Damaged Burials or Reliquiae Cogotenses? On the Accompanying Human Bones in Burial Pits Belonging to the Iberian Bronze Age

Abstract

Social Sciences and Humanities are increasingly interested in the relationship between society and material culture, and archaeology can provide, among other contributions, its chronological depth and the variability and certain regularities in mortuary rituals. In this respect, archaeological literature frequently cites cases of a few human bones redeposited at mortuary sites, often burials of adults accompanied by some bones of an infant, but without a clear pattern being discernable. In contrast, research on the Bronze Age Cogotas I archaeological culture in the Iberian Peninsula (MBA and LBA, ca. 1800–1100 cal BC) has identified what seems to be an emerging pattern: primary burials of very young children accompanied by the bone of an adult, possibly female, who had died before, even long before, as the statistical analysis of the radiocarbon dates of the individuals involved appears to corroborate. This may therefore be a ritualised mortuary practice that included bone relics, but its explanation is not simple, due to the polysemic nature of such relics. The creation and maintenance of real or fictitious kinship ties, a special protection for dead infants, possible gender aspects, ideas about fertility and renewal, strengthening interpersonal relationships, legitimisation of emerging inequality, etc., are some of the possible components of this social practice which was until now unknown in the Iberian prehistory, but also little known in other areas in European prehistory.