Pathways for the Dead in the Middle and Late Bronze Age in Ireland

Abstract

Because of its diversity and visibility the mortuary record of the Early Bronze Age (2400–1500 cal. BC) has long dominated interpretation of that period in Ireland (e.g. Cooney and Grogan 1994; Waddell 1998; Brindley 2007) and burials from Bronze Age cemeteries represent over 70 per cent of the burial record from Irish prehistory (Murphy et al. 2010). The explosion of development-funded excavation in the period from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s provided a settlement balance to that picture and also evidence for additional cemeteries (e.g. Grogan et al. 2007; McQuade et al. 2009). This suggests that Early Bronze Age cemeteries served as local foci for communities. From the evidence of the numbers interred over a number of generations the dead buried in the cemeteries represent what Mary Helms (1998) has usefully called the ‘distinguished dead’ from communities, not the entire population. Treatment of the dead within the cemeteries is complex and there are clear indications of change over time. Interpretative models had associated inhumation with males and a broader shift over time from inhumation to cremation relying on a view of cremation and inhumation as opposed, separate mortuary rites (e.g. Mount 1997). However, the evidence indicates a much more complex set of pathways in the postmortem treatment of the dead in which cremation and inhumation were employed as complementary mortuary rites with an increasing focus on cremation over time (e.g. Cahill and Sikora 2011). This new picture has important implications for the increasing significance of the the pyre and the transformation of the dead (Mizoguchi 1993: 232). In looking at the period after 1500 cal. BC we see continuity in aspects of mortuary practice and use of sites, but in other ways mortuary practice changed dramatically. Cremation is now the dominant mortuary rite. Burial in the Middle and Late Bronze Age (down to 600 cal. BC) has been widely discussed as less visible, and hence much less important as an aspect of social behaviour (e.g. Cooney and Grogan 1994: 144). But it is more useful to think in terms of shifting emphases in mortuary practice. In a recent discussion Lynch and O’Donnell (2007: 107) have described this period as being characterized by ‘an incredibly intricate and variable physical treatment of the dead’.