Cremation and inhumation - Funerary practices and the body

4 Funerary practices and the body

4.2 Cremation and inhumation

In central Europe, the late Bronze Age Urnfield period (BA D, Ha A/B, c. 1300 to 800 ^bc) is characterised by the dominance of cremation as a burial rite. By and large, bodies were cremated, placed in urns and buried in urnfields that could reach considerable dimensions. Inhumation cemeteries, such as the warrior cem-etery of Neckarsulm, Germany (Knöpke and Wahl 2009), remain the exception.

Although of simple appearance, urn burials imply a complicated chain of actions and practices that constitute the funerary ritual. The burning of the body on the funerary pyre is one crucial element, as it transforms it into a different kind of sub-stance (Sørensen and Rebay 2008b). The practice of cremation may be explained by a range of different beliefs, such as releasing the soul from the body, enabling rebirth or helping the journey to the afterlife, but rarely are beliefs formulated clearly enough that practices can be explained solely through them (Rebay- Salisbury 2012a). In fact, one of the most convincing arguments of why bodies are cremated or inhumed is tradition – bodies are treated the way they always have been, and therefore, it is the right way. Alternatives might never come to mind if there is no exposure to new and different ideas. It is the times in which funerary practices change that require further interpretation.

The treatment of the body does not, however, end with cremation. Although in some cases, the pyre remains stay put and form the basis of the grave, the cre-mated remains are most often translated to a different place. There is a consider-able amount of variation in the way the remains are deposited. First, a distinction can be made if and how the pyre remains were separated from the burnt bones.

In some cases, a fair amount of the pyre debris, including the human bones, is scattered in the grave or placed in a vessel. In other cases, the pyre remains and

human bones were separated. The separation and picking out of human bones may be done to varying degrees; small amounts of charcoal are almost always found with the cremated remains. Especially when the pyre remains are extinguished by water or rained on, the colour contrast between the white bones and the dark wood ashes might have aided the separation (see Fig. 4.3).

Most often, only the cremated bones found their way into the graves, but the pyre remains as such might also be deposited in the vicinity, inside or outside the grave. Cremated remains were frequently collected and placed in a container, a ceramic urn or an organic container before being placed in a grave pit. Finds from Cottbus-Alvensleben, Germany, a late Bronze Age to early Iron Age cem-etery from the Lausatian area (Bz D – Ha C1) with 105 individuals, revealed that particular care was taken to preserve the person beyond the pyre by stacking the remains in anatomical order in the urns, thereby ‘anthropomorphising’ the urn (Gramsch 2004: 412). However, in other cases little care was taken to ensure completeness or enclosure of the remains. Cremated remains may also be scat-tered directly in the grave or placed on the ground in heaps. These minute distinc-tions in the way cremated remains were treated often remain elusive, as different semantics are used by different researchers and wrong descriptions are frequent in the literature (cf. Kurz 1997: 67–70). It is thus difficult to assess the frequency and distribution of these different ways of dealing with the cremated dead.

Grave goods can be added and removed at any stage of the funeral ritual, before, during and after the cremation. Late Bronze Age urn burials tend to include few objects, but this simple appearance does not allow conclusions on the social status of the deceased. At that time, status is not generally expressed in the mortuary realm (exceptions such as Čaka, Slovakia or Seddin, Germany, prove the rule, cf.

Kunow 2003, Paulík 1975), but negotiated in other venues such as settlements and sacred places. Traditionally, the large-scale spread of cremation during the middle to late Bronze Age has been understood in terms of the movements of peoples (for example, Childe 1950, Kraft 1926) or a change in religious beliefs (for example, Alexander 1979). More recently, a change in how the human body is ontologically understood is seen as the more likely underlying cause (Harris et al. 2013b).

Figure 4.3 Cremated bones and pyre remains in an experimental cremation of a pig in Hallstatt 2006, before and after rain (© photos: Doris Pany-Kucera)

Funerary practices and the body 65 After several hundred years during which cremation prevailed, the early Iron Age saw the re-emergence of inhumation burials in central Europe. The transi-tion back to inhumatransi-tion follows interesting regional and chronological patterns (Rebay-Salisbury in press-c), and in many places, inhumation and cremation are practiced side by side. The way in which body treatment is linked to other vari-ables of identity, such as gender, age and status, is underexplored, as clear links are difficult to establish; it is often a variety of factors that lead to the choice of different burial practices.

Very broadly, the re-introduction of inhumation seems to follow a west to east trajectory. The earliest instances of a transition to inhumation can be observed west of the Rhine, in eastern France, and on the western Swiss plateau, where inhumation had been practiced since the late Bronze Age (Wamser 1975). In fact, inhumation is not the only factor contributing to a ‘Hallstattisation’ from the west;

several elements such as the use of iron and wagons in graves are also first trace-able in the western parts of the West Hallstatt zone (Trachsel 2004: 328). The practice of building burial mounds, an important indicator of social stratification, also spreads from a ninth century ^bc core between Burgundy and the French Jura, Hessen and north Bavaria towards areas further west, north and east (Pare 2003).

Within this core area, the western groups practiced inhumation, while the east-ern groups in the area along the Rhine practiced cremation (Pare 2003 fig. 4).

Early inhumations in Germany cluster in the upper Rhine Valley around Brei-sach and Colmar, in the Hegau and in the Middle Alb (Stöllner 2012: 558, fig. 4).

Other areas such as Bavaria (Kossack 1959), Bavarian Swabia (Dietrich 1998), the upper Rhine (Aufdermauer 1963) and the upper Neckar valley (Reim 1990) do not show a consistent transition at all and cannot be reliably connected to a chronological development (Kurz 1997: 119).

In the West Hallstatt provinces depositing the body in burial mounds that clus-ter in groups typically of about ten to forty in number, and rarely more than one hundred, can be seen as the norm (Spindler 1983: 92). The burial mounds often contain multiple individuals, and secondary burials are frequent. The transition from cremation to inhumation has traditionally been seen as a marker for the transition from the early to the late Hallstatt period (Ha C to D, c. 620 ^bc), or even in terms of a ‘Celtic revolution’ (Zürn 1987: 25–27), but in fact cremation continued to be practiced throughout the whole of the Hallstatt period. Small cre-mation graves, comprising inauspicious, small pits with scattered crecre-mations or urns and few, if any, grave goods, may be found between burial mounds – often overlooked in antiquarian excavations – or in separate cemeteries (Fries 2007).

They are difficult to date as most can only be assigned to the Hallstatt period in general, but there are examples of graves securely dated to both Ha C and Ha D.

In some areas, anthropological investigations of the cremated remains have dem-onstrated a high count of sub-adults, but these tendencies cannot be extrapolated over the whole of the area (Fries 2007: 25). Overall, there are more graves dating to Ha D than C in the West Hallstatt provinces, and women and children seem to be underrepresented, especially in the early period. The ‘small cremation graves’

may account for this difference (Müller-Scheeßel 2007: 8), as the vast number of

graves overall leaves no reason to suspect that not everybody had been granted a formal burial.

Early Hallstatt cremation graves continue Urnfield traditions with new pottery types (Kurz 1997: 122–123, Spindler 1983: 187). The bodies are typically mated in their dress, and metal dress elements are picked out along with the cre-mated bones and deposited in a ceramic urn, an organic container or scattered in the grave pit. Pyre remains are often also placed in graves along with large sets of vessels. Hallstatt cremation graves tend to include few metal grave goods, but the long sword, which in the late Bronze Age is deposited in rivers and bogs but not in graves, became included in the grave assemblages from the Early Hallstatt period onwards (Kurz 1997: 129). The sword bearers seem to be the first to take up inhu-mation as a burial rite (although other graves may just not have enough datable objects). They are frequently buried in separate burial mounds, disconnected from the community and underlining their striving for exclusivity (Stöllner 2012: 559).

The elite spearheads this innovation, while for some time yet cremation remains the norm for average graves before most people ‘convert’ to inhumation (Spindler 1983: 186). Late Hallstatt burials are typically inhumations under large burial mounds, with few or no ceramic vessels but ample metal grave goods, which include dress fittings and jewellery as well as daggers and spearheads (Stöllner 2012: 551).

One of the largest and best-known Hallstatt burial mounds in Germany is the Magdalenenberg near Villingen (Spindler 1971, Spindler 1972, Spindler 1973, Spindler 1976b, Spindler 1977, Spindler 1980). Its central wooden chamber, den-drochronologically dated to 616 ^bc, early in Ha D (Trachsel 2004: 149), had been robbed, so research focussed on excavation, analysis and interpretation of the 128 secondary burials dating to a quite narrow chronological margin between 616 and 575 ^bc, encompassing no more than two to three generations (Trachsel 2004:

150). The burial mound can be understood as a bi-ritual cemetery, as it includes both cremations and inhumations, although the latter are much more common.

The graves 14, 22, 28 and 40 were single cremation graves covered by stone pack-ing. The remains were deposited in a grave pit in what must have been an organic container with few grave goods (one grave contained an iron belt buckle and ring with traces of the funerary fire, one grave contained a miniature vessel, one a large vessel with conical neck and another grave fragments of a large vessel). Anthro-pological analysis confirmed one male individual and suggests two further male individuals; one had no diagnostic criteria preserved. All were adults between 20 and 60 years of age (Kühl 1977). Johannes Müller (1994) categorises the crema-tions in status groups 3 and 4, the lowest social ranks.

Graves that contain both cremations and inhumations are particularly interest-ing at the Magdalenenberg, as they reveal details about the relationships between the individuals. The bi-ritual grave 56 (Fig. 4.4) contained a female inhumation with an elaborate set of jewellery and dress elements of amber, bone, lignite and bronze, including pins for a veil, and arm and leg rings; on the left side of her body, between the forearm and the hip, a cremation was placed in a birch bark container with a bronze pin, a small bronze ring and bronze belt fittings (Spindler 1973:

Funerary practices and the body 67

Figure 4.4 Bi-ritual graves 56, 75 and 106 from the Magdalenenberg near Villingen, expressing different relationships between the inhumed and cremated body (after Spindler 1973: pl. 2, pl. 37, Spindler 1976b: pl. 42)

19). The individual was a child around 14 years of age (Kühl 1977: 126) and of unknown sex. The fact that the inhumed woman was between 20 and 40 years old at death makes it just about possible that she was buried with her own child. The way the cremated remains were placed next to the woman’s body shows an inti-mate, perhaps protective, relationship. This is different in the other bi-ritual graves:

Grave 75, the inhumation of a male individual, was buried with a miniature vessel and an organic, rectangular container at his feet that contained the remains of two cremated individuals, a woman of about 30 years of age and a 10- to 11-year-old child (Kühl 1977: 126–131). Grave 106 (Fig. 4.4), another male inhumation, had the urn of a child less than seven years old at his feet. In both these cases, the dif-ference in grave equipment and the placing of the cremation suggests the expres-sion of a subordinate role of the cremated individuals in the grave.

The Hohmichele (Riek 1962), one of 36 burial mounds of the Speckhau necrop-olis associated with the Heuneburg, included eight inhumation and five cremation burials. Burial Mound 17 and 18 of the Speckhau group have recently been inves-tigated by Bettina Arnold and Matthew L. Murray (Arnold and Murray 2002, Arnold, Murray and Schneider 2001, Arnold, Murray and Schneider 2003). The central chamber of Burial Mound 17 measured 5 by 5 m and contained the crema-tion of a man and inhumacrema-tion of a woman along the eastern wall of the chamber in a south–north orientation. The chamber had been looted, but the man was found with the remnants of an iron spearhead and knife. The woman was found with bronze earrings, a bronze pin, a bronze-studded leather belt, a bronze and iron fibula and bronze arm rings (Arnold, Murray and Schneider 2001: 69). At least three secondary inhumation burials were found in the mantle of the burial mound, which was used from c. 600/540 ^bc until c. 450/400 ^bc (Arnold 2012: 106). The cremation grave in the centre of Burial Mound 18 included the remains of a large, square funerary pyre measuring 3 by 3 m. Radiocarbon dates between 1390 and 1010 cal. ^bc derived from the central cremation grave were much older than

expected and can possibly be explained by the old wood effect (Arnold, Murray and Schneider 2003: 81); the use-life of the burial mound spanned from late Hall-statt C (640/600 ^bc) to Hallstatt D3/La Tène A (450/400 ^bc, Arnold 2012: 106).

The cemetery of Schirndorf in Bavaria (Hughes 1999, Hughes 2001, Stroh 1979, Stroh 1988, Stroh 2000a, Stroh 2000b) is another of the few almost fully excavated Hallstatt cemeteries that include both inhumations and cremations.

It spans the whole duration of the Hallstatt period and includes more than 100 burial mounds and about 300 individuals (Müller-Scheeßel 2005a: 341). The burial mounds include wooden chambers, stone covers and stone linings; graves are densely packed, and the sequence of burials is difficult to reconstruct due to the complexity of secondary burials and grave extensions. The oldest burials are often male cremations with large sets of ceramic vessels, but inhumations soon become equally common; cremation and inhumation are practiced side by side (Müller-Scheeßel 2005a: 341). ‘Small cremation graves’ occur at the periphery of the mounds; they are often women and children with few, if any, grave goods (Müller-Scheeßel 2005a: 341). Secondary burials are both cremations and inhu-mations. The wooden chamber of Mound 33, for instance, includes an inhumation along the west wall and clusters of cremated remains in the north and east of the chamber; cremated remains of two individuals were found over the hand of the inhumed individual (Müller-Scheeßel 2005a: fig. 5). The primary inhumation was almost certainly an adult male, but bones of a juvenile individual were found in the chamber as well. The cremated individuals could be classified as an adult, per-haps female, and a juvenile; it remains unclear, however, if the deposition of the cremated bones of two individuals were one or two separate events (Hughes 1999:

395–397). Secondary burials may be interred into the same chambers; if they were still intact, older individuals may be pushed aside and older grave goods smashed in the process. Other secondary burials are new constructions on top of older monuments. Nils Müller-Scheeßel (2005a) observed a trend during the course of the Hallstatt period towards less effort in grave construction and equipping buried individuals with objects, but, at the same time, a trend towards greater equality – more people of all age groups and genders are included in the community the cemetery represents.

