NEOLITHIC MORTUARY PRACTICES

INTRAMURAL BURIALS IN BULGARIA IN THEIR SOUTHEAST EUROPEAN AND ANATOLIAN CONTEXT

KRUM BACVAROV

Abstract

No one today questions the fact that intramural burials fall far short of reflecting to a full extent the mortuary practices of southeast European and Anatolian Neolithic. Moreover, the evidence points to the conclusion that human skeletal remains from Neolithic settlements belong to very few individuals in comparison to the total estimated number of Neolithic inhabitants. A number of researchers offer diverse explanations to this phenomenon, basing their hypotheses on a larger or smaller amount of information about the Neolithic burials, most often from separate parts of the area.

According to J. C. Chapman, Neolithic tells in Bulgaria are characterized by the distribution of scattered human bones and seldom by graves containing articulated skeletons. It was only in the Late Neolithic that burials were sometimes located in temporarily unoccupied sections of the settlements. In view of the absence of Neolithic cemeteries the author considers two possibilities. First, because of its accidental occurrence, burial was an indication of status, more often applied to women and children than to adult men. However, since the burial mode did not imply status differentiation, Chapman gives preference to the second possibility: a complete absence of graves. He interprets the few examples as burials of "nonpersons", which means that from the Early Neolithic onwards there existed two vertically differentiated social categories. Y. Yakar has reached slightly different conclusions, although they refer mainly to the mortuary practices of Anatolian Neolithic and Early Chalcolithic. He is of the opinion that there also existed a different mode in which the dead were buried besides formal or secondary inhumation and presumes that they might have been left unburied in caves or rock shelters, using as an argument the later idea of caves as the main outlets to the underworld.

On the basis of comparative material from quite a larger area including the central European Linienbandkeramik culture, southeast European Neolithic as well as Anatolian and Levantine Neolithic and Early Chalcolithic settlements, U. Veit concludes that the cultural conceptions underlying mortuary practices were quite similar and "that the differences which are archaeologically observable relate at least partly to different climatic conditions for the preservation of skeletal remains". The author criticizes I. Hodder's postprocessual approach and argues for "a rather limited set of social situations, as detectable from the archaeological 'texts', which may be reflected in a variety of ritual, or more general cultural forms, according to specific environmental or historical conditions".

J. Orschiedt's thesis differs rather substantially in that he considers all intramural burials of the central European Linienbandkeramik culture as "exceptional". He also notes the predominance of children's and women's sex-and-age groups, which is characteristic of the region, and ascertains that the ratio between children and adults in the settlements and cemeteries was inversely proportional. A similar point of view has been expressed by R. Torremans in regard to Anatolian Neolithic intramural burials and by J. Bojadzhiev, who, on the basis of data about 86 Neolithic burials from 15 Bulgarian settlements, comes to the conclusion that the intramural graves "do not represent the standard mortuary practices but appear to be a deviation from it" and that the burial within the settlement was due to a variety of reasons, which were not uniform by chronological or by territorial principle". In his view certain Neolithic burials were "the result of accidental circumstances". The author logically comes to the question where then the "usual" graves were located and suggests two answers: the burials were not formal inhumations and did not leave archaeological traces, or - and according to Bojadzhiev, the much more probable variant - there exist Neolithic cemeteries which have so far remained undiscovered due to "natural and geographical changes and the erosion and accumulation processes spanning the period from the Neolithic to the present".

In fact, the so-called absence of burials is not a phenomenon, characteristic only of the southeast European Neolithic, but one to be witnessed in a number of pre- and protohistoric cultures from northern Europe to the Fertile Crescent. The chambered tombs of Neolithic England for instance were not the only mortuary practice, but "the bodies of some, and perhaps the majority, of the dead were habitually disposed of in a way which has left no archaeological trace". The case with the English Iron Age A is similar in that frequent human bones and rare burials are typical of it, a fact that is explained by cannibalism or exposure of the corpses.

On the other hand, the analysis of the mortuary practices of the central European Linienbandkeramik culture demonstrates that the burial in a cemetery was just one of a number of diverse practices and it is also highly probable that only a small part of the population might have been represented in the Neolithic cemeteries. On the basis of data from four Bavarian Neolithic cemeteries - Aiterhofen-Odmuhle, Sengofen, Mangolding, and Dillingen-Steinheim - N. Nieszery has established that individuals chosen by society were buried there and that exhumation and secondary burial in another place might have been practiced. Finally the author concludes that there are no archaeological proofs about the way most of the dead were buried. His conclusions have been confirmed by J. Petrasch, who, despite following a different way of reasoning, after studying the traces left by the teeth of predators, and the cut marks on human bones in central European Neolithic settlements, presumes that parallel to the formal inhumations and cremation burials in extramural cemeteries and intramural graves there existed multistage mortuary practices.

