Defining residential Graves

Abstract

Since prehistoric times, the use of graves built within private houses has been a common burial custom of both Old and New World societies. Although efforts have been made by scholars to interpret the role these graves had in constructing the social, cultural and economic organization of ancient societies, there has been no attempt to clearly define the use of basic terminology, such as ‘intramural’, for this category of funerary depositions.The paper here presented will thus aim at defining a more coherent typology of ‘residential graves’ (i.e., a built tomb embedded within a dwelling and contemporary with it) and distinguish it from other types of funerary depositions that were part of the settlement (i.e. cists, pits, pithoi), but that are difficult to connect with the collective memory of the community. Such an epistemological exercise will facilitate interpretations carried out by scholars interested in mortuary archaeology and will also define the socio-economic value of residential graves as part of the construction of the familial memory. Moreover, to further elucidate the definition of residential graves I will also present a specific case study (i.e., Titriş Höyük during the late IIIrd millennium BC) in which the use of such funerary depositions was pivotal for framing the emergence of a new social class.