No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Archaeothanatology, funerary archaeology and bioarchaeology: perspectives on the long view of death and the dead.
A qualitative actualistic human taphonomy study was conducted to analyze human decomposition and disarticulation in coffins. Two adult cadavers were placed in rectangular wooden coffins for around two and a half years for the purpose of the study. We used the archaeothanatological methodological framework to situate the actualistic study in a mortuary archaeological context. In addition to previously known factors acting on postmortem movement—including gravity, insect activity, water, and bloat—the results demonstrate that bone movement in coffins can be affected by the collection of decomposition by-products, including both movement of limbs during decomposition and stabilization of bones when the decomposition by-products solidified. The disarticulation sequence observed in the coffin differed from that proposed in previous archaeothanatological research and was conclusive with findings from earlier actualistic studies where disarticulation was demonstrated to be variable. We emphasize the importance of deducing what type of void context the deceased was originally placed in prior to interpretations of causative taphonomic agents, as different voids allow for a variability of potential taphonomic postmortem processes. To this end, archaeothanatological analyses are useful. This study confirms the importance of considering human taphonomy in situ for interpretations of mortuary treatment in connection to deposition.
In recent years, a thanatology of primates has become a respectable research topic, and although still sparse, observations among several taxa have shown how complex responses to the dead can be. In human evolutionary archeology, re-analysis of old ‘burial’ sites is slowly revising our view on the development of specifically human responses to the dead. We propose here the means of integrating information from the two disciplines of primatology and archeology, in support of the field of primate thanatology. We propose a terminology and a shared set of research questions, from which we generate a number of observations that can be utilized in the field, in order to establish a working dialogue and foster greater collaboration across the two disciplines.
Shanidar Cave in Iraqi Kurdistan became an iconic Palaeolithic site after Ralph Solecki’s discoveries in 1951-1960 of 10 Neanderthals, some of whom he argued had died in rockfalls and others–controversially–buried with formal burial rites, including one with flowers. New excavations began in 2015. In 2018 the team discovered the articulated upper body of an adult Neanderthal near to the ‘Flower Burial’ location, dating to 70–60 thousand years ago. Stratigraphic evidence suggests that it was a deliberate burial. The new find is the first articulated Neanderthal discovered for some 25 years, so of considerable potential importance for Neanderthal studies.
The third millennium BCE was a period of major cultural and demographic changes in Europe that signaled the beginning of the Bronze Age. People from the Pontic steppe expanded westward, leading to the formation of the Corded Ware complex and transforming the genetic landscape of Europe. At the time, the Globular Amphora culture (3300–2700 BCE) existed over large parts of Central and Eastern Europe, but little is known about their interaction with neighboring Corded Ware groups and steppe societies. Here we present a detailed study of a Late Neolithic mass grave from southern Poland belonging to the Globular Amphora culture and containing the remains of 15 men, women, and children, all killed by blows to the head. We sequenced their genomes to between 1.1- and 3.9-fold coverage and performed kinship analyses that demonstrate that the individuals belonged to a large extended family. The bodies had been carefully laid out according to kin relationships by someone who evidently knew the deceased. From a population genetic viewpoint, the people from Koszyce are clearly distinct from neighboring Corded Ware groups because of their lack of steppe-related ancestry. Although the reason for the massacre is unknown, it is possible that it was connected with the expansion of Corded Ware groups, which may have resulted in competition for resources and violent conflict. Together with the archaeological evidence, these analyses provide an unprecedented level of insight into the kinship structure and social behavior of a Late Neolithic community.
Palaeoanthropology, or more precisely Palaeolithic archaeology, offers the possibility of bridging the gap between mortuary activities that can be observed in the wider animal community and which relate to chemistry and emotion; to the often-elaborate systems of rationalization and symbolic contextualisation that are characteristic of recently observable societies. I draw on ethological studies to provide a core set of mortuary behaviours one might expect hominoids to inherit, and on anthropological observations to explore funerary activity represented in the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic, in order to examine how a distinctly human set of funerary behaviours arose from a more widespread set of mortuary behaviours. I suggest that the most profound innovation of the hominins was the incorporation of places into the commemoration of the dead, and propose a falsifiable mechanism for why this came about; and I suggest that the pattern of the earliest burials fits with modern hunter–gatherer belief systems about death, and how these vary by social complexity. Finally, I propose several research questions pertaining to the social context of funerary practices, suggesting how a hominin evolutionary thanatology may contribute not only to our understanding of human behavioural evolution, but to a wider thanatology of the animal kingdom.
