Burial Customs

This article makes use of recently published graves to offer the first synthetic analysis of the typology and topography of Spartan burials that is founded on archaeological evidence. Our knowledge of Spartan burial practices has long been based almost entirely on textual sources – excavations conducted in Sparta between 1906 and 1994 uncovered fewer than 20 pre-Roman graves. The absence of pre-Roman cemeteries led scholars to conclude that, as long as the Lycurgan customs were in effect, all burials in Sparta were intracommunal and that few tombs had been found because they had been destroyed by later building activity. Burial practices have, as a result, been seen as one of many ways in which Sparta was an outlier. The aforementioned recently published graves offer a different picture of Spartan burial practices. It is now clear that there was at least one extracommunal cemetery in the Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic periods. What would normally be described as extramural burials did, therefore, take place, but intracommunal burials of adults continued to be made in Sparta throughout the Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic periods. Those burials were concentrated along important roads and on the slopes of hills. The emergent understanding of Spartan burial practices takes on added significance when placed in a wider context. Burial practices in Sparta align closely with those found in Argos and Corinth. Indeed, burial practices in Sparta, rather than being exceptional, are notably similar to those of its most important Peloponnesian neighbours; a key issue is that in all three poleis intracommunal burials continued to take place through the Hellenistic period. The finding that adults were buried both extracommunally and intracommunally in Sparta, Argos and Corinth after the Geometric period calls into question the standard narrative of the development of Greek burial practices in the post-Mycenaean period.

Note: This article has two parts: main text and supplementary materials (appendices listing of burials in Sparta, available here and on the ABSA website).

This paper examines the landscape context of the Bartlow Hills, a group of large Romano-British barrows that were excavated in the 1840s but have been largely neglected since. GIS is employed to test whether it was possible to view the mounds from nearby roads, barrows, and villas. Existing research on provincial barrows, and especially their landscape context, and some recent relevant applications of GIS are reviewed. We argue that barrows are active and symbolically charged statements about power and identity. The most striking pattern to emerge from the GIS analysis is a focus on display to a local rather than a transient audience.

This article reexamines the construction of the spectacular five-bay choir of the Temple Church in London (finished 1240). Using previously neglected documentary evidence, it demonstrates that the decision of King Henry III of England (r. 1216–72) to entrust his future burial to the Templars was instrumental to the conception of the building project, rendering him its de facto architectural patron. This conclusion leads to an assessment of the relationship that existed between the order and the Crown. Thereafter follows an architectural analysis of the choir itself--a structure whose distinctive design is interpreted in terms of the multifaceted agendas of both parties. The choir-building project, it is finally argued, had a decisive impact on Henry's formation as an architectural patron in at least two respects. First, it exposed him to the possibilities of building commissions, thereby encouraging his later experimentation with different means of architectural promotion. Second, it exposed him to the perils of building collaborations, thereby encouraging his later experimentation with different methods of architectural production. Both circumstances would eventually lead the king to seek interment not at the Temple Church but at Westminster Abbey--the reconstruction of which, carried out by the newly enlarged King's Works, was to have a profound effect on the future of Gothic architecture in England. Thus, seen in this light, the Temple Church choir constitutes a valuable case study in the dynamics of medieval artistic patronage.

This paper presents bio-anthropological data concerning the Shanidar cave, Proto-Neolithic, Homo sapiens population at the dawn of sedentary life in SW Asia. It was proposed that changes in human organizational systems and perceived environmental contexts, as reflected by ecofacts and tool assemblages, indicating the intensification of harvesting of resources during this Proto-Neolithic cultural component, could have altered existing interrelationships between pathogens, vectors, and human hosts. The individuals comprising the skeletal collection represent both sex subcategories and most age subgroups. Further, no evidence of bio-distance has been documented between them judging from morphometrics and mensurational analyses. Paleopathological investigations of the skeletal record revealed the presence of infectious diseases, lesions of the joints, lesions of the jaws and teeth, benign tumors, hemopoietic and metabolic disorders, as well as severe traumatic conditions. Bone isotopic testing for investigations of dietary patterns indicated a diet heavily based on C3 plants, while the animal protein component was calculated to an intake of less than 10%. The paleopathological profile in conjunction with the archeometric studies, and the rest of the archaeological record present significant reflections of the lives of these Proto-Neolithic people in SW Asia, during this transitional time period.

