H. Härke & A. Belinskij 2015. Causes and contexts of long-term ritual change: The Iron Age to early...

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DEATH AND CHANGING RITUALSFunction and Meaning in Ancient Funerary Practices

Edited by

J. Rasmus Brandt, Marina Prusac and Håkon Roland

Paperback Edition: ISBN 978-1-78297-639-4Digital Edition: ISBN 978-1-78297-640-0

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Studies in Funerary Archaeology: Vol. 7

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Brandt, J. Rasmus. Death and changing rituals : function and meaning in ancient funerary practices / edited by J. Rasmus Brandt, Häkon Roland and Marina Prusac. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-78297-639-4 1. Funeral rites and ceremonies, Ancient. I. Roland, Häkon. II. Prusac, Marina. III. Title. GT3170.B73 2014 393’.93093--dc23 2014032027

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Front cover: Military grave stele, of Quintus Metius. From Salona. Split, Archaeological museum. Courtesy of the museum. Photo: Tonci Šešer.The frieze in the upper band: Tarquinia, Tomba del Barone, rear wall. Courtesy of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali, Soprintendenza per i beni archeologici dell’Etruria Meridionale, Museo di Villa Giulia. Photo no. MAX 7068 c.Back cover: The body of John Williams being taken for staked burial at Cannon Street crossroads, London, in 1811. The Newgate Calendar, http: //www.exclassics.com/newgate/ngbibl.htm.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements vContributors viiIntroduction: Ritual, Change, and Funerary Practices ixJ. Rasmus Brandt

1. A Proper Burial. Some Thoughts on Changes in Mortuary Ritual and how Archaeology can begin to understand them 1 Liv Nilsson Stutz

2. Neolithic and Copper Age Mortuary Practices in the Italian Peninsula. Change of Meaning or Change of Medium? 17

Andrea Dolfini

3. Change and Continuity in Early Bronze Age Mortuary Rites: A Case Study from Northumberland 45 Chris Fowler

4. Causes and Contexts of Long-term Ritual Change: The Iron Age to Early Medieval Cemetery of Klin-Yar (North Caucasus, Russia) 93 Heinrich Härke & Andrej Belinskij

5. Passage to the Underworld. Continuity or Change in Etruscan Funerary Ideology and Practices (6th–2nd Centuries BC)? 105 J. Rasmus Brandt

6. “Whether by Decay or Fire consumed …”: Cremation in Hellenistic and Roman Asia Minor 185 Sven Ahrens

vContents

7. A ‘Civilised’ Death? The Interpretation of Provincial Roman Grave Good Assemblages 223 John Pearce

8. Friends, Foes and Hybrids: The Transformation of Burial Ritual in Roman Dalmatia 249 Marina Prusac

9. Commemorating the Dead in North Africa. Continuity and Change from the Second to the Fifth Century CE 269 Eric Rebillard

10. Churches and Graves of the Early Byzantine Period in Scythia Minor and Moesia Secunda: The Development of a Christian Topography at the Periphery of the Roman Empire 287 Irina Achim

11. Social Anxiety and the Re-emergence of Furnished Burial in Post Roman Albania 343 William Bowden

12. Changing Rituals and Reinventing Tradition: The burnt Viking Ship at Myklebostad, Western Norway 359 Terje Oestigaard 13. Transforming Medieval Beliefs. The Significance of Bodily Resurrection to Medieval Burial Rituals 379 Roberta Gilchrist

14. Changing Beliefs about the Dead Body in Post-Medieval Britain and Ireland 399 Sarah Tarlow

General Index 413

CAUSES AND CONTEXTS OF LONG-TERM RITUAL CHANGEThe Iron Age to Early Medieval Cemetery

of Klin-Yar (North Caucasus, Russia)