This article is part of the theme issue ‘Evolutionary thanatology: impacts of the dead on the living in humans and other animals’.
In the inhumation cemeteries of the Central European Early Bronze Age and early medieval periods, many graves were reopened a short time after burial and, in most cases, grave goods removed. Increasingly, in recent times, grave reopening practices have become a focus of research. One reopened grave from a large Early Bronze Age (Wieselburg/Gáta culture) cemetery in Weiden am See, eastern Austria, was excavated using a microstratigraphic protocol in order to increase our understanding of the formation processes of reopened graves and to create a reference for future analysis. This article presents the results of the taphonomic analysis of the human remains, which form the basis for a reconstruction of the human actions that were carried out during the reopening of the grave.
Burials have been excavated in the 19th century but they have been a true research topic
only in the second half of the 20th century. The archaeological approach of sepulchral
contexts, developed based on neolithic collective burials, generated a separate discipline
that has evolved toward a full interpretation of the burial. This is what has come
to be known as archaeology of death or archaeothanatology, now relates to all periods
and all types of human remains deposits, aims among other things at reconstructing and
interpreting burial gestures, in connection with all other archaeological data.
Compared with neighbouring European areas, Middle Neolithic funerary practices in Southern France are characterised by a high proportion of individuals buried in domestic structures of settlements. The purpose of this paper is to characterise these human remains while discussing, among other things, the nature of the burials (conveying a positive or negative attitude towards the deceased) and the presence of the deceased in the space occupied by the living.
Rispetto ad altre aree europee le pratiche funerarie del Neolitico Medio in Francia meridionale sono caratteriz-zate da un'altra proporzione di individui sepolti in strut-ture domestiche all'interno di insediamenti. Il contributo si propone di caratterizzare tali resti umani, discuten-do, fra l'altro, la natura delle deposizioni (che veicolano un'attitudine positiva oppure negativa verso i defunti) e la presenza dei morti nello spazio occupato dai vivi.
In Europe, the Middle Neolithic is characterized by an important diversification of cultures. In northeastern France, the appearance of the Michelsberg culture has been correlated with major cultural changes and interpreted as the result of the settlement of new groups originating from the Paris Basin. This cultural transition has been accompanied by the expansion of particular funerary practices involving inhumations within circular pits and individuals in "non-conventional" positions (deposited in the pits without any particular treatment). If the status of such individuals has been highly debated, the sacrifice hypothesis has been retained for the site of Gougenheim (Alsace). At the regional level, the analysis of the Gougenheim mitochondrial gene pool (SNPs and HVR-I sequence analyses) permitted us to highlight a major genetic break associated with the emergence of the Michelsberg in the region. This genetic discontinuity appeared to be linked to new affinities with farmers from the Paris Basin, correlated to a noticeable hunter-gatherer legacy. All of the evidence gathered supports (i) the occidental origin of the Michelsberg groups and (ii) the potential implication of this migration in the progression of the hunter-gatherer legacy from the Paris Basin to Alsace / Western Germany at the beginning of the Late Neolithic. At the local level, we noted some differences in the maternal gene pool of individuals in "conventional" vs. "non-conventional" positions. The relative genetic isolation of these sub-groups nicely echoes both their social distinction and the hypothesis of sacrifices retained for the site. Our investigation demonstrates that a multi-scale aDNA study of ancient communities offers a unique opportunity to disentangle the complex relationships between cultural and biological evolution.