In the literature dealing with the development of ceramic specialization, paste uniformity has been suggested as a surrogate index of product standardization and the result of a more intensive level of specialization. More recently, the amount of paste variability has been seen as an indicator of different types of production organization. Ethnoarchaeological data from Mexico, Peru, and Guatemala suggest that a variety of environmental, technological, and social factors influence paste variability. These factors are important in all production contexts and complicate inferences drawn about production organization in antiquity. As a consequence, social and economic inferences derived from ancient ceramic pastes need to be understood in relation to numerous other factors such as natural variability of the ceramic raw materials, their procurement, and their use in paste preparation. Furthermore, changes in resource use and paste preparation over time can obscure intracommunity and other fine-scale patterns. As a consequence, it is argued that little, if anything, can be learned about the organization of production below the level of the local production community. Rather, the primary usefulness of paste compositional analyses lies in the identification, in geographic and geological spaces (“community signature units”), of source communities that exploit raw materials within a limited range of probably no more than 3 to 4 km. Paste analyses thus provide important information about the organization of ceramic distribution, revealing the emergence and demise of source communities and the movement of their ceramic products.

This article examines changes in ritual practices during the Epiclassic period in central Mexico. It presents data recovered
from recent excavations of a shrine discovered in Lake Xaltocan in the northern Basin of Mexico. Pottery and AMS dates
place the construction and use of the shrine in the Epiclassic period. The shrine was first built during or soon after the collapse
of the Teotihuacan state. With the decline of Teotihuacan and the emergence of competing centers, ritual practitioners
began human sacrifice: the remains of over 30 individuals were documented, including 13 complete severed crania.
This practice suggests conflict as the political landscape became decentralized. Despite how broader processes may have
affected behavior, the shrine, ritual practice was fundamentally local. We present archaeobotanical evidence of offerings
of food, incense, and flowers that elucidates the microlevel nature of ritual at the shrine.

Este artículo examina los cambios en las prácticas rituales durante el período Epiclásico en el centro de México. Presenta
datos recuperados de excavaciones recientes de un lugar sagrado descubierto en el Lago de Xaltocan, situado al norte de la Cuenca de México. Las cerámicas y las fechas de radiocarbano 14 el santuario en el período Epiclásico. Este hallazgo consiste en una plataforma construida y utilizada cuando el estado de Teotihuacan se encontraba dominado por la tensión que conllevó al colapso. Con la caída de Teotihuacán y la aparición de otros centros políticos, la práctica del sacrificio humano se inició; en este caso se ejemplifica con la presencia de los restos de más de 30 individuos, incluyendo 13 cráneos decapitados completos, hallados en el contexto ceremonial. Esta costumbre sugiere la existencia de conflicto cuando el paisaje político se volvió más descentralizado. Aunque los procesos regionales afectaron las actividades en el sitio, el ritual era, sobre todo, un fenómeno local. Presentamos datos arqueobotánicos que indican que los practicantes del ritual realizaron ritos asociados con el agua y la fertilidad e hicieron ofrendas de comida, incienso, y flores.

The Hegykő cemetery (and the Hegykő group) has strong ties with the 6th-century cemeteries of Lower-Austria both regarding its material culture and its funerary rites, and thus any interpretation must be set in this context. The comparative analysis of the cemetery’s two grave groups sheds light on the tendency that the community using the cemetery gradually acculturated to the population using the 6th-century cemeteries of Pannonia.

A rare Chalcolithic rolled-gold bead-like ornament dated to c. 2400–2200 cal. BC was found in association with sherds of early Beaker ware in an Early Bronze Age Collared Urn burial dated
to c. 1545–1450 cal. BC. The grave was located at Pendleton, Lancashire. This paper reports on the AMS radiocarbon dates for the burial context along with X-ray composition analysis of the
gold ornament, which shows the object had a high platinum content consistent with alluvial, placer, deposits possibly originating in Brittany, France rather than the British Isles. This
unparalleled rolled-gold ornament is compared to the corpus of British and French rolled-gold ornaments and contemporary goldwork and a provenance, manufacture and biography of the find is explored. Both curation and fragmentation are considered in the context of a dated Beaker ware assemblage from the local domestic site of Lower Brockholes, Preston, as well as existing corpora of Beaker and Collared Urn ware from the region.

By integrating osteological, taphonomic, archaeological, and stable isotopic data, we test for cannibalism in the Lau Group, Fiji, and discuss the potential underlying cause(s) and context(s) of this behavior. First, we compare taphonomic and element representations of human skeletal material from two contexts in Fiji, examining human bone fragments from archaeological sites, including middens and burials in the Lau Island Group. Fourteen sites produced human remains. Only two of those sites included distinct human burial contexts, but in the remaining 12 sites, the human bone was recovered from middens or contexts where midden was mixed with possible secondary burials. A total of 262 NISP, representing an estimated 15 MNI make up the Lau human assemblage. Second, we analyzed bones contained in 20 individual human burials from four different sites that are housed at the Fiji Museum for comparative purposes. Third, we examine previously published stable isotopic (δ13C, δ15N) analysis of bone collagen to gauge protein consumption of likely cannibalized humans in midden contexts and potential cannibals from primary burials. We model a cannibalistic diet category within the context of isotopically-measured Pacific Islands food groups and apply an isotopic mixing model to gauge plausible dietary contributions from six sources including human flesh. Isotopic mixing models of the Lauan samples illustrate a high diversity in reconstructed diets. The percent contribution of human flesh is low for all individual Lauans. We conclude that mortuary rituals evidenced by sharp-force trauma (SFT) may suggest non-nutritive and nonviolent practices that may have included the consumption of small amounts of human flesh.

The perception of and interaction with ancient relics in past societies has been intensively debated in the
archaeology of north-western Europe. This paper aims to make a contribution to this debate by reconstructing
the long-term history of late prehistoric barrows and urnfields in Flanders (Belgium). The period between the
Late Bronze Age and High Middle Ages (c. 1100 cal BC–AD 1300) is centred on. Contrary to Germany,
Scandinavia and especially Britain, data from the Low Countries (Belgium and the Netherlands) have so far
barely played a role in wider international and theoretical discussions on the role of the past in the past. Previous
studies on reuse practices in the Low Countries mainly focused on the Meuse-Demer-Scheldt region of the
southern Netherlands and north-eastern Belgium, which partly overlaps Flanders. These studies are combined
and summarised. Their main outcomes are tested by means of a detailed inventory of reused late prehistoric
cemeteries in Flanders. This study differs methodologically from most others in that it both offers an evidence-based overview of regional diachronic trends (documented at 62 barrow cemeteries and 13 urnfields) and discusses the developments at six sites yielding high resolution data. The observed reuse practices and site
biographies appear to be remarkably dynamic and more diverse than previously suggested.

The sixteenth-century reckoning with extra-European peoples and cultures occurred at precisely the same moment that humanists were increasingly preoccupied with the daily life, material culture, and lived religion of classical antiquity. Leading figures in sixteenth-century antiquarianism took an abiding interest in ethnographic accounts of contemporary peoples and even produced such accounts. This article examines how sixteenth-century readers and scholars placed bodies of literature on ancient and modern customs in dialogue with one another. While scholars have long appreciated that ethnographic and travel writing were deeply mediated by the study of antiquity, that mediation cut both ways. This article addresses the question of how ethnographic descriptions of modern peoples shaped sixteenth-century understandings of the customs and lived religion of antiquity. The writings of merchants and humanists testify to the ways in which the practices of ethnographic writing helped to shape travellers’ and readers’ appreciation of the cultural alterity of classical antiquity.

Over 500 victims of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) were buried in the cemetery of La Carcavilla (Palencia, Spain). White material, observed in several burials, was analyzed with Raman spectroscopy and powder XRD, and confirmed to be lime. Archaeological findings at La Carcavilla's cemetery show that the application of lime was used in an organized way, mostly associated with coffinless interments of victims of Francoist repression. In burials with a lime cast, observations made it possible to draw conclusions regarding the presence of soft tissue at the moment of deposition, the sequence of events, and the presence of clothing and other evidence. This study illustrates the importance of analyzing a burial within the depositional environment and taphonomic context.

Despite much intensive archaeological fieldwork, several regions of Greece
still have not yielded any evidence for palatial structures. It may be, therefore,
that they never gave rise to full palatial states. Rather, in regions such as
Achaia, local elites may have functioned within less-articulated organizational
orders (perhaps chiefdoms), which did not require the centralization of
economic activities. These polities existed alongside the more complex palatial
states, but it is not necessary to posit that they were subjected to or dependent
on the palaces economically or politically, although their opportunities may
have been constricted by the presence of the larger power. After the collapse
of the palatial system around 1200 b.c., some of these smaller polities seem
to have flourished in the LH IIIC period.

Horses are the most common grave goods found in Icelandic Viking Age graves. Horse skeletons have previously been sexed based on pelvis shape and the presence of canine teeth in male horses over 4–5 years of age. Morphological data has shown that all horses from Icelandic burials that were amenable to sexing were male. Yet the use of morphological methods to determine sex is problematic since they rely on finding a well-preserved pelvis and/or robust canine teeth. Furthermore, quantitative data underlying the features of the horse pelvis used for sexing is lacking and canine teeth have been reported to occur in mares. In this study we build upon and extend recently developed methodologies to make use of shotgun sequencing of ancient DNA (aDNA) for molecular sexing of Viking Age horse remains. With minimal sequencing effort we identified the sex of the largest collection (n = 22) of Viking Age Icelandic horses studied to date, sourced from both burial (n = 19) and non-burial (n = 3) sites. Our results revealed a male to female sex bias ratio of 18:1 in burial sites, versus 0:3 in non-burial sites. These findings support the significant over-representation of male horses in Viking Age graves in Iceland, yet show that –albeit rare– mares could also be selected for ritual burial in Viking Age Iceland. This cost-effective method provides statistical confidence to allow for sexing of highly fragmented archaeological specimens with low endogenous DNA content.

Sardasht is a mountainous region located in the northern part of the Zagros. The Little Zab river,
has had an important role in the formation of archaeological sites in the region. During field studies
conducted along the eastern bank of the Iranian Little Zab we found seven pithos cemeteries, as
well as archaeological sites that belong to multiple cultures. Unfortunately, all the cemeteries have
been disturbed by illegal excavations and many pithos cemeteries have been destroyed. We were
able to recover a significant amount of ceramic material, including glazed potsherds and sherds of
the fine orange “Clinky ware” characteristic of the Parthian period, as well as glass, agate and clay
beads. This paper presents the evidence from the newly discovered Parthian cemeteries in
Sardasht, and compares their characteristics with other known Parthian pithos cemeteries such
as those at Mingeçevir, Germi, Kangavar, Taq-e Bostan, Marivan and the Acropolis and the Royal
City of Susa. A comparative study on the shape of the pithoi and other finds indicates a close
similarity between the pithos cemeteries of Sardasht with the cemeteries at Germi and Taq-e
Bostan. Considering these comparisons, we believe that the Sardasht cemeteries date to the
first and second centuries AD.

This text comprises a critical discussion of assemblage theory and its application to burial studies. In recent research, burials have been viewed as fluid and indeterminate assemblages that 'become' in varied ways depending on different perceptions (concepts and ideas) and apparatuses (e.g. excavation tools and measuring instruments). The past and the present are thus mixed in potentially ever-new configurations which run the risk of replacing epistemological relativism with ontological fluidity. It is argued here that the hypothetical mutability of burial assemblages can be reduced significantly by addressing the varying speed and degree of the involved processes of integration and disintegration. By doing this, the main focus is shifted to the animacy of such processes and how they may have been understood and utilized in burials. Using both general and specific examples, it is argued that cremation burials can be studied as carefully compiled amalgamations that utilize the properties and animacies of different materialities to deal with death, corpses and the afterlife.

This is a proof, you can find the final version here: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774320000116
It is Open Access.

Pollen and intestinal parasite eggs of a number of burials from a medieval cemetery at Nivelles (Belgium) have been studied. The results of the pollen analysis provide indications for the use of straw and hay in the medieval burial ritual. Pollen assemblages from samples from the pelvic area of the skeletons, which are generally believed to represent the contents of the digestive tract, are potentially also influenced by this practice. The consequences for the palynological analysis and interpretation of pollen assemblages from medieval burials are discussed. The parasitological analysis shows a high infection rate of Trichuris and Ascaris in the medieval population of Nivelles.

This paper is dedicated to the relations between two phenomena
so characteristic for the medieval Bosnian history: one being the monastic  order krstjani from Bosnia, ie. the Bosnian Church and the other are medieval  tombstones - stećci. During the development of the historiography, attitudes  of medievalists regarding these phenomena went through different phases,  from almost unconditional connections between them, to the modern  stance when it was determined that they were linked, but not exclusively.
The sources for the analysis are the epitaphs written on the tombstones,
which were confirmed to have belonged to members of the Bosnian church, as well as those tombstones which contain the symbols of a cane and a book  which historiography recognizes as signs of spiritual status of the deceased.