Heinrich Härke & Andrej Belinskij

The discussion of change tends to prioritise sudden, marked change over the gradual development and transformation of behaviour and institutions, but it is probably fair to say that the latter is far more common in human societies. At the site of Klin-Yar, it is possible to observe the evolution of grave construction and mortuary ritual across three cultural phases, from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Middle Ages. This evolution comprises continuous elements as well as observable changes and developments. Changing ideas about the afterlife and tensions between social norms and individual behaviour may have affected the changes. But the key factors behind the overall pattern of evolution appear to be a series of interlinked changes: immigration leading to economic change which, in turn, led to social change; the latter was, at the same time, affected by the wider geo-political context of the region. This case study highlights two points: (1) causes of ritual change may often be strongly interlinked, and it may therefore be misleading to look for a single obvious cause; and (2) marked changes in the wider contexts may not always be reflected in pronounced changes in mortuary ritual.

Keywords: Alans, burial ritual, Koban Culture, ritual change, Sarmatians

The archaeological study of change is one of the most fascinating areas of the discipline because it rests on one of its strengths: the long-term perspective which makes changes stand out more clearly than they would when observed within the context of a shorter period. But there are a number of problems associated with studying change. One is that we tend to think of ‘change’ in terms of sudden and marked change whereas most

94 Heinrich Härke & Andrej Belinskij

change in human societies tends to be slow, gradual and cumulative – something which is often more in the nature of evolution. In fact, changes over a long period appear more marked mainly because the long-term perspective has the effect of collapsing them into seemingly shorter and more pronounced events.

This, in turn, is linked to the second problem. Archaeologists are better at observing difference and studying variation, than at observing change and studying processes of transformation. The reasons for this are twofold, and they are rooted in the structure of the discipline and in the nature of the archaeological evidence. The discipline is split into specialisms which have traditionally been defined by chronology more than by any other factor, and specialists in the one or the other period feel uneasy transgressing into other periods because of their lack of familiarity with evidence and debates there. The consequence is that phases of change and transition between the chronological blocks tend to be studied from one side or the other, or not at all, but rarely as a whole. The fragmentary and incomplete nature of the archaeological evidence tends to exacerbate the problem. This evidence presents us with a series of isolated ‘snapshots’ of past situations rather than a complete ‘film’ of unfolding stories in the past. Thus, we infer processes of transformation from differences between the ‘snapshots’, and causes of change from contextual information. Even where the ‘snapshots’ are reasonably close to one another, the chronological resolution of our dating evidence will often make it difficult or even impossible to follow a transformation step by step; very often, it will be century by century, or if we are lucky, decade by decade.

Fig. 4.1. Site map of Klin-Yar, with location of excavations 1994–96 (drawn by M. Mathews, Reading).

954 Causes and Contexts of Long-Term Ritual Change

The specific subject of ritual change poses a third problem: to what extent can we separate, or even distinguish, ritual change from other types of change? Can we study ritual change on its own? In many societies, there appears to be a link between funerary ritual and the type of economy (pers. comm. Tony Walter, Bath). Processualists have postulated that social organisation determines the complexity of mortuary rites (Binford 1971), which implies that social change may, or should, entail ritual change. Political change has recently been the cause of ritual change in Russia where the collapse of the Soviet Union was followed by a massive return of orthodox ritual in worship and burial (Merridale 2000). And recent cases of migration in, or into, Europe have demonstrated that migrants often (though not always) bring their own styles of ritual with them, linking ritual change to population change (Jonker 1996).

Some of the issues discussed above will be explored in this paper which looks at a case of ritual change within a single cemetery site over the best part of two millennia, with a focus on processes of transformation and their causes. Particular attention will be paid to interrelated aspects of change in order to see how ritual change may be interlinked with other changes in society. This, in turn, may help to identify the causal factors at work in the transformational processes.

Klin-Yar: site and evidenceKlin-Yar is located in the chalk and sandstone hills of the Russian North Caucasus, outside the old spa town of Kislovodsk in the region of Stavropol. A narrow, steep-sided sandstone plateau (called Paravos, or ‘The Locomotive’) has produced settlement traces of Late Bronze/Early Iron Age (Koban Culture) and Early Medieval (Alanic) date. Further settlement areas of Koban and Alanic date are located on the upper slopes around the plateau. Extensive burial grounds with Koban, Sarmatian and Alanic graves occupy the lower slopes (Fig. 4.1). It is the presence of three cultural and chronological phases in the cemeteries which has made Klin-Yar a key site for regional archaeology, and it makes it an ideal case for the study of change.