L’objectif de cette contribution est de proposer un fil conducteur pour une comparaison entre le Nord et le Sud Levant du point de vue des pratiques funéraires (Épipaléolithique final et Néolithique précéramique). Les obstacles à une telle approche sont nombreux à cause notamment du manque de données disponibles et de traitements funéraires complexes et variés. Bien que le prélèvement du crâne soit un sujet largement débattu, les données factuelles demeurent incomplètes et dissociées. Nous avons entrepris une synthèse préliminaire basée sur 65 sites (NMI : 3 001 individus) attribués à la période qui va du Natoufien ancien (13000 cal. BC) à la première moitié du 7e millénaire (cal. BC) et situés au Levant nord et sud, dans la haute vallée du Tigre et en Anatolie centrale. Toutes les catégories d’inhumation ont été inventoriées et les squelettes acéphales ont fait l’objet d’une attention spécifique. Ceux-ci représentent 6,1 % du corpus, mais cette proportion varie en fonction des zones géographiques et au fil du temps. Au début du Néolithique Précéramique, la pratique du prélèvement se développe conjointement de part et d’autre du Levant. Mais le PPNB moyen marque une rupture claire alors que le prélèvement devient très sélectif au nord mais concerne, au contraire, plus d’un tiers des défunts au sud. Les données qualitatives apportent également quelques éléments de discussion sur le processus de prélèvement et sur les chaînes opératoires liées au traitement funéraire. Au sud, le prélèvement concerne en majorité le seul bloc crânio-facial et semble intervenir plus tardivement qu’au nord. Toutefois, hors de ce cadre interprétatif standard, une sépulture oubliée de Jéricho témoigne d’un prélèvement antérieur à l’inhumation du cadavre, nous encourageant à davantage de prudence lors de la fouille et de l’interprétation des sépultures du Néolithique précéramique levantin.
Early Bronze Age and early medieval inhumation graves in (central) Europe had often been re-opened a short time after burial and, in most cases, grave goods were removed. To improve the understanding of the archaeological evidence of these graves, one re-opened grave from a large early Bronze Age (Wieselburg/Gáta culture) cemetery in Weiden am See, eastern Austria, was excavated using a microstratigraphic protocol to maximize data collection for the reconstruction of the context formation process and, consequently, the interpretation of the re-opening process. In this article the results of the soil thin section analyses are presented and discussed.
The archaeological documentation of the development of sedentary farming societies in Anatolia is not yet mirrored by a genetic understanding of the human populations involved, in contrast to the spread of farming in Europe [1–3]. Sedentary farming communities emerged in parts of the Fertile Crescent during the tenth millennium and early ninth millennium calibrated (cal) BC and had appeared in central Anatolia by 8300 cal BC [4]. Farming spread into west Anatolia by the early seventh millennium cal BC and quasi-synchronously into Europe, although the timing and process of this movement remain unclear. Using genome sequence data that we generated from nine central Anatolian Neolithic individuals, we studied the transition period from early Aceramic (Pre-Pottery) to the later Pottery Neolithic, when farming expanded west of the Fertile Crescent. We find that genetic diversity in the earliest farmers was conspicuously low, on a par with European foraging groups. With the advent of the Pottery Neolithic, genetic variation within societies reached levels later found in early European farmers. Our results confirm that the earliest Neolithic central Anatolians belonged to the same gene pool as the first Neolithic migrants spreading into Europe. Further, genetic affinities between later Anatolian farmers and fourth to third millennium BC Chalcolithic south Europeans suggest an additional wave of Anatolian migrants, after the initial Neolithic spread but before the Yamnaya-related migrations. We propose that the earliest farming societies demographically resembled foragers and that only after regional gene flow and rising heterogeneity did the farming population expansions into Europe occur.
Funerary taphonomy has come of age as an important field in osteoarchaeology. Its goal is to reconstruct funerary practices by using taphonomic evidence, including both evidence recorded during excavation (particularly the context and state of articulation of human remains) and evidence observable in subsequent laboratory analysis (such as element representation and traces of burning, animal modification, cut-marks, and fragmentation). This article – intended as a systematic introduction to the field – gives an overview of funerary taphonomy. It first discusses the goals and theoretical questions, and then reviews the wide range of methods available to archaeologists using human remains to investigate funerary behaviour. It finishes with a review of how taphonomists have approached particular issues, such as single burials, commingled multiple depositions, cannibalism, and the cultural reuse of human skeletal parts.
