PresentDead blog post 3

PresentDead blog post 3

Astrid Noterman

As part of the PresentDead project, I spent a week in Vienna to take a preliminary look at the human skeletal remains from Brunn am Gebirge, Achau and Globasnitz. The aim was to test a recording system that we are currently developing for bone surface modifications and bone breakage.

The archaeological focus on secondary interventions has traditionally been on the artefacts and the reasons why some of them were removed and others left behind. But in recent years, more attention has been paid to skeletal remains. In fact, focus has shifted from the basic description of the anatomical area of the body that has been disturbed to the taphonomic and technical consequences of the reopening. Today, archaeologists are increasingly interested in the traces left on bones by tools. The most classic example is the holes that are sometimes seen, made by the penetration of a probe – a tool that seems to have been used to detect graves in some regions. We can mention grave 8 from Friedberg-Bruchenbrücken (Germany) with a 4 mm hole on the upper part of the left tibia of the individual (Thiedmann, Schleifring 1992, pp. 435-439).
The marks left by the use of a sharp tool such as a knife are interesting for understanding the modus operandi of the reopening, and by extension for reconstructing funerary costume. Such marks are sometimes recorded, like at Vendenheim in eastern France (Chenal, Barrand-Emam 2014).

There are in fact a whole range of traces that secondary intrusions can leave on the bones, and one of the aims of the PresentDead is to better understand them in order to find out more about the practice of reopening, but also about the way in which individuals were dressed at the time of burial.
So during a week I looked at a selection of graves from three collections and ‘chased’ these marks. The bone preservation was uneven, making the process rather challenging. Eventually, I identified a few chopping & cut marks, sun bleaching and coffin wear.

The next steps now are to adjust the recording protocol to make it even more effective and to carry out a full, in-depth osteological study of the human remains from the sites.

Picture: chopping mark on the left femur from grave 3 from Brunn am Gebirge (NHM collection, photo by A. A. Noterman).

PresentDead blog post 2

Edeltraud Aspöck

Turning ideas into practice

Ha! PresentDead has already been running for half a year. And it is four months since the last (and first) blog post… so much for me thinking that the initial enthusiasm of starting the PresentDead project will finally turn me into a very active online communicator. Well, I am still the same as I ever was.

Saying that, the months since then have been quite exciting and really important ones as we have been working on transforming the more abstract project ideas into concrete workplans and tasks. This process, however, does not really lend itself into short, easy to communicate and ideally somewhat entertaining blog-post pieces. Anyway. So far, we have been defining workplans and goals and discussing how to implement them. And in an even more concrete fashion, Astrid has worked on the development of protocols for the analysis of bone taphonomy, which includes an analysis of the impact of reopening on the human remains as well as potential evidence of fragmentation. Fragmentation in the sense of fragmentation theory (e.g. Chapman, J. 2000. Fragmentation in Archaeology, People, Places and Broken Objects in the Prehistory of South-Eastern Europe. London, Routledge) – that is the idea that objects might be deliberately broken in order to create fragments for use in other practices. Astrid has also come to  Vienna to take a look at the human remains of selected individuals from three collections (Brunn am Gebirge , Achau , Globasnitz ) to ‘test’ the protocols she is developing. (This will certainly also be worth a dedicated blog post in the very near future!)

Thom Gobbitt and I have been working together quite closely since the start of the project (as was planned, my vision has always been to have an integrated archaeological-historical research in PresentDead, and with Thom, who is also trained as an archaeologist we have the right candidate for this endeavour!). This has meant a lot of discussion about how to proceed with the historical part of the project (we decided to follow two strands of research, a data-driven one and a more ‘traditional’ one, where Thom will organise workshops and collaborate with other historians on the topic); we have also been discussing how to organise the historical part of the data platform and how to achieve semantic integration of data (that, basically, is to integrate archaeological and historical data based on their “meaning”), among other things. Finally, we also realised that we really need to start the project with a historian’s review of how historical sources related to the reopening of graves have been used to inform the archaeological work and interpretation. And this is what Thom is working on now (and which has already brought to light many small but very important results, and these will certainly also be worthy of a blog post written by the third social media enthusiast in this project )

Ali Klevnäs has in the meantime been looking into Carpathian basin evidence for the reopening of graves prior to our main period of interest of the 5th to 8th centuries CE. The so-called “Sarmatian” cemeteries show plenty of evidence for reopening of graves and it will be important to establish if and how these practices can be related to what we find in the later “row grave cemeteries”.

Apart from being engaged, to varying degrees, with all of the above research threads, I have primarily been working on the data modelling, and, most importantly, have been establishing connections with archaeologists and other cooperation partners. We had a very fruitful first official meeting with Walter Pohl and the Viennese team from the HistoGenes project (Histogenes meets PresentDead), exchanging very practical ideas on the handling of the data and case studies, and with some very concrete outcomes about collaborations already being proposed (more to come on those when they happen). And for me, personally, it has been a nice experience to re-connect with several colleagues who are excavating in Vienna and the surroundings, and to breath the air of excavation once more while searching for potential sites for micro-archaeological excavations (as well as for analysis).

