Archaeologists Delia Hurka and Birgit Anzenberger have uncovered a five acre site in Freising, Bavaria which includes quite a few Bell Beaker deposits. The pits look like graves but appear to lack skeletal remains despite the presence of complete skeletons from later periods. Hurka and Anzenberger wonder if children were buried whose delicate remains faded into oblivion.
Another possibility could be that this is part of a growing list of Beaker deposits that look like graves but are actually something else ritual related, involving smashed pottery and divided or single article offerings. Rojo-Guerra et al, 2014 was one recent paper on this party pit phenomeon.
We'll see. I think one satisfying possibility is these are bothros pits which may explain the underworldly nature of the deposit. Whatever they are, they're everywhere. All throughout Europe.
I don't know if that is the case at Eching, but the brief description sounds like it has the prosphoric gift tendency (Prosphora- for the lack of an actual word, something that has been broken or divided in a small ritual gift of a piece of a whole that connects the living and the dead.)
A single piece of gold foil was found in one of the pits, I'll try and find a picture.
I'm beginning to think that if I went to Western Europe - anywhere in Western Europe - threw a coin over my head, and dug a hole where it landed, I'd find Beaker remains.
ReplyDeleteThe Greek use of the term which is extensively analyzed is discussed at https://books.openedition.org/pulg/501?lang=en
ReplyDeleteThis is a fascinating read! This in particular struck me concerning the Beaker "Bothros"
Delete"More significant is the use of the bothros in magic rituals for direct contact with a particular dead person. In Lucian, for example, a young man has a magician dig a bothros and perform rites to summon his dead father and to make it possible for the son to hear his father’s opinion of his girl-friend.190 In the Aethiopica of Heliodoros, a mother performs an elaborate ritual at a bothros on the battlefield at night, to bring her fallen son back from the dead, so that she can inquire about the fate of her other son.191 By digging the bothros and sacrificing into it, a dead person or the divinity could be summoned and called up to the world of the living."
Perhaps this is what we see in the "single bead" that is thrown in the pit. Allison Sheridan discussed the 'missing bead' or 'mismatched bead' phenomenon and theorized that a personal bead necklace came to have a sentimental value beyond decoration.
https://bellbeakerblogger.blogspot.com/2015/04/sentimentalism-in-jet-amber-necklaces.html
It is possible that these bothros, whether they are found, whether in cemeteries or alone, are attempts to summon the dead with libation and blood for opinions on important matters such as above, marriage prospects, feuds, other concerns. Wow. Thanks for sharing