Cutmarks on the bones of ten individuals from Körtik Tepe, a Pre-Pottery Neolithic site in Southeastern Anatolia, were analysed using a bioarchaeological approach. Half of the ten individuals possess cutmarks on their crania only while the other five have cutmarks on both their cranial and postcranial bones. Diagnoses of these cutmarks suggest they were made on fresh cadavers, while skeletal data and burial customs reveal that the individuals with cutmarks were subject to human intervention in the decomposition process, understood as post-burial practices rather than secondary burials. This conclusion is supported by the application of plaster and paint as part of the burial customs. The process of defleshing is interpreted as an attempt to purify the corpse and to separate death from life.
An intense debate concerning the nature and mode of Neolithic transition in Europe has long received much attention. Recent publications of paleogenetic analyses focusing on ancient European farmers from Central Europe or the Iberian Peninsula have greatly contributed to this debate, providing arguments in favor of major migrations accompanying European Neolithization and highlighting noticeable genetic differentiation between farmers associated with two archaeologically defined migration routes: the Danube valley and the Mediterranean Sea. The aim of the present study was to fill a gap with the first paleogenetic data of Neolithic settlers from a region (France) where the two great currents came into both direct and indirect contact with each other. To this end, we analyzed the Gurgy 'Les Noisats' group, an Early/Middle Neolithic necropolis in the southern part of the Paris Basin. Interestingly , the archaeological record from this region highlighted a clear cultural influence from the Danubian cultural sphere but also notes exchanges with the Mediterranean cultural area. To unravel the processes implied in these cultural exchanges, we analyzed 102 individuals and obtained the largest Neolithic mitochondrial gene pool so far (39 HVS-I mito-chondrial sequences and haplogroups for 55 individuals) from a single archaeological site from the Early/Middle Neolithic period. Pairwise F ST values, haplogroup frequencies and shared informative haplotypes were calculated and compared with ancient and modern Eu-ropean and Near Eastern populations. These descriptive analyses provided patterns resulting from different evolutionary scenarios; however, the archaeological data available for the region suggest that the Gurgy group was formed through equivalent genetic contributions of farmer descendants from the Danubian and Mediterranean Neolithization waves. However, these results, that would constitute the most ancient genetic evidence of admixture between farmers from both Central and Mediterranean migration routes in the European Neolithiza-tion debate, are subject to confirmation through appropriate model-based approaches.
Our understanding of Minoan funerary practices in the Early and Middle Bronze Age on Crete was until recently to a large degree informed by the excavations of cemeteries that took place early in the 20th century. However, the aforementioned excavations are characterized by a significant lack of detailed archaeological data regarding the precise positions of osteological remains and the actual treatment of the body. The excavation of the Early Minoan II–Middle Minoan II cemetery at Sissi (ca. 2650–1720 B.C.) focused on a more complete characterization of the complexity and variation in Minoan funerary practices.
Using archaeothanatology and involving field anthropologists from the first stages of excavation, precise and reliable interment sequences and (successive) treatments of the bodies were reconstructed. The result is a more nuanced understanding of primary and secondary burials and in turn contemporary Minoan society.
Detailed taphonomic and skeletal analyses document the diverse and often unusual burial practices employed by European Neolithic populations. In the Upper Chamber at Scaloria Cave in southern Italy, the remains
of some two dozen individuals had been subjected to careful and systematic defleshing and disarticulation involving cutting and scraping with stone tools, which had left their marks on the bones. In some cases these
were not complete bodies but parts of bodies that had been brought to the cave from the surrounding area. The fragmented and commingled burial layer that resulted from these activities indicates complex secondary
burial rites effecting the transition from entirely living to entirely dead individuals.
Compassionate behavior towards dying, diseased, or disabled individuals is often regarded as a uniquely human trait, though recent reports of reactions to death and dying in nonhuman animals highlight the value of adopting a comparative evolutionary approach toward these behaviors. Here, we review recent studies of animal behavior toward the dying, diseased, or disabled which may be of interest to paleopathologists and bioarchaeologists studying compassionate behavior in humans and their extinct ancestors. ‘Compassionate’ behavior toward the enfeebled and dying has now been reported in several non-primate mammals (e.g., wild African elephants and river otters) and nonhuman primates (primarily captive chimpanzees). In addition, a number of recent reports have documented wide variation in nonhuman primates’ reactions to recently deceased group mates (or offspring) both across species, as well as across individuals belonging to the same social group. We suggest there is considerable potential for collaboration among paleopathologists and primatologists in examining the causes of illness and disability in animals and its impact on their lives.
