Funerary Space Research Articles

A new approach to a data ontology for the qualitative assessment of funerary spaces

A new approach to a data ontology for the qualitative assessment of funerary spaces

Rediscovering Cova de la Sarsa (València, Spain): A Multidisciplinary Approach to One of the Key Early Neolithic Sites in the Western Mediterranean

Cova de la Sarsa (València, Spain) is one of the most important Neolithic impressed ware culture archaeological sites in the Western Mediterranean. It has been widely referenced since it was excavated in the 1920s, due partly to the relatively early excavation and publication of the site, and partly to the qualitative and quantitative importance of its archaeological remains. Unfortunately, as it was an older excavation and lacked present-day rigorous methodological approaches, this important site has been somewhat relegated to the background in the reviews about the Neolithic at the end of the 20th century. However, during the last few years, both the site itself and its archaeological remains have been the object of new studies that hopefully will return the site to the forefront of discussions about the Mediterranean Neolithic. We here present the most relevant results of the research carried out by our group (i.e., pottery study, radiocarbon dating, and isotope analysis), and contextualize them within the dense research history of the cave and the studies carried out by other colleagues with the purpose of revisiting its materials and increasing the knowledge available from the site. Radiocarbon dates on human remains show that the cave was used during prehistoric times as a funerary space longer than expected, and also sporadically afterwards. The characterization of the pottery assemblage concludes that most materials belong to the Early Neolithic. Isotopic analysis portrays an overall similar diet based on terrestrial C3 resources throughout prehistoric times, with a possible varied dietary protein input between individuals during the Early Neolithic.

Interpretation of Funerary Spaces in Roman Times: Insights from a Nucleus of Braga, NW Iberian Peninsula

The funerary/cult archeological nucleus of Rua do Raio (Braga, in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula) was discovered between 2007 and 2009, under the excavation works of a necropolis of Bracara Augusta. This building exhibits a set of particularities that confirms its archeological importance. It is a construction dating from the middle of the 1st century AD, subject to two reforms, one in the second half of the 1st century AD and another in the 2nd century AD, with a trapezoidal shape and comprising ten rectangular tanks rendered with opus signinum mortars. It shows a unique architectural configuration in the city, as well as in the Portuguese territory, and the space is under musealization, together with a set of graves identified in the same archeological intervention. The present investigation contextualizes the funerary and religious architecture of the city. Its description is presented, highlighting its relevance, and an interpretative possibility is formulated.

Close to Us or Far from Them? Unusual Funerary Spaces in Early and Middle Bronze Age Cyprus

Close to Us or Far from Them? Unusual Funerary Spaces in Early and Middle Bronze Age Cyprus

Cronología de las Minas neolíticas de Can Tintorer (Gavà, Barcelona): explotación minera y uso funerario

This paper aims to determine the chronology of one of the most significant Neolithic contexts in the Northeast of the Iberian Peninsula: the Can Tintorer mining complex (Gavà, Barcelona). Based on the statistical analysis and Bayesian modelling of a total of 23 radiocarbon dates, 5 of which have not been published until now, the work addresses the temporal relationships and the degree of contemporaneity between the different areas of mining exploitation and their use as a funerary space. Finally, the temporality of the mining complex in the framework of the Neolithic of the NE of the Iberian Peninsula is also tested, based on several comparative statistical analyses with the available radiocarbon dates from settlement and funerary contexts from this period in the region.

Nobility, kinship and memory in Santa Eufemia de Cozuelos, the first female convent of the Military Order of Santiago

This paper refers to the noble patronage around Santa Eufemia de Cozuelos, the first female house of the Military Order of Santiago since 1186, based in the north of the Kingdom of Castile, during the second half of the thirteenth century. This patronage provided the convent with funerary spaces to perpetuate the memory of some noble Castilian and Leonese families whose members effected important land donations to the monastery, thus assuring prayers for the salvation of their souls. Unlike the vast majority of the many female monastic houses founded in the kingdoms of Castile and León in the Middle Ages, the lack of aristocratic founders, patrons or benefactors in all the female Jacobean convents in Castile and León since their founding until the second half of the thirteenth century, Santa Eufemia among them, is striking. The subject of this paper aims to determine how the Military Order of Santiago managed to attract to its first female house a whole group of noble lineages. The patronage of these noble families along the second half of the thirteenth century provided the Jacobean monastery with the noble prestige that many other Castilian female convents had from their origin and of which Santa Eufemia lacked, and furthermore, also provided the Jacobean convent with the most relevant territorial expansion of its monastic domain, precisely along this same period. A detailed revision of the available source material and bibliography allowed us to put together enough information to follow and verify this process.

