Author:
BRÜCK JOANNA,BOOTH THOMAS J.
Abstract
This paper sets out the results of radiocarbon, histological, and contextual analysis of human remains from non-mortuary contexts in Middle and Late Bronze Age Britain. In the latter period in particular, human bone (much of it fragmentary and disarticulated) has frequently been recovered from settlement contexts and from other locations, such as waterholes, across the wider landscape. However, the source and post-mortem trajectories of such finds are poorly understood. The results of our analyses indicate that some of these finds come from primary burials while others were the result of post-mortem processes such as excarnation. Certain fragments appear to have been curated for lengthy periods of time but there is much less evidence for deliberate curation of bone than there is in Early Bronze Age graves, although other forms of manipulation, such as cutting and shaping of bone fragments, have been recorded. In contrast to the Early Bronze Age, where it has been argued that curated bones may have belonged to venerated ancestors, some of the individuals from the sites discussed in this paper had suffered violent deaths, suggesting that bones selected for manipulation, curation, and deposition may have belonged to a variety of different categories of person.
Publisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Subject
Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law,Geography, Planning and Development
Reference92 articles.
1. Death is not the end: radiocarbon and histo-taphonomic evidence for curation and excarnation of human remains in Bronze Age Britain;Booth;Antiquity,2020
2. Shorncote Quarry: excavations of a late prehistoric landscape in the Upper Thames Valley, 1997 and 1998;Brossler;Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society,2002
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