Rethinking Collective Burial in Mediterranean Caves: Middle Bronze Age Grotta Regina Margherita, Central Italy

ABSTRACT Drawing on the results of new multi-method research in Grotta Regina Margherita—the largest known Middle Bronze Age mortuary cave in west-central Italy (ca. 1650–1450 b.c.)—this article helps to replace the generic idea of “collective burial” with a more precise understanding of how the bodies of the deceased were transformed into potent social, symbolic, and sensuous resources housed in caves. It contextualizes this process within a nuanced understanding of settlement and subsistence practices, in which relatively short-lived and small-scale agricultural communities extended inland to the edge of the Apennine Mountains, ritually demarcating mortuary assemblages in caves in the process.

[1]  Jo Day.  Archaeology of the Senses , 2021, Anthropology.

[2]  M. Benvenuti,et al.  Settlement, space organization and land-use of a small Middle Bronze Age community of central Italy. The case study of Gorgo del Ciliegio (Arezzo-Tuscany) , 2020 .

[3]  Joanna Brück.  Personifying Prehistory , 2019 .

[4]  A. Cardarelli,et al.  Flows of people in villages and large centres in Bronze Age Italy through strontium and oxygen isotopes , 2019, PloS one.

[5]  J. Shand.  The Grave , 2018, The Unstill Ones.

[6]  W. Patterson,et al.  A Meeting in the Forest: Hunters and Farmers at the Coneybury ‘Anomaly’, Wiltshire , 2018, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society.

[7]  C. Bronk Ramsey,et al.  Assembling the Dead, Gathering the Living: Radiocarbon Dating and Bayesian Modelling for Copper Age Valencina de la Concepción (Seville, Spain) , 2018, Journal of World Prehistory.

[8]  A. Schmitt,et al.  What defines a Collective Grave , 2018 .

[9]  M. Rolfo,et al.  How to Detect Ritual in Middle Bronze Age Italy? A Contextual Approach at Pastena Cave , 2018, Between Worlds.

[10]  R. Skeates,et al.  Caves as Vibrant Places: A Theoretical Manifesto , 2018, Between Worlds.

[11]  W. D. Neef.  Context in grotten, grotten in context : experimenteel geofysisch onderzoek in vier grotten in Centraal-Italië , 2017 .

[12]  R. Boaventura,et al.  Current Approaches to Collective Burials in the Late European Prehistory , 2017 .

[13]  E. Usai,et al.  Diet and ritual in the western Mediterranean Copper Age: human and animal stable isotopes from the collective burial at S. Caterina di Pittinuri (Sardinia, ltaly) , 2017 .

[14]  John Robb,et al.  Funerary taphonomy: An overview of goals and methods , 2016 .

[15]  J. Robb.  What can we really say about skeletal part representation, MNI and funerary ritual? A simulation approach , 2016 .

[16]  M. Rolfo,et al.  Reassessing human occupation patterns in the inner central Apennines in prehistory: The case-study of Grotta Mora Cavorso , 2016 .

[17]  Francisca Alves Cardoso,et al.  The Bom Santo Cave (Lisbon, Portugal): Catchment, Diet, and Patterns of Mobility of a Middle Neolithic Population , 2016, European Journal of Archaeology.

[18]  K. Baustian,et al.  Theoretical Approaches to Analysis and Interpretation of Commingled Human Remains , 2016 .

[19]  C. Knüsel,et al.  Cleaning the dead: Neolithic ritual processing of human bone at Scaloria Cave, Italy , 2015, Antiquity.

[20]  R. Mowat.  The Making of the Middle Sea: A history of the Mediterranean from the beginning to the emergence of the Classical World , 2014 .

[21]  Francisca Alves Cardoso,et al.  Sample-specific sex estimation in archaeological contexts with commingled human remains: a case study from the Middle Neolithic cave of Bom Santo in Portugal , 2014 .

[22]  S. Manning,et al.  Reviewing Cyprian Broodbank’s The Making of the Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean from the Beginning to the Emergence of the Classical World (London: Thames & Hudson, 2013) , 2014 .

[23]  Anna J. Osterholtz,et al.  Commingled and Disarticulated Human Remains , 2014 .

[24]  R. Skeates,et al.  The cultural life of caves in Seulo, central Sardinia. , 2013 .

[25]  P. Tomkins.  Landscapes of Ritual, Identity and Memory. Reconsidering Neolithic and Early Bronze Age Cave-use in Crete, Greece , 2013 .

[26]  D. Nociarová,et al.  Taphonomical study of the anthropological remains from Cova Des Pas (Minorca) , 2012 .

[27]  Estella Weiss-Krejci.  Shedding Light on Dark Places:: Deposition of the Dead in Caves and Cave-Like Features in Neolithic and Copper Age Iberia , 2012 .

[28]  R. Albert,et al.  Microarchaeology of a collective burial: cova des Pas (Minorca) , 2011 .

[29]  O. Craig,et al.  Stable isotope evidence for the consumption of millet and other plants in Bronze Age Italy. , 2009, American journal of physical anthropology.

[30]  D. Hutchinson,et al.  Chapter 2. Collective Burials and Community Memories: Interpreting the Placement of the Dead in the Southeastern and Mid‐Atlantic United States with Reference to Ethnographic Cases from Indonesia , 2008 .

[31]  R. Corbey,et al.  Cultural landscapes, social networks and historical trajectories: A data-rich synthesis of Early Bronze Age networks (c. 2200-1700 BC) in Abruzzo and Lazio (Central Italy) , 2007 .

[32]  P. Bellintani,et al.  Villaggio delle Macine: le più antiche perle in vetro e ambra dell'Italia centrale , 2007 .

[33]  H. Duday,et al.  Ethnology and archaeology of death : from the illusion of references to the use of a terminology , 2006 .

[34]  A. Shortland,et al.  “…beads which have given rise to so much dogmatism, controversy and rash speculation”: faience in Early Bronze Age Britain and Ireland , 2004 .

[35]  U. Albarella.  The animal economy after the eruption of Avellino pumice: the case of La Starza (Avellino, Southern Italy) , 1999 .

[36]  M. Miari.  Offerte votive legate al mondo vegetale e animale nelle cavità naturali dell'Italia protostorica , 1995 .

[37]  C. Daniela.  Aspetti culturali della media età del bronzo nell’Italia centro-meridionale. , 1995 .

[38]  M. Rubini,et al.  Gli inumati della grotta Vittorio Vecchi di Monte Flucino (Sezze, Latina, media Età del Bronzo, XVII-XIV sec. a.C.) , 1990 .

[39]  A. Whittle,et al.  ANATOMY OF A TOMB-WEST KENNET REVISITED , 1986 .

[40]  L. Barfield.  The chalcolithic cemetery at Manerba del Garda , 1983, Antiquity.

[41]  M. Shanks,et al.  Symbolic and Structural Archaeology: Ideology, symbolic power and ritual communication: a reinterpretation of Neolithic mortuary practices , 1982 .

[42]  G. Barker.  Landscape and society , 1981 .