It is usually assumed that the information about the mortuary practices in Anatolia and the Levant is much more complete and this is true, to a certain extent. However, it does not mean that all mortuary practices are established; there is not a site with available skeletal remains of at least one generation of its inhabitants. A typical example in this respect is Ain Ghazal, northern Mesopotamia. Judging by skeletons from the Middle Prepottery Neolithic B (MPPNB) the excavators estimate that we are missing at least 80 % of the burials for each generation.

In spite of the seemingly large number of skeletons from all levels at Catalhoyuk, the burials under the platforms of the buildings are evidently not representative of the whole population. The burials in most of the other settlements from the Late Neolithic and Early Chalcolithic are far less in number, as is the case with Hac?lar. Despite his purposeful systematic excavations, R. Duru failed to discover the extramural Neolithic cemetery, which has been hypothetically proposed by J. Mellaart. The same goes for the PPNB in the Levant; after more than a century of excavations no extramural cemetery from this period has been discovered yet. The greatest number of skeletal remains in the whole region of Anatolia and the Levant comes from Cayonu, southeast Anatolia, where bones from 605 individuals have been found. The mortuary practices during the different stages even only from the PPNB vary. In the Skull Building for example 70 percent of the population is represented, whereas in the final stage of this period traces of burials are totally missing.

The data analysis of 108 Neolithic intramural burials from 17 Bulgarian settlements and of burials in 75 settlements in south-east Europe, western and central Anatolia has allowed me to build up a general classification of mortuary practices in this region, to follow their chronological development, to determine their zones of distribution and to make an attempt to establish their possible origin. Three classes of mortuary practices are distributed in this territory: formal inhumation, secondary inhumation and cremation burial. In the first class the period between the biological death and the burial was relatively short, the body of the dead individual was buried in a contracted or an extended position and the archaeological result is a grave, containing more or less articulated skeleton. In the second class this period is longer, the body of the dead individual was subjected to excarnation or other treatment with the aim of detaching the soft tissues, and the archaeological result is a grave containing skeletal remains not in anatomical order. In the third class the duration of the period is archaeologically unknown, but the remains were subjected to cremation and the archaeological result is a grave containing cremated human remains in or not in anatomical order.

The formal inhumation includes 3 groups: individual, group, and collective, which are subdivided into types and sometimes into variants.

The formal individual inhumation in a dwelling space is distributed in a comparatively compact zone, mainly in the southern parts of the territory under study, encompassing western Anatolia, Thrace, eastern Thessaly, the Vardar Valley, north-central Bulgaria and northeast Bulgaria. It borders on Moldavia to the east, and reaches Banat to the west, but the latter two regions are comparatively isolated from the "nuclear distributional area" of the mortuary practice.

The dead were buried in a contracted position on their sides or on the abdomen under house floors, at times under or near ovens, but this refers only to the central part of the zone. Individuals from all sex-and-age groups were buried in the Anatolian settlements, whereas in Thrace only the groups of adult women and children are to be found. Except for the instance from Banat, where adult men were buried, the rest of the graves confirm - or at least do not contradict - this observation. In most cases grave inventory was found.

The formal individual inhumation in a dwelling space appears at the very beginning of the Neolithic: in southwest and central Anatolia it is registered in the Prepottery Neolithic, in Thrace - in the Karanovo I culture. In the northwestern and northeastern parts of the zone its appearance is connected with the last phases of the Starcevo culture and the end of the Cris culture. It continued to be practiced also during the Late Neolithic and the Anatolian Early Chalcolithic, but then again "shrank" only within the most southeastern part of its zone of distribution: western Anatolia, the Marmara region and Thrace. This "pulsation" is one of the arguments in favor of the conclusion that the formal individual inhumation in a dwelling space originated in the Levantine and Anatolian region, and was not a development of the epipaleolithic tradition of burials under open hearths, as P. Raczky supposed. And while in the Levant and Anatolia the burial under house floors included all sex-and-age groups, in Thrace, where it appeared at quite a later time, the mortuary practice underwent specific evolution and can be associated only with adult women, children and babies.

