Memory, Landscape & Mortuary Practice

Abstract

Stone Age people handled their dead in various ways. From the Late Mesolithic period onwards, the deceased were also buried in formal cemeteries, and according to radiocarbon dates, the cemeteries were used for long periods and occasionally reused after a hiatus of several hundred years. The tradition of continuous burials indicates that the cemeteries were not only static containers of the dead but also important places for Stone Age communities, which were often established in potent places and marked by landscape features that might have had a strong association with death. The paper explores the tradition of burials in cemeteries exemplified through Jönsas Stone Age cemetery in southern Finland. Here the natural topography, along with memories of practices conducted at the site in the past, played a significant role in the Stone Age mortuary practices, also resulting in the ritual reuse of the cemetery by the Neolithic Corded Ware Culture.

A large fifth-millennium BC cemetery in the subarctic north of the Baltic Sea?

“…At Jönsas, a total of 27 burials span from the Late Mesolithic (sixth–seventh millennium BC) to the early third millennium BC (e.g. Ahola 2017); excavations at Vaateranta have identified up to 22 burials from the fourth millennium BC (Katiskoski 2004). The interpretation of both sites as cemeteries rests principally on pit morphology and the shapes of red ochre deposits, as well as the human dental remains from eight burials at Vaateranta (Katiskoski 2004; Ahola et al .…”

“…The interpretation of both sites as cemeteries rests principally on pit morphology and the shapes of red ochre deposits, as well as the human dental remains from eight burials at Vaateranta (Katiskoski 2004; Ahola et al . 2016).…”

Creating a Sense of Belonging: Religion and Migration in the Context of the 3rdMillennium BC Corded Ware Complex in the Eastern and Northern Baltic Sea Region

“…15-16). Even in European prehistory, important burial sites have often been either continuously in use for millennia or were reused after a considerable hiatus of several hundred years (e.g., Wessman 2010, Williams 2013, Ahola 2017b. For example, the people connected with the Yamnaya in south-eastern Europe occasionally made new internments in their burial mounds (Heyd 2011).…”

“…Interestingly, recent studies have shown that groups connected with the CWC also reused older burial monuments with new burials (e.g., Holtorf 1998, Malmer 2002, Ebbesen 2008, Bourgeois 2013, Jeunesse 2014, Tunia and Włodarczak et al 2016, Ahola 2017b, Malmström et al 2019. Although some of the reused burial sites have been identified as previous CWC graves (e.g., Tunia and Włodarczak 2016, p. 224), considerably older monuments were also chosen as burial locations.…”

“…7000-3000 cal BC, Meadows et al 2018) have been unearthed from this cemetery, the site was clearly an important communal place for the hunter-gatherer groups of the region (Nilsson Stutz et al 2013). Accordingly, even if the cemetery is not a monumental burial site as such, its location on an island and its long-term use over several millennia might nevertheless have made it monumental in the minds of the people (Ahola 2017b). According to the radiocarbon data available (Meadows et al 2018), the Zvejnieki burials associated with the CWC were added to the hunter-gatherer cemetery a few hundred years after the hunter-gatherer groups had ceased to use the place as a cemetery.…”