Living with death: what moral consideration of mortuary practices reveals about the plurality of worldviews in the multi-millennial past of Central Fennoscandia

Abstract

ABSTRACTMortuary practices evident in the materiality of Central Fennoscandia in Northern Europe are interpreted here rather unconventionally as expressions of morality. This is defined as the culturally approved way to manage death, without scruples. The last seven millennia are set on a flat temporal scale in this paper, revealing contradictions between different ideologies and worldviews over that time. The ubiquitous themes that emerge are agency of place and the bond between fire, life, and death, along with the main criticism, which asserts that the overwhelming fear of the dead reported in the region during 2nd millennium may have been aggravated by Christian dogma. Thus, projecting similar notions of fear to local prehistoric burials is problematic and should be made with caution. The study acts as a reminder that archaeological interpretation is drawn from theory – the interpretational key – which affects both the hypotheses and the results. Changing the key may turn even an established interpretation on its head.