SOCIETY IN TRANSITION: CULTURAL CHANGE IN THE EARLY BRONZE AGE CEMETERY AT NIŽNÁ MYŠL’A IN THE LIGHT OF ABSOLUTE CHRONOLOGY

ABSTRACTThe article presents the results of research on the absolute chronology of the Nižná Myšľa cemetery. Due to its scale and location in a key region of the Carpathian Basin, it should be considered one of the most important Early Bronze Age sites in Central Europe. Many years of archaeological research have so far failed to provide adequate data on absolute chronology. This text presents the results of statistical and spatial analyses on a series of newly acquired 14C dates. They allowed us to present a model of the spatial and chronological development of the funerary space and to capture the stage of significant cultural change associated with the adoption of a new raw material—bronze.

A Third Intermediate Period Stone Stela from Dra Abu el-Nagaلوحة حجرية من منطقة ذراع أبو النجا تعود لعصر الانتقال الثالث

The courtyard of tomb SMDAN 1030—part of the concession of the Spanish archaeological mission Proyecto Djehuty at Dra Abu el-Naga—is an exceptional example of the reuse of funerary space. The materials found within it included a Third Intermediate Period stone stela, SMDAN 5247. This paper describes the secondary archaeological context in which it was found and presents a chronological, typological and prosopographical study of the piece.

Remembering, forgetting and (dis)enfranchised grief in everyday settings in English and Welsh towns: Migrants' and minorities’ translocal and local memories associated with funerary spaces and practices

In this paper we explore migrants' and minorities' memories and memory-making associated with death, funerary and remembrance practices, with particular attention to how this intersects with experiences of migration and/or being part of a cultural or religious minority. The paper examines different spaces including bodies, homes, translocal networks, cemeteries and crematoria, centred on insights from focus groups, biographical and key participant interviews in four medium sized multicultural towns in England and Wales. These case studies afford an exploration of the complex and dynamic ‘ecologies’ of migrant and minority memories and sense of citizenship in relation to death, bereavement and remembrance spaces and practices. Participant accounts highlight memories of past practices, (post)colonial marginalization, disenfranchisement, changes in practices, the strains of transnational grieving, pragmatic compromises and collaborating to improve funerary provision as endeavours of everyday citizenship. These are explored through two broad interlinked themes: firstly, translocal memories of past and evolving funerary and remembrance spaces, customs and practices; and secondly, relationality and autonomy through the choice of where to situate the dead, and implications for associated future memory-making.

The funerary practices from the end of the Bronze Age and the beginning of the Iron Age in the south-west of Romania and the relations with the south of Danube

The socio-anthropological approach to the funerary practices proves a tight connection between the religious beliefs and the funerary practices. However, it is hard to be evidenced only through the funerary discoveries most of the time. The study of the funerary space structure reveals several possibilities for interpretation, provided the necropolises are researched thoroughly. In the analysis made on the funerary practices, there are often used notions, such as that of a social person, understood as a variety of situations (age, social rank, gender etc.), or social energy consumed during the development of a funerary practice. In this manner only, hypotheses can be issued regarding the social structure if it considers that the funerary space can also be seen as a confirmation of the social identity. The funerary practices can “codify” information related both to the social structure and ideology, thus to the collective mentality of those communities. Different attempts have been made to sketch the religion of the prehistoric communities, using the funerary discoveries for this purpose. To the north of the Danube, in the south-western side of Romania, the funerary practices used to be characteristic for the end of the Bronze Age, which implied the cremation of the dead and the depositing of the remains into a pottery vessel that played the role of an urn. This was buried along with one or more adjacent vessels and sometimes clay statuettes. Among the archaeological discoveries available in the actual stage of the researches, the Gârla Mare type is evidenced, which belongs to the wider area of the incrusted ceramics groups situated on one side and another on the middle inferior course of the Danube. Most of them come from the necropolises of cremation in an urn, being known only a few discoveries of settlements. At the beginning of the Iron Age, a different funerary practice can be noticed, i.e., the building of tumuli and the depositing of the offerings in vessels, on the bottom of them. The disappearance of the plane necropolises, starting with the 12th century BCE and the appearance, in the same period, of the tumular constructions because of the richness or the quantity of the social energy invested in them suggest the appearance of new forms of collective representation, a change in the collective mentality. Furthermore, as a tendency to affirm the social identity, the funerary tumulus can be pointed out.