Phase at Klin-Yar Designation Period/Absolute date1 Koban Culture Late BA/Early IA 10th–4th century BC2 Sarmatian Late IA/Roman IA 2nd century BC–4th/5th century AD3 Alanic Early Middle Ages 4th/5th–8th century AD

Excavations carried out before 1993 uncovered some 350 graves, most of them dating to the Late Bronze/Early Iron Age, but also about 100 Sarmatian and Alanic graves, providing one of the largest samples of undisturbed Alanic burials in the entire North Caucasus (the terms ‘Sarmatian’ and ‘Alanic’ are used here primarily as chronological, not as ethnic labels). Joint Anglo-Russian fieldwork in cemeteries III and IV undertaken by the Regional Heritage Unit ‘Nasledie’ and the University of Reading added another

52 graves, with more than 100 individuals (Härke & Belinsky 2000; 2008; Belinskij & Härke forthcoming). This new fieldwork also identified an elite plot of rich Late Sarmatian and Early Alanic catacombs. The full extent of the Klin-Yar cemeteries can currently only be guessed at, but it is probably somewhere between 1000 and 3000 graves. Cultural contacts shown in grave-goods are wide-ranging, from Central Asia to Mesopotamia and Byzantium. In the Alanic Period, a branch of the Silk Road is thought to have led past Klin-Yar to the mountain passes of the Caucasus.

In the first phase of the site, the Koban-Period inhabitants of Klin-Yar practised inhumation with grave-goods in rectangular grave pits (Fig. 4.2). These pits were regularly

Fig. 4.2. Plans of graves from the three phases represented in the Klin-Yar cemeteries: Koban Period (grave 362), Sarmatian (grave 365) and Alanic (grave 360) (drawn by M. Mathews, Reading).

cut, quite shallow, and sometimes stone-lined and/or covered with flagstones. Each grave contained a single body, deposited crouched on the side. Gender differences within the burial rite were marked. As a rule, males had been deposited on the right side, females on the left; this is part of a long-standing East European tradition reaching back to the Late Neolithic (Häusler 2003; Sofaer-Derevenskij 1997). There was a limited range of grave-goods which, again, show marked differences between the genders. Males were buried with weapons (usually a spearhead) and tools (knife and whetstone), females with dress and body ornaments (headdress, glass or amber beads, bronze pins). One male adult burial (skeletal sex determination checked and confirmed) with female grave-goods (large bronze pin and nine glass beads) was also unusual in the deposition of the body which had been bunched up in a corner of the grave, and in the placing of a pottery vessel underneath the bent left knee (grave 355) (Fig. 4.3); this may be one of the ‘shaman’ burials which have occasionally been suggested in cases of Koban-Period cemeteries (pers. comm. S. L. Dudarev, Armavir; Belinskij & Härke, forthcoming). The most frequent grave deposit, common to both genders, was a single pottery vessel; this was found with the majority of Koban burials at Klin-Yar. Wealth was indicated by more elaborate items within this range, such as a decorated axe in a male burial (grave 362) and bronze bracelets and a necklet in a female burial (grave 366). Previous excavations had produced some more exotic items, including Assyrian helmets and Scythian artefacts, highlighting that Klin-Yar belongs to the contact zone between the steppes to the north, and developed civilisations to the south, of the Caucasus mountains.

