The early medieval cemetery of Oosterbeintum (Friesland)

Oxford Handbooks Online, 2014

This chapter provides a brief overview of practices involving human remains during the period c. 4000–2200 BC in northern Europe, with an emphasis on Denmark and southern Sweden. Finds of human bones come from a number of different contexts, such as monumental and earthen graves, mortuary houses, bog finds, causewayed camps, and settlements. Some of these remains may be the product of specific stages in extended mortuary processes, while others probably result from different kinds of practices. The interpretation of megalithic tombs as ossuaries is reviewed critically, and an alternative interpretation, primary burial with subsequent handling of selected bones, is preferred. Recent evidence from eastern Sweden, indicating more complex mortuary practices than usually envisaged for the middle Neolithic in this area, is discussed briefly. This includes the practice of cremation, indications of secondary burial, and the discovery of probable mortuary houses.

JEB Gordon FM Rakita, Lane A. Beck und Sloan R. …, 2005

The pyre and the grave: early medieval cremation burials in the Netherlands, the German Rhineland and Belgium, 2020

https://doi.org/10.1080/00438243.2020.1769297 This paper problematises grand-narrative thinking in continental, north western European early medieval (450–800 CE) burial archaeology. Using the existing research history and current debate on early medieval cremation burials, I demonstrate that European early medieval burial archaeology has focused on explaining the development of the furnished inhumation burial since the discipline’s conception. This has led to a misrepresentation of the diversity of early medieval burial practices and reinforced broad, unsatisfactory explanatory models. By including other burial types, like cremation burials, the overall model is changed in terms of what early medieval burial practices comprised, enabling a better understanding of the development of early medieval society.

World Archaeology, 2020

This paper problematizes grand-narrative thinking in continental, north western European early medieval (450-800 CE) burial archaeology. Using the existing research history and current debate on early medieval cremation burials, I demonstrate that European early medieval burial archaeology has focused on explaining the development of the furnished inhumation burial since the discipline's conception. This has led to a misrepresentation of the diversity of early medieval burial practices and reinforced broad, unsatisfactory explanatory models. By including other burial types, like cremation burials, the overall model is changed in terms of what early medieval burial practices comprised, enabling a better understanding of the development of early medieval society.

Cremation and inhumation practices in early medieval Europe are usually considered separately.