The Trust for Thanet Archaeology in Kent, south-east England, has published some fantastic reconstruction drawings of grave robbery in the early medieval cemetery at Lord of the Manor, Ozengell.
Grave disturbance in Visigothic Spain
GRR members research early medieval grave disturbance across Europe, in Austria, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, and England. But it turns out there is also evidence from Visigothic Spain.
We would love to hear from anyone who has worked on an affected site there!
Symposium on Theory and Methodology of Mortuary Archaeology
Martine van Haperen and the Dutch foundation Archaeological Dialogues are organizing a small conference on the interaction between theory and methodology in archaeological mortuary studies.
The conference will take place at Leiden University on April 22nd 2015, the first day of a three-day conference titled ‘Merovingian Mortuary Studies in an Interdisciplinary Perspective’.
The organizers invite papers on the following themes: techniques and standards for excavation and publication; the use of scientific analyses on grave remains; and the potential added value of ethnographic examples and anthropological theory for archaeological mortuary studies.
Please see the call for papers for more details. The deadline for abstract submission is January 15th 2015.
Limbs, Bones and Exhumations in Past Societies
On 16 and 17 November 2014, three members of the Grave Reopening Research group will present papers at the conference Limbs, Bones and Exhumations in Past Societies in Bytów, Poland.
Edeltraud Aspöck: ‘Analysing the (micro)taphonomy of reopened graves’
Alison Klevnäs: ‘Grave robbery in the Merovingian kingdoms and Anglo-Saxon England‘
Martine van Haperen: ‘Early medieval reopened graves. A Dutch perspective’
The abstract booklet can be downloaded from Academia.edu. If you would like to attend, please send your application to the organizers at mpw@muzeumbytow.pl before 5.09.2014.
Find the conference on Facebook!
EAA 2014
Edeltraud Aspöck will also visit the EAA 2014 in Istanbul and present a paper in session T06S025 Chasing Death Ways: new methods, techniques and practices in documenting and interpreting the funerary record, organised by Hayley Mickleburgh, Dr. Karina Gerdau Radonic, Rita Peyroteo Stjerna, Mari Tõrv.
Paper title will be:
The (micro)taphonomy of reopened graves
Abstract: It is frequently the case that human remains which have been buried in graves are not left to ‘rest in peace’ eternally. There are a wide range of documented historical and ethnographical reasons and circumstances for the reopening of graves. For example, graves have been reopened as part of funerary rituals, for the removal of grave goods or body parts for symbolic reasons, as part of ancestral rites, or simply in order to be ‘robbed’ for materialistic reasons.
Understanding the reasons behind the reopening is often limited by a lack of understanding of the archaeological record. The methodological object of my post-doc project is to develop a new taphonomy-based method for the archaeological analysis of reopened graves. In this paper I will present preliminary results of the project, focusing on the results of my fieldwork on a reopened early Bronze Age inhumation grave in Austria. A bundle of methods has been applied, including archaeothanathology, single finds recording, soil analysis (micromorphology). The suitability of the applied methods for understanding the formation and the reopening of the grave will be discussed.
