Breaking and Making the Ancestors : : Piecing Together the Urnfield Mortuary Process in the Lower-Rhine-Basin, Ca. 1300 - 400 BC.

• Author: Louwen, Arjan.
• Place / Publishing House: Leiden : : Sidestone Press,, 2021.; ©2021.
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (358 pages)

Towards the capstone of the European Bronze Age, in an area stretching from the Carpathians in the East to the North Sea in the West, vast cremation grave cemeteries occur that are perhaps better known as 'urnfields.' Today some 700 of these burial sites have come to light in the Netherlands alone. In this corner of Europe, also known as the 'Lower-Rhine-Basin,' these cemeteries are often characterised by vast collections of small burial mounds under which the cremated remains of decedents were buried in small shaft-like pits. In many a case the cremated remains had been put in urns first, providing these cemeteries with their very name. Though rich in numbers, urnfield graves are often described as 'poor' and 'simple' as only in rare occasions decedents were provided with grave gifts. However, when close attention is paid to the actions involved in the creation of these seemingly simple graves, they in fact reveal a richness in funerary practices that on their turn hint a complex and intricate mortuary process. This book delves into the wealth of funerary practices reflected in more than 3,000 urnfield graves excavated throughout the Netherlands in order to reconstruct the mortuary process associated with the urnfields in this particular part of Europe. Together these graves tell interesting stories about how the dead related to each other, how plain and simple objects could be used as metaphors in the creation of relational and ancestral identities and how the dead were inextricably linked to the land.

Table of Contents

Intro -- Introduction: Bits and pieces -- 1.1 A true fact, alternative choices -- 1.7 Research outline -- 1.6 Dataset and methodology -- 1.4 From pots to people 2.0 -- 1.3 A historiographical circle -- 1.2 Urnfields on the edge of the continent: The Lower-Rhine-Basin -- 1.5 Research questions -- The whole is more than the sum of its parts -- 2.1 Introduction -- 2.2 Practice in practice: more than a habit -- 2.6 Conclusion -- 2.5 Piecing together personhood in the Bronze- and Iron Age -- 2.4 Death as a Narrative -- 2.3 The liminality of death -- Dissecting the urnfield funeral -- 3.1 From practice theory to theory in practice -- 3.2 The urnfield mortuary process -- 3.4 Selection of cemeteries -- 3.3 Building the database: the urnfield mortuary process in cells -- The body and the mortuary process -- 4.1 Introduction -- 4.2 Between deathbed and pyre -- 4.5 Conclusion -- 4.4 Between cremation and interment -- 4.3 The cremation process -- Objects and the urnfield mortuary process -- 5.1 Introduction -- 5.2 Urns -- 5.8 Conclusion: So many people, so many ways? -- 5.7 "Admixtures" -- 5.6 Animals and the mortuary process -- 5.5 Treatment of objects -- 5.4 Objects in relation to sex and age -- 5.3 Selection of objects -- Assembling the ancestors -- 6.1 Introduction -- 6.5 Locating the grave -- 6.4 Interring bodies whole: The composition of inhumation graves -- 6.3 Assembling the dead: Modes of interment -- 6.2 Everybody counts: The inclusivity of urnfields -- The related dead -- 7.1 Meaning through practice -- 7.4 Land, ancestors and the related dead -- 7.3 Personhood and the social dead -- 7.2 The origin of urnfield mortuary practices in view of a practice-based approach -- Ancestral landscapes -- 8.1 The first holistic approach to urnfields -- 8.5 Urnfields as part of ancestral landscapes -- 8.4 The open structure of late prehistoric burial grounds.

8.3 The 'population increase thesis' revisited -- 8.2 On the longevity of late prehistoric farmsteads -- Breaking and making the ancestors -- 9.1 A fragmented past -- 9.5 Epilogue: Why we do the things we do… -- 9.4 The end of the urnfields as we know them -- 9.3 From land and ancestors to ancestral lands -- 9.2 The composite dead -- References -- Appendix I Inventory of sites -- Appendix II Radiocarbon dates -- Dutch summary -- Acknowledgements -- Blank Page -- Blank Page.