Burial practices at the dawn of the neolithic (6th millennium and first half of the 5th millennium cal-BC) in southern France and Italy: from “simple” pit graves to an architectural typology [La sépulture au début du Néolithique (VIe millénaire et première moitié du Ve millénaire cal BC) en France méridionale et en Italie : de l’idée d’une « simple » fosse à une typologie architecturale]

Abstract

For a long time, the matter of burial practices at the dawn of the neolithic in the north-western Mediterranean region had been considered as settled. These practices were thought to be highly uniform, consisting of primary burials that obeyed a particular norm in which the deceased were always placed individually in a “simple” pit, lying in a contracted position on one side and with few grave goods, if any. However, an archaeo-thanatological approach, applied to virtually the entire corpus of available documentation and osteological collections in Italy and southern France, has invalidated the hypothesis of uniform burial patterns and revealed a multiplicity of funeral practices. We chose to focus on graves used for primary individual burials because these were considered to be the norm. Our paper presents the results of a series of taphonomic analyses (many applied for the first time to these graves), which have produced a very different picture, which indicate much more complex practices than simple pit burials. The reconstruction of 48 individual graves has demonstrated the existence of five different types. This new architectural typology definitively shows that the funerary system of early farmers in Italy and southern France was much more diverse and complex than previously thought, and thus offers new pointers to unravel the polymorphism of the impresso-cardial complex