The most widely practiced type of mortuary practices in the region under study is undoubtedly the formal individual inhumation in an interdwelling space. Its zone of distribution spans the Marmara Sea, western Anatolia, Peloponnesus, Thessaly, western Macedonia and the Vardar Valley, Thrace, southwest Bulgaria, the Sofia Basin, north-central Bulgaria, southern Albania, Shumadia, Srem, Dalmatia, the Iron Gates, Bachka, Banat, the Tisza Valley, Transilvania, Muntenia and Moldavia. Yet regions of more intensive or less intensive practicing are also to be witnessed there. In Catalhoyuk the formal individual inhumation in an interdwelling space refers to a single burial. The practice has two variants: formal individual inhumation in an interdwelling space in a contracted or in an extended position, the second variant having been registered only in Peloponnesus, Thrace and Shumadia. All sex-and-age groups are represented, as well as all kinds of grave inventory. This type existed throughout the whole of the Neolithic and with such a mass distribution it is very difficult to make suppositions as to its origin, but it is evident that it is more closely related to southeast Europe and the eastern coast of the Sea of Marmara, especially to the northern parts of the region, rather than to Anatolia and the Levant.

The formal individual inhumation in the settlement's periphery has a limited zone of distribution, mainly in the eastern parts of the territory under study: the eastern coast of the Sea of Marmara, Thrace, northeast Bulgaria, Shumadia, Srem, the Iron gates area, Banat and Transilvania. Particularly characteristic is the concentration of a large number of graves on a relatively small area, as are the cases in the area of the eastern coast of the Sea of Marmara, northeast Bulgaria, Srem and the Iron Gates. Although the level of research does not yet allow having the space aspect of this type of practice elucidated to a sufficient degree, obviously it refers to the isolation of the graves within a certain section of the settlement. The dead were buried in a contracted position on their side, often with grave inventory. All sex-and age groups are represented.

This type of mortuary practice found distribution mainly in the Early Neolithic. The earliest burial of this type is a grave from Tell Azmak, which is referred to the Karanovo I culture. The burials from Il?p?nar ІХ, followed by the Starcevo and Cris burials may be of a slightly later origin. The data about Botos is too incomplete, but on the basis of the clay vessels M. Garasanin relates the site to the early Turdas phase of the Late Neolithic Vinca culture.

Whatever the reasons for the separation of the mortuary space from the living space might have been, it is obvious that the connection between them was preserved, at least until the end of the Neolithic. As with the case of the formal individual inhumation in an interdwelling space, it is clear that the origin of this type of practice should not be sought in the East.

The formal group inhumation in a dwelling space is represented only in central and western Anatolia. It relates to double burials of women with children under house floors in a contracted position on their sides and with grave inventory. The burials date back to the Anatolian Late Neolithic.

The zone of distribution of the formal group inhumation in an interdwelling space comprises Thrace, western Bulgaria, western Macedonia and the Vardar Valley, Srem, Shumadia, the Tisza Valley and Moldavia, the latter having remained to a certain extent isolated from the more compact southern and western parts of the zone. Two variants are represented. The first is registered in Thrace, western Bulgaria, western Macedonia, Srem, the Tisza Valley, and Moldavia. Adults with one or two children, two children or up to three adults were buried. The dead were buried in a contracted position on their sides one next to the other, most often with an inventory. The second variant is related to burials from western Bulgaria, the Vardar Valley, and Shumadia. Each grave contains skeletons of two adults, buried in a contracted position on their sides one on top of the other, obviously not at one and the same time but one after the other over a short period of time. Both variants appear in the Early Neolithic, but in Thrace the first is represented only in the Late Neolithic Karanovo III period, whereas in the rest of the zone the formal group inhumation in an interdwelling space is not registered in the second half of the Neolithic.

The origin of this type of mortuary practice is not clear. Obviously at its earliest it appeared in the western parts of the zone and it was there again that its practicing was stopped, whereas in Thrace it is connected with burials from two settlements related to the beginning of the Late Neolithic.

The formal group inhumation in the settlement's periphery is registered only in one settlement, Lepenski Vir in the Danubian Iron Gates area. It represents a double burial of an adult man and woman in a contracted position the one facing the other. The burial is referred to the Starcevo culture and is evidently connected to the others - individual - burials from the settlement, also located in its periphery.

The formal collective inhumation in a dwelling space is distributed only in the southwest and central Anatolian settlements. The dead were buried in a contracted position on their sides, sometimes one on top of the other. All sex-and-age groups are represented. The mortuary practice was performed throughout all the phases of the settlements' existence, especially in the Anatolian Late Neolithic and Early Chalcolithic.