In the second (Sarmatian) phase, the local burial rite was characterised by inhumation in a small underground chamber (catacomb), usually with the body extended on the back and provided with some grave-goods (Fig. 4.2). The chamber was accessed by a pit or a short corridor (dromos) which was in most cases aligned east–west; in a few cases, the ritual deposition of a horse ‘skin’ (head-and-hooves) was observed on or in the dromos. The entrance to the chamber from the dromos was always blocked with large stones. Most Sarmatian chambers contained only a single body, and many double burials were constructed by linking single-burial chambers with a short dromos. In some cases of Late Sarmatian catacombs, two bodies had been buried in the same chamber. In contrast to the preceding period, gender was signalled now only through grave-goods: some males had been buried with weapons, many females with dress ornaments (earrings, beads) and a mirror; pottery vessels and horse sacrifice were gender-neutral depositions. Within the narrow range of grave-goods, wealth indicators were few and unspectacular; they included an iron long sword for males (e.g. grave 365), and gold ornaments for females (e.g. grave 379). The most notable feature of the Sarmatian burial rite at this site was variation from grave to grave, and an absence of standardisation.

The Alanic ritual in the third phase was similar to the Sarmatian, but more elaborate. The standard burial rite continued to be dressed inhumation, with an increased range and quantity of grave-goods. The catacombs were larger and deeper now and occasionally had additional features such as pits or niches; dromoi were longer and predominantly orientated around north–south, with the entrance at the northern end blocked with

Fig. 4.3. Photograph of the possible ‘shaman’ burial in Koban grave 355 (photo H. Härke).

Fig. 4.4. Plan of horse ‘skin’ deposition 1/1995 next to the dromos of Alanic catacomb 357 (drawn by M. Mathews, Reading).

Dromos 357

Fig. 4.5. Skeleton of an adolescent (grave 385), a possible human sacrifice in the topsoil above the dromos of Late Sarmatian catacomb 386 (photo H. Härke).

large stones (Fig. 4.2). In the majority of cases, Alanic catacombs contained more than one body, and occasionally as many as four. There is clear evidence of re-opening of chambers and later deposition of bodies and grave-goods, suggesting that the catacombs were used as family or kin group vaults. This is highlighted by cases of large catacombs with single bodies where space had been left for later depositions (e.g. in grave 371). Sacrificial depositions in or on the dromos became more frequent and varied in the Alanic phase, frequently including pottery, less often weapons or parts of horse harness.

Gender associations of Alanic grave-goods are less easy to identify because of multiple burials and mixed inventories in the chambers, but items found on the bodies indicate that grave-goods were gendered along Sarmatian lines: males had weapons, and boot and belt fittings, while females had been buried with dress ornaments and textile bags. There was, however, some overlap, with a single earring found in the cases of a couple of men, and a large knife or short sword found next to, at least, one woman. Pottery, wooden household items and horse harness were found in the head and foot ends of chambers, possibly implying that they were gender-neutral objects. The most conspicuous indicator of wealth was the sacrificial deposit of an entire horse in the dromos; these cases were concentrated in the elite plot. Glass vessels, bronze cauldrons and Byzantine coins (of late sixth/early seventh century date) were found only in the richest graves at Klin-Yar (e.g. grave 360).

In addition to the graves, there were some ritual features in the cemetery which were not always clearly associated with particular graves; virtually all of them appear to be of Sarmatian or Alanic date. One was a dromos without a chamber, but with a horse ‘skin’ deposition on top; this may have been intended as a cenotaph. Three horse ‘skin’ depositions between the graves and a separate horse burial without a human body (grave 367) suggest the conduct of post-burial ritual in cemetery III (Fig. 4.4). The most intriguing of these ritual features was the skeleton of an adolescent (grave 385) deposited in contorted position above the backfilled dromos of a Late Sarmatian catacomb (grave 386) (Fig. 4.5). This may well have been a human sacrifice although such cases are extremely rare in other Sarmatian and Alanic cemeteries of the region.

Discussion: ritual change at Klin-YarThere are marked changes as well as clear continuities in the mortuary ritual at Klin-Yar. Features found across all three phases, over some two millennia, are inhumation rite and grave-goods custom. While, from an archaeological perspective, these are profound continuities, the list of observable changes is considerably longer.

