Ritual and biography: Late Bronze Age inhumations and the performance of death in graves and settlements in the central place of Kuckenburg (Unstrut group)

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Peter Ettel; Dr. Wolfgang Haak; Dr. Enrico Paust; Dr. Patrick Roberts; Dr. Florian Niko Schneider
• Subject Area: Prehistory and World Archaeology ; General Genetics and Functional Genome Biology
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 546939225

The key issue of this proposal is the exceptional Late Bronze Age (LBA) micro-region Kuckenburg near Querfurt in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany (Unstrut group). Whereas the LBA witnessed in Central Europe on a broad scale a ritual standardization with the spread of cremations, this practice was not adopted in the Unstrut group of Central Germany for half a millennium. Instead, inhumations continued to be practised. With the proposed project we aim at a conclusive understanding of this strong funerary conservatism, and the wide range of mortuary rituals witnessed in the Unstrut group: Especially the temporal and spatial coexistence of burials on graveyards with the deposition of human corpses in settlement pits or of skulls and intentionally dismembered body parts in ditches and pits, make this phenomenon particularly enigmatic. The micro-region provides ideal opportunities to deal with these phenomena: The remains of almost 300 unburnt individuals are the most extensive complex of human skeletal material from the LBA in Central Europe. Moreover, the micro-region was unlike other sites in use over the whole LBA, and comprises three mortuary areas: a fortified hillfort settlement, a normal settlement, and a large bi-ritual graveyard. As large parts of the complex still await analysis, it offers the unique opportunity for a multidimensional bioarchaeological study of LBA burial practices, and their interdependencies to cultic, social, and economic behavior. To achieve this level of understanding we seek a close cooperation between archaeology and the natural sciences. While archaeology, genetics, isotope analysis, and physical anthropology make possible an individual approach to the deceased, botany and archaeozoology together with the afore mentioned sciences contribute significantly to the local and regional influencing factors. With the present project, we are thus committing to a multilevel analytical and conceptual framework for a joint evaluation of the various datasets within the framework of three central levels of analysis: Funerary practices, biographies, and influencing factors on biographies and practices. The preliminary work conducted by the applicants shows the huge potential of the micro-region for such an undertaking. Based on large scale excavations since 2004 first archaeological and genetic analyses by the University of Jena and the Max-Planck-Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology Leipzig indicate differences between the three mortuary areas. However, the number of analyzed samples so-far is much too small to draw any definitive conclusions as approximately 2/3 of the ritually important features still await analysis. With the present project we aim at working on these desiderata and deliver a conclusive analysis of the development and topography of the diverse mortuary rituals, the displayed (i.e. ritual) versus “true” social position of the deceased, and the demographic, social, and new ritual influences on rituals and biographies.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants