BURIED BUT APPARENT. EXAMPLE OF URNFIELD COMMUNITY

This contribution is devoted to the key role that anthropological analysis plays in the general interpretation of burial customs and related social structures. The Urnfield burial site in Přáslavice (Czech Republic) was evaluated in terms of typology, chronology, anthropology, and spatial relations. Social structures were concluded from this evidence. By comparing the results of the anthropological analysis with other, later sites which had been anthropologically processed , it has been shown that the burial site in Přáslavice is structurally different from an anthropological point of view, in particular in regards to the evidence of fewer funerals within a larger population and the absence of funerals for women with children. Based on the assumption that some child funerals have been overlooked, a new anthropological analysis was performed, which not only uncovered evidence of several funerals for children, but also identified other distinct markers that bring into question previous conclusions, including conclusions regarding social structure. However, based on the current analysis, it is possible to point to a certain regularity in the composition of the buried community on multiple sites. Author(s): Šabatová, Klára - Jarošová, Ivana (Masaryk University)