Multiple Burials

15 years ago four Neolithic graves with multiple burials were excavated near the
village of Eulau in Saxony-Anhalt/ Germany. In the graves were thirteen
individuals - five adults and eight children who were victims of a violent conflict
4500 years ago. The alignment of the thirteen dead in the graves, facing each
other, some holding hands, quickly suggested a close relationship between the
buried during their lifetime. The results of the strontium isotope and aDNA
analyses carried out on the skeletons finally brought the graves to world fame.
Some of the buried turned out to be close relatives. It was even possible to
establish a relationship between father and mother and their two biological sons.
A little more than a decade after the first publication of the Eulau graves, we now
have numerous interpretations of the Eulau graves from both the scientific and
popular fields. There is talk of the earliest evidence of a nuclear family or even of
an act of revenge provoked by the robbery of women.
The interpretations of the Eulau burials are - like other interpretations of
archaeological findings - marked by gender clichés and stereotypes. In my
presentation, I would like to point these out and question them. How far can and
should the archaeological interpretation of scientific results go?

The paper aims at analysing the social factors connected with the increase of sequential multiple burials around the first quarter of the Second Millennium BC in Egypt. In particular, in the late Middle Kingdom, the practice of multiple burials became more widespread across the whole country and it was more visible at all social levels, reaching also the uppermost levels of society and the royal court. Such a burial demography pattern can be linked with deeper transformations in the social organisation noticeable through iconographic, textual, linguistic, and archaeological evidence: an increase of plurality of people named/represented on stelae; a lexical deviation inside the vocabulary related to ‘familial’ groups (CT 146); the interruption in the archaeological record of the texts known as ‘Letters to the Dead’; the introduction of an uncommon architectural feature in the eastern Delta (Avaris), the ‘house of the dead’. The increase and spread on a preeminent scale of multiple burials drove a renegotiation of the role of the dead body within the burial assemblage. In the light of a changed burial demography, the tomb became the ideal memory container for supporting the identity of a more crowded household structure and dead bodies constituted the tangible mnemonic bridge to the past and social identity. Sequential multiple burials affected also temporality, and the passage of time increased the objectification of the body itself; therefore multiple bodies inside a grave may have influenced the selection of the range of objects to be placed in, as demonstrated by a consistent infiltration of the domestic sphere inside the funerary domain at the end of Twelfth Dynasty.

Excavation and interpretation of multiple burials are a challenge for both archaeologists and
anthropologists. In our work, we explore possible causes and formation processes of a multiple burial
from the Copper Age recovered at Balatonszentgyörgy-Kenderföldek in 2017. The burial represents
commingled remains with the most likely number of 22 individuals. We performed a complete assessment
of the taphonomic parameters and the funerary behavior, and study the human remains, including cross-referencing the anthropological data with the spatial and stratigraphic information. These data were
compared with other contemporary sites to reveal differences and similarities regarding this special kind
of human activity. The results of the anthropological and archaeological analysis gave information about
the depositional processes of the human remains and the usage of the settlement pit which also implies
the ritual nature of the burial.

La sépulture mise au jour dans la basilique des Saints Martyrs Just et Pastor a fait l’objet d’une étude anthropologique détaillée, visant à caractériser l’échantillon squelettique exhumé d’un point de vue biologique. En l’absence de lésions traumatiques sur les ossements, l’hypothèse d’un contexte épidémique a été privilégiée. Cette attribution est confortée par l’étude du recrutement par âge qui rend compte d’anomalies similaires à celles rencontrées dans des cimetières de peste attestés. L’étude paléopathologique révèle la faible fréquence des affections squelettiques et conduit à discuter l’influence de l’état de santé préexistant de la population sur la mortalité en temps de peste. Certaines composantes du traitement sépulcral sont enfin discutées au regard des données disponibles pour d’autres sites de peste européens.

---

The grave discovered at the basilica of the Holy Martyrs Justus and Pastor in Barcelona has resulted in a detailed anthropological study aimed at characterising the exhumed skeleton sample from a biological point of view. Given that there are no traumatic lesions on the bones, the hypothesis of an epidemic context has been put forward. This attribution is supported by the study of distribution by age which records abnormalities similar to those found in documented plague graveyards. The paleopathological study shows the low incidence of skeletal disorders and leads to debate about the influence of the pre-existing health condition of the population on mortality in times of plague. Certain components of funerary practices are finally discussed in relation to data
available for other European plague sites.

