Скачать или смотреть Composing the dead person in urnfield graves from the low countries

The transition from the Bronze age to the Iron age in the Low Countries is in fact marked with various continuing cultural traits. One of these continuing traits clearly is the habit of burying the ashes of the deceased in collective cemeteries better known as urnfields. Since urnfields occur in an area stretching from the Carpathians in the East and the Atlantic in the West it seems evident that the Low Countries form part of a network in which cultural transmissions took place on a scale encompassing the larger part of Europe. But what ideas underlie these seemingly wide shared funerary practices? And are these practices indeed that widespread across Europe? A case-study dealing with some 3000 cremation graves dating between 1300 and 400 BC from the Netherlands, North Belgium and West Germany shows that a multi-angle analysis of these graves is evident in our understanding of urnfield funerary practices. By combining osteological analyses, material culture studies and stratigraphical information the study revealed several reoccurring traits in the composition of urnfield graves that seem to hint at wide shared ideas about the notion of the (dead) person across the research area and most probably beyond. This paper will present the most important methodological aspects and results of the research and aims to open up the discussion about how urnfield graves should be perceived in a broader European context.

Author: Louwen, Arjan - Leiden University (Presenting author)