The Oxford Handbook of Neolithic Europe

by Chris Fowler

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  CHAPTER 53

  MORTUARY PRACTICES AND BODILY REPRESENTATIONS IN NORTH-WEST EUROPE

  CHRIS FOWLER AND CHRIS SCARRE

  INTRODUCTION

  A diverse range of mortuary practices are documented from Neolithic north-west Europe. Some bodies were buried complete (singly or in groups, simultaneously or successively), whilst others were exposed to the elements, actively defleshed or disarticulated, or cremated. Structures in which bodies had been deposited might be burnt or later elaborated, whilst the skeletal elements of the dead were sometimes further manipulated. Whilst the majority of the population are under-represented in the surviving mortuary evidence, inferences about personhood, ancestry, community, and understandings of the body can be drawn from the mortuary evidence from Britain, Ireland and northern France, c. 5300–2250 BC, and from rare but intriguing figurative representations.

  Three themes run through this analysis: the integrity of the body, the presentation of the body, and the representation of the body. Integrity refers to the treatment of the corpse, and in particular the degree to which it is kept intact after death. Inhumation in a single grave greatly respects the integrity of the corpse whilst a cremation in which the ashes are collected and placed in a pit or container without further manipulation respects such integrity to a lesser extent. Other practices more clearly disrupt bodily integrity through manipulation of the corpse or the decomposed or cremated remains of that corpse. Presentation in this context refers to the way in which the body is ‘dressed up’ for the act of transformation, most evident to us when the body is buried intact: the kinds of objects, ornaments, and clothing that are involved. This is not to resurrect the notion of a single identity expressed in grave goods; material objects placed in the grave may represent multiple aspects of identity that connect the living to the dead and may relate to different stages in funerary narrative. In depositing grave goods, onlookers might consider that they are donating parts of their own personalities with the dead, rather than exemplifying the personality or individuality of the deceased, or that they are facilitating a transformation of the deceased and/or depositing items used in funerary rites. Representation refers to the presentation of human bodies (or parts thereof) in media other than the human body itself. Figurative representations include figurines, motifs on pottery or in rock art, and statue-menhirs. There are ambiguities over who or what was being represented: a living person, a mythical ancestor, a shadowy (and perhaps only part-human) deity? Other representations are even more ambiguous: it is possible that tombs and other media represented bodies in a less figurative way, or were understood as manifestations of a collective body, whilst some but not all shouldered menhirs may have been intended as anthropomorphs. A distinction between presenting and representing bodies might be more our concern than that of Neolithic communities. Diverse and recurring intersections between these three themes underpin our discussion of funerary treatment and body symbolism in Neolithic north-west Europe.

  BURIALS IN EARLY CEMETERIES IN NORTHERN FRANCE

  Cemeteries of single inhumations, almost unknown in early Neolithic Britain, were a feature of the early Neolithic in northern France. At Vignely, Seine-et-Marne, used over a long period c. 4500–3600 BC, detailed observation of taphonomic processes within a group of non-monumental graves has provided evidence for one body placed in a wooden coffin, another in an open-topped bier, and others tied or wrapped in shrouds and laid on the back or crouched on one side (Chambon and Lanchon 2003, fig. 53.1). An unwrapped body on an open-topped bier would have been presented to mourners as the visible remains of a recognizable person, whilst bodies buried in closed coffins or wrapped in shrouds offered alternative visual images of the deceased. The shrouds or encasements may have borne symbolic markings, but they hid the faces and bodies of corpses as these passed through the funeral rite.

  FIG. 53.1. Vignely (Seine-et-Marne, France): selected middle Neolithic graves indicating the variability of burial arrangements and the detection of organic coffins and containers from detailed examination of skeletal positioning.

  (Diagram courtesy of Philippe Chambon, translation of labels Chris Scarre).

  Single grave cemeteries allow us to determine how bodies were routinely dressed up for burial: the kinds of objects, ornaments, and clothing that were involved, and by extension the entirety of the grave goods. At Vignely, for example, one of the dead wore a necklace of fossil shell beads, another had a boar’s tusk pendant, yet others had polished stone blades or pottery vessels. Thus, even though objects were not present or preserved in the majority of the 34 graves in this cemetery, it is clear that the burial performance itself frequently involved placing selected items with the dead.

  The earlier Bandkeramik farming communities of northern France had buried the dead in crouched position resting on one side, without any covering mound or monument. The mid-fifth millennium Passy tombs of Burgundy reveal a strikingly new presentation of the corpse, one which was emphasized by the laying out of the deceased extended on the back, by the personal accoutrements which stressed the role of hunting, and by the provision of a long mound up to 280m in length (Sidéra 2000; Duhamel 1997). This was a localized phenomenon, but it illustrates the growing visibility of a community of the selected dead who were identified in a specific way during the fifth millennium BC. At the Passy necropolis itself a single grave (Passy 5.1) contained pendants of boar’s tusk and dog canine; an antler mace head; a series of 12 flint arrowheads grouped together near the right leg (presumably the remains of a quiver of arrows); several sea shells, including a perforated disk of mother-of-pearl and a cockleshell held in the left hand; various other tools of flint and bone; and two pottery vessels (Duhamel 1997). A flint scraper could have served for the manufacture of bow and arrow shafts (Sidéra 1997, 507). Identities in death do not necessarily relate to the social role or profile of the deceased—and it is possible that some grave goods were items used in the funerary transformation of the dead, or gifts from the living to the dead, rather than possessions of the deceased. Indeed, arrowheads were buried even in graves of individuals (children, handicapped) who can never have drawn a bow in life (Chambon and Pétillon 2009). Nonetheless, grave goods are suggestive of the social importance of specific statements about bodily practice and idealised identities. Passy burial 5.1 hence appears to emphasize the prestige of hunting, and familiarity with wild animals and the seashore in a society dependent on domesticated animals.

  MORTUARY PRACTICES AT EARLY TOMBS

  Some of the earliest evidence across north-we
st Europe indicates successive (or perhaps even simultaneous) single burial in collective tombs. At Ernes/Condé-sur-Ifs in western Normandy a series of early fourth-millennium BC stone chambers contained a small number of articulated skeletons, generally crouched on one side. In La Bruyère du Hamel chamber C, 12 bodies had been placed in two groups around the walls of the chamber with almost no overlap between them (Dron et al. 2003). Such respect for the integrity of the corpse was not a standardized practice and other tomb chambers in the region illustrate an entirely different pattern. At Vierville, two chambers within the same mound contained disarticulated remains of 28 and between 24 and 38 individuals respectively. The presence of several articulations suggests that corpses had been intact or partially intact when initially deposited (Dron et al. 2003), and the commingled nature of the remains indicates secondary manipulation after deposition. The complementarity of these practices is emphasized by their presence at La Hoguette within different chambers of a single monument: articulated skeletons within chambers I, II, III, VI, and VII, commingled remains in chambers IV and V (Dron et al. 2003; Piera 2003).

  At other tombs, individual skeletons became both disarticulated and incomplete: this is the pattern found south of the Loire for example at Bougon, at Prissé-la-Charrière, and at Champ Châlon (Mohen and Scarre 2002; Soler et al. 2003; Joussaume 2006). The radiocarbon date sequences from the two passage graves within the Prissé-la-Charrière long mound indicate that funerary deposition occurred over at most a few generations, c. 4400–4200 BC (Soler et al. 2003). Although relatively few articulations were preserved and the skeletal elements were commingled, only a small number of individuals was represented in each chamber. The site provides an arrested snapshot of a cyclical process of deposition and removal in which many bodies passed through the chamber, remaining there until they were defleshed and the dry bones removed.