(Inter)regional identities - performance in EIA sumptious burials of the Low Countries
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2017-03-22

The emergence of the lavish burials known as Hallstatt chieftains’ or princely graves reflects one of the most noteworthy developments in Early Iron Age Europe. These elaborate elite burials of the Hallstatt C period contain beautiful weaponry, bronze vessels and elaborately decorated wagons and horse-gear and are found primarily in Southern Germany and Bohemia. There is, however, also a small cluster of these burials in the Low Countries. These Dutch and Belgian burials contain many of the same objects, all imports from the Hallstatt Culture in Central Europe. New finds and research, including the comprehensive study of all the Dutch and Belgian burials offer new insights into those graves. The elite burials of the Low Countries not only contain far more Central European ‘princely’ paraphernalia than thought, they also appear to contain high-quality items, challenging the established interpretation of these burials being feeble derivatives. These imported items, however, appear to have been recontextualized in a regionally specific manner through a destructive burial practice that involved the transformation of both the dead and their grave goods through fire, manipulation and fragmentation.
While the burial rituals seem to differ between the Hallstatt Culture and the Low Countries, detailed examination of rituals in both areas shows similarities as well. The objects interred in these ostentatious graves of the early Hallstatt Period in the Low Countries and those of the early Hallstatt Culture in southern Germany, western Austria and Bohemia also testify large-scale contacts as well as a potentially increasing social differentiation (or at least its representation in burials). The relationships that must have existed between these and other areas in the early Hallstatt period can be addressed and considered on a large scale. In this paper we present the possibilities of analyses by looking at the ostentatious burials from the Low Countries both from the regional and the international perspective, an approach that leads to a much better understanding of the performance of those exceptional burials.

Author - Dr. Schumann, Robert, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany (Presenting author)
Co-author(s) - Van der Vaart-Verschoof, Sasja, Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands