Belgium / Belgique / Bélgica : funerary practices at the northern fringe of the Atlantic area

The western part of Belgium, northern France and south-eastern England belongs to the so-called Channel-North Sea cultural area, which forms a part of the larger Atlantic cultural complex as defined by different researchers. During the Middle Bronze Age, a characteristic funerary landscape arose with funerary monuments that are clearly visible in the landscape. These barrows structure the landscape and are grouped together in small clusters or are extended in lines along the horizon. This tradition began as early as the Late Neolithic period, as attested by finds of beaker burials in the Kent region and radiocarbon dates in Flanders. Between 1700-1500/1400 BC a peak in the construction of this specific funerary monument is clearly visible in the archaeological record. After this period, there are fewer indications of the construction of barrows, although they were still used as secondary burial sites. From 1500 BC, the first so-called flat graves appeared in the Channel-North Sea region, as revealed by radiocarbon dates on cremated bones. They appear as isolated graves or in small groups in existing cemeteries. This discovery contradicts previous hypotheses, which associated the appearance of flat graves with the spread of the so-called Urnfield culture. In the older barrows of the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, burial was still present, but cremation was introduced much earlier than expected as a new funerary ritual, around 1500 BC. Cremation was the dominant way of disposing of the dead in the Channel-North Sea region. As a part of this ritual, we can identify different practices within the same cemetery in the way the cremated bones are collected and deposited in their final burial place. A typical feature for the Atlantic region is the deposition of a small symbolic package of cremated bones in the burial pit. In contrast with the Urnfield cemeteries, the bones are deposited in an organic container or mixed with the remnants of the pyre.

ISBN:9781789699395

Publication year:2022

Accessibility:Closed