Paleopathological reporting is hampered by a lack of precision in the confidence levels of diagnosis. In this article, we recommend the application of a slightly modified system of nomenclature ratified by the UN and widely used in forensic medicine for the identification of torture. The application of this terminological framework within paleopathology would encourage consistency between practitioners and enhance the reliability of comparisons between cases.
The genetic impact associated to the Neolithic spread in Europe has been widely debated over the last 20 years. Within this context, ancient DNA studies have provided a more reliable picture by directly analyzing the protagonist populations at different regions in Europe. However, the lack of available data from the original Near Eastern farmers has limited the achieved conclusions, preventing the formulation of continental models of Neolithic expansion. Here we address this issue by presenting mitochondrial DNA data of the original Near-Eastern Neolithic communities with the aim of providing the adequate background for the interpretation of Neolithic genetic data from European samples. Sixty-three skeletons from the Pre Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) sites of Tell Halula, Tell Ramad and Dja'de El Mughara dating between 8,700-6,600 cal. B.C. were analyzed, and 15 validated mitochondrial DNA profiles were recovered. In order to estimate the demographic contribution of the first farmers to both Central European and Western Mediterranean Neolithic cultures, haplotype and haplogroup diversities in the PPNB sample were compared using phylogeographic and population genetic analyses to available ancient DNA data from human remains belonging to the Linearbandkeramik-Alföldi Vonaldiszes Kerámia and Cardial/Epicardial cultures. We also searched for possible signatures of the original Neolithic expansion over the modern Near Eastern and South European genetic pools, and tried to infer possible routes of expansion by comparing the obtained results to a database of 60 modern populations from both regions. Comparisons performed among the 3 ancient datasets allowed us to identify K and N-derived mitochondrial DNA haplogroups as potential markers of the Neolithic expansion, whose genetic signature would have reached both the Iberian coasts and the Central European plain. Moreover, the observed genetic affinities between the PPNB samples and the modern populations of Cyprus and Crete seem to suggest that the Neolithic was first introduced into Europe through pioneer seafaring colonization.
At present, there is no accepted standardised lexicon in English to describe burials and
the position of buried human remains. Terms have tended to vary with the investigator
and rely on loose, but often ill-defined systems of previous use. As a consequence, there
are myriad terms used to describe the same phenomena or, as the case may be, no
single well-defined term to do so. This means that new terms are continually invented –
and sometimes re-invented bearing different nuances – that hinder use of published
work and make comparisons across works difficult. In France for the last 40 years,
Duday, his colleagues and students have published a series of papers employing a standard
burial terminology that, until recently, was only available in French and in French
language publications. Due to limited language competency of English-language scholars
and a desire of French scholars to publish in their own (very precise) native language,
these seminal works have not influenced English-language use. They clearly lead the way
to the development of a standard vocabulary. What follows is a critique of previous
non-standard terminological use and a series of suggestions to remedy this situation.
This contribution’s debt to French language scholarship is clear, but it does not reproduce
a mere translation of terms. Rather, it tries to synthesise French use with Englishlanguage
scholarship. Its weakest point is that it does not integrate terms from other
European languages that also have a long legacy of regional and time-specific application,
nor can it claim to do so in other world languages. This is work for the future. This
treatment concentrates on adult remains, with archaeothantological study of infant and
children’s remains being at only a very anecdotal level to date.
This article represents a systematic effort to answer the question, What are archaeology’s most important scientific challenges? Starting with a crowd-sourced query directed broadly to the professional community of archaeologists, the authors augmented, prioritized, and refined the responses during a two-day workshop focused specifically on this question. The resulting 25 “grand challenges” focus on dynamic cultural processes and the operation of coupled human and natural systems. We organize these challenges into five topics: (1) emergence, communities, and complexity; (2) resilience, persistence, transformation, and collapse; (3) movement, mobility, and migration; (4) cognition, behavior, and identity; and (5)human-environment interactions. A discussion and a brief list of references accompany each question. An important goal
in identifying these challenges is to inform decisions on infrastructure investments for archaeology. Our premise is that the
highest priority investments should enable us to address the most important questions. Addressing many of these challenges
will require both sophisticated modeling and large-scale synthetic research that are only now becoming possible. Although
new archaeological fieldwork will be essential, the greatest payoff will derive from investments that provide sophisticated
research access to the explosion in systematically collected archaeological data that has occurred over the last several
decades.
