WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN A CASE FROM THE LATE NEOLITHIC IN SE EUROPE
Channel: European Association of Archaeologists
Date: 2020-10-04

The issue of the under-representation of children is well-known for the Neolithic and Copper Age in South-Eastern Europe and not only. But what about the children that ARE represented in the cemetery? We are used to the “body in a grave” representation whenwe think of human remains in a burial ground. But the situation at the discussed site seems to be quite different. The vast majority of sub-adult remains were found in complexes of disarticulated bones accompanied by other remains such as pottery or disarticulated animal bones or in the archaeological layer. In only a few cases the children were discovered in features that were described as “graves” or the preserved remains (the presence of small bones, such as vertebras or ribs) seem to indicate such a feature. The issue of voluntary disarticulation will also be raised during the presentation. I will present the situation of sub-adult human remains from the Late Neolithic cemetery at Cernavodă – Columbia D, attributed to the Hamangia culture, a site that was excavated at the middle of the last century but never published. I will also compare the situation encountered at this site with the situation from the contemporary and culturally equal cemetery south of the Danube, at Durankulak, Bulgaria and with the contemporary cemetery north of the Danube, at Cernica, Romania.


Author(s): Kogalniceanu, Raluca (Institute of Archaeology, Bucharest) - Simalcsik, Angela (Centre of Anthropological Research, Iasi)