Although in the post-Roman transition (Late Antiquity) intense socioeconomic, cultural and environmental changes took place in NW Iberia, their impact in the life of local communities is barely known. The funerary rites and burial are processes deeply rooted in societies, hence their modifications may reveal helpful aspects to understand the aforementioned transition. To reach this objective and improve our knowledge on the local lifestyle, I analyzed and compared the taphonomy, or post-mortem alterations, of burials from A Lanzada necropolis. This is one of the few sites in NW Spain where two different funerary phases, Roman and post-Roman, have been found. The burial context was studied in 59 graves (38 Roman and 21 post-Roman) and surface abrasion and biotic-abiotic alterations were analyzed in 84 skeletons (38 Roman, 40 post-Roman, 6 undetermined). The results showed modifications on burial ritual in the Late Antiquity funerary area: grave orientation changed to W-E (it was S-N in Roman times), no grave goods were present, body position was always supine, and multiple consecutive burials and stone slabs coffins were introduced. This type of funerary context was apparently common in later Galician necropoleis. In contrast, in the Roman period the funerary practices were more varied, since they included burial cremations, tile-built graves, as well as prone burials with carelessly deposited human remains. Other Iberian sites show similar patterns of changes between Roman/post-Roman phases. A possible standardization of funerary ritual in Late Antiquity is suggested and different socioeconomic and cultural causes are explored to understand the observed trends.

Bezeichnend für die prähistorische Archäologie ist, dass der Hauptschwerpunkt und die Schwierigkeit des Faches darin liegen, sich mit schriftlosen Menschen und Kulturen zu befassen. Aus diesem Grund war die prähistorische Archäologie seit jeher auf Nachbarwissenschaften, wie die biologische Anthropologie angewiesen um ein umfassendes Bild vergangener Verhältnisse zu rekonstruieren. So ist die Grundidee für diese Arbeit während eines Praktikums an der Friedrich‐Schiller‐Universität Jena entstanden, in dessen Rahmen das Skelettmaterial des Aunjetitzer Gräberfeldes von Nohra für eine Extraktion von Zähnen vorbereitet werden sollte. Während der Arbeit mit dem Material fiel auf, dass die Ergebnisse der Grabung, die 1955 von E. Schmidt‐Thielbeer veröffentlicht worden sind zwar immer wieder für Vergleiche herangezogen wurden. Allerdings erfolgte nie eine ausführliche anthropologische Untersuchung der menschlichen Überreste. Die Untersuchung der Mehrfachbestattungen in der Aunjetitzer Kultur, bot nun im Rahmen dieser Magisterarbeit die Möglichkeit dieses Defizit zu beheben. Da die Ergebnisse der anthropologischen Analyse mit in die archäologische Auswertung von Mehrfachbestattungen einfließen sollten, wurde der anthropologische Abschnitt an den Anfang der Arbeit gesetzt. Die archäologische Auseinandersetzung mit den Mehrfachbestattungen in der Aunjetitzer Kultur bildet folglich den zweiten Abschnitt der Arbeit.

This paper examines a dataset of multiple burials in early Anglo-Saxon England previously published by Nick Stoodley in 2002. The focus here is on updating his research with post-2002 data and reassessing his conclusions. Stoodley's paper entitled 'Multiple burials multiple meanings? Interpreting the early Anglo-Saxon multiple internment' presented a comprehensive overview of multiple burials in a way that had not been previously done. This paper expands upon that, revisiting Stoodley's analysis and conclusions and questioning his application of available data. This paper concludes that Stoodley's analysis was not representative of his own data and found trends where they did not exist, such as suggesting incorrectly that females rather than males were almost exclusively buried with subadults. Stoodley's final argument that multiple internment burials were 'amulets' for dealing with high-stress deaths is examined more empirically in this paper and added upon by suggesting that the individuals interred together were tied by social relationships that were not necessarily rooted in biology. The various multiple interment burials of the early Anglo-Saxon period marked the ending and renewal of social relationships, whether it be occupational or dealing with societal-familial roles, such as conceptions of caretakers. As the social relationship is broken in death, enacting that relationship in death repairs the lost relationship. Finally, this paper widens the discussion surrounding multiple burials, contextualising previous tangential work on the subject and suggesting the imperative and neglected need for a comprehensive study on human-animal multiple burials, both in terms of cremations and inhumations during the early Anglo-Saxon period.