Post-mortem manipulation of human bodies, including the commingling of multiple individuals, is attested throughout the past. More rarely, the bones of different individuals are assembled to create a single ‘individual’ for burial. Rarer still are composite individuals with skeletal elements separated by hundreds or even thousands of years. Here, the authors report an isolated inhumation within a Gallo-Roman-period cremation cemetery at Pommerœul, Belgium. Assumed to be Roman, radiocarbon determinations show the burial is Late Neolithic—with a Roman-period cranium. Bioarchaeological analyses also reveal the inclusion of multiple Neolithic individuals of various ages and dates. The burial is explained as a composite Neolithic burial that was reworked 2500 years later with the addition of a new cranium and grave goods.

This article presents the results of a preliminary bioarchaeological study of 10 funerary urns containing human burned remains from the Los Tamarindos urn-field cemetery dated to the Postclassic period. I was able to determine the basic biological profile data. In addition, I determined the fragmentation rate as well as the thermal alternation of bones from funerary urns from Los Tamarindos, which allowed me to propose the first observations about the Pretarascan cremation burial practices in this region. The low weight of bones indicates that burials should be determined as partial burials; however, they contain fragments of bones from each anatomical region. The structure of the bones and the chromatic discoloration caused by the thermal alternation indicate that temperature during the cremation did not exceed 900°C, given that the cremains did not exhibit the recrystallization structure, which is interpreted as a characteristic feature of the high maximum temperature of a funerary pyre during the cremation.

Antequera in southern Spain is widely recognised as an outstanding example of the European megalithic phenomenon. One of its most remarkable features is the evident relationship between conspicuous natural formations and human-built monuments. Here, the authors report the results of their investigation of a tomb newly discovered at the site of Piedras Blancas at the foot of La Peña de los Enamorados, a limestone massif that dominates the Antequera plain. Excavation and multidisciplinary study, including geological, architectural and archaeoastronomical investigations, have revealed a complex funerary monument that is part natural, part built, part hypogeum, part megalith. The results emphasise the centrality of La Peña in the Neolithic worldview and encourage wider investigation of prehistoric place-making.

This study presents preliminary results of recent explorations at Iroungou (Gabon), a pre-colonial burial cave containing scattered skeletal remains of at least 28 men, women and children. The individuals, whose crania show cultural tooth ablation, were buried with abundant metallic objects, a combination with no known equivalent in West Central Africa.

Burial mounds piled high with enemy corpses are well known in Mesopotamian inscriptions as symbols of victory, but no archaeological examples have so far been recovered. Archaeological investigations of a tall mound adjacent to the site of Tell Banat in Syria have revealed an unusual, late third-millennium BC mortuary population, dominated by adult and sub-adult males. The systematic placement of these human remains and associated assemblages suggests that, rather than containing enemy combatants, this was a memorial to a community's battle dead. The authors propose that the deceased belonged to an organised army, with broader implications for state administration and the adherence or resistance to a new regime fostered by such monumentalisation.

The seventh-century ship burial at Sutton Hoo Mound 1, excavated in 1939, contained an impressive display of gold, silver and bronze objects, weapons and other offerings. Organic materials such as wood, textiles and leather were also present. The leather items were studied, and the results published in 1983, when two pairs of shoes were identified from the extremely fragmented remains that survived. Recently, a reassessment of the leather fragments revised the identification to two bags and a single pair of shoes. Multiple reconstruction techniques, developed over the last twenty years, were used to examine the leather fragments and associated metal fittings to provide a new understanding of the leather items and how they had been placed in the burial.

Stone cist graves dating to the Bronze Age through to the late medieval period are well attested across Western Europe. In the Americas, such cist graves are found only on the island of Saba in the Dutch Caribbean. First starting in the colonial period, this funerary practice continues on Saba to the present day, representing a cultural continuity with rural seventeenth-century populations—probably settlers from the British Isles. This article discusses the recent excavation of several cist burials on Saba, their structural forms and their relevance for understanding cultural continuity in the Caribbean of the historical period.

Gender archaeology approaches to Iberian late prehistory have experienced a significant growth in the last two decades. However, much of the work undertaken has focused on specific aspects of the archaeological record (rock art, burial practices), particularly from the Bronze Age and Iron Age periods for which the evidence is more readily available. In addition, it has tended to be regional or local in scope. Here, we attempt an empirically robust multi-proxy approach to the development of early gender inequalities in Neolithic Iberia. Inspired by Gerda Lerner's ideas on the origins of patriarchy and based on a systematic collection of data analysed by means of significance testing, we present the first comprehensive study of gender dissymmetries in Iberian prehistory. Our conclusions suggest that, first, the multi-proxy method used has potential for the systematic study of gender inequalities on the basis of archaeological data and, second, that the Neolithic witnessed emerging gender inequalities that set the basis for male domination in later periods.

