Abstract
ABSTRACTThe adoption of a new funerary ritual with all its social and cognitive meanings is of great importance to understanding social transformations of past societies. The first known occurrence of cremation in the territory corresponding to modern Belgium dates back to the Mesolithic period. From the end of the Neolithic onward, the practice of cremation was characterized by periods in which this rite was predominant and periods of contractions, defined by a decrease in the use of this funerary ritual. This paper aims to quantify such phenomenon for the first time by modeling discontinuities in burial practices through kernel density analysis of 1428 radiocarbon (14C) dates from 311 archaeological sites located in Belgium from the Mesolithic to the Middle Ages. Despite possible taphonomic and sampling biases, the results highlight the existence of periods with a large uptake of cremation rite followed by periods of contractions; such discontinuities took place in correlation with changes in the socio-economical structure of local communities, as, for example, during the later Middle Bronze Age and at the end of the Roman Period.
Highlights
In 1998, it was demonstrated that calcined bone can be radiocarbon (14C) dated using the carbon present in the inorganic fraction of bone commonly called bioapatite (Lanting and Brindley 1998; Lanting et al 2001)
This paper aims to quantify such phenomenon for the first time by modeling discontinuities in burial practices through kernel density analysis of 1428 radiocarbon (14C) dates from 311 archaeological sites located in Belgium from the Mesolithic to the Middle Ages
Cremation represents an exception in the Mesolithic period, since the predominant rite appears to be inhumation as confirmed by the 28 14C dates from 12 archaeological sites with inhumations against only two dates from cremation contexts (Figure 2c–d). 14C-dated Mesolithic inhumations appear exclusively in caves such as the Grotte du Bois Laiterie at Profondeville/Rivière (Otte and Straus 1997), Grotte Margaux at Dinant/Anseremme (Cauwe 1998), and rock shelters, like the Abri de Chauveau at Yvoir/ Godinne (Toussaint and Becker 1993), clustered in the Sambre and Meuse basin in southern Belgium (Meiklejohn et al 2014) (Figure 2a)
Summary
In 1998, it was demonstrated that calcined bone can be radiocarbon (14C) dated using the carbon present in the inorganic fraction of bone commonly called bioapatite (Lanting and Brindley 1998; Lanting et al 2001). A great number of cremated human remains from archaeological contexts located in Belgium were 14C dated over the last two decades Most of these data were placed in public repositories such as the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage web-based 14C databases (http://c14.kikirpa.be/ and http://radiocarbon.kikirpa.be/).
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