Three human burials were found at Çatalhöyük that contained large microfaunal assemblages. Taphonomic analysis demonstrated that many of these elements had passed through the digestive tract of a small carnivore, indicating that the microfauna entered the burials in carnivore scats rather than as carcasses. One of the burials in particular (F. 513) contained an enormous quantity of microfauna which was concentrated over the torso of the body. It is concluded that the scats were deliberately placed in the burials by the human inhabitants of the site as part of ritualistic practice. Furthermore, it is suggested that small carnivores were encouraged to enter Çatalhöyük in order to control house mice, and other small mammal, numbers.
Daniel AMBROISE et Catherine PERLÉS,
Note sur l'analyse archéologique des squelettes humains.
L'analyse détaillée de squelettes découverts lors de fouilles archéologiques a montré que certains détails significatifs pour l'interprétation de la sépulture (individuelle ou collective) étaient souvent ignorés. Ceci plus particulièrement dans les cas de remaniements partiels des squelettes, que peut éclairer une étude approfondie des relations articulaires et de l'orientation des os. Mais cette étude se heurte à des problèmes de terminologie (par imprécision ou absence de vocabulaire approprié) autant qu'à des problèmes de représentation graphique. Les auteurs présentent donc des tentatives de solution, tout en signalant l'importance des renseignements que peut apporter une recherche de cet ordre dans le domaine des rites d'inhumation.
The discovery of a dismantled stone circle—close to Stonehenge's bluestone quarries in west Wales—raises the possibility that a 900-year-old legend about Stonehenge being built from an earlier stone circle contains a grain of truth. Radiocarbon and OSL dating of Waun Mawn indicate construction c. 3000 BC, shortly before the initial construction of Stonehenge. The identical diameters of Waun Mawn and the enclosing ditch of Stonehenge, and their orientations on the midsummer solstice sunrise, suggest that at least part of the Waun Mawn circle was brought from west Wales to Salisbury Plain. This interpretation complements recent isotope work that supports a hypothesis of migration of both people and animals from Wales to Stonehenge.<br/
It is a classical anthropological paradox that symbols of rebirth and fertility are frequently found in funerary rituals throughout the world. The original essays collected here re-examine this phenomenon through insights from China, India, New Guinea, Latin America, and Africa. The contributors, each a specialist in one of these areas, have worked in close collaboration to produce a genuinely innovative theoretical approach to the study of the symbolism surrounding death, an outline of which is provided in an important introduction by the editors. The major concern of the volume is the way in which funerary rituals dramatically transform the image of life as a dialectic flux involving exchange and transaction, marriage and procreation, into an image of a still, transcendental order in which oppositions such as those between self and other, wife-giver and wife-taker, Brahmin and untouchable, birth and therefore death have been abolished. This transformation often involves a general devaluation of biology, and, particularly, of sexuality, which is contrasted with a more spiritual and controlled source of life. The role of women, who are frequently associated with biological processes, mourning and death pollution, is often predominant in funerary rituals, and in examining this book makes a further contribution to the understanding of the symbolism of gender. The death rituals and the symbolism of rebirth are also analysed in the context of the political processes of the different societies considered, and it is argued that social order and political organisation may be legitimated through an exploitation of the emotions and biology.
Although some definitions of thanatology-broadly definable as the study of death and dying-exclude nonhumans as subjects, recognition of the scientific value of studying how other species respond to sick, injured, dying and dead conspecifics appears to be growing. And whereas earlier literature was largely characterized by anecdotal descriptions and sometimes fanciful interpretations, we now see more rigorous and often quantitative analysis of various behaviors displayed towards conspecifics (and sometimes heterospecifics) at various stages of incapacitation, including death. Studies of social insects in particular have revealed chemical cues that trigger corpse management behaviors, as well as the adaptive value of these behaviors. More recent research on other taxonomic groups (including aquatic and avian species, and mammals) has sought to better document these animals' responses to the dying and dead, to identify influencing factors and underlying mechanisms, and to better understand the physiological, emotional, social and psychological significance of the phenomena observed. This special issue presents original short reports, reviews, and full research articles relating to these topics in New World monkeys, Old World monkeys and apes, as well as equids and proboscids. The range of events, data, hypotheses and proposals presented will hopefully enrich the field and stimulate further developments in comparative evolutionary thanatology.