The zones of distribution of the formal collective inhumation in an interdwelling space comprise Metochia, Shumadia, the Iron Gates area and the Tisza Valley. The dead were buried in a contracted position on their sides or on their backs, sometimes one on top of the other, which could mean that they were buried at certain time intervals, most probably short ones. Grave inventory is rarely discovered. The main sex-and-age groups are represented in each of the burials related to this practice. The formal collective inhumation in an interdwelling space is registered only in the Early Neolithic.

The secondary inhumation also includes three groups, individual, group, and collective.

The secondary individual inhumation in a dwelling space is distributed in central and southwest Anatolia, and the Sofia Basin. Scattered skulls and mandibles were buried under house floors with or without inventory. All sex-and-age groups are represented. A grave from Golokut in Srem is related to the secondary individual inhumation in a dwelling space, in which case the upper half of an otherwise articulated skeleton was discovered under the house floor. However the character of this burial is not quite clear and it might be referred to formal partial inhumation. The Anatolian burials relate to the Anatolian Late Neolithic and Early Chalcolithic, while those from the Sofia Basin - to the Kremikovci group.

The burying of scattered skulls, mandibles and teeth is registered as early as the Paleolithic and it might be contended that as a ritual it appeared simultaneously with the appearance of mortuary practices in general. The secondary individual inhumation in a dwelling space however has a rather different symbolic contents and obviously originated in the Anatolian and Levantine region where for the first time it was connected with buildings, although in a different context.

The zone of distribution of the secondary individual inhumation in an interdwelling space encompasses the northern Sporades, Peloponnesus, Thrace, western Macedonia and the Vardar Valley, Metochia, Shumadia, Dalmatia, Bachka, Transilvania, Banat and the Tisza Valley.

Two variants are registered, secondary individual inhumation in an interdwelling space of scattered skulls and/or mandibles on the one hand and of scattered postcranial bones, sometimes together with skulls, not in anatomical order, on the other. All sex-and-age groups are represented. Inventory is rarely found, mainly animal bones.

This type of mortuary practice was performed during the whole Neolithic and probably in its entire zone of distribution at that, although most of the examples do not come from closed complexes.

The secondary individual inhumation in the settlement's periphery is represented in two regions, lying remote from one another, northeast Bulgaria on the one hand, and Srem and the Iron Gates, on the other. It may be assumed that the Danube was the connection between them, but the degree to which the archaeological sites linked to this type of mortuary practices have been studied does not allow well-founded assumptions.

The secondary group inhumation has so far been registered only in western Thrace and Oltenia. The first case relates to a secondary burial, containing skeletal remains of an 11-14 years old child and of a 16-18 years old girl, interred not in anatomical order, and the second, to three skulls, belonging to a woman of c. 25 years of age, a young individual, and an individual of a undetermined sex and age.

The zone of distribution of the secondary collective inhumation in a dwelling space encompasses central and southwest Anatolia, western Thessaly, and Thrace. It concerns the burial of excarnated skeletal remains - mostly skulls and long bones - of a great number of individuals not in anatomical order under house floors, sometimes with inventory. In the west Thessalian settlement at Prodromos for example, stratigraphic observations show that the grave pit has been opened three times consecutively. The platforms at the Anatolian settlements have also been opened repeatedly. There is not any information of that kind in regard to the Thracian burial. There is another difference however. While the Thessalian and the Anatolian graves contain bones both from children and from adults, in the Thracian burial only children's skeletal remains have been discovered. The latter fact obviously points to a specific development of that tradition. In Thrace and Thessaly this type of burial was practiced only in the Early Neolithic, and in Anatolia in the Anatolian Late Neolithic and Early Chalcolithic.

The secondary collective inhumation in an interdwelling space is represented only in Thrace. The burials contain excarnated skeletal remains from a great number of individuals not in anatomical order, in the first of the two cases in a pit, and in the other in a clay pot. The graves relate to the Karanovo I and Karanovo IV cultures respectively. Given the absence of enough accurate data about the Thracian burials, related to the two types of secondary collective inhumation, it is difficult to make conjectures about the origin of the practice, but from the point of view of its zone of distribution it seems nevertheless logical to assume that it is Anatolian. However it should not be forgotten that its practicing in Thrace was characterized by specific local peculiarities, mainly in regard to the sex and the age of the buried.

As I have already mentioned, cremation burial is a practice, in which the duration of the period between the physical death and the final interment cannot be archaeologically established, the human remains were cremated and the archaeological result is a grave containing cremated human remains in or not in anatomical order. This class of mortuary practices includes two groups, individual and collective burial.

