Katharina Becker is a previous member of the School of Archaeology at UCD, she is best
known for her ground-breaking research as part of the “Iron Age Ireland: Finding an Invisible People” project. She is now
based at the University of Bradford where she pursues her work on the Irish
Iron Age, notably taking part in a new research project: “The Irish Iron Age: Beyond Celts and Romans”.
In her
seminar, Dr. Becker talked about the practice of cremation in the late prehistoric
period in Ireland, and more specifically the occurrence of what has
traditionally been labelled “token cremations” by archaeologists. She however
challenged such a concept and argued that these small deposits of cremated
human bone are neither “token” nor “burials”. Such an interpretation has been
influenced by our own ideas about the need for a formal burial of the body and
its part. Her talk highlighted the complexity of the archaeological record for
the period and its potential to provide insights into later prehistoric
mortuary practices and religious beliefs.
During the
later prehistoric period, the rite of cremation was dominant, but inhumations
are also found, and this before the introduction of Christian rites from the
Roman Empire. A modern cremation would produce between 1227 and 3001g of cremated bones for an adult.
Archaeologically however, this is rarely the case. For a start, one must think
of the efficiency of a modern crematorium as opposed to a funeral pyre. Then,
there is the phase of recovering the bones from the pyre remains: a complete
recovery would be very hard indeed. So it is common to find cremations with a
quantity of bone far inferior to the data collected from modern cremations. The
term “token burials” has – until now - been applied to interred deposits of
very small quantity of cremated remains.
In her
lecture however, Dr. Becker showed that on several instances, there seems to be
a clear spatial relationship between the site of these “token cremations” and
that of structures that can be interpreted as funerary pyres. This is the case
at Rathgall, Co. Wicklow and Newford, Co. Galway. Such sites were in use over a
period of time and it is likely that the pyre location was re-used for
successive cremations. In this case, “token burials” of cremated remains in the
vicinities of these pyres could very well be evidence for the deposition of
residual material that was “cleaned out” of the pyre between its different
uses. In this sense, it is neither token nor burial.
This does
not mean however, that these deposits were meaningless: the very fact that the
remains were interred speaks of their enduring significance in the eyes of the
community who buried them. In the Iron Age, ring ditches seem to have been the
focus for these practices. Such structures framed and delineated a special
place, a place of transformation where the burial rites took place. The ditch
itself became the preferred place for the deposition of charred remains,
marking their significance as part of these rites.
In
conclusion, it can be said that the concept of token burials draws , among other
things, on anthropological parallels and on the Classical world (pars pro toto depositions). It belongs
to a framework of thought in which the intactness and special treatment of human
remains is of paramount importance. How far can this concept be applied to the
archaeological record? In the case of late prehistoric Ireland, this record is
far more complex than previously thought. Not only have the “invisible people”
become visible, but we can now see that there were more fundamental changes in
mortuary practices than previously thought, changes which go hand in hand with
shifts in depositional practices in general.
By Alexandra
Guglielmi
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