OF INCINERATION BURIALS AND FUNERARY METALS DURING THE LATE BRONZE AGE IN THE EASTERN CARPATHIAN
Channel: European Association of Archaeologists
Date: 2021-03-05

Incineration, a relatively new body treatment practice in the Eastern Carpathian Basin (ECB), reaches its full bloom during the Late Bronze Age. This mortuary custom brings significant changes to the funerary milieu and the adjacent finds are not exempted from this either. Dawning from the thesis that metals in funerary inventories would denote individuals of distinct and, possibly, higher status, the contextual evidence is carefully analysed. Furthermore, metal finds are framed in a wider typological scape and are discussed both in synchronous and diachronic relations. These are compared to contemporaneous inventories of inhumation burials from the region, while in the same time metal types not specific to the ECB are tentatively highlighted as main markers for directionalities of flows. Roughly, 80 burial grounds fall within the chronological framework in the study region, out of which circa. 50 contain at least one incineration burial with metal finds. Based on the preliminary analysis, changes in the wider networking can be recognised. Moreover, alterations in metal funerary inventory seen as a barometer of social organisations partially represent metal consumption, mirror perceptions and value systems of the people who carried out the disposal of the body.


Author(s): Daroczi, Tibor (Institutul de Arheologie si Istoria Artei al Academiei Române)