Evolutionary thanatology benefits from broad taxonomic comparisons of non-human animals' responses to death. Furthermore, exploring the sensory and cognitive bases of these responses promises to allow classification of the underlying mechanisms on a spectrum from phylogenetically ancient to more derived traits. We draw on studies of perception and cognition in invertebrate and vertebrate taxa (with a focus on arthropods, corvids, proboscids, cetaceans and primates) to explore the cues that these animals use to detect life and death in others, and discuss proximate and ultimate drivers behind their capacities to do so. Parallels in thanatological behaviour exhibited by the last four taxa suggest similar sensory–cognitive processing rules for dealing with corpses, the evolution of which may have been driven by complex social environments. Uniting these responses is a phenomenon we term ‘animacy detection malfunction’, whereupon the corpse, having both animate and inanimate attributes, creates states of fear/curiosity manifested as approach/avoidance behaviours in observers. We suggest that integrating diverse lines of evidence (including the ‘uncanny valley’ effect originating from the field of robotics) provides a promising way to advance the field, and conclude by proposing avenues for future research.
This article is part of the theme issue ‘Evolutionary thanatology: impacts of the dead on the living in humans and other animals’.
Excavation of a Classic Kerma cemetery in Sudan revealed a number of burials segregated by age, throwing into question a presumed disregard for the burial of the young. Burial rites were varied according to the age of the deceased and show a remarkable concern for the ritual burial of infants and the stillborn.
ill., notes bibliogr. [Texte d'un cours de spécialisation intensive à Rome, 18 octobre-6 novembre 2004].
The importance of the Grimaldi complex of caves and rock shelters is twofold: scientific and historical. Scientifically, it is one of the major Upper Paleolithic sites, considering the variety of mobiliary and parietal art, the number of single and multiple burials and associated grave goods, and the abundant lithic and fauna remains. Historically, the documentation of activity that took place in this site starting from the second half of the 19 th century and the studies carried out on the materials that have been recovered in the decades between 1870s-1910s, provide instructive examples of methods and goals of Paleolithic archeology and anthropology of the epoch. This paper combines the scientific and the historic interest of the site through a chronicle of the events that took place during the period of the most sensational discoveries, i.e. beginning with the identification in 1872 of the first Upper Paleolithic burial and ending with the results of the excavations carried out in 1901 at Grotte des Enfants published in four volumes a few years later. The paper discusses early interpretations and modern views on the different findings and documents changes in perspectives and goals of paleoanthropological research in over a century, raising some of the major issues of contemporary Upper Paleolithic studies.
The analysis of ancient DNA recovered from archaeological remains can be used to reconstruct kinship among the occupants of a necropolis and provide a more detailed portrait of the community considered. Such palaeogenetic analyses have been conducted on sarcophagi excavated from the Merovingian necropolis in Jau-Dignac et Loirac (7th–8th century AD, Aquitaine, southwest France). The genetic study consisted of the analysis of mitochondrial DNA and nuclear STRs (Short Tandem Repeats) from nine skeletons deposited in three grouped sarcophagi. Only data concerning the mitochondrial genomes could be obtained, and six different mitochondrial lineages were retrieved from eight samples. Our analyses permitted a high confidence characterisation of maternal relationships between individuals deposited in the same sepulchre. These results are important and novel for the period and region and argue that individuals were grouped inside sarcophagi according to relationship criteria. The presence of perinatal remains in one sarcophagus was particularly striking because access to this type of funerary structure during this period was generally reserved for older children. Moreover, we demonstrated genetically that the perinatal remains were not related maternally to two women found in the same sarcophagus (whereas the maternal relationship between the two young women could be determined), and we proposed different possible explanations for this unexpected observation. Overall, archaeological, anthropological and genetic data suggest that the Jau-Dignac et Loirac necropolis groups together the closely and distantly related members of a High Middle Ages familia. Our ancient DNA analyses note the important contribution of palaeogenetic analyses to archaeological kinship studies.
