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88.More information
Abstract1 The collective grave is a structure in which several individuals were buried in succession. Within this burial type, five categories are distinguished. First of all, there are tombs which have traditionally been described as collective, but ultimately contain no clear evidence for successive burials. The second group comprises minimal collective tombs, with small numbers of bodies and quite simple funerary behaviour. Emptied graves are common. This was possibly done for a variety of reasons, such as to create more space or to recuperate bones. Secondary deposits, particularly cremations, are rare. They are not easy to identify and this explains their scarcity. The last group includes tombs with combined evidence for rearranged bones, compartmentation, and partial emptying. A tentative chronology for these practices is put forward. In the middle Neolithic (4 500-3 500 B.C.) the successive nature of burials in the monumental tombs of western France remains hypothetical. They were built to contain a limited number of burials, without selection for gender or age. From 3 300 to 2 800 B.C., inhumation in collective tombs was the norm. Did this apply to the whole population ? However, in the grave the practices appear not to have been codified. At the end of the Neolithic, between 2 700 and 2 300 B.C., the increased variety of burial practice marks the decline of previous ideology. Nevertheless, collective graves do not disappear until the first quarter of the 2nd millennium. What do the collective tombs really signify ? We cannot conclude that their image of equality in death must conform to some social organisation. The society of the dead is an idealized projection of the society of the living.
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90.More information
ABSTRACT Funerary monuments found in the Paris Basin and dating from the 3rd millennium include both megalithic structures and wooden ones. Although reserved only for a certain section of the community, the former seem to have required the widespread mobilisation of the population. Anthropological analysis aimed at characterising the medical state of the populations concerned has been carried out on four series from these burials with a view to testing the hypothesis that there may have been a link between standards of living, wealth and funerary architecture. The answer to our question is not clear- cut : inter-site differences are certainly revealed, but they withstand, at least partially, a simple dichotomy : megalithic/wooden structures.