Dietary life histories in Stone Age Northern Europe

We present here a framework for using stable isotope analysis of bone and teeth to study individual life history. A sampling strategy and analytical approach for stable carbon and nitrogen analysis of bone and dentine collagen optimised for intra-individual purposes is put forward. The rationale behind this strategy, various requirements and constrains, and recommendations on how to modify it according to variations in material and analytical instrumentation, are discussed and explained in detail. Based on intra-individual data for 131 human individuals from Mesolithic and Neolithic sites in Northern Europe, we consider the sources and various kinds of variation one is likely to find, and how the data can be explained and transformed into an archaeologically meaningful interpretation. It is concluded that the use of stable isotope analysis to trace individual life history is not limited to carefully excavated, neatly preserved, single burials with articulate skeletal remains. Even collective burials, disturbed graves, disarticulated human remains in cultural layers, or other depositions that deviate from what is often considered as a “proper burial”, offer the possibility to look at individual life biographies.     

Last Meals: Recovering Abdominal Contents From Skeletonized Remains

Excavation and analysis of human remains is becoming a polarized field in anthropology; it is therefore necessary to consider alternate avenues of data collection from these features to maximize their potential. The analysis of abdominal soils for digestive tract contents is consistently overlooked in research designs. Two previous studies have attempted to recover abdominal contents through systematic sampling methods using multiple inhumations and two others have recovered colon contents in isolated instances. This research briefly familiarizes the reader with current state of investigation, and then proposes and tests a different method to recover abdominal contents in skeletonized inhumations. Using this method, more than 70% of the sampled inhumations yielded data on ingested botanical products. Though recovered, faunal remains were rare. The implications of recovery, some interpretations for each population, and avenues of future research are considered.     

“Funerary bundles” in the PPNB at the archaeological site of Tell Halula (middle Euphrates valley,Syria): analysis of the taphonomic dynamics of seated bodies

This paper presents the results of the taphonomic analysis of the burials from Tell Halula (Middle Euphrates Valley, Syria). The numerous burials recovered from this Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) settlement, in addition to the large volume of field documentation, have provided an opportunity to study burials in more depth than is usually allowed. This data set is important because of the unique mode of deposition, the exceptional preservation of the related assemblages (including fabrics, mats, and basketry) and the highly standardized nature of the funerary practices. Although the burials were found in various stages of preservation and articulation, we will show that they all represented the same type of funerary deposit, namely seated burials, often encased in bottle-shaped funerary bundles, and that the variability found during excavation can be attributed to post-depositional taphonomic effects. We provide a study of the different forms that result from these taphonomic influences and highlight the importance of doing this type of analysis. We hope that this paper will be a valuable contribution to the growing body of literature surrounding both seated burials and the taphonomy of burials.     

汉代非单棺墓葬的考古学意义观察——以中小型墓葬为观察对象

汉代的非单棺墓,即同穴多人葬,包括有亲缘关系的合葬墓和非亲缘关系的主仆同葬墓。本文所论非单棺墓,为有亲缘关系的合葬墓。这类墓葬的考古年代学类型有同时合葬和异时合葬两种形式。同时合葬因迁葬或同时丧亡而形成,异时合葬则由于先后丧亡因而先后入葬形成。异时而葬的合葬墓,墓主葬入的时间虽有绝对的先后,但因考古学研究方法的特性,对先后葬入的随葬品的考古年代学分期,会有同一时间段或不同时间段两种结论。对于非单棺墓葬的研究,我们首先要重视资料报道的准确件,其次要以对单棺墓葬的分析作为研究的前提,此外要注意辨析同一墓葬内和不同墓葬间不同器物群组之间的关系。     

WHEN THE BOUGH BREAKS: CHILDHOOD MORTALITY AND BURIAL PRACTICE IN LATE NEOLITHIC ATLANTIC EUROPE

Towards the end of the fifth millennium BC, a new funerary tradition developed in Iberia and elsewhere in Atlantic Europe involving the use of megalithic tombs and natural or artificially constructed caves for the collective burial of the dead. Ancestor worship has been the most common theoretical framework used to explain this Neolithic burial tradition, despite demographic information which indicates that these burials house the remains of a significant percentage of children and adolescents. Using data from Late Neolithic (3500–2500 BC) tombs in south‐western Iberia as a departure point, in this paper we suggest that by reconsidering the impact that childhood mortality had upon burial and grave visitation practices in Neolithic communities, archaeologists can gain valuable phenomenological information which will allow for a more robust, multivocal interpretative approach.     

