Archaeological Evidence of Atypical Burials in the Middle Ages

The research into the Medieval necropolises in the territory of present-day Serbia has established a relatively standardized mode of interment of the bodies of men, women, and children. The deceased were laid supine oriented west to east, with their head to the west. This paper addresses the deviations from this practice recorded in the necropolises dated into the period from the 10th to the 15th centuries. The evidence is critically discussed on the individuals oriented contrary to the established standard, the ones buried in the foetal position, the deceased thrown into the burial pit or laid prone, facing downward. The aim of the paper is to raise the question who were these people, deprived of the prescriptive Christian funeral and the adequate treatment of their bodies in death. The research is based on the precept that there is a correlation between the persons laid in extraordinary positions in their graves, and the outcasts, stigmatized and marginalized individuals. The paper is based upon the theoretical basis that postulates the burial and the treatment of a dead body as the community’s encounter with a social loss and the additional unwanted outcome of death – the cadaver. Additionally, the modes of marginalization and the generation of the marginalized in a society through the deprivation of a decent burial are discussed from various perspectives, starting with the ideas of Robert E. Park, Erving Goffman and Elisa Perego. Regardless of the fact that the phenomenon of the atypically buried individuals has not been duly investigated in the Serbian Medieval archaeology, the analysis of the evidence shows that contexts corresponding to this type are registered at no less than 19 sites. In order to offer a more precise answer to the question which of these individuals have indeed been marginalized and why, it is essential to conduct physical-anthropological analyses, present in only two instances treated here. Considering the quality of the data at the disposal, the paper reaches the conclusion that the individuals laid contrary to the norm (with the exception of children), thrown into the burial pit, or laid prone facing downward, are indeed the marginalized ones. Particularly are indicative the situations where more than one parameter of stigmatization is present in one funerary context. The suggestion is put forward that the flexed individuals laid in foetal position are the ones who could not have been laid prone due to some illness, such as muscular atrophy of paralysis. The extraordinary treatment of some new-borns and children, buried under the stećci, raises the issue of the social position of children in this cultural context. In spite of the limitations of reinterpretation of old evidence, the potential is demonstrated of the research integrating various lines of evidence: archaeological, physical-anthropological, ethnographic, historiographic, and legal-historic.

Počátky univerzitní výuky neklasické archeologie v programových proslovech Jana Kollára a Jana Erazima Vocela (1849–1851)

The first Central European university departments focused specifically on non-classical archaeology were established 170 years ago: Jan Kollár became a professor in Vienna in 1849, Jan Erazim Vocel in Prague in 1850. The content and focus of their teaching in this period is best evidenced by introductory and concluding speeches, preserved in manuscript and printed form; above all, they clearly demonstrate the difference between Kollár’s Romantic approach, which for the most part uncritically sought traces of the supposed original Slavic settlement in Europe (mainly in Italy), and Vocel’s, which already distinguished between “pagan” and “Christian” (prehistoric and medieval) archaeology and with his concept of the field was already heading for Positivism. The article includes the texts of these speeches.

The Making of Medieval Rome

Integrating the written sources with Rome's surviving remains and, most importantly, with the results of the past half-century's worth of medieval archaeology in the city, The Making of Medieval Rome is the first in-depth profile of Rome's transformation over a millennium to appear in any language in over forty years. Though the main focus rests on Rome's urban trajectory in topographical, architectural, and archaeological terms, Hendrik folds aspects of ecclesiastical, political, social, military, economic, and intellectual history into the narrative in order to illustrate how and why the cityscape evolved as it did during the thousand years between the end of the Roman Empire and the start of the Renaissance. A wide-ranging synthesis of decades' worth of specialized research and remarkable archaeological discoveries, this book is essential reading for anyone interested in how and why the ancient imperial capital transformed into the spiritual heart of Western Christendom.

Towards an Ontology-Driven Information System for Archaeological Pottery Studies: The Greyware Experience

The archaeological analysis of medieval and modern pottery has benefited from the consolidation of archaeometry in the domain of Medieval Archaeology in the past few decades. As part of an ongoing research project devoted to the characterization of pottery production, distribution processes and technological transfer, we deal with a considerable amount of data that are very diverse in origin and nature and must be exploited within an integrated information system in order to provide information for historical knowledge. The Greyware system has been designed to fulfil this goal and provides the main categories for pottery analysis within a shareable and reusable scenario. Its development and application prove that a little semantics goes a long way and that the creation of domain ontologies for archaeological research is an iterative process under development, as long as several projects sharing data, resources and time can develop a collaborative framework to maximize the assets of individual expertise and collaborative work. In this paper, we discuss the requirements of the system, the challenge of developing strategies for normalized data management and their potential for exploiting historical vestiges from an integrated perspective.

Tübingen Publications in Prehistory

Tübingen Publications in Prehistory reflect the work of a cooperative project between the Department of Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology of the University of Tübingen’s Institute for Pre- and Protohistory and Medieval Archaeology and Kerns Verlag to provide the results of current research in prehistoric archaeology and all its allied fields to a broad international audience.

Ever the Handmaid? A Consideration of What a Medieval Archaeology in South Asia Might Be

This article shifts discussion of the medieval in South Asia away from conversations about ‘what’ took place towards ‘how’ it is studied. Following a brief review of what defines the South Asian medieval, this article starts with the premise that the entire period has not been studied archaeologically and that there is a great deal of potential in doing so. This potential is explored with reference to recent work in Central India, which has investigated a particular set of developments in which socio-economic histories first located the transition from the ancient to the medieval in South Asia, namely, royal grants of land to Hindu temples in the fourth to seventh centuries ce. Considering these land grants as archaeological objects and situating them in the very landscapes they existed within reveal a great deal of new information about early medieval social formation and the transition to the early medieval in this region. In presenting this research, I demonstrate not only the potential value of an archaeological approach to the study of the period but also the necessity of it. Consideration then turns to the directions and form(s) that a ‘medieval archaeology’ might usefully take in the study of South Asia, which by no means shares the same empirical (text–object) and theoretical (historical–archaeological) relationships as the study of the medieval elsewhere in the world.