Notre collègue archéologue Aurore Schmitt, membre statutaire d’Ades et co-directrice de l’équipe “Bio-archéologie et paléoanthropologie”, vient de publier aux Presses Universitaires de Louvain un volume consacré aux sépultures collectives.

This volume comprises the proceedings of an international workshop that took place at the UCLouvain in Belgium on the 8^th and 9^th of December 2016. This workshop addressed the topic of collective burial practices, focusing on two main questions: “Who are the deceased buried together in collective tombs?” and “Why are these deceased buried collectively?” Archaeologists, ethnologists and ethnoarchaeologists were thus invited to discuss the identity of the deceased deposited in collective burial places, as well as the ideological and social motivations for gathering the dead in the same tomb over several generations. The chapters in the volume examine case studies ranging from contemporary Madagascar and Austronesia to the Prehistoric Mediterranean and Dynastic Europe. They also reinitiate discussions regarding the potential of archaeological and anthropobiological datasets to approach social organization among past populations.

Pour plus d’informations voir le sommaire ci-après et le site de l’éditeur: ici.

SOMMAIRE

Gathered to their Fathers…  (Jan Driessen)

1. Introduction:Towards a Theoretical and Methodological Framework for the Study of Collective Burial Practices (Sylviane Déderix, Aurore Schmitt,Isabelle Crevecoeur)

2. Collective and Single Burial in Madagascar  (Mike Parker Pearson & Denis Regnier)

3. Houses for Bones.Collective Disposal of the Dead among the Uut Danum of Borneo (Pascal Couderc)

4. Current Collective Graves in the Austronesian World.A few Remarks about Sumba and Sulawesi (Indonesia) (Jeunesse & Anthony Denaire)

5. Who is Who in the Grave? A Cross-Cultural Approach (Estella Weiss-Krejci)

6. The Social Implications of Death in Prehistoric Malta (Malone & colleagues)

7. 101 Ways of Creating Collective BurialThe Exceptional Cretan Tombs in the Context of the 3^rd Millennium BC Mediterranean (Borja Legarra Herrero)

8. Counting Individuals, Reconstructing Groups.A Critical Review of Bioarchaeological Data from Middle Helladic and Mycenaean Graves (Nikolas Papadimitriou)

9. The Value of Recent Biochemical Analysis for Collective Burial Sites (Amélie Le Roy)

10. What Defines a Collective Grave? Archaeological and Ethnological Perspectives on Collective Burial Practices (Aurore Schmitt & Sylviane Déderix)

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