A new study examining upper Palaeolithic burial practices in Eurasia shows they varied widely, as some graves were filled with a large number of personal and ritual items while the vast majority were fairly simple.
No simple answer
“We don’t know why some of these burials were so ornate, but what’s striking is that they postdate the arrival of modern humans in Eurasia by almost 10,000 years,” said Julien Riel-Salvatore, Ph.D., assistant professor of anthropology at University of Colorado Denver, and lead author of the study. “When they appear around 30,000 years ago some are lavish but many aren’t and over time the most elaborate ones almost disappear. So, the behaviour of humans does not always go from simple to complex; it often waxes and wanes in terms of its complexity depending on the conditions people live under.”
The study, re-examined 85 burials from the Upper Palaeolithic period, found that male burials were more common that female, and infants were rare, if present at all in later periods, a difference that could perhaps be related to changes in subsistence and climate.
The research highlighted the few known ornate burials in Russia, Italy and the Czech Republic that stretch back nearly 30,000 years are anomalies, and rather than the rule are the exception. They therefore cannot be seen as representative of the earliest Homo sapiens burial practices in Eurasia, although they are the most visible in the modern perception of Upper Palaeolithic burial.
Photograph of the Palaeolithic Skeleton discovered in the Fifth Cave in the Rochers Rouges, near Mentone, on January 12, 1894. Reproduced by the kind permission of M. Bertrand, Mentone.
Making sense of ritual with a limited dataset
In addition to this, Riel-Salvatore highlights the greatest problem in trying to make sense of the burial rituals as a whole, “The problem with these burials is they are so rare – there’s just over three per thousand years for all of Eurasia – so it becomes difficult to draw any clear conclusions about what they meant to their societies.”
In fact, the majority of the burials were fairly plain and included mostly items of daily life as opposed to ornate burial goods. In that way, many were similar to Neanderthal graves.
Both early humans and Neanderthals put bodies into pits sometimes with household items. During the Upper Palaeolithic, this included ornaments worn by the deceased while they were alive. When present, ornaments of stone, teeth and shells are often found on the heads and torsos of the dead rather than the lower body, consistent with how they were likely worn in life.
“Some researchers have used burial practices to try and separate modern humans from Neanderthals,” said Riel-Salvatore.“But we are challenging the orthodoxy that all modern human burials were necessarily more sophisticated than those of Neanderthals.”
Shanidar Neanderthals Burial. Image: JohnConnell, Flickr
Symbolic behaviour
Many scientists believe that the capacity for symbolic behaviour separates humans from Neanderthals, who disappeared about 35,000 years ago.
“It’s thought to be an expression of abstract thinking” Riel-Salvatore said. “But as research progresses we are finding evidence that Neanderthals engaged in practices generally considered characteristic of modern humans.”
Riel-Salvatore is an expert on early modern humans and Neanderthals. His last study proposed that, contrary to popular belief, early humans didn’t wipe out Neanderthals but interbred with them, swamping them genetically. Another of his studies demonstrated that Neanderthals in southern Italy adapted, innovated and created technology before contact with modern humans, something previously considered unlikely.
This latest study, “Upper Paleolithic mortuary practices in Eurasia: A critical look at the burial record” co-authored with Claudine Gravel-Miguel (Arizona State University), will be published in The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Death and Burial in April.
The book reveals intriguing variation in early human burial customs between 10,000 and 35,000 years ago. And this study raises the question of why there was so much variability in early human burial practices.
“There seems to be little rhyme or reason to it,” Riel-Salvatore said. “The main point here is that we need to be careful of using exceptional examples of ornate burials to characterize Upper Palaeolithic burial practices as a whole.”
Source: University of Colorado Denver
Fuente / Iturria: http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/02/2013/upper-palaeolithic-burials-no-more-sophisticated-than-neanderthals
