Wat te doen met onze doden? Het grafritueel van de Swifterbantcultuur in Nederland

Samenvatting

There are 34 known graves of the Neolithic Swifterbant Culture in the Netherlands. When this skeletal material from various sites is analysed to determine standard burial rituals, some interesting features can be observed. The practice of inhumation seems to have been restricted to adult men and women. The abundance of scattered bones on settlement sites and the near absence of child burials are indicative of other funerary rites besides inhumation. Dead children and adolescents were probably buried only in the exceptional case of their dying at the same time as an adult. The large number of scattered bones and the presence of skull fragments outside burials may indicate that bones from the deceased circulated in the world of the living.