The cemetery of Riedenburg-Untereggersberg, Germany (Nikulka 1998), shows similarities to Schirndorf in the grave architecture. There 127 individu-als were buried in 95 graves placed in 84 architecturally distinguishable grave structures, of which 33 had wooden chambers (Schumann 2015: 56). Here, too, the chronological succession of burials is difficult to ascertain but seems to cover the whole Hallstatt period. Stone-lined burial mounds were frequently re-opened and expanded; subsequent burials were added to the cemetery in many different kinds of ways, including in existing burial mounds, adjacent to and between burial mounds and, after levelling the ground, over old burial mounds. Multiple inter-ments in grave chambers can often not be securely distinguished from secondary additions and small, inauspicious cremation graves are common too. The age and sex of the buried individual, as well as chronological trends, were revealed to be fundamental for the mode of burial (Nikulka 2004). As in other cemeteries in the

Funerary practices and the body 69 Altmühl Valley, namely Dietfurt-Tennisplatz, Dietfurt-Tankstelle, Riedenburg-Emmerthal, Riedenburg-Deising, Kelheim-Am Urnenfeld and Beilngries-Im Ried-Ost, recently summarised by Robert Schumann (Schumann 2015: 106–

107), there is a clear chronological trend from cremation to inhumation during the Hallstatt period, but social concerns play a role in the choice of burial practice too. Among the inhumation burials, male individuals prevail; amongst cremation burials, the sex ratio is balanced. Adult individuals tend to occupy the primary places within grave structures, and mature individuals are particularly frequently interred.

The cemetery of Hallstatt, Austria, occupying a somewhat intermediate posi-tion between the west and the east, has early been recognised as a ‘bi-ritual’

cemetery. The documentation of Johann Georg Ramsauer included a clear dif-ferentiation between inhumations and cremations (‘Sckelette, Leichenbraende’

[sic]), and illustrations for about a third of the graves, particularly the very large and rich cremations and inhumations in peculiar positions (Hodson 1990: 5, Kern 2009b: 117). The illustrations include partial cremations, in which part of the body seems inhumed and another part cremated, but they constitute intercutting graves with separate sets of grave goods (which were numbered accordingly at the time of excavation).

Inhumations and cremations are represented almost equally in Hallstatt (53 per cent inhumation, 47 per cent cremation; Hodson 1990: 76, Pany 2009: 136). Bod-ies are usually inhumed on their backs, with the head in the west looking towards the east (or, topographically speaking, from the high valley to the lake). Crema-tions are normally scattered, with dress elements placed on top of the cremated body and other grave goods arranged around the cremation; they come in differ-ent sizes and levels of equipmdiffer-ent. Very few individuals were deposited in urns, in which case the graves are inconspicuous and consist only of the urn and body (Pany 2009: 129–130). According to the data published in Hodson’s analysis (1990: 76, table 12; 78, fig. 18), male graves are more likely to be cremations: the ratio of cremations to inhumation is 56:44 for male graves, and 45:55 for female graves. However, of the 926 graves, 478 graves could be classified as female, but only 294 as male, an imbalance which could easily account for the difference.

Both inhumation and cremation graves are chronologically spread over the whole duration of the cemetery. According to Hodson (1990), 290 graves belong to the early cemetery phase (Ha C, 800 to 600 ^bc), 170 to the later phase (Ha D, 600 to 475/450 ^bc), with 466 that could only be dated to the Hallstatt period more gener-ally. In Ha C, 166 cremations can be juxtaposed with 124 inhumations, in Ha D 96 cremations with 74 inhumations. This means that the ratio of cremation to inhu-mation of the datable graves remains almost unchanged (57:43 and 56:44) as the Iron Age progressed. A link of burial rite to status differences is the most credible for the cemetery of Hallstatt. Seventy per cent of metal vessels, which are thought to constitute considerable wealth, stem from cremation graves (Kern 2009a: 129,

In document The Human Body in Early Iron Age Central Europe Burial Practices and Images of the Hallstatt World-Routledge (2016) (Page 78-89)