First, there was a development from Koban grave pits (phase 1) to Sarmatian/Alanic underground chambers (catacombs; phases 2 and 3). This coincided with a shift from single burial (phase 1) to multiple burial, first in the shape of linked single-burial chambers (phase 2), then with several bodies in one chamber (from late in phase 2, and throughout phase 3). Consecutive double burial, in turn, meant continued use and re-use of burial chambers, possibly as family or kinship vaults (from late in phase 2, and throughout phase 3). Parallel to these three developments and innovations, it is possible to observe, across all phases, an increasing complexity of funerary ritual in graves until it reached a peak in the rich Alanic catacombs (phase 3). With the sacrificial depositions between the graves, we may also see the appearance of commemorative ritual at this site (from phase 2 or 3).

Perhaps the most intriguing change, though, was a ‘pendulum’ change in the overall ritual package from standardisation (phase 1, Koban Culture) to variety (phase 2, Sarmatian) and back to standardisation (phase 3, Alanic). Like all the other changes, this seems to have been a slow and gradual process, in each case over decades or even centuries, with more marked transitions from phase 1 to 2, and more gradual, incremental developments from phase 2 to 3.

The key question, as with all processes of change and transformation, relates to the reasons and causes of the processes. The following discussion will attempt a deductive approach, looking at the possible causes of change, and then considering which of the observed changes might be explained by them. This will include factors suggested by the editors of the present volume, as well as other factors which may be relevant in late prehistoric and early historic processes of change.

Mortuary ritual is often thought to be determined by ideas about cosmology and the afterlife; changing ideas should, therefore, affect the shape (or perhaps just the

meaning?) of ritual. Such change might well explain the abandonment of the crouched body position in Koban graves which is so strikingly reminiscent of the foetal position, but is also a sleeping position. Eschatological change may also be a factor in the appearance of burial chambers which could be thought of as ‘underground houses’. The inhabitants of North Ossetia, generally accepted as the direct descendants of the Alans of the North Caucasus and living a couple of hundred kilometres to the east of Klin-Yar, put small brick models of houses into their graves (Kalojev 2004). However, that may be a modern innovation because the religion of Iranian nomads (including Sarmatians and Alans) is generally thought to be linked to fire and the sun (Frye 1962), not to houses and underground spaces. The disposal of the dead in rural Iran today is by exposure at designated places and on purpose-built platforms (seen at Yazd in 2004; pers. comm. Hubertus Härke, Vaasa).

Personal preferences are always likely to have some impact on funerals, and the tension between social norms and individual behaviour is typical of funerary ritual in all societies (pers. comm. Tony Walter, Bath). This tension could explain the changing patterns of standardisation versus variety (the ‘pendulum’ change) which can be observed at Klin-Yar. Perhaps, Sarmatians were greater individualists than Koban people and Alans, or to put it another way, the standardising populations before and after the Sarmatians had a tighter social control.

At Klin-Yar, population change appears to be closely linked to ritual change. The skeletal evidence suggests that the Sarmatians at this site are likely to be immigrants from the southern Urals (possibly a male-only immigration) who mixed with the native Koban population (Belinskij & Härke forthcoming). The Alans, too, were new arrivals in the region, introducing new male and female phenotypes; there are differences in the stable isotope patterns of the Alanic populations buried in cemeteries III and IV, respectively, suggesting the existence among the local Alans of, at least, two sub-groups of possibly different origins (Belinskij & Härke forthcoming). Interestingly, though, the limited Sarmatian immigration led to a more marked change in burial ritual than the apparently more extensive Alanic influx which was followed by gradual change and a development of existing ritual themes. The presence of Alanic sub-groups might help to explain subtle differences in grave construction, grave-goods, and funerary ritual between cemeteries III and IV as well as their separate locations on either side of the rock formation.

Economic change was associated with the population change, and the former may well have been the primary factor of change. The native Koban people were agriculturalists while the biological evidence of the Sarmatians suggests the lifestyle of horse nomads and the diet of livestock breeders (Belinskij & Härke forthcoming). In the Alanic Period, the economy appears to have been mixed, including agriculture and herding. It is probably significant that settlements of Koban and Alanic date have been found in the vicinity of the Klin-Yar cemeteries, but none of Sarmatian date. An a priori observation would be that the two sedentary populations (Koban and Alanic) had a more standardised ritual than the nomadic population of the intervening Sarmatian Period.

This may be as significant as the fact that a ritual emphasis on horse sacrifice and horse burial appeared with the transition from Koban agriculturalists to Sarmatian nomads. With the next economic change, from the Sarmatian livestock economy to the mixed economy of the Alans (but starting in the Late Sarmatian Period), we see the emergence of family or kin group vaults and of commemorative ritual in the cemeteries. Again, this link is probably significant because agricultural societies tend to emphasise family links because these define land ownership and give access to land. A final economic factor involved in ritual changes at Klin-Yar may be the Early Medieval branch of the Silk Road which ran along the North Caucasus, and passed through the Kislovodsk Basin in the seventh century AD (Ierusalimskaya 1992). This could have contributed to the exceptional burial wealth found at Klin-Yar in the first half of the seventh century.

Economic factors seem to have engendered social change, with a noticeably greater social differentiation in the Alanic Period (phase 3 at Klin-Yar). This is particularly visible in the elite plot of cemetery III which boasts a concentration of wealth indicators: 14 horse and horse ‘skin’ depositions, three bronze cauldrons, four glass vessels, as well as the most elaborate underground architecture and the largest burial chambers at the site (Fig. 4.6). Greater social hierarchy was expressed in a more complex, but at the same time more standardised, burial ritual, and possibly in human sacrifice (grave 385, cf. above). Gender was symbolised to some extent in the ritual of all three phases at Klin-Yar (Härke 2000), but least of all (only by the few grave-goods) in the second, Sarmatian phase. This may be linked to social patterns of Iranian-speaking nomads, which are also signalled by the discovery of ‘amazon’ burials elsewhere in Scythian and Sarmatian contexts (Guliaev 2003).

Political change is often associated with economic and social change, be it as cause or consequence. Some grave-goods in rich Alanic catacombs, such as Byzantine coins (in graves 341 and 363) and an Iranian glass vessel (in grave 360), are a clear reflection of the position of the North Caucasus Alans between the Byzantine and Iranian regional powers, and of the Alanic military service for both of them at various times (Savenko, in Belinskij & Härke forthcoming). Finally, the changing patterns of standardisation and variation in mortuary ritual across the three phases at Klin-Yar may well reflect differences between settled societies in the process of early state formation (perhaps in the Koban Period, and most likely in the Alanic), on the one hand, and nomadic immigrants (Sarmatians), on the other.

Concluding remarks Many of the possible explanations discussed above make eminent sense in explaining ritual change at Klin-Yar and elsewhere, but the key point surely is that the possible causal factors are all strongly interlinked: immigration brought in new populations with different economies and possibly with a new religion; economic change led to social change; and changes in the wider political context reinforced social and economic change. This interlinkage is probably in the nature of mortuary ritual which itself

Fig. 4.6. Analytical plan of the Sarmatian–Alanic elite plot in cemetery III of Klin-Yar (drawn by M. Mathews, Reading).

is complex and reflects a multitude of very different aspects, including ideas about afterlife and pollution, personal factors such as individual biographies and mourners’ emotions, kinship and family links as well as social relations, status, and access to positions and land.

Sometimes even a short-term, dramatic change of behaviour and attitude in the encounter with death may not have an obvious single cause. The public mourning of Princess Diana in Britain, a country not previously known for public hysteria on such occasions, is a case in point: sociologists of death are still debating the reasons for this entirely new phenomenon which surprised everyone at the time, and nobody more so than the academic specialists (Walter 1999). If this focused look at the development of burial ritual at a single site over a long period of time tells us anything, it is probably that we should not be looking for single causes of gradual change, and perhaps not even of marked change, in mortuary behaviour.

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