This paper presents the results of an excavation that uncovered c. 390 m of roadside plots within the ribbon development alongside the Fosse Way on the south-west periphery of the walled small town of Margidunum in Nottinghamshire. The roadside plots appear to have been used for a combination of domestic occupation and agricultural activity, and to the rear lay 54 inhumation burials in 52 graves (including two double burials) and a single urned cremation burial, whose skeletons bore evidence for the tough working lives of the individuals. These are interpreted as the remains of peasant farmers and as evidence for the agricultural focus of the settlement, and of ‘small towns’ more generally. A contrast is drawn between the apparent poverty of this community and the apparently more high-status occupation within the defended core of the town.

Excavations of the Kopilo cemetery in central Bosnia in 2021 and 2022 have provided the first insights into Bronze and Iron Age burial practices in this part of Europe. We documented a total of 46 inhumation graves, with the variety of finds indicating supra-regional contacts of this population.

Brzezie in the Pleszew region was first mentioned in archaeological literature, as the location where a treasure of gold artifacts dating back to the 3rd period of the Bronze Age was discovered in 1876. Archaeological research has been conducted there almost continuously since 1985. The result of many years of fieldwork is the discovery of 363 late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age graves, as well as 50 burials of the Przeworsk culture from the era of Roman influence. In the last few years, further research has been conducted by archeologist Grzegorz Szczurek. After comprehensive geophysical prospecting, the extent of the necropolis was established, and more graves were excavated. For the first time, materials for radiocarbon and luminescence dating were also collected to determine the absolute chronology for this archaeological site. Four samples were dated in the Poznań radiocarbon laboratory, and five luminescence tests were conducted in the Gliwice luminescence laboratory. Due to the complete thermo-destruction of collagen in human bones, age determination was based on carbonate fractionation. In one case, a piece of charcoal was selected for dating purposes. Considering uncertainties and the fact that both methods date different events, the results reveal concurrence, giving a 1000–500 BC range.

This article looks at lawsuits surrounding two Chinese cemeteries in the mid-twentieth century South Korean cities of Incheon and Seoul as crucial sites to examine the post-colonial legal construction of national citizenry based on property rights. While different legal rationales were employed in each case, the two Chinese cemeteries were relocated to the periphery of each city as a consequence of the litigation. In Incheon, it was argued that the cemetery was owned by Chinese nationals whose land rights were ambiguous and hence open to question, both during the colonial and post-colonial period. On the other hand, in Seoul, rights to the cemetery were at stake due to its association with Japanese nationals, whose holdings were regarded as ‘enemy properties’ in the post-colonial years. Not only were the lawsuits symbolic events that foreshadowed the displacement of Chinese residents from what was considered to be Korea's national land, they also revealed an operative ambiguity in the post-colonial legal system, readily exploited as a tool for discrimination. Drawing upon an analysis of these cases, I argue that the Chinese cemeteries served as a reminder that uncertainty and ambiguity were on tap in the legal workings of post-colonial society, manifested in blunt efforts to define its legitimate members and dictate who is entitled to be buried within a nation's borders.

Archaeological studies of Early Islamic communities in Central Asia have focused on lowland urban communities. Here, the authors report on recent geophysical survey and excavation of an Early Islamic cemetery at Tashbulak in south-eastern Uzbekistan. AMS dating places the establishment of the cemetery in the mid-eighth century AD, making it one of the earliest Islamic burial grounds documented in Central Asia. Burials at Tashbulak conform to Islamic prescriptions for grave form and body deposition. The consistency in ritual suggests the existence of a funerary community of practice, challenging narratives of Islamic conversion in peripheral areas as a process of slow diffusion and emphasising the importance of archaeological approaches for documenting the diversity of Early Islamic communities.

South-eastern Iran flourished during the Bronze Age and several important settlements from this period have been excavated. Few contemporaneous cemeteries, however, have been investigated. Excavations at Bampur 14 have revealed 10 graves dating from the late fourth to early second millennium BC. Finds include a copper-bronze seal and a stone column, demonstrating connections with north-eastern Iran and Central Asia.

