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 Netherlan...

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
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