This paper examines parish church sites in County Limerick and their evolving meanings as a result of Ireland’s unsuccessful Protestant Reformation. Unusually for Europe, most Irish parish churches fell into ruin from 1550 to 1700. Conquest, loss of patronage and the Anglican Church of Ireland's failure to convert most native Catholics ensured that.
Nevertheless, local memories continued to draw people to these sites. There is evidence for Catholic burial in the 18th and 19th centuries, conversion of chancels into burial plots and, sometimes, church maintenance or construction by Anglicans. These activities all reveal contemporary concerns with history, identity and legitimacy.

An estimated 300 mass grave sites, and more than 19,000 burial pits, have been unearthed in Cambodia. These graves mark the sites where approximately 2 million Cambodians died, either from starvation, disease, or execution. In recent years considerable research has directed attention both to the forensic study of Cambodia's mass graves and also to the politics of memorialization in Cambodia. Less attention has addressed the actual, material production of mass graves during the genocide; consequently, our understanding of the social relations that embody concrete forms of violence remains inadequate. In this paper I draw conceptually on 'administrative violence' as a means of bridging direct and structural violence. In so doing I detail how law-making and law-preserving forms of violence intersect with the imposition of structures of violence. This paper therefore makes two contributions-one theoretical, the other empirical. On the one hand I contribute to the burgeoning geographic literature on violence, specifically, through an elaboration of administrative violence; and, on the other hand, I reconsider the spatial practices of Democratic Kampuchea, thereby contributing to a more geographically-informed understanding of the Cambodian genocide.

The use of red pigments linked to burial practices is widely documented in the Iberian prehistoric record and very often it has been traditionally interpreted as a ritual practice entailing the utilisation of local raw materials (iron oxides). Some research works, nevertheless, have also detected the use of red pigments which can only be interpreted as allochthonous. The red pigments spread over a single inhumation in a monumental Megalithic tomb surrounding Valencina de la Concepción Copper Age settlement was studied by means of X-ray diffraction, field emission scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, X-ray microfluorescence, micro-Raman and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopies. This approach allowed characterising the red pigments as cinnabar, mixed with tiny amounts of iron oxides. The presence of cinnabar, a product that was necessarily imported, in a context of an exceptional set of grave goods, suggests that the use of cinnabar was linked not only to ritual but also to practices related to the display of social status.

"‘Change equals death’ (Woody Allen)

Apart from eschatological aspects, death is more important for the living than the dead. It is argued that funerals are one of the most important settings for recreating society through the re-establishment of alliances. When an important person dies, his or her former social relations and alliances come to an end and have to be re-established from a societal point of view. At funerals not only are gifts given to the deceased, but it is equally important that the ritual participants make new alliances and re-negotiate old ones by the exchange of gifts. Thus, the distributions of artefacts, or the construction of different funeral monuments, are here seen as the outcome of such transactions. By emphasising transactions and re-negotiations of alliances in different funerals we argue that the distribution of prestige goods in Europe is not only part of trade or warfare. Exchange of gifts and prestige items as part of reciprocal relations was crucial in the structuring of inter-regional areas. Funerals were such occasions where the descendants and the living could legitimate future hierarchies by transferring the deceased’s social status and power to themselves by re-negotiating former alliances and creating new ones."

Early Bronze Age communities on the north coast of Cyprus developed a distinctive ceramic tradition with a rich array of forms, including ritual vessels with symbolically complex decoration reflecting the importance of horned animals and other phenomena in a local cosmology. These were deposited in tombs together with decorated drinking bowls and quantities of cattle bones, suggesting the high cost of funerary events. In addition, some tombs appear to have been the scene of ongoing ritual activities and possibly mortuary 'shrines'. These and other forms of patterned behaviour relating to death and burial served to promote new forms of authority through connections with ancestors. North coast mortuary ceremonial also played a key role in the longerterm development of ritual iconography and ritualized practices in Bronze Age Cyprus.

