Modelling mortuary populations at local and regional levels

Abstract

Disposal of the dead is a multi-step process usually involving several people and multiple locations over time. Understanding the size and internal composition of a cemetery generated by this process is important for estimating the social and chronological patterning of the people buried there. When we know the number of dead in a cemetery, the length of time the cemetery was in use, and the life expectancy of the population, we can also help establish the size and composition of the living community who used it. This paper provides both local and regional spatial perspectives for a mortuary population by combining surface collection and excavation to describe activity areas and population size at a Bronze Age cemetery in Eastern Hungary. While prehistoric features and activity areas are difficult to identify using surface collection alone, we find that the combination of surface collection and excavation data in a GIS permits us to estimate the size of the cemetery, propose plausible models of activity areas within it, and generate new hypotheses about the regional community that produced it.