The Beidaud Archaeological Microzone Research Project. Preliminary report on the 2020 and 2021 campaigns

The paper presents the research project started by the University of Bucharest and the Eco-Museal Institute in Tulcea in the Beidaud Archaeological Microzone, Tulcea County (Romania), which contains four sites (Fig. 1): a Neolithic settlement pertaining to the Hamangia culture, in a location called la Grădină, south of the Beidaud commune; a fortified settlement dated to the second half of the 6th c. BC, located on the Calebair Hill, 2 km northwest of the Beidaud commune; a Roman rural settlement on the Dealul cu Cișmea, located 500 m northwest of the fortified settlement; and a tumular funerary space on the Dealul cu Cișmea. In 2021 and 2022, our team obtained important information through field surveys of the two sites on the Dealul cu Cișmea. Also, the entire area under scrutiny was topographically surveyed (topographic plan, orthophotoplan, 3D model). The University of Bucharest geoarchaeological team also extracted its first cores at the mouth of the Hamangia river. The archaeological field campaign had, as a main objective, the dating of the tumular funerary space, which was accomplished by the excavation of tumulus T1, dated to the 2nd-3rd c. AD.

Relationships between sepulchral caves and dolmens during the Neolithic in the Western Pyrenees (France)—abridged version

This contribution aims to evaluate the state of our knowledge about Neolithic burials in natural cavities and in stone-built monuments within a geographic area limited to the southern part of the Adour river basin. Particular emphasis was placed on shared concepts of funerary spaces and sanctuaries. This research is mainly based on the excavations and studies carried out over the last 30 years and within the ongoing collective research project dedicated to the investigation of dolmen features and territories in the north-western Pyrenees (PCR “Structures dolméniques et territoires dans les Pyrénées nord-occidentales”). Data from the Early Neolithic period are scarce. Documentation relating to the Middle and Late/Final Neolithic shows that the practices are linked to modalities observed more widely within an Atlantic tradition, but that they were also influenced by traditions in the eastern part of the Pyrenean chain, particularly during the Late/Final Neolithic. Two features turned out to be significant: burial mounds – built as early as the Middle Neolithic period, including or not including megalithic architecture, were real territorial markers still erected in the Bronze Age but also reused up to Antiquity; and, less monumental, sepulchral caves – used and sometimes re-used several decades or centuries later by the same community.

Sambaqui Arapuan

Este estudo foi iniciado a partir da análise do material arqueológico coletado no sítio sambaqui Arapuan, localizado no município de Guapimirim, litoral do Rio de Janeiro, e que estava sob a guarda do Museu Nacional/UFRJ. O sítio Arapuan é um espaço funerário com uma elevada quantidade de sepultamentos, em relação aos demais sítios da região. Ao confrontar as informações dos relatórios de campo, que registraram as variadas ações a partir da década de 1970; os registros dos sepultamentos, com dados do material esquelético humano e do material lítico; adornos e fragmentos de cerâmica; e as informações das coleções das reservas técnicas do Setor de Antropologia Biológica e do Setor de Arqueologia do Museu Nacional, observamos a ausência de grande parte do material coletado (ossos e elementos da cultura material), um elevado grau de fragmentação dos ossos e falta de identificação no material, impedindo a sua localização nos relatórios. Assim, este estudo tem como objetivo criar subsídios para propor uma série de novas ações no sítio, face ao seu expressivo potencial informativo a respeito da cultura sambaquieira no litoral do Rio de Janeiro, completando uma série de estudos mais consistentes em outros sítios dessa região.