Asx̂aana-x̂ Cave in the Islands of the Four Mountains, Alaska, was excavated in 1990. The cave contained the remains of Unangan mummies and their grave goods including textile, wood, bone and stone artifacts. These mummies were buried between AD 1250 and AD 1780-1790. The mummies were distributed in three distinct areas in the front, middle and back of the large cave. The textile and wooden artifacts and their distribution have been described in earlier publications. The stone artifacts include end blades, adzes, ulus and hammerstones plus an oil lamp and a small figurine; among the bone artifacts are whale bone planks and scapulae, rods and shafts, harpoon heads and labrets. These artifacts are typical of artifacts in the Aleutian Islands, while their distribution continues to strengthen the idea of a disjunct distribution of artifacts in the cave, which I interpret as being due to different social groups using the three areas of the cave for their burials.

The socio-cultural behaviour of Scandinavian Mesolithic hunter-gatherers has been difficult to understand due to the dearth of sites thus far investigated. Recent excavations at Kanaljorden in Sweden, however, have revealed disarticulated human crania intentionally placed at the bottom of a former lake. The adult crania exhibited antemortem blunt force trauma patterns differentiated by sex that were probably the result of interpersonal violence; the remains of wooden stakes were recovered inside two crania, indicating that they had been mounted. Taphonomic factors suggest that the human bodies were manipulated prior to deposition. This unique site challenges our understanding of the handling of the dead during the European Mesolithic.

In this paper, osteological and archaeological data are brought together to further our understanding of childhood in the early Neolithic Linearbandkeramik culture (LBK; c. 5500–5000 cal BC). In many characterizations of LBK society, fixed representations of sex or identities based on subsistence strategies pervade, with children rarely considered and then only as a specialized and separate topic of study. As a challenge to this view, a summary of the current models of childhood in the LBK culture is presented and debated with reference to the burial rites of children. A period of ‘middle’ childhood is proposed for the LBK culture. The osteological evidence suggests that childhood could be a time of dietary stress, perhaps with sex-based differences from childhood, and examples of the diseases and traumas suffered are discussed. Finally, the possibility that the children were actively contributing to acts of personal violence is raised. While the recognition of identity making as a continuous process remains a powerful exploratory route to investigating prehistoric societies, we argue that this should not discourage us from seeing identity as formed over the entire lifecourse.

The well-known Mesolithic cemeteries of Northern Europe have long been viewed as evidence of developing social complexity in those regions in the centuries immediately before the Neolithic transition. These sites also had important symbolic connotations. This study uses new and more detailed analysis of the burial practices in one of these cemeteries to argue that much more is involved than social differentiation. Repeated burial in the densely packed site of Zvejnieki entailed large-scale disturbance of earlier graves, and would have involved recurrent encounters with the remains of the ancestral dead. The intentional use of older settlement material in the grave fills may also have signified a symbolic link with the past. The specific identity of the dead is highlighted by the evidence for clay face masks and tight body wrappings in some cases.

Because of its great potential to provide data on contacts and overseas trade, ivory has aroused a great deal of interest since the very start of research into Iberian late prehistory. Research recently undertaken by the German Archaeological Institute in Madrid in collaboration with a number of other institutions has provided valuable contributions to the study of ivory in the Iberian Copper Age and Early Bronze Age. One of the archaeological sites that is contributing the most data for analysing ivory from the Copper Age in southern Iberia is Valencina de la Concepción (Seville), which is currently the focus of several debates on the development of social complexity. This article contributes to this line of research by providing new, unpublished evidence and by examining the significance of ivory craftsmanship in commercial, social, and ideological terms. It also assesses in greater detail the prominent part played by luxury ivory items as an expression of social status and power.

Excavation of a Classic Kerma cemetery in Sudan revealed a number of burials segregated by age, throwing into question a presumed disregard for the burial of the young. Burial rites were varied according to the age of the deceased and show a remarkable concern for the ritual burial of infants and the stillborn

This paper reviews the architectural and human skeletal remains from Umm an-Nar period tombs (c. 2500–2000 BC), found across the Oman Peninsula. Possible meanings for the regional dispersal of the tombs across the region are considered. Tomb Unar 2 may provide possible interpretations of 3rd-millennium BC burial practices.

A man and a woman were found in a double burial dating from the 1st century BC and located in a Xiongnu burial site in northern Mongolia. An offering box at the head of the man's coffin contained both remains of domestic animals and a human hyoid bone. The skeleton of the man was complete whereas the woman's hyoid bone was missing. The isolated hyoid bone could belong to the buried woman, which suggests the removal of her tongue and probably her sacrifice.