Re: Indicia of Danubian Origins

"tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
<I wonder how Kossina or anyone else could have claimed inhumation as sign of
Scandinavian origin given that that custom was introduced (most likely by
invasion from the South, says Albrectsen) to Scandinavia in the period 50 BCE
- 0, before which time cremation was used exclusively? But it would fit in
nicely with that elite in Scandinavia trying to reopen the trade routes to
their old homes?>

Kossina's approach, and the one that characterized the ethnographically
oriented archaeology of the time (and to which the British school was a
reaction), was to look first for adjacency and cultural coherence.
Inhumation, of course, was practiced by everyone from Scythians to Celts in
the south. But because the other markers were thought to be from
Scandinavia, the dogma of the time was that inhumation also had to be from
there.

There's no reason to think that inhumation - especially Wielbark-style
inhumation, e.g., w/o weapons,etc. - came from identifiable Germanic speakers.
There were a lot of similar practices throughout southern Europe. An
interesting question is whether weapons were broken or not included simply to
prevent grave-robbing. This would also explain the heavy stones used to
cobble some Wielbark graves.

It seems that there isn't any rhyme or reason to whether a Wielbark grave
will be cremation or inhumation. I've never seen it correlated to stone
circles or barrows. The practice seems to have been independent of anything
that might have been "ethnic" in those graveyards.

S. Long

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