Estudo bioarqueológico do Túmulo Megalítico de Santa Rita (Algarve, Portugal)

O presente trabalho apresenta novos contributos para a compreensão dos aspectos biológicos e culturais da população que ergueu e utilizou o Túmulo Megalítico de Santa Rita, localizado no município de Vila Real de Santo António, Portugal. Os ossos estudados são provenientes da câmara funerária, que foi utilizada como espaço funerário secundário e coletivo durante o Calcolítico, entre o final do IV milênio a.n.e. (antes da nossa era) e o segundo quarto do III milênio a.n.e., correspondendo ao primeiro ciclo de ocupação do monumento. Analisou-se o processo tafonômico de modificação do espólio osteológico humano, dados demográficos (sexo e idade à morte), características morfológicas e paleopatológicas da população inumada e o tratamento funerário praticado no ossuário.

Contribution to an archaeology of the Ottoman Heritage in Romania: The muslim cemetery in Lanurile (Dobruja).

Despite recent increasing interest in the Ottoman materiality in Romania, local archaeological research continues to ignore its long biography, artificially separating the sites and objects from the present. No less problematic is the fact that heritage policies focus solely on the more “famous” Ottoman monuments built by the elites, while ignoring the “modest” architecture found, for example, in rural areas. In order to redress these shortcomings, this study looks at the long biography (from the Ottoman period up to the present day) of the Muslim cemetery in Lanurile in rural Dobruja (Bărăganu commune, Constanţa County), analysing it in relation to other material elements from the neighbouring village of Bărăganu. Ottoman documents mention these two villages by the names Osman-Facı and Ebeköyü, both being inhabited by Turks and Tatars and both part of the kaza of Mangalia. The two villages were renamed Bărăganu and Lanurile, respectively, after the inclusion of Dobruja in the Romanian state in 1878. Gradually – in particular during the 1970s and, increasingly, after 1990 – the inhabitants of these villages (Romanians and Turks/Tatars) began to migrate to nearby towns and cities (Basarabi, Medgidia and Constanţa) or to Turkey (in the case of Turks and Tatars). According to local testimony, this migration occurred simultaneously with the settlement in Bărăganu and Lanurile of many families from the Moldavia region. As a result of this massive depopulation, the Muslim cemeteries are the only remaining material legacy of the villages’ Ottoman past. Lanurile cemetery in particular reflects a genealogical depth (through the extensive and dense distribution of funerary monuments), an aspiration to enduring memory (through the monumentality and durability of the funerary stelae) and an image of eternity (through the monotony of the stones planted in the ground). This funerary space is at one and the same time a monument to a disappeared community, a necropolis in the process of becoming an archaeological site and still-functioning cemetery with a long biography. The present study thus seeks to examine the relationships between the materiality of the Ottoman heritage, the material memory of the Turkish and Tatar communities, local commemorative practices, and the social effects of modernity.

Analysis of the Western Late-Roman Cemetery of O Areal: Example of an Atlantic Coastal Funerary Site in the Harbour of Vigo (Spain)

The modern city of Vigo (Galicia, Spain) was an important commercial harbour during the Roman and Late-Roman periods, especially as a link between Mediterranean and North Atlantic routes, acting as an entrepot for maritime trade. This not only brought foreign products and population to this Roman vicus, but also ideas, customs, and traditions which are reflected in its funerary spaces. The Western Cemetery of O Areal, one of Vigo’s major burial areas during the Late Antiquity, is clear evidence of this movement of foreign ideas, presenting much more variety in terms of tomb types and burial customs than other north-western coastal cemeteries, especially as it served the funerary needs of a secondary agglomeration and not a conventual capital of Gallaecia. The study of this area has also revealed some similarities with British funerary customs, a reflection of the connections between this Hispanic territory and the Northern provinces of the Empire.