The zone of distribution of the individual cremation burial covers two regions, distanced from each other, eastern Thessaly on the one hand and Transilvania and the Tisza Valley, on the other. Three types are represented, individual cremation burial in a dwelling space, in an interdwelling space, and in an extramural cemetery. In the first instance the cremation relates to the finishing, and in the next two, to the preliminary rituals, which accounts for the considerable differences between the two burial types. The practicing of the first type was distributed in the south Hungarian Early Neolithic, of the second - in the Early Neolithic of eastern Thessaly and Transylvania, and of the third - in the east Thessalian Late Neolithic.

The collective cremation burial is distributed in Thessaly, Thrace, Shumadia, Banat and the Tisza Valley. Three types represent the group: collective cremation burial in a dwelling space, in an interdwelling space, and in the settlement's periphery. The first two have more common features: the burials related to them are pits with clay vessels, containing cremated human remains of a large number of individuals. The third is represented by a single burial from Thessaly: a pit with cremated human remains of a large number of individuals, buried together with a mortar. The collective cremation burial was practiced in the Early Neolithic. The only exception is the burial from Vrsac, Banat, which M. Garasanin relates to the first phase of the Vinca culture, on the basis of the clay vessel.

Cremation was practiced as a ritual as early as the Late Paleolithic. Especially characteristic is the superficial scorching of the bones as in the examples from the Tisza Valley, which are linked to the individual cremation burial in a dwelling space. A similar mortuary practice was performed also in the central Anatolian settlement from the Prepottery Neolithic, As?kl?, where the dead were buried under house floors and traces of scorching have been noticed on the bones of some of them. On the other hand the individual cremation burial in an interdwelling space is known from Epipaleolithic settlements in Anatolia and the Levant, and southeast Europe. Cremation burial in an extramural cemetery, however, is an isolated phenomenon, characteristic only of the east Thessalian Late Neolithic.

According to А. Orphanidis-Georgiadis, cremation burial appeared and developed independently in certain regions. Actually, the interment of cremated human remains in clay vessels in Thrace, Shumadia and the Tisza Valley is related to the Early Neolithic - the Azmak variant of the Karanovo I culture, the end of the Starcevo and the Koros cultures - and chronologically precedes the distribution of this practice in Thessaly, where it is related to Late Neolithic Tsangli-Larissa phase of the Dimini culture. The influence of the eastern parts of the zone may be completely excluded because no such types of mortuary practices from so early a date are known in Anatolia. From a chronological point of view, the impulse may have come from Thrace, where the practice was connected with the children's age group and did not have wide distribution.

On the basis of the general characteristics of Neolithic mortuary practices in southeast Europe, western and central Anatolia it can be argued that there was a relatively insignificant isolation of the ritual sphere from everyday life; the particular ritual elements vary considerably, which implies that factors of a concrete nature had the leading role. Although the idea of separating the world of the living from the world of the dead - and the settlement/dwelling space from the mortuary space respectively - had already been taking shape and found realization in the existence of cemeteries as the ones at Souphli-Magoula and Plateia-Magoula Zarkou in eastern Thessaly, they still remained an isolated phenomenon, connected with the cremation burials. Although it cannot be excluded in theory, the formal inhumation in extramural cemeteries would not be in keeping with the overall character of the Neolithic mortuary practices in the region, which seems to be also confirmed by the field archaeological research. The same holds for the burial in caverns and rock shelters. It was characteristic of some Neolithic cultures in northern Europe, the western Mediterranean, and Malta, where the fertility cult was closely connected with the caverns, whereas in southeast Europe and western Anatolia mortuary rituals were public and were obviously associated with the settlement/dwelling.

On the other hand, the secondary burial in all its types was widely distributed, evidence of which are the numerous "scattered" human bones found in dwelling or interdwelling context in the Neolithic settlements in the region. It seems completely reasonable to assume that at the first stage of the mortuary practice most of the dead were exposed in extramural structures-ossuaries, so that they could be excarnated, and later separate bones of some of them be moved to the settlement and buried there individually or collectively, or used in various ritual forms of the so-called cult of the ancestors. It is difficult to say what the criteria for the choice of one or other mortuary practice might have been, last but not least because of the scarce anthropological evidence, but undoubtedly for some reasons, depending most probably also on the circumstances of death, which cannot be established archaeologically, the Neolithic people tried to preserve their links with certain individuals by burying them in the settlement. And despite the fact that they are fewer than the rest, most of these cases cannot be defined as "exceptions" or as "result of accidental circumstances"; as its wide-spread practice in southeast Europe, western and central Anatolia shows, the intramural formal and secondary inhumation was part of the standard mortuary practices.

Неолитни погребални обреди/ Neolithic mortuary practices