"tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
<<Did the Celts cremate? Or should one connect that custom with the
hypothetical "Nordwestblock" language between Celtic and Germanic?>>
It's hard to come to conclusions about the significance of early cremation
burials, even if one does have some idea of its history.
Cremation and various forms of inhumation consistently appear together in
many locations in Europe. Much has been made of the two appearing together
with no apparent rhyme or reason in Wielbark, but it seems the same is true
of many earlier Halstatt sites. If cremation burial is consistently
associated with any early "material culture" it is probably bronze age
Urnfield sites, which appears to have originated in the south of modern
Poland, spread and then fragmented. (I do not know when cremation burials
made their earliest appearances in the east or in south Asia. Maybe someone
on the list can help out here.)
However, cremation burials actually makes a partial appearance in Europe and
Anatolia a good deal earlier than Urnfield. One of those places is Tripolye
near the Danube, where inhumation and cremation graves appear together.
Here's a note from an interesting survey of funeral practices that you can
find on the web:
"Outre l’attestation à Gedikli dans l’extrême sud-est anatolien,
l’incinération est attestée en Europe centrale et balkanique au IIIe
millénaire, mais de façon très sporadique (à chaque fois l’inhumation reste
largement majoritaire). Dans le sud de la Russie, dans la phase récente de la
culture de Tripolye, l’incinération est également attestée pour une période à
peu près contemporaine à son apparition en Anatolie." - L'EVOLUTION DES
PRATIQUES FUNERAIRES SUR LE PLATEAU ANATOLIEN, by Yannis Deliyannis
(
http://membres.lycos.fr/hatti/articles/hlk_2_2.html)
If we are to associate cremation burials with any kind of pastoral sky-god or
fire "worship" (I'm not saying we should), then perhaps that ethos may have
originated on the Danube. Again I do not know about earlier dates for
cremation burials elsewhere.)
(Very interesting in this piece is also the plausible connection of a large
number of early and rich supine inhumation graves in central Anatolia with a
large influx of Assyrian merchants, arriving while the region was still
fragmented in many local cultural units. This is also the location of
arguably our first record of IE languages.)
Of course what cremation burial represented when it first appeared is
anyone's guess, since it doesn't appaer to correlate with other particular
differences observable by archaeology in these early cultures. It appears
that it cannot always be associated with "religious' motives or "ethnic"
differences - the paper above mentions a lower social status as a possible
correlate, though that is not obvious either. It should also be pointed out
that we seem to have attestation (e.g., in the Illiad) that not all
cremations may have resulted in burials. I would also think that the real
meaning of cremation burials in Denmark is not at all clear.
Steve Long