Death and Burial (Archaeology)

Special supplement to Mittelweg 36, the journal of the Hamburg Institute for Social Research, on the burial and reburial of war dead in comparative and transnational perspective. Based on a conference in September 2013 in the Berlin Colloquia series. Essay by Edward Madigan, Heonik Kwon, Kirk Savage.

Biology is often seen as a way to explain how diseases occur and spread. But, as evolutionary biologist Richard Lewontin said, “biology is not physics...and sociology is not biology because human societies are made by self-conscious organisms.” At the heart of this is a conflict between biology and sociology. Biology is concerned with the study of living organisms and life itself while sociology  focuses on the social interactions of humans, human-made institutions and organizations. Steven Feierman and John M. Janzen's The Social Basis of Health & Healing in Africa argues in part that changing colonial control and racist attitudes of the ruling elite influenced the medical community, the division of labor, organization of society, medicine, health and healing in Africa through a number of selected pieces. For this paper, mortality is defined as death and morbity is defined as illness.1 The following paper will argue that the social, political and economic context of diseases better explains African disease and death than any biological explanations.

"Résumé: Dans la péninsule d’Oman, le passage du Néolithique à l’âge du Bronze est marqué par de profondes transformations socio-économiques accompagnées de changements dans les pratiques funéraires. Autour de 3100 avant notre ère, la région voit ainsi le développement d’un système économique basé sur l’agriculture d’oasis, sur l’exploitation et l’exportation du cuivre, et sur le déploiement d’un intense réseau d’échanges à plusieurs échelles. Les pratiques funéraires sont marquées par le passage de la sépulture individuelle en fosse à la sépulture collective construite en pierre. Le cadre environnemental et chrono-culturel de ce travail est exposé, incluant un historique de la recherche dans la région et un état des con-naissances sur les pratiques funéraires et les données biologiques. Puis, l’analyse archéo-anthropologique des sépultures et des restes humains de onze ensembles sépulcraux datés du Néolithique (V-IVe mill.) à la fin de l’âge du Bronze ancien (env. 2000 av. n.è.) est présentée afin de caractériser les pratiques funéraires et les paramètres biologiques des groupes abordés. En dehors des données acquises pour chaque en-semble traité, la synthèse diachronique des données existantes permet d’explorer l’interaction des dyna-miques culturelles et biologiques. Parmi les principaux résultats obtenus, on peut mentionner la mise en évidence d’une complexité des pratiques funéraires dès le Néolithique, un bilan de l’état de conservation des collections ostéologiques, des dénombrements détaillés (NMI) pour les tombes collectives de l’âge du Bronze, la mise en évidence d’un système de gestion de ces mêmes tombes, un bilan diachronique des affections bucco-dentaires, et l’existence d’une dynamique d’accroissement démographique apparue probablement dès le Néolithique. La thèse conclut par une discussion de ces résultats à la lumière du modèle général d’évolution proposé dans les travaux antérieurs.
Mots-clés : Péninsule d’Oman, Sultanat d’Oman, Émirats Arabes Unis, Néolithique, âge du Bronze ancien, transition, pratiques funéraires, archéo-anthropologie, sépultures collectives, affections bucco-dentaires, paléodémographie.

Abstract: In the Oman Peninsula, the transition from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age is marked by profound socio-economic transformations accompanied by changes in funerary practices. Around 3100 BCE, the region experienced the development of an economic system based on oasis agriculture, the exploitation and export of copper, and the deployment of an intense trade network at multiple scales. Funerary practices are marked by the transition from individual burials to collective graves built in stones. The environmental and chronocultural framework of this study are presented, including the history of research in the region and a review of the data available on funerary practices and biological parameters. Then, the bioarchaeological analysis of the graves and human remains of eleven sites dated from the Neolithic (5th-4th mill. BCE) to the end of the Early Bronze Age (ca. 2000 BCE) aims to characterize the funerary practices and biological pa-rameters of the studied groups. Apart from data acquired for each site, the diachronic synthesis of existing data allows us to explore the interplay of cultural and biological dynamics. Among the main results obtained, we can mention the identification of complex burial practices starting from the Neolithic, an assessment of the preservation of osteological collections, detailed counting (MNI) for collective graves from the Bronze Age, evidence for a management system of these graves, a diachronic analysis of oral diseases, and the demonstration of a population increase starting from the Neolithic. The thesis concludes with a discussion of these results in light of the general evolution model previously proposed.
Keywords:Oman Peninsula, Sultanate of Oman, United Arab Emirates, Neolithic, Early Bronze Age, transition, funerary practices, bioarchaeology, collective graves, oral and dental disease, paleodemography."

"Implementation of the toolbox of mathematical statistics into archeological investigations demanded from the researcher a special organization of source material. Formalization of archeological data, i.e. their decomposition into constituent features, became an obligatory condition for modern statistical investigations. However, the principles of formalization implementation still stay debatable. The author of the article, carrying out the review of Russian archeological literature, formulates basic approaches to fulfillment of formalization procedure of the obsequies elements."

""During recent rescue excavations conducted on Petra Zoranića
square in Zadar, the remains of an earlier-known church were
discovered, which has been identified as the Church of St. Peter of
the Windlass mentioned in medieval documents. A sarcophagus
with an engraved epitaph of Georgius, preist and recluse, was
found in the south-west corner of the church. The sarcophagus
fully corresponds to the formational and decorative standards of
identical monuments from the latter half of the eighth and first half
of the ninth centuries.""

The relationship between agriculture, sedentarization and the emergence of inequality has been a common subject when analysing the transition between egalitarian and non-egalitarian societies. However, the strategies used during that process and their archaeological expressions are difficult to detect and interpret. The aim of this paper is to provide an example – the emergence of Early Iron Age cremation cemeteries in the Middle Tagus valley – of how this transformation could have been materially expressed. Through the study of Arroyo Culebro D and other cremation cemeteries, we will analyse the crucial moment when the structural changes that sedentarization carries started to be ideologically assumed, expressed and (or) repressed.

Die Beiträge dieser Ausgabe fragen danach, wie, warum und wo Tiere sterben und wie der Tod von Tieren erlebt, gerechtfertigt, repräsentiert und verarbeitet wird. Dafür setzen sie sich mit Tieropfern, Tiergräbern, Stierkampf, Euthanasie, gestrandeten Walen und der Rolle von Tieren im Krieg auseinander, untersuchen Repräsentationen des Todes von Tieren in der Kunst und im Film oder Verkörperungen des Todes in Tiergestalt sowie den Tod von Tieren aus phänomenologischer Sicht.