Pedeapsă după moarte? Cazul mormântului 239 de la Pecica – Situl 15

Abstract

The rescue archaeological excavations carried out in recent years due to infrastructure works or spatial arrangements for business and services in the administrative territory of Pecica (Arad County, Romania), have simultaneously uncovered parts of settlements, as well as burials pertaining to funerary sites. In the context of the archaeological preventive excavations related to the building of the Nădlac– Pecica section of the A1 Highway, the archaeological team of the Satu Mare County Museum investigated, among others, an area of roughly 10.10 ha, ca. 2 km ENE of the city of Pecica, subsequently known as Site 15. The investigations resulted in the identification of 469 archaeological features, from eight different periods, among which two groups of graves from the Early Avar period. The grave Ft. 239 was uncovered almost at the margin of the excavation, about 5 m south from the graves Ft. 223 and 224. The deceased was placed face down (ventral decubitus) (prone burial), i. e., with hands stretched out next to the body (the right one), respectively placed under the pelvis (the left one). From the position of the hands, it can be concluded that they were not tied to each other. On the base of the elements of the material culture deposited in the grave and the 14C analysis, the grave can be dated between 600– 641 (sigma 1). The prone burial of the deceased (a woman in the current case), i. e., has no analogues in the Lower Mureș region, and according to the repertory made (195 burial sites) it is almost completely absent from the burial sites of the 6– 7th centuries. Generally, graves with individuals buried face down were interpreted as a post‑mortem punishment of the deceased (and possibly relatives) in the form of post‑mortem exclusion and degradation, or as an apotropaic rite of banishing potential negative energies that could emanate from the dead, e. g., “ evil eye”. In our opinion, these two interpretations are parts of a single system of thought, because in both cases the core is the fear of the buried individual. In the case of grave 239 from Pecica – Site 15, in the absence of histological and paleopathological analyses, we cannot link the fear of the micro‑community to any disease, which visually would have caused it. Thereby, at the current stage of research, we believe that we are dealing with a ritual in which the community “insured” itself against the deceased and her soul that could return.

Keywords

• early avar period
• 7th century
• grave
• prone burial
• material culture