Los Canes Mesolithic burials: archaeothanatology

Los Canes cave (Asturias, Northern Spain) is an outstanding site with traces of human occupation from the Solutrean to the Bronze Age. It consists of a very narrow cavity with three Late Mesolithic funerary structures, dating to the sixth millennium cal BC. The human remains found in these graves were studied in this paper from an archaeothanatological perspective. We considered the positions of the bodies and the causes of the displacement of several bones from their anatomical connections. This study discusses whether these inhumations correspond to primary or secondary burials. We conclude that they were primary graves, with traces of reuse in some cases. The dispersion of several bones may be explained by taphonomic factors and intensive utilization of the cave as a funerary space. Los Canes burials confirm the diversity found across the European Mesolithic funerary world and enhance our knowledge of the last hunter-gatherers in the Iberian Peninsula.

Sensing the deathscape: Digital media and death during COVID-19

Across cultures, death has traditionally encompassed diverse material and ritual assemblages. Funeral practices are a unifying element of death, presenting an opportunity for communal memorialization of the deceased. These practices are environmentally embedded, spanning traditional graveyards and floral memorials, to contemporary green burials and body farms. However, COVID-19 has disrupted socio-environmental practices, due to disease transmission concerns that have manifested new constraints to funerary space. Here, I contemplate the digital deathscape during COVID-19 through three vignettes: the first considers Hart Island mass-burial drone footage and the emergence of a necropticon. The second vignette considers the emergence of domestic deathscapes and their significance to digitally broadcast (DB) funerals. The third vignette, Billy’s funeral, gives interview-based insights into the porous domestic deathscape of a DB funeral guest, Samantha. All three vignettes contemplate the experience of remotely sensing the deathscape and the scenarios that arise when traditionally hidden or ‘in-place’ death rituals arise ‘out-of-place’.

Digging up the archives: a reassessment of burial practices in the cemeteries from the Extra muros basilica Sector at Histria

Articolul de față se bazează pe redescoperirea și reinterpretarea informațiilor din fondul de arhivă Nubar Hamparțumian aflat la Institutul de Arheologie „ Vasile Pârvan” al Academiei Române din București. Documentele de arhivă conțin informații cu privire la 74 de morminte descoperite în campaniile de cercetare arheologică desfășurate în intervalul 1961– 1964 în Sectorul „ Basilica extra muros” de la Histria. Prin colectarea și organizarea informațiilor referitoare la fiecare mormânt în parte a fost posibilă o analiză sistematică și detaliată. Urmărind același scop, toate scheletele au fost analizate antropologic. În prima parte a articolului este construită o narațiune istorică pentru a surprinde schimbările ce au loc la nivelul topografiei cetății și modul în care acestea determină organizarea spațiului funerar. În urma analizei descoperirilor este elaborată o tipologie a mormintelor, care cuprinde cinci tipuri. Sunt discutate și interpretate diferitele relații între seturi de variabile (între amenajări funerare și inventare, între sexul sau vârsta indivizilor și inventare funerare etc.) în încercarea de a contura un discurs cât mai complex cu privire la practicile funerare identificate în necropolele histriene în intervalul cuprins între secolul al IV-lea și secolul al VII-lea p. Chr.

In the Company of Wisdom: Transforming Cemeteries into Spaces of Learning in Late Antique Milan

The intellectualization of Christianity and the cult of martyrs are often studied as separate phenomena. Using Milan as a case study, I argue that the didactic, exegetical, and aesthetic practices associated with the classrooms of ancient grammarians and philosophers were imported into cemeteries and martyrial shrines by elite, educated bishops. The article begins with a review of theoretical models, drawn largely from the field of geography, which guide the analysis of Milan’s western (ad martyres) cemetery. This is followed by four sections, each of which highlights a stage in the cemetery’s development: 1) a presentation of evidence for burial and care for the dead in the pre-Ambrosian era; 2) an analysis of the pedagogical methods employed by Ambrose in the two parts of De excessu fratris; 3) a review of Ambrose’s interventions at the site in the 380s; and 4) a discussion of the post-Ambrosian decoration of the shrine of San Vittore in Ciel d’Oro in the trajectory of a process of intellectualization. The result was a transformation of cemetery space where two sets of practices, funerary and pedagogical, merged and co-existed, sometimes in harmony, and oftentimes in conflict, both contributing to the evolution and “becoming” of the funerary space.