From earth to fire: funerary rituals in megalithic monuments in Central Alentejo (Portugal).

Abstract

All the details of prehistoric funerary rituals are important for understanding ancient societies - primary burial, secondary burial, with or without cremations. Understanding when cremation rituals began is essential, as it implies a new mentality towards death. In the case of Central Alentejo, where most of the megalithic graves were excavated in the first half of the 20th century, with stratigraphy recording methodologies that were not always (or almost never) very rigorous and often did not even collect osteological remains (human bones), this analysis is more difficult. Thus, the osteological analysis of bones, despite being crucial for understanding the evolutionary process of funerary contexts (with or without cremation), reconstructing biological profiles and assessing the conditions of cremation, may be completely lost for some regions. In this work, we intend to present the existing data for the Central Alentejo (Portugal) based on the research projects of the author, which focused on ancient works, but also to present data from more recent excavations, which have allowed us to clearly identify several monuments where cremations took place between the late Neolithic and the 1st Iron Age (5th century BC).