Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T12:41:36.905Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Tempo of Bronze Age Barrow Use: Modeling the Ebb and Flow in Monumental Funerary Landscapes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2016

Quentin P J Bourgeois  and
David R Fontijn
Quentin P J Bourgeois*
Affiliation:
Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University, P.O. Box 9514, 2300 RA Leiden, the Netherlands; also Prehistoric Archaeology, Department of Culture and Society, Aarhus University, Denmark
David R Fontijn
Affiliation:
Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University, P.O. Box 9514, 2300 RA Leiden, the Netherlands
*
Corresponding author. Email: [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The thousands of Bronze Age burial mounds of northwestern Europe often have complex histories, with multiple construction phases and secondary burials added to these mounds. It can be difficult to understand the dynamic nature of these events and the ebb and flow of activities in these monumental funerary landscapes. This article presents chronological models of five Bronze Age barrows from two sites. A total of 41 radiocarbon-dated cremation burials were fitted into several chronological sequences. The results from the chronological models at both sites suggest that the creation of a burial mound was just one event within a much longer funerary history. For both sites, there are indications that the deceased were buried in flat graves decades and sometimes more than a century prior to any monument construction. Once in place, the barrows were then used as a repository for the dead for decades afterwards. At the same time, a comparison of the models suggests that funerary events at both sites were punctuated. At one site, several barrows were in use simultaneously, at the other, barrows seem to be each other's successor. The models provide evidence for both protracted histories as well as punctuated events.

Type
Articles
Information
Radiocarbon , Volume 57 , Issue 1 , 2015 , pp. 47 - 64
Copyright
Copyright © 2015 by the Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of the University of Arizona 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bailey, G. 2007. Time perspectives, palimpsests and the archaeology of time. Journal of Anthropological Arcchaeology 26(2):198–223.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bayliss, A. 2009. Rolling out revolution: using radiocarbon dating in archaeology. Radiocarbon 51(1):123–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bayliss, A, van der Plicht, H, Bronk Ramsey, C, McCormac, G, Healy, F, Whittle, A. 2011. Towards generational time-scales: the quantitative interpretation of archaeological chronologies. In: Whittle, A, Healy, F, Bayliss, A, editors. Gathering Time: Dating the Early Neolithic Enclosures of Southern Britain and Ireland. Oxford: Oxbow Books. p 17–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bourgeois, Q. 2013. Monuments on the Horizon. The Formation of the Barrow Landscape throughout the 3rd and 2nd Millennium BCE. Leiden: Sidestone Press.Google Scholar
Bradley, R. 2003. The translation of time. In: Van Dyke, RM, Alcock, SE, editors. Archaeologies of Memory. Oxford: Blackwell. p 221–7.Google Scholar
Bronk Ramsey, C. 2009. Bayesian analysis of radiocarbon dates. Radiocarbon 51(1):337–60.Google Scholar
Garwood, P. 2007. Before the hills in order stood: chronology, time and history in the interpretation of Early Bronze Age round barrows. In: Last, J, editor. Beyond the Grave, New Perspectives on Barrows. Oxford: Oxbow Books. p 30–52.Google Scholar
Glasbergen, W. 1954. Barrow excavations in the Eight Beatitudes. The Bronze Age cemetery between Toterfout & Halve Mijl, North Brabant. I. The excavations. Palaeohistoria 2:1–134.Google Scholar
Gosden, C, Lock, G. 1998. Prehistoric histories. World Archaeology 30(1):2–12.Google Scholar
Holst, MK. 2013. Time and space. In: Holst, MK, Rasmussen, M, editors. Skelhøj and the Bronze Age Barrows of Southern Scandinavia. Volume I: The Bronze Age Barrow Tradition and the Excavation of Skelhøj. Højbjerg: Jutland Archaeological Society.Google Scholar
Lanting, JN, van der Plicht, H. 2003. De 14C chronologie van de Nederlandse Pre- en Protohistorie IV: Bronstijd en Vroege Ijzertijd. Palaeohistoria 43–44:117–261.Google Scholar
Lohof, E. 1994. Tradition and change. Burial practices in the Late Neolithic and Bronze Age in the north-eastern Netherlands. Archaeological Dialogues 1(2):98–119.Google Scholar
Louwen, A, Fontijn, DR, Bourgeois, QPJ. 2014. Stratigraphy of the graves in burial mound 2 and 3 of Apeldoorn–Wieselse Weg - preliminary data report. https://leidenuniv.academia.edu/DavidFontijn.Google Scholar
Mizoguchi, K. 1993. Time in the reproduction of mortuary practices. World Archaeology 25(2):223–35.Google Scholar
Reimer, PJ, Bard, E, Bayliss, A, Beck, JW, Blackwell, PG, Bronk Ramsey, C, Buck, CE, Cheng, H, Edwards, RL, Friedrich, M, Grootes, PM, Guilderson, TP, Haflidason, H, Hajdas, I, Hatté, C, Heaton, TJ, Hoffman, DL, Hogg, AG, Hughen, KA, Kaiser, KF, Kromer, B, Manning, SW, Niu, M, Reimer, RW, Richards, DA, Scott, EM, Southon, JR, Staff, RA, Turney, CSM, van der Plicht, J. 2013. IntCal13 and Marine13 radiocarbon age calibration curves 0–50,000 years cal BP. Radiocarbon 55(4):1869–87.Google Scholar
Smits, L. 2011a. Rapportage Crematieonderzoe Bergsham-Garderen (internal report). Leiden: Leiden University.Google Scholar
Smits, L. 2011b. Analyse van de crematiegraven van de grafheuvels te Apeldoorn–Wieselse Weg (internal report). Leiden: Leiden University.Google Scholar
Van Giffen, AE. 1937. Tumuli-opgravingen in Gelderland, 1935/1936. Gelre 40:3–18.Google Scholar
Van Strydonck, M, Boudin, M, De Mulder, G. 2009. 14C dating of cremated bones: the issue of sample contamination. Radiocarbon 52(2):578–86.Google Scholar
Whittle, A. 2011. Grand narratives and shorter stories. In: Hadjikoumis, A, Robinson, E, Viner, S, editors. The Dynamics of Neolithisation in Europe: Studies in Honours of Andrew Sherratt. Oxford: Oxbow Books. p 10–24.Google Scholar
Whittle, A, Bayliss, A. 2007. The times of their lives: from chronological precision to kinds of history and change. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 17(Supplement l):21–8.Google Scholar
Woodward, AB, Woodward, PJ. 1996. The topography of some barrow cemeteries in Bronze Age Wessex. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 62:275–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar