mortuary practices
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2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (3–4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Verónica Alberto-Barroso ◽  
Marco Moreno-Benítez ◽  
Teresa Delgado-Darias ◽  
Félix Mendoza-Medina ◽  
Ibán Suárez- Medina ◽  
...  

This article addresses the study of an indigenous burial at Mina Mountain (Lanzarote), dating from cal A.D. 1300 to 1402. Pre-European funerary contexts in Lanzarote are scarce, resulting in a particular historical situation for a population that lived on the island for at least 1,400 years, whose dead people and burial sites are virtually unknown. We analyze the available data on mortuary practices of the native population, adding a new example to the limited existing evidence. This is the first archaeological study carried out on the island that focuses on a funerary context, providing clear evidence for canine scavenging on a corpse placed in a pit and the subsequent rearrangement of the disarticulated skeletal remains in a secondary hollow. The study advances bioanthropological description and specific taphonomic data of bone modifications as evidence of the events that took place at the site, providing data to interpret this singular burial. In addition, the chronological framework,  together with the references of the narrative sources describing the Franco-Norman conquest of the island in 1402, allows us to propose a potential scenario explaining this unique site.   Se aborda el estudio de un enterramiento indígena en Montaña Mina (Lanzarote), datado entre el 1300-1402 d. C. Los contextos funerarios en Lanzarote son escasos, reflejando una situación histórica peculiar en la que no se conocen donde están los muertos de una población que arraigó en la isla durante 1400 años. En este trabajo se analiza la información disponible sobre las prácticas funerarias indígenas, aportando un nuevo caso al limitado repertorio de sitios mortuorios. Se trata del primer estudio arqueológico sobre un contexto funerario con claras evidencias de carroñeo. El enterramiento corresponde a una fosa en la que el cadáver fue alterado por la intervención de perros, lo que provocó una reubicación posterior de los restos humanos dentro de la misma fosa. A partir del análisis bioantropológico y tafónomico de las evidencias óseas se establece la secuencia de los hechos que allí tuvieron lugar. Asimismo, atendiendo al marco cronológico del entierro y la información recogida en las crónicas de la conquista normanda de la isla en 1402, se propone un posible escenario para le explicación de este caso único.


Ñawpa Pacha ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Jordan A. Dalton ◽  
Colleen O’Shea ◽  
Juliana Gómez Mejía ◽  
Noemi Oncebay Pizarro
Keyword(s):  

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jamie Hodgkins ◽  
Caley M. Orr ◽  
Claudine Gravel-Miguel ◽  
Julien Riel-Salvatore ◽  
Christopher E. Miller ◽  
...  

AbstractThe evolution and development of human mortuary behaviors is of enormous cultural significance. Here we report a richly-decorated young infant burial (AVH-1) from Arma Veirana (Liguria, northwestern Italy) that is directly dated to 10,211–9910 cal BP (95.4% probability), placing it within the early Holocene and therefore attributable to the early Mesolithic, a cultural period from which well-documented burials are exceedingly rare. Virtual dental histology, proteomics, and aDNA indicate that the infant was a 40–50 days old female. Associated artifacts indicate significant material and emotional investment in the child’s interment. The detailed biological profile of AVH-1 establishes the child as the earliest European near-neonate documented to be female. The Arma Veirana burial thus provides insight into sex/gender-based social status, funerary treatment, and the attribution of personhood to the youngest individuals among prehistoric hunter-gatherer groups and adds substantially to the scant data on mortuary practices from an important period in prehistory shortly following the end of the last Ice Age.


Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (10) ◽  
pp. 877
Author(s):  
Teresa Bürge

The aim of the paper is to discuss mortuary contexts and possible related ritual features as parts of sacred landscapes in Late Bronze Age Cyprus. Since the island was an important node in the Eastern Mediterranean economic network, it will be explored whether and how connectivity and insularity may be reflected in ritual and mortuary practices. The article concentrates on the extra-urban cemetery of Area A at the harbour city of Hala Sultan Tekke, where numerous pits and other shafts with peculiar deposits of complete and broken objects as well as faunal remains have been found. These will be evaluated and set in relation to the contexts of the nearby tombs to reconstruct ritual activities in connection with funerals and possible rituals of commemoration or ancestral rites. The evidence from Hala Sultan Tekke and other selected Late Cypriot sites demonstrates that these practices were highly dynamic in integrating and adopting external objects, symbols, and concepts, while, nevertheless, definite island-specific characteristics remain visible.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Astrid Storgaard Roborg ◽  
Mette Løvschal

In southern Scandinavia, the Early Iron Age transition is characterised by radical ideological and organisational changes involving new material practices of sorting, delimiting, depositing and discarding artefacts, humans and nonhumans, in both wetlands and drylands. However, settlements and wetland areas are mostly excavated separately, and the deeper relationship between these practices and associated spheres remains somewhat inconclusive. Aldersro, Eastern Jutland, provides an exceptional opportunity to revisit this relationship. A juxtaposed settlement and wetland activity area spanning more than 1.4 hectares were excavated in 2002-2003. The excavations exposed the structural remains of houses, fences, storage buildings, pits and peat graves. Moreover, they disclosed extensive archaeological remains of more than 800 ceramic vessels, processed wood, stones, burnt organic material, human and animal bones subject to 14C, pollen, archaeobotany, zooarchaeology, osteology, and ceramic analyses. The site has provided vital new insights into the diachronic dynamics of depositional and mortuary practices in the Early Iron Age. The highly fragmented remains of more than eight human individuals were mixed and deposited together with typical settlement debris, and would have been exposed right next to a settlement area.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Chris Fowler ◽  
Rachel J. Crellin ◽  
Michelle Gamble

While the Early Neolithic chambered tombs of the Isle of Man are well known and the Late Neolithic has been clearly defined with reference to a distinctive suite of artefacts, little is known about the Middle Neolithic. This article reports on 17 new Neolithic radiocarbon dates from cremated human remains from the Isle of Man. These identify five burials in cists as Middle Neolithic and indicate new sequences of activity at cemeteries starting in the Middle Neolithic. Each of these sites is examined in detail. The dates also spur a reconsideration of the development of Ronaldsway pottery and the integration of Grooved Ware pottery and motifs into early 3rd millennium practice on the island. The paper ends with a consideration of the changing effects of mortuary practices throughout the Neolithic on the Isle of Man and a discussion of connections with Middle and Late Neolithic activity in Ireland and Britain.


PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (8) ◽  
pp. e0251318
Author(s):  
Julien Riel-Salvatore ◽  
Andrew Lythe ◽  
Alejandra Uribe Albornoz

The Aceramic Neolithic site of Ganj Dareh (Kermanshah, Iran) is arguably one of the most significant sites for enhancing our understanding of goat domestication and the onset of sedentism. Despite its central importance, it has proven difficult to obtain contextually reliable data from it and integrate the site in regional syntheses because it was never published in full after excavations ceased in 1974. This paper presents the Ganj Dareh archive at Université de Montréal and shows how the documentation and artifacts it comprises still offer a great deal of useful information about the site. In particular, we 1) present the first stratigraphic profile for the site, which reveals a more complex depositional history than Smith’s five-level sequence; 2) reveal the presence of two possible pre-agricultural levels (H-01 and P-01); 3) explore the spatial organization of different levels; 4) explain possible discrepancies in the radiocarbon dates from the site; 5) show some differences in lithic technological organization in levels H-01 and P-01 suggestive of higher degrees of residential mobility than subsequent phases of occupation at the site; and 6) reanalyze the burial data to broaden our understanding of Aceramic Neolithic mortuary practices in the Zagros. These data help refine our understanding of Ganj Dareh’s depositional and occupational history and recenter it as a key site to improve our understanding the Neolithization process in the Middle East.


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