Grave goods

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
The gilded throne of Pharaoh Tutankhamun is but one of the treasures found within his tomb.

Grave goods, in

body
.

They are usually personal possessions, supplies to smooth the deceased's journey into an

suttee
.)

Where grave goods appear,

Egyptian tombs
that was not thoroughly looted in ancient times.

Grave goods can be regarded as a

retainer sacrifice, where servants or wives of a deceased chieftain are interred with the body.[9] As the inclusion of expensive grave goods and of slaves or retainers became a sign of high status in the Bronze Age, the prohibitive cost led to the development of "fake" grave goods, where artwork meant to depict grave goods or retainers is produced for the burial and deposited in the grave in place of the actual sacrifice.[10]

History

Model of the warrior's burial 'Hamburg-Marmstorf Grave No. 216', dating to circa 50 A.D., Hamburg-Marmstorf, Hamburg, Germany. At the upper edge are turf and the plough horizon. Below are the burial in a ceramic urn and beneath that the grave goods.

There are disputed claims of

Upper Palaeolithic
sites.

Burials that include intentional artifacts come much later. There is evidence of Egyptians (of the Badarian culture) being buried with grave goods very early in their prehistory. Examples of these items include pots, shells, combs, stone vessels, animal figurines, and slate palettes.[11][12]

Beads made of basalt deposited in graves in the Fertile Crescent date to the end of the Upper Paleolithic, beginning in about the 12th to 11th millennium BC.[13]

The distribution of grave goods are a potential indicator of the

chieftain" graves (barrows), indicating social stratification.[14] It is also possible that burial goods indicate a level of concern and consciousness in regard to an afterlife and related sense of spirituality. For example, when they buried pharaohs in ancient Egypt, they buried common house hold items, food, vehicles, etc. so they could have a comfortable afterlife.[15]

Famous grave sites

5th Dynasty (Old Kingdom), 2435–2305 BC. Excavations by Ernesto Schiaparelli
, 1911. Egyptian Museum, Turin, S. 14051–14055

The expression of social status in rich graves is taken to extremes in the royal graves of the Bronze Age. In the

pyramids and the royal graves in the Valley of the Kings are among the most elaborate burials in human history. This trend is continued into the Iron Age. An example of an extremely rich royal grave of the Iron Age is the Terracotta Army of Qin Shi Huang.[16]

In the sphere of the

Frankish Empire (7th century), the situation may be more complicated.[17]
In the Christian Middle Ages, high-status graves are marked on the exterior, with tomb effigies or expensive tomb stones and still had certain grave goods such as accessories and textiles.[18]

The practice of placing grave goods with the dead body has thus an uninterrupted history beginning in the Upper Paleolithic, if not the Middle Paleolithic. Many people would assume that the introduction of Christianity led to the absence of grave goods, however, there were many different Christian tombs that were shown to still have grave goods such as jewelry.[18][19]

Role in archaeology

Copper Age grave group including a stone wristguard, copper dagger and bone belt fitting found at Sittingbourne

The importance of grave goods, from the simple behavioral and technical to the metaphysical, in archaeology cannot be overestimated. Because of their almost ubiquitous presence throughout the world and throughout prehistory, in many cases the excavation of every-day items placed in burials is the main source of such artifacts in a given prehistoric culture. However, care must be taken to avoid naïve interpretation of grave goods as an objective sample of artifacts in use in a culture. Because of their ritual context, grave goods may represent a special class of artifacts, in some instances produced especially for burial. Artwork produced for the burial itself is known as funerary art, while grave goods in the narrow sense are items produced for actual use that are placed in the grave, but in practice the two categories overlap.

Grave goods in Bronze Age and Iron Age cemeteries are a good indicator of relative social status; these wealthier graves may have included earrings, necklaces, and exotic foreign materials such as amber. Some even had the spectacular sighting of gold as their grave goods which contrasted from the less wealthy graves which were more deficient.[20] Also, in a 2001 study on an

Iron Age cemetery in Pontecagnano Faiano, Italy, a correlation was found between the quality of grave goods and Forensic indicators on the skeletons, showing that skeletons in wealthy tombs tended to show substantially less evidence of biological stress during adulthood, with fewer broken bones or signs of hard labor.[21]

Along with social status, grave goods also shed light on the societal norms with regards to sex. Common binary societies had women perform duties such as mothering, processing activities, cooking, etc. and men perform duties such as hunting and fighting. These societies would bury their women with jewelry and their men with axes. The Durankulak cemetery on the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast had findings to match this society structure.[22] There are societies where the roles are switched. The Sauromatian society's women were highly respected warriors. Their graves were full of weapons and horse trappings.[23] When it was difficult to determine sex of the individual due to bone decay, the grave goods became the determining factor.

See also

References

  1. )
  2. ^ "Grave Goods in Ancient Egypt". World History Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2020-10-02.
  3. ^ hooverre (2014-02-06). "Ancient Egyptian Grave Goods". Rise of Civilization. Archived from the original on 2021-01-18. Retrieved 2020-10-02.
  4. ^ . Retrieved 11 April 2023.
  5. ); several examples collected
  6. ^ "All Souls' Day – Saints & Angels". Catholic Online. Retrieved 2020-10-14.
  7. ^ "Top 10 things to know about the Day of the Dead". Travel. 2017-10-26. Archived from the original on July 14, 2017. Retrieved 2020-10-14.
  8. ^ "What's the Origin of Hell Money?". South China Morning Post. 2015-09-03. Retrieved 2020-10-14.
  9. ^ "Human Sacrifice | The Ancient Egypt Site". www.ancient-egypt.org. Retrieved 2020-10-14.
  10. ^ "BBC – History – Ancient History in depth: Hidden Treasure Fact Files". www.bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 2020-10-14.
  11. ^ "Artifacts: Grave Goods, Mummification, Online Exhibits, Exhibits, Spurlock Museum, U of I". www.spurlock.illinois.edu. Retrieved 2020-11-12.
  12. ^ Smith, Homer W. (2015) [1952]. Man and His Gods. p. 16.
  13. ^ The Earliest Beads, muma.org[clarification needed]
  14. , p. 268.
  15. ^ "Mummy History". history.com. Retrieved 2020-11-12.
  16. ^ Lubow, Arthur. "Terra Cotta Soldiers on the March". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved 2020-10-14.
  17. ^ .
  18. .
  19. ^ "BBC – History – Ancient History in depth: Hidden Treasure Fact Files". www.bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 2020-11-12.
  20. PMID 11424073
    .
  21. .
  22. .

Further reading

External links