engleski

To Burn or not to Burn: Inhumation Versus Cremation at the End of the Bronze Age in the Region between the Southern Carpathian Basin and the Western Balkans

Different treatments of the body of a deceased in a burial often serve to reconstruct interactions and movement, as well as changes in the perception of afterlife in prehistoric societies. The spread of the Urnfield phenomenon in the Late Bronze Age Europe created an essential and long-lasting transformation of burial rites with a wide acceptance of cremation for a period of almost 500 years in most parts of Europe. In this paper, the focus is on the southeastern border zone of the Urnfield between the southern Carpathian Basin, the southeastern Alps, both regions included in the Urnfield zone, and the area of the western Balkans, which was one of the few regions that continued to use inhumation in burials. An intermediary position largely influenced burial rites of communities settled in this western Balkan area. Through a diachronic overview from the 11th to the 8th century BCE, it becomes clear that both gradual changes and abrupt adoptions of different rites took place and that the local dynamics and even individual preference had an important role in the choice of burial rites. Without the intention to underplay the ideological background of different body treatments, some communities obviously practiced both burial rites without any clear archaeological distinction (in terms of grave goods and a position in burial) between individuals inhumed and those burned on a pyre. The mutual impact of neighbouring societies that had different burial rites – communities in the Balkans practiced inhumation while communities in the southern Carpathian Basin practiced cremation – is particularly evident in the period of the 9th and 8th centuries BCE with an appearance of large bi-ritual burial grounds in the border zone along the Sava River. Moreover, in this context it is also important to comment on the appearance of first tumuli graves in an area previously dominated by flat urn cemeteries.

burials, cremation, inhumation, Late Bronze Age, Balkans, Carpathian Basin

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