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Burial of horses and horse-elements occurred throughout Europe during the first millennium AD. These burials are prevalent in northwest Europe and are perhaps more significant in Britain than previously realised. This article explores the position and value of the horse within Britain during this period, why the burials are likely to represent ritual deposition and what they may indicate about the culture. Both horse deposits and human-horse burials are linked to non-Christian burial and sacrificial practices of the Iron Age and Early Medieval period and are particularly associated with Anglo-Saxon and Viking Britain. Some of the traditions appear to reflect the culture described in the Icelandic Sagas, Beowulf and other legends and chronicles. Archaeologically, the human-horse burials are also linked with high status individuals and ‘warrior graves,’ while complete-horse and horse-element burials may represent ritual feasting and sacrificial rites probably linked with fertility, luck and the ancestors.

The transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture in Europe is associated with demographic changes that may have shifted the human gene pool of the region as a result of an influx of Neolithic farmers from the Near East. However, the genetic composition of populations after the earliest Neolithic, when a diverse mosaic of societies that had been fully engaged in agriculture for some time appeared in central Europe, is poorly known. At this period during the Late Neolithic (ca. 2,800–2,000 BC), regionally distinctive burial patterns associated with two different cultural groups emerge, Bell Beaker and Corded Ware, and may reflect differences in how these societies were organized. Ancient DNA analyses of human remains from the Late Neolithic Bell Beaker site of Kromsdorf, Germany showed distinct mitochondrial haplotypes for six individuals, which were classified under the haplogroups I1, K1, T1, U2, U5, and W5, and two males were identified as belonging to the Y haplogroup R1b. In contrast to other Late Neolithic societies in Europe emphasizing maintenance of biological relatedness in mortuary contexts, the diversity of maternal haplotypes evident at Kromsdorf suggests that burial practices of Bell Beaker communities operated outside of social norms based on shared maternal lineages. Furthermore, our data, along with those from previous studies, indicate that modern U5-lineages may have received little, if any, contribution from the Mesolithic or Neolithic mitochondrial gene pool.

Residues from nine ancient Maya dedicatory vessels were analyzed for biosilicates. In all cases, the analysis was successful in identifying plant and sponge remains that had been placed in the vessels. This analysis sheds light on ancient Maya plant use as well as ritual and religious practices.

This report describes a pilot study examining aDNA from a skeletal population excavated in the 1990s at the late Early Bronze Age (EBA, c. 2300-2100 BC) urban settlement of Titriş Höyük in southeastern Turkey. Typically, late EBA burials at Titriş Höyük consisted of periodically reused underground family crypts contained within houses. However, one unique set of remains dated to the latest phase of the late EBA occupation at the site departed from this burial pattern entirely. It consisted of an above ground mortuary installation (B98.87) displaying the skulls and post-cranial bones of 19 individuals, most exhibiting a variety of fatal traumas. In this article, we compare the mtDNA sequences of these individuals with those buried in contemporary traditional late EBA intramural crypts. After successful extraction and amplification of ancient DNA molecules during a double blind study of 13 skeletons selected for the pilot study, our team was able to compare the genetic relatedness of individuals displayed in B98.87 to individuals buried elsewhere on the site. Based on archaeological evidence alone, earlier we had suggested that the occupants of B98.87 were perhaps outsiders, possibly soldiers vanquished in hostilities taking place shortly before the abandonment of the city at the end of the late EBA. However, our pilot study showed no clear genetic difference between the population of B98.87 and the broader population of the late EBA city, contrary to our expectations.

The last five decades have witnessed an increasing concern with mortuary remains as a source of information to infer some aspects of past social systems. Archaeologists and anthropologists recognized that a great variety of information is potentially incorporated in mortuary remains (Tainter 1975, Alekshin 1983, O’Shea 1984:1). The processual approach has stressed the significance of the mortuary remains as an area of mutual interest between archaeology and ethnography (Chapman 1977). Various attempts have been made to provide correlations between mortuary behavior and social system (Saxe 1978, Binford 1972, Brown 1971, Tainter 1975, 1978, Wright 1978, Chapman 1981, Harrold 1980, Alekshin 1984, O’Shea 1984). Some scholars have argued against a systematic linking between mortuary remains and the social system (Kroeber 1927, Ucko 1969, Hodder 1982), stressing the specific nature of the mortuary practice and the role of ideology. This controversy about the use of funerary remains is due to the fact that its justification rested largely on ethnographic rather than on archaeological grounds (O’Shea 1984). However, the whole mortuary theory is based on the assumption that social differentiations, weather by age, sex, social position etc., is reflected by mortuary differentiation of the dead (Binford 1972). This correlation does not imply that mortuary practices are merely a passive reflection of social life (Hodder 1982: 145). It is also evident that some aspects of mortuary symbolism will not be detected by mortuary analysis and therefore only a minimal level of internal differentiation is expected to be displayed (O’Shea 1984:8, Rakita and Buikstra 2005). But there is no doubt that this mortuary analysis provides archaeologists with a valuable tool to interpret the mortuary archaeological remains.

