Bronze Age urned cremation burials of Mainland Scotland : mortuary ritual and cremation technology
Tracing the treatment of the body before, during and after cremation, this thesis aims to reconstruct and theorise the mortuary rituals associated with urned cremation burial in Bronze Age Scotland. It is an attempt to bridge the gap between theoretical perspectives from funerary archaeology and up-to-date methods for understanding heat-related changes to bone from osteoarchaeology and forensic anthropology. As with other types of mortuary treatment, the physical aspects of cremation detected by osteological analysis are interconnected with the meaning and symbolism of the ritual. The research involved the osteological analysis of a sample of urned cremation burials from the collections of The National Museums of Scotland. The analysis aimed to estimate not only the age at death and sex of the remains, but also to investigate factors such as the number of individuals in an urn, the effectiveness of the cremation process, whether the bodies had been cremated as fresh corpses or dry bones, the position of the body on the pyre, the range of pyre goods and the selection of remains included in the urns. In total, 75 urned cremation burials from 50 sites were analysed, a significant addition to the corpus of osteologically
Medina-Pettersson, Cecilia Aurora Linnea
Scotland ; Bronze Age ; osteoarchaeology ; mortuary rituals ; cremation
Bronze Age urned cremation burials of Mainland Scotland : mortuary ritual and cremation technology. Tracing the treatment of the body before, during and after cremation, this thesis aims to reconstruct and theorise the mortuary rituals associated with urned cremation burial in Bronze Age Scotland. It is an attempt to bridge the gap between theoretical perspectives from funerary archaeology and up-to-date methods for understanding heat-related changes to bone from osteoarchaeology and forensic anthropology. As with other types of mortuary treatment, the physical aspects of cremation detected by osteological analysis are interconnected with the meaning and symbolism of the ritual. The research involved the osteological analysis of a sample of urned cremation burials from the collections of The National Museums of Scotland. The analysis aimed to estimate not only the age at death and sex of the remains, but also to investigate factors such as the number of individuals in an urn, the effectiveness of the cremation process, whether the bodies had been cremated as fresh corpses or dry bones, the position of the body on the pyre, the range of pyre goods and the selection of remains included in the urns. In total, 75 urned cremation burials from 50 sites were analysed, a significant addition to the corpus of osteologically
bronze_age cremation burial mainland_scotland mortuary_ritual cremation technology tracing treatment body cremation aim_reconstruct theorise mortuary_ritual associate cremation burial bronze_age scotland attempt_bridge gap theoretical_perspective funerary archaeology up_to_date method heat related_change bone forensic anthropology type mortuary treatment physical aspect cremation detect osteological_analysis interconnect mean symbolism ritual involved osteological_analysis sample cremation burial collection national museums scotland analysis aim estimate age_death sex remain also_investigate factor number_individual urn effectiveness cremation process whether body fresh corps dry bone position body pyre range pyre good selection remain included urn total cremation burial_site analyse significant addition corpus