This project asks how people understood death, burial and the surrounding world in Mesolithic-Neolithic north-eastern Europe (c. 6800–3000 BC). Prehistoric graves and human remains have been a central part of archaeological research for centuries. However, when we are investigating these remains, we carry with us our own cultural and subjective ideas of death, dying and human mortality. This, naturally, raises the question of whether we are projecting our modern Western ideas of a ‘good death' or ‘proper burial' to a time when such anthropocentric or essentialist thinking did not exist. By taking a relational view of the Mesolithic-Neolithic burial record, this project contests the role of hunter-gatherer inhumation burial as a ritual response to death. Instead, the project suggests that these remains could be similar material manifestations of ritual discourses with the surrounding world as are votive deposits and rock art.

2022

2025