Dieuws stek

My phd-research:

Grafconstructies, grafveldstructuur en de rituele handelingen rond het graf: een archeologische benadering van de omgang met de dood en de doden in de Vroege Middeleeuwen in de Maasvallei. (dutch title)

Death and the subsequent cremation and/or burial of the dead are among the most impactful events in the human existence. The material culture found in early medieval burials and cemeteries  is an impressively rich source to archaeologists. Most of the attention has been given to the objects found in the graves, like swords, beltsets, necklaces, glass and earthenware vessels and many other objects made of bronze, iron, silver and gold. It are these finds that have inspired long lived cemetery research themes, like etnicity, social status and symbolism. The last decades have seen a shift towards the study of human skeletal remains, enabling gender, age categories, subsistence and migration to be taken into account.

But a grave is more than the burials gifts and skeletal remains within. It is a feature, a hole dug into the ground, where a variety of containers surrounding the body and the burial gifts, like shrouds, coffins, chambers, stone built structures or sarcophagi, combinations of these or even nothing at all. This architecture of the grave and the structure of the cemetery can give very specific insights into the choices, acts and practices, thoughts and meanings surrounding the burial. The way the body was handled, protected, contained, connected to other contexts and/or tranformed may be accessed through these grave structures. In my research an attempt will be made to formulate a conceptual framework for grave structures, including a typology of grave containers. With the spatial analasis of a number of early medieval cemeteries in and around the middle Meuse Valley I will show the great variability that can be uncovered, adding new meaning to existing ideas about early medieval cemetery research, and adding new ideas to approach cemetery research.

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