Re: When Burial Begins

Chapstick wrote:
"Lee Olsen" <paleocity@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1161743633.017157.170940@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.britarch.ac.uk/BA/ba66/feat1.shtml


i read every bit of this ... thanks for posting! also went off on a great
diversion thru the Mt Carmel caves and all that archeology (google search).
great stuff!
--chap


Like magic, and right on cue to collaborate discussions here on sap,
Dar (this morning, 10 29 2006) posted another important clue, on the
Palanth forum, as to the origins and use of ochre burials.

http://www.oeaw.ac.at/shared/news/2006/press_inf_20060728.html
"Another sensation at Krems: a new burial of the ice-age
Wien OM [July 28, 2006] - Just one year after the discovery of the
27.000 year old double burial of newborns at Krems (Lower Austria),
which conducted international headlines, archaeologists of the
Prehistoric Commission of the Austrian Academy of Sciences recovered a
further burial of a child. In a distance of about one meter from the
2005 burial, these days a second small grave pit was detected. Contrary
to the double burial this grave was not protected by a shoulder blade
of a mammoth. However, the skeletal remains of the infant were well
preserved. The burial was also entirely embedded in red ochre, which
points to the use of an organic material, e.g. a leather cloak, in
which the body was deposited."
--------------------------
Several things germane to discussions here. Because human graveyards
are found in close proximity to home bases, more than one skeleton can
be expected to be found in the same area as has happened at Krems. This
is not so with Pliocene or early Pleistocene, with the First Family
being a rare exception and was more parsimonious with a flooding event.
This is strong evidence against any idea that early hominids utilized
home bases or buried their dead.
Secondly, the inference to a "leather cloak" is consistent to the idea
that ochre was not sprinked over the body at time of burial, either by
rubbing directly on bones with crayons (secondary burial) or spreading
the powder over the body when intact in the grave (primary burial). The
red ochre was most likely on the leather to begin with and not part of
some elaborate ceremonial ritual because there are many other uses for
ochre.

http://www.britarch.ac.uk/ba/ba45/ba45feat.html
"The use of red ochre - one assumes to colour either the boy's clothing
or a burial shroud - also links Lagar Velho 1 with other Gravettian
ceremonial burials across Europe."
and
http://tinyurl.com/y9leor

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: ANCIENT MARINERS: Andean-Mexican seagoing trade
    ... The term "red ochre" is about a people who's burial ... Archaic" as a culture. ... My understanding is that no burials were found at Riverside..... ... The claim requires there to be a Lake Superior ...
    (sci.anthropology)
  • Re: ANCIENT MARINERS: Andean-Mexican seagoing trade
    ... The term "red ochre" is about a people who's burial ... Archaic" as a culture. ... My understanding is that no burials were found at Riverside..... ... The claim requires there to be a Lake Superior ...
    (sci.archaeology)
  • Re: New Recipe: How to Make a Mass Extinction
    ... most of their grave sites ... most on-the-go nomadic burials were done by laying ... Some nomads, for example, went up and down the Urals ... smoking and drying it - on wood racks. ...
    (sci.anthropology.paleo)
  • Re: New Recipe: How to Make a Mass Extinction
    ... most of their grave sites ... most on-the-go nomadic burials were done by laying ... Some nomads, for example, went up and down the Urals ... smoking and drying it - on wood racks. ...
    (sci.anthropology.paleo)
  • Re: Modern Historians and Gildas
    ... Amongst the inhumations, a wide variety of burial practices has been ... Rippenköper weave in England (grave 37). ... Finds show the cremation burials to date ... early Christian priests who were all from the warrior class. ...
    (soc.history.medieval)