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Change Of Burial

During the late bronze age a change occured in the low countries on how people buried their dead. Normally, people were buried in burial mounds. Some of these mounds are still visible today in several countries. However only the elite were buried in such mounds, about 95% of the population were buried in either ditches or cremated.

We actually have very little evidence or remains of the buried common people. In fact on a dig of a bronze age settlement where I was present in Bovenkarspel, the Netherlands, I found a piece of a human hip bone which was lying in a ditch.

The first small change already occured during the middle bronze age, no longer were only the elite placed in these burial mounds but whole families. Sometimes this also included cattle, especially in West-Frisia cattle was seen as a measure of wealth.

During the late bronze age and early iron age, people started to cremate their dead and and placed them in urns on urn fields. This change happened first in the South and slowly spread towards the North between 1100-12BC. But how exactly did such a burial process happen?

The body was placed on a wooden pile and set on fire. After the body was burned, several options were available depending on the time area and the region. These were the options:

1) A burned skeleton grave in which a human-sized grave was dug and the remains of the cremated person was placed inside this grave. 2) An urn grave. The ashes/remains of the dead were placed inside an urn and buried in a small hole in the ground. 3) Fire grave. The collected ashes/remains were thrown in a small hole, the size of that of an urn grave. 4) Fire mound. The remains were left behind on the spot the body was burned and a burial mound was erected on top of it.

Sometimes urns of these urn graves were placed inside a wooden structure, a hall of the dead. Sometimes just one hall for just one dead and other times multiple urns inside one hall. This was a habit mainly practiced by the Eastern Germanic people. Our trusty Cees is an exception however, he got buried in his own personal hall of the dead despite not being cremated. Quite an unusual burial style for West-Frisia.

Research from cremated graves show that the people used locally cut wood for the funeral piles but it is uncertain if grave gifts were burned along on the pile during the bronze age. We know this did happen during the iron age because most of the cremated remains belonged to objects not human beings.

I personally find it a shame that they started to burn their dead because we now have very little objects, clothing and bodies from the iron age compared to the bronze age.

Here are photos of: Danish burial mounds Depiction of an urn field Several ways of cremation An Anglo-Saxon burial urn Cees’ hall of the dead Depiction of an Urn burial by an unknown artist

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