REVISITING THE DEAD AT HELENA CROSSING,ARKANSAS

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a bioarchaeological reanalysis of the skeletal remains interred in the Middle Woodland burial mounds at the Helena Crossing site (3PH11). Based on current bioarchaeological methods, our reanalysis offers summaries of the sex and age estimates, pathologies, and trauma of the burials from Helena Crossing that are useful for their subsequent interpretation. We also document previously unrecognized evidence of postmortem processing in specific burials as evidenced by cut and chop marks that are associated with defleshing, disarticulating, and possibly mutilating particular corpses. We note the special attention paid to detaching and processing the mandibles and/or maxillas of several burials that indicates, along with evidence from other sites, that the mouth was an important symbolically charged orifice during the Middle Woodland period in the Eastern Woodlands.     

Royal burial and the cult of kingship in France and England, 1060–1330

In the late-eleventh and early twelfth centuries, French and English royal burials were relatively unceremonial, low-key affairs, a contrast with the obsequies of other contemporary rulers such as the Holy Roman emperors. One reason for that may be the dominance of reforming ecclesiastics in arranging the funeral rites in England and France; another, the importance attached by the monarchs to obtaining personalised intercession from ascetic monks. By the early fourteenth century, however, the French and English sovereigns were commemorated after death in magnificent ceremonies and monuments. In the intervening centuries, those kings and their followers had shown a growing interest in the creation and promotion of royal saint-cults; in the honouring of royal remains; in public and splendid funeral ceremonies and lawish tombs; and in the creation and development of imposing burial-churches at Saint-Denis and Westminster. During this time there was an increasing emphasis upon the image and panoply of monarchy in both kingdoms which was rooted to a large extent in the personal and political rivalry of their rulers. The new splendours of royal burials can be seen as one important part of those developments.     

Royal burial and the cult of kingship in France and England, 1060–1330

In the late-eleventh and early twelfth centuries, French and English royal burials were relatively unceremonial, low-key affairs, a contrast with the obsequies of other contemporary rulers such as the Holy Roman emperors. One reason for that may be the dominance of reforming ecclesiastics in arranging the funeral rites in England and France; another, the importance attached by the monarchs to obtaining personalised intercession from ascetic monks. By the early fourteenth century, however, the French and English sovereigns were commemorated after death in magnificent ceremonies and monuments. In the intervening centuries, those kings and their followers had shown a growing interest in the creation and promotion of royal saint-cults; in the honouring of royal remains; in public and splendid funeral ceremonies and lawish tombs; and in the creation and development of imposing burial-churches at Saint-Denis and Westminster. During this time there was an increasing emphasis upon the image and panoply of monarchy in both kingdoms which was rooted to a large extent in the personal and political rivalry of their rulers. The new splendours of royal burials can be seen as one important part of those developments.     

Examining Possible Driftwood Use in Viking Age Icelandic Boats

While boat and ship graves are known from across northern Europe, and are particularly associated with the Viking Age, only seven examples of such monuments have been excavated in Iceland. Furthermore, no shipwrecks are known dating from this period in Iceland, and examples of boat timbers preserved by waterlogging are very rare. As such, the mineralized wood remains from these burials comprise the vast majority of direct archaeological evidence currently available for the boats used in daily life in early Iceland. This paper uses taxonomic identification of mineralized wood remains from the Icelandic boat graves, along with comparative data from Europe and Scandinavia, to discuss boat construction and repair in early Iceland, including the possibilities of driftwood utilization and the importation of boats from Norway. The economic and social significance of the practice of boat burial in Iceland is also explored, with regard to the importance of boats as transport and the limited availability of wood suitable for boat construction and repair.     

Pewter Funerary Chalices and Patens from York Minster

IT HAS BEEN accepted for many years that, unlike their silver counterparts, pewter chalices and patens found in priestly burials continued largely unchanged in form throughout the medieval period; this means that the presence of a pewter chalice or paten does not in itself currently offer any reliable dating of a related burial beyond a broad 13th–16th-century timeframe. Pewter chalices and patens recovered from 25 burials within York Minster between 1966 and 1973 are thought to represent the largest collection found within one church in England, and initial assessment of this collection and its related excavation data indicated that it offered the possibility of providing findspots for some of the vessels from recorded burials or dated archaeological sequences, and thus to provide more examples of tightly drawn dating. In the event, it has been possible to assign a single chalice and paten set to a recorded individual, and to provide others with periods within which, or after which, burial occurred. Scrutiny of the objects also resulted in the identification of two distinct forms of paten, one of which was shown in seven instances to bear incised motifs which had not been noted or commented upon previously.     

Iron Age Burial in Wales: Patterns,Practices and Problems

Until the latter part of the twentieth century, Iron Age burial in Britain was thought to be largely archaeologically invisible. However, over the last 40 years the recovery of large assemblages of human remains, often from pits and ditches rather than beneath monumental structures, has changed our understanding of Iron Age funerary practices. The problem, though, is that the majority of this material derives from core areas of study, particularly southern England and Yorkshire. Our knowledge of burial in the more peripheral areas of Britain, such as Wales, is much more poorly understood. The perceived paucity of burials from such regions is often still interpreted as resulting from the practice of archaeologically invisible disposal methods such as excarnation or the scattering of cremated remains. This paper presents a comprehensive review and analysis of Iron Age human remains in Wales. Although the resource for study is relatively small, a variety of practices, disposal methods and treatments of bodies can be recognized which challenge our current narratives. The scarcity of burials when compared to other parts of Britain, such as Wessex, is suggested to be a result of both poor preservation and bias in archaeological research strategies, rather than the dominance of an ‘invisible’ burial rite.     

Kana Tamata or Feasts of Men: An Interdisciplinary Approach for Identifying Cannibalism in Prehistoric Fiji

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 behaviour. 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 number of identified specimens per species, representing an estimated 15 minimum number of individuals make up the Lau human assemblage. Second, we analysed 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 cannibalised 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 may suggest non‐nutritive and non‐violent practices that may have included the consumption of small amounts of human flesh. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Place to Rest Your (Burnt) Bones? Mortuary Houses in Early Anglo-Saxon England

This article presents a fresh interpretation of square and rectangular mortuary structures found in association with deposits of cremated material and cremation burials in a range of early Anglo-Saxon (fifth-/sixth-century AD) cemeteries across southern and eastern England. Responding to a recent argument that they could be traces of pyre structures, a range of ethnographic analogies are drawn upon, and the full-range of archaeological evidence is synthesized, to re-affirm and extend their interpretation as unburned mortuary structures. Three interleaving significances are proposed: (i) demarcating the burial place of specific individuals or groups from the rest of the cemetery population, (ii) operating as ‘columbaria’ for the above-ground storage of the cremated dead (i.e. not just to demarcate cremation burials), and (iii) providing key nodes of commemoration between funerals as the structures were built, used, repaired and eventually decayed within cemeteries. The article proposes that timber ‘mortuary houses’ reveal that groups in early Anglo-Saxon England perceived their cemeteries in relation to contemporary settlement architectures, with some groups constructing and maintaining miniaturized canopied buildings to store and display the cremated remains of the dead.     

Eneolithic Cattle Burials from Aljmaš‐Podunavlje and Osijek‐Retfala,Croatia

Two single bovine burials and one mixed animal burial (containing bovine and canid skeletal remains) have been unearthed at two Baden culture sites, Aljmaš‐Podunavlje and Osijek‐Retfala located in Eastern Croatia. Zooarchaeological analysis attributed the faunal remains to domesticated cattle (Bos taurus) and in one case a dog (Canis familiaris). Almost complete and articulated skeletons of subadult or adult cows were found in all three examined features, while pit 59/60 from Aljmaš also contained a skull belonging to an adult‐domesticated cattle and a skeleton of a very young dog, 2–3 months old. All of the skeletons are well preserved and display no evidence of carcass processing indicating that the animals were buried intentionally. Consideration of the positions in which these animals were interred and their relationship with nearby deposits enables discussion of potential animal burial strategies and possible connections with certain ritual practices in which cows and in one case a dog played important roles. The described burials represent the southernmost known distribution of the rite discussed. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Exploring Roman Ritual Behaviours Through Plant Remains from Pannonia Inferior

The recovery of new plant remains from eastern Croatia are discussed here in order to determine their ritual significance and how this evidence may fit into chronological and regional observations on ritual plant offerings in the Roman world. Samples collected from inhumations, cremations and an altar dedicated to Silvanus Domesticus, dating from the 2nd to 4th centuries AD, are presented and show that a range of more ‘common’ plant remains, such as cereals and pulses, were an important part of ritual life. These results are also compared to the growing archaeobotanical data collected from shrine and cremation burials across Europe. Although the archaeobotanical data from the Croatian sites are limited, the increasing evidence of ritual plant use allows observations regarding the wider context of Roman social and religious change.     

