The significance of Early Neolithic settlement burials: a case study from Central Germany

Abstract

Early Neolithic Settlement burials in Central Europe have long been treated as an irregularity and thus sparked discussions about perceptions of social deviancy. In recent years, the highly increased number of documented settlement burials suggests that they constituted an integral part of a more complex system of burial practices, which precludes a dichotomous division into ‘regular’ and ‘irregular’ burials. Based on the characteristics of a series of interments in the Central German settlement Niederröblingen, this study aims to determine the probabilities of individual agency within a framework of collective rules in the early Neolithic Linearbandkeramik culture.

Keywords

• Linear pottery culture
• burial customs
• settlement burials
• settlement archaeology
• Neolithic
• irregularity