Upper Tigris River Valley is a river valley of Southeastern Turkey and it has 1900 km lenght and flows throughout the Mesopotamia. This valley has been researched with Ilısu Dam Rescue Project just during last 30 years and the burial customs from Chalcolithic settlement in valley are an important part of Chalcolithic assemblage. The most characteristic archaeological artefacts of this assemblage is infant burial that had been buried under Chalcolithic floores as a local Late Chalcolithic tradition. All of these supplies to understand for researchers the characteristic featues of Chalcolithic assemblage in valley and chronological-terminological problems about that.

Taking the Infinity Burial Project (IBP) as its inspiration, this essay theorizes a politics of edibility by way of decomposing the discursive boundaries erected between human bodies and environments. In particular, this essay reads the IBP as a deconstruction of another dualism-eater/eaten -that permeates and informs cultural practices from birth to burial. Mobilizing a rhetoric of carnality, the IBP decomposes the human body's relation to its environments, merging its statuses as eater and eaten. At the same time, this rhetoric of carnality also emphasizes the irreducibly productive nature of consumption as an articulatory practice in its own right. As this essay argues, a politics of edibility not only recognizes the superficiality of the body/environment and eater/eaten dichotomies but it also respects the relations generated in the wake of their deconstruction.

In response to the violence of the Revolutionary War and affirming Enlightened philosophies, Harvard University founded its Medical School in 1783. Excavated materials from a trash feature at Holden Chapel, site of Harvard’s early medical lectures, include anatomized human remains. There, new regimes of medical authority were created through the manipulation of bodies via transgressive practices of dissection, display, and disposal. Existing studies of nineteenth-century cadavers strongly focus on their emotional and evidentiary qualities. Close attention should also be paid to instructional bodies. Instructional human remains, uncannily both subject and object, person and specimen, were distinct from other kinds of bodies – and distinctly troubling. The Holden collection historicizes concepts of the body, permits an archaeology of early medical authority, and destabilizes archaeologists’ usual approaches to human remains, corporeality, and the individual.

The early Neolithic in northern Central Europe ought to be the theatre in which
incoming farmersmeet local hunter-gatherers, with greater or lesser impact. By way of contrast, the authors use isotope analysis in a cemetery beside the Danube to describe a peaceful, well-integrated community with a common diet and largely indigenous inhabitants. Men and women may have had different mobility strategies, but the isotopes did not signal special origins or diverse foodproducing roles.Other explanations attend the variations in the burial rites of individuals and their distribution into cemetery plots.

Anthropology's response to the West African Ebola epidemic was one of the most rapid and expansive anthropological interventions to a global health emergency in the discipline's history. This article sets forth the size and scale of the anthropological response and describes the protagonists, interventions , and priorities for anthropological engagement. It takes an inclusive approach to anthropological praxis by engaging with the work of nonanthro-pologist " allies, " including qualitative researchers, social workers, and allied experts. The article narrates how the concept of " anthropology " came to serve as a semantic marker of solidarity with local populations, respect for customary practices and local sociopolitical realities, and an avowed belief in the capacities of local populations to lead localized epidemic prevention and response efforts. Of particular consideration is the range of complementary and conflicting epistemological, professional, and critical engagements held by anthropologists. The article also discusses how to assess anthropological " impact " in epidemics. 421

This paper examines the British Museum unpublished records related to an Early Bronze (EB) Age pithos burial uncovered a century ago in the Inner Town at Carchemish. The grave, cursorily cited and variously dated (Chalcolithic, EB or even LBA) in the final reports, was described in some detail by Hogarth and Thompson; a precise dating is, however, possible today thanks to the information of paramount importance given by T. E. Lawrence who identified and took a picture of the associated finds, which was recently rediscovered in the Carchemish Archives. The pithos can be now ascribed to the third quarter of the third millennium BC and helps to confirm the recent theory according to which the Inner Town of Carchemish, with its massive earthen rampart, had already developed at the time of the second urbanisation in Syria and upper Mesopotamia.

This article presents a description of Khankarinsky Dol mound 34 on the left bank of the Inya River, 1–1.5 km southeast of Chineta, Krasnoshchekovsky District, Altai Territory. Excavations revealed a cist with a supine burial of a male, whose head was oriented to the east. Beyond the eastern wall of the cist, a horse cranium and three crania of sheep were placed. Features of the burial rite suggest that the burial belongs to the Korgantass type, which is distributed over the Altai-Sayan and Kazakhstan, with certain parallels in northern China. Principal categories of offerings are analyzed, including those associated with the horse. On their basis, the horse harness is reconstructed. On the basis of the typology of artifacts and radiocarbon analysis, the burial was dated to the 5th to 4th centuries BC (possibly late 5th to early 4th centuries BC). The Korgantass burials at Khankarinsky Dol and elsewhere in the Altai Mountains indicate a migration from the eastern part of the nomadic world, apparently from northern China or the Trans-Baikal region.

What is the last thing someone ever wears, who decides, and what emotions do those garments embody? Excavations by Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) of two 1840s Non-conformist and Baptist cemetery sites answer some of these questions for poorer mid-nineteenth century Londoners. The decayed textiles emerging from these graves are a new and emotionally rich source for exploring the distance of the recent past. The unexplained, chance-found scraps of clothing and shrouds read in their own context reveal unique information, breaking archival silence about burial rituals and death-related consumption practices in lower social levels than the middle classes. The choice of interred textiles and garments - such as a satin baby’s bonnet, pinned silk ribbons and a false waistcoat -, their qualities and construction all bespeak emotions around pride, dignity, religious feeling, tenderness and socially codified grief. Clothing fragments become a substitute fleshliness as the bodily tissue they cover wears away, the last traces of the invested, materialised emotions surrounding death. The paper also considers the emotions these intimate, poignant and sometimes gruesome objects evoke in the researcher during analysis. How - or should - these feelings be considered after stripping my own emotional responses for the supposed objectivity required of an archaeological report?

The River Styx site was an important Middle Woodland
ceremonial center in north-central Florida that included a
horseshoe-shaped earthen embankment, a burial mound
containing only cremations, and diverse nonlocal artifacts.
The site was recorded more than forty years ago but a report
was never written. This article presents a summary of
excavation results at River Styx and analysis of the pottery
assemblage based on archived notes and collections at the
Florida Museum of Natural History. From the pottery
assemblage, 24 vessel lots, consisting of mostly partially
reconstructed vessels, are described in terms of form, surface
treatment, and mineralogical constituents characterized by
petrographic analysis. The provenance of each vessel is
inferred, and more than half of the analyzed assemblage is
judged to be nonlocal.

The article sets the goal of describing the Ukrainian ritual of the sealed grave and its relation to revenants, or the unquiet dead, based both on the author's fieldwork and ethnographic collections of the turn of the 20th century. The meaning of the ritual and its variants are delineated through folk beliefs and institutionalised Orthodoxy and are defined as one of the main reasons for becoming revenants. Depending on a proper or failed funeral, the dead have different possibilities and time boundaries to visit the living. Together with biological reasons, the ritual of sealing a grave allows a seven-year period of return prior to the grave being finally sealed.

The excavation of the Møllegabet sites in 1976 started as the world's first systematic excavation of submerged Stone Age. The book presents the results of the excavations with the finds of a shell midden, a boat grave as well as a dwelling partly dug into an early small shell midden. The material represents the earliest as well as the central part of the Ertebølle culture. The dwelling material is used for a spatial analysis.

"Representations", N. 129, Winter 2015.

The essay analyzes the project of maintaining the body of V. I. Lenin in the Mausoleum in Moscow for the past ninety years, focusing on the unique biological science that developed around this project, and the unexpected political role this body has performed.

While the lack of grave goods has been the focus of most scholarly discussion of Coles Creek burial practices, the mortuary analyses presented here focus on recognizing correspondences among sex, age, and burial position. Using assemblages from three Coles Creek sites (Greenhouse, Lake George, and Mount Nebo), I find that while there is significant intersite variability among Coles Creek mortuary programs, certain age groups are consistently treated differently from each other and from everyone else. Thus
interments were being made with deliberate care and consideration for those involved and are not nearly as haphazard and disorderly as previously thought.