Multiple identities in the Beaker period: interpreting inhumations out of the Beaker spotlight in southern England

ABSTRACT

The Beaker period in southern England is associated with the appearance of a highly visible set of material culture in the archaeological record, primarily associated with inhumation burials. This Beaker material culture has a long history of archaeological research and has resulted in this period being named after a style of pottery, the Beaker. However, the funerary record for this period is one that exhibits substantial variability. This paper considers how the archaeological narrative of the Beaker period has been constructed and presents a set of examples that exclude Beaker pottery and Beaker artefacts from the grave assemblage, located in southern England. Herein, it is questioned what these burials represent and whether they can be considered Beaker burials or represent other identities co-existing with Beaker using societies. Whilst the Beaker period does not represent an unchanging, fixed set of traditions over time or space, the examples employed demonstrate non-Beaker related burials to have been present from early in the Beaker period. We aim to highlight this important aspect of the archaeological record as requiring more research and synthesis, and promote discussion of non-Beaker identities during this dynamic period of prehistory.     

Hunter-gatherer burials and the creation of persistent places in southeastern Australia

One of the difficulties in interpreting hunter-gatherer mortuary practices is that many mortuary theories are derived from sedentary societies and rely upon an excavated record. This paper is an analysis of both historical and archaeological evidence of Aboriginal burial practices in the Murray River region of southeastern Australia. The archaeological data relies primarily upon analysis of burials exposed through erosion rather than systematic excavations which limits the range of burial characteristics that may be recorded and interpreted. The mortuary practices identified are highly patterned but regionally and locally variable. It is argued that the evidence demonstrates the persistence of place for Aboriginal people. The existence of persistent places is further related to a potentially fluid but structured connection between people and land.     

The value of sieving of grave soil in the recovery of human remains: an experimental study of poorly preserved archaeological inhumations

The aim of this work is to assess the effects of sieving basal grave fills, following lifting of visible skeletal remains on the recovery of human bones and loose teeth in poorly preserved inhumation burials. The experiment was carried out during excavations at the 7th–9th century AD cemetery site at Whitby, England. Burials generally consisted of degraded bone fragments and/or soil stains. In each grave (N = 70 adult burials), all visible human remains were hand-collected on site; following this, the soil remaining in the grave was recovered and sieved successively through 8 mm, 4 mm and 2 mm meshes. No bone or dental fragments in the 2–4 mm fraction were identifiable to skeletal element. Approximately one third of the total weight of bone, and one third of the total numbers of teeth were recovered in the 4–8 mm and >8 mm sieved fractions. It is concluded that sieving down to 4 mm is adequate for recovery of adult skeletal remains at the study site. It would be useful to conduct similar sieving experiments at other archaeological cemetery sites to provide data on recovery when bone survival is good, and in subadult burials.     

殷墟使用朱砂情况的考察

与史前、夏及早商时期一样,朱砂在殷墟文化时期的北方仍是较为稀缺的资源,只存在于规格较高的考古遗存中。通过对安阳殷墟及其他同时期情况进行分析,朱砂的使用从殷墟早期到晚期呈上升趋势。依据使用场合的不同,可分为朱砂葬、朱砂祭祀坑和朱书文字三类。朱砂葬是朱砂使用情况中最为常见的一种。本文通过对殷墟西区、大司空、孝民屯、徐家桥和侯家庄王陵区墓地的朱砂葬进行分析,发现晚商时期只有高等级贵族才有资格使用朱砂。从其使用情况推测,晚商时期朱砂在丧葬活动中的礼仪功能是主要的,用以体现死者的身份等级,同时或具有辟邪的功能。殷墟朱砂的来源,最大可能性仍然是以贵州为中心的我国西南地区,不过特定时期也可能采用了来自陕西秦岭一带的资源。     

Early Human Decapitation, 11,700–10,700 cal bp,within the Pre‐Pottery Neolithic Village of Tell Qaramel,North Syria

The process and timing of skull removal remains poorly understood by researchers. New archaeological and skeletal analysis from two skeletons from the early Pre‐Pottery Neolithic site of Tell Qaramel, northern Syria, highlights that Neolithic villagers used stone tools to physically decapitate the dead. Drawing upon cutmarks on the axis and the mandible from primary and secondary burials, we employed a scanning electron microscope to document how Neolithic people cut the ligament and its surrounding connecting tissues that bind the cranium with the bones of the axis and the mandible. The position of the cutmarks, especially at the top of the odontoid process of the axis, illustrates the complexities of intentional skull removal. From these and associated burial data, we illustrate that Levantine Neolithic people had specific practical codes for the sequence of skull removal, but given variation in the decomposition of the human body, at times, villagers had to use flint tools for skull removal. This study provides evidence of some of the world's earliest examples of intentional decapitation within human communities. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.