A Copper Age settlement and cemetery was fully excavated at Rákóczifalva-Bivaly-tó Site 1/C in 2005-2007, making it possible to compare the use of its material culture in closely related, coeval, but different archaeological contexts. Such a rare set of circumstances allows the authors to highlight methodological issues associated with the distorting effect of archaeological finds made on sites where only settlement or burial data are available, and on the importance of choosing appropriate analytical units.

In 2017, a Muslim cemetery project was proposed in the municipality of St-Apollinaire, just outside Quebec City. This proposal required a change in local zoning, which necessitated approval from citizens living around the targeted plot of land, through the use of diverse deliberative tools. Drawing on a small-scale empirical study conducted in 2017–2018 with key informants in the cemetery project, this article investigates how these actors lived through, engaged with, and operated within the bounds of law. To do this, I suggest employing a legal consciousness framework to examine how local life is also where everyday lived law occurs. The local governance of diversity in death thus requires a re-evaluation of the “local,” identity politics, relationships, and legal consciousness. Ultimately, this article proposes that local decision-making processes play an important yet underexamined role in the broader conversations on belonging.

The island of Sardinia is well known for its Late Neolithic and Copper Age underground rock-cut tombs that were used over generations for collective burials. Many tombs were decorated to resemble house interiors and cemeteries are often referred to as villages of the dead. Research so far has focused on excavating stratigraphic contexts within some of these monuments, or on typological classifications of tomb plans and wall decorations, but the landscape context of the cemeteries and their relationship to settlements have been overlooked. The article presents the results of two seasons of survey in Ossi (north-west Sardinia), focusing on two major cemeteries (Mesu ‘e Montes and S’Adde ‘e Asile). Combining fieldwalking, mapping and 3D recording techniques, the survey provides a comprehensive documentation of the cemeteries (from the underground architecture of individual tombs to their landscape setting) and yields evidence of prehistoric settlements in their vicinity. The article discusses the topographic and visual relationships between the tombs and the residential areas and how they may reflect social interactions between the living and the dead in late prehistoric Sardinia.

Stećci are medieval tombstones. Scattered across the landscapes of the Western Balkans in their thousands, they amalgamate the historical, cultural and religious components of medieval societies in the region, and are expressions of identity, social systems, politics and religious belief. Through these monuments, a diverse spectrum of identities was enunciated, providing us with a rare opportunity to investigate the archaeo-historic development of medieval South-eastern Europe.

The excavation of a building in the village of Felanitx in the eastern part of the island of Mallorca (Balearic Islands) has revealed the existence of a small necropolis. The inhumations did not provide grave goods except for a bronze belt buckle for which the typological study suggests a Late Antique chronology. The stratigraphical sequence however seems to suggest a possible evolution of the space across time since some graves are cut by others. In order to obtain an absolute date for the necropolis and to verify if there are chronological differences between the graves, a total of 6 human bones samples have been 14C dated by AMS. The results of the radiocarbon dating confirm a Late Antique chronology (4th to 7th century AD) for the graves but do not suggest a chronological evolution. Despite the fact that the knowledge of the necropolis is still fragmentary, the results are extremely important because they provide an absolute date for a Late Antique necropolis in the Mallorcan rural area.

“Structural violence” is a term used to describe inflicted systematic violence on a disenfranchised group by an established order, usually framed as a government or the social majority. The disenfranchised groups are marginalized and not provided with the same access to resources such as healthcare or food, the effects of which can be observed directly in their death. Bioarchaeologists often can detect the visible effects of this violence on skeletal remains, which provide a visual representation to and reinforcement of social prejudices inflicted in life and death. Discussed here is how the same concept of structural violence can be inflicted on the landscape through damage to or obliteration of cemeteries. We propose a definition of “landscape structural violence” exhibited through cemetery erasure as a reinforcement of preexisting social prejudices in death where the governments or the social majority, intentionally or passively, destroy, remove, or obscure a cemetery without consultation with the descendant community. This definition is applied to several examples of New Orleans cemeteries to determine the functionality of the definition and what activity is and what is not structural violence inflicted on the landscape.

In the bicentenary year of its excavation, remote sensing has revealed, for the first time, the full extent of this iconic type-site Iron Age cemetery and its landscape context in East Yorkshire. A total of 23ha was surveyed, revealing new insights concerning the burial ground and damage through modern farming.

Recently a cremation cemetery was excavated at the site of Wijnegem where 29 cremation graves and 9 funerary monuments were uncovered. Thirty radiocarbon (14C) dates were carried out, mostly on cremated bone but also 10 charcoal samples were dated. Twenty-four cremations were studied. Four ring ditches were dated by charcoal samples from the infill of the ditch. The 14C dates showed an interesting long-term occupation of the cemetery. Different phases were ascertained. The history of the cemetery starts in the northern part of the site around a circular funerary monument. Two cremations were dated at the transition of the Early to Middle Bronze Ages. Two other graves represent the transition from the Middle to the Late Bronze Ages. The main occupation period dates between the end of the Late Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age. Finally, an isolated cremation grave marks the definite abandonment of the site during the Late Iron Age.

Recent radiocarbon dating of a skeleton from Balevullin, Tiree, excavated in the early twentieth century, demonstrates that it dates to the Neolithic period, rather than the Iron Age as originally expected. Osteological examination suggests that the individual was a young adult woman, exhibiting osteological deformities consistent with vitamin D deficiency, most likely deriving from childhood rickets; an exceptionally early identification of the disease in the UK with potentially significant social implications. Isotopic analysis supports the osteological evidence for physiological stress in childhood and further suggests that the woman was most probably local to the islands. Analysis of the surviving written archive reveals that the surviving skeleton was one of several originally recovered from the site, making Balevullin an exceptionally rare example of a British Neolithic inhumation cemetery.

The report summarises results from an excavation site within the Wotton cemetery on the outskirts of Gloucester. A total of 20 cremations and 54 inhumations were excavated and are the subject of a detailed human bone report. The earliest cremation urns were of pre-Flavian date and could be paralleled by pots from the Kingsholm fortress. Cremation rite continued into the early second century, but was then replaced by inhumation burials. These dated from the later first/early second century till the fourth century. Part of a ditched enclosure, perhaps with an earlier precursor, was laid out in the second century and survived, respected by burials, into the later Roman period. The layout of this part of the Wotton cemetery is not in the orderly rows expected for urban burial in the province and this circumstance is compared both with other urban cemeteries and with practices known on rural sites. Analysis of the human bone suggested working people were buried in this part of the cemetery. At least one of the burials seems likely to have been a soldier and another may have been a person of importance very late in the life of the town.

The well-known Mesolithic cemeteries of Northern Europe have long been viewed as evidence of developing social complexity in those regions in the centuries immediately before the Neolithic transition. These sites also had important symbolic connotations. This study uses new and more detailed analysis of the burial practices in one of these cemeteries to argue that much more is involved than social differentiation. Repeated burial in the densely packed site of Zvejnieki entailed large-scale disturbance of earlier graves, and would have involved recurrent encounters with the remains of the ancestral dead. The intentional use of older settlement material in the grave fills may also have signified a symbolic link with the past. The specific identity of the dead is highlighted by the evidence for clay face masks and tight body wrappings in some cases.

Settlements and cemeteries associated with a European colonial presence provide rich opportunities to gain insights into the character and composition of those populations, even in the absence of written records. The study reported here has the added fascination of a detective story, seeking to match an unknown burial ground to a series of known but long lost cemeteries. The systematic analysis of the graves and their occupants is carried out within a comparative framework which highlights the variable composition and distinguishing features of the different types of graveyard that are encountered within a colonial context. The authors conclude that the Baillif cemetery was a nineteenth-century military graveyard, and that many of the young men who were buried here were new recruits who fell victim to endemic diseases such as dysentery, yellow fever and malaria.

Children are often under-represented in excavated populations due to the poor survival of their bones. Using a group of medieval burials from Serbia, our researchers examine the differential survival of children and of different parts of the body within the same terrain, and rightly urge us to take these factors into consideration before attempting demographic, ritual or social interpretations.