PresentDead blog post 1

Edeltraud Aspöck

And #PresentDead hit the ground running: 29th – 30th September 2023 we visited the colloquium ‘Between Goths, Huns and Gepids. The Middle Danube Region in the Early Migration Period’ in Târgu Mureș in Romania. It was organised by Mureș County Museum (Târgu Mureș) in collaboration with the National Museum of Transylvanian History (Cluj-Napoca) to mark the publication of the migration-period inhumation cemetery from Ernei from the Transylvanian Plateau: The Migration Period Cemetery from Ernei, BMM sa XIX, Cluj-Napoca, 2023 (edited by Alpár Dobos and Sándor Berecki). Ernei is a site that we plan to investigate together with other cemeteries in the region for in-depth analysis of the grave reopening.

On Friday the colloquium was opened by our colleague and cooperation partner Alpár Dobos, with a presentation on the cemetery Ernei, a cemetery with 70 graves and hence untypical for the 5th century in this region, where solitary graves and small grave groups are common. However, its dating to the mid-5th century CE is secured not only by grave goods but also by recent radiocarbon dates. The publication of the C14 results is a collaboration of the excavators with Ali Klevnäs (one of the outcomes of her project ‘Interacting with the dead. Belief and conflict in Early Medieval Europe (AD 450-750)’ and currently in preparation. For PresentDead, the high number of reopened graves – all but one of the graves were reopened – raises interesting questions about the start of the reopening phenomenon.

Whilst the presentations on the first day provided more insights on migration period artefacts and sites of the region, with interesting discussions also in relation to PresentDead research questions, on day 2 the whole morning was dedicated to the discussion of grave disturbances: Ali Klevnäs started with a presentation on the state-of-the-art of research on reopened graves in Western Europe. I provided an overview of PresentDead, its overall aims and objectives and a focus on case studies and the specific approach I had developed to overcome current hinderances of research. Thom Gobbitt gave an overview of the textual sources that he will be working with for PresentDead and gave examples of texts that will be relevant from the Langobard laws, his specialism. The third talk from the PresentDead project was presented by Astrid Noterman, who presented on methods that we will use, primarily from within her specialism as an biological anthropologist and taphonomist (archaeothanatology). We had an interesting discussion, once again drawing our attention to terminology (is reopening the right term? We say yes, in English, German and French, but possibly not in other languages), but also what role ethnic labels may play in PresentDead (or not!).

In the second part of the session on grave disturbances Alpár Dobos was introducing newly excavated sites in Transylvania and how they would fit into the picture (and which interesting questions they pose about the origin of reopening); Regina Viktória Csordás gave a first presentation on her new PhD project on reopening of Transdanubian cemeteries in Hungary that she just started at Eötvös Loránd University; and the section was concluded by Coriolan Horațiu Opreanu who presented on a mortuary custom that is still upheld by the Romanian Orthodox Christians, the exhumation and reburial of the human remains of their dead. A reminder, that reopening of graves can be the cultural norm for engagement with the dead. The afternoon provided us – among other presentations – with more insights in particular on artefacts and even more specifically we learnt of new material analyses that were carried out as part of the ‘Power and Culture in the Carpathian Basin during the Early Middle Ages’ project and that gave us more ideas to think about in particular in relation to ways of recycling – an important factor when it comes to discuss the whereabout of objects removed from graves.

Grave reopening in the Paris region

Grave reopening in the Paris region

Astrid Noterman

How to approach and understand disturbed graves in a densely populated region undergoing constant development?
Here is a new paper by Astrid Noterman on grave disturbances in Île-de-France published in a special volume of the RAIF journal, and which discusses Merovingian burial practices in the Paris region. Between looting, accidental disturbance and reopening practice, a lot of complexity for the archaeologists and the need to develop excavation protocols to appreciate the broad range of post-depositional interventions during the Merovingian period and beyond.

NOTERMAN A. A., PECQUEUR L. (2023) – La réouverture des sépultures mérovingiennes franciliennes : le pillage en question, in: LE FORESTIER C. (dir.), Archéologie des nécropoles mérovingiennes en Île-de-France, Paris, Les Amis de la Revue archéologique d’Île-de-France, p. 271-285 (RAIF, supplément 7)

https://www.raif.fr/index.php/en/7-2023-gb?amp;view=article&layout=edit&id=490

ERC PresentDead has started

Edeltraud Aspöck

This month work on the ERC project PresentDead has begun. The project will be investigating more evidence for re-entering graves and also other forms of contact between the living and the materials of the dead (graves, human remains and artefacts) in early medieval central and eastern Europe (5th to 8th centuries CE). Archaeological and textual evidence in diverse contexts will be studied using new scientific methods, technical solutions and new theoretical approaches.

http://reopenedgraves.eu/projects-erc-presentdead/