Certain individuals’ whole or fragmentary bodies seem to have been selected and interred beneath/between dwellings, in ‘rubbish areas’ or settlement ditches during the Neolithic period in the Balkan area (between 7th-4th millennia BC). For the early Neolithic, they account for the only human remains discovered. Given its broad time span, apparent uniformity on a large geographical area and across multiple prehistoric cultures (from Southern Romania to northern Greece), studying this depositional practice is key to understanding the context which shaped the beginnings of settlements, agriculture and the Neolithic way of life in Europe. Traditionally such human remains have been either a focus of osteological studies, looking at them in a biological dimension, or subjected to cultural analysis. DivMeanBody took an interdisciplinary comparative perspective, at the cross-road of archaeology and osteology, alongside material culture theories and concepts, towards the re-interpretation of such deposits from a taphonomic perspective. The aim has been to answer the question of whether these are deliberate depositions or more complex, including non-cultural processes, might explain this fragmentation. Inside these Balkan settlements, through the presence of human remains, the boundary between the living and the dead is a fluid one, while temporal distances gain a different value through the present materiality of the dead from the past.
In order to understand how these past people were performing and dealing with the dynamic processes of life and death in their communities and the relation of these practices to the formation of archaeological deposits, DivMeanBody reviewed the information available on these discoveries, by creating a database comprising 106 sites, from six countries (Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Greece), and 817 burials and scattered bones discoveries. Following this, the research developed along several lines of inquiry: understanding the ways in which the latest scientific (in particular aDNA) narratives shape the interpretation of human remains, and the potential of interdisciplinary research, an analysis of unpublished material in order to gain more insights into the post-mortem biography of these human remains, and an interpretation of the discoveries in their wider taphonomic and archaeological context (including fresh osteological analysis). Through these, the project accomplished its aim, to surpass the divide present in contemporary research between a biological body (studied by osteology) and a cultural body (by archaeology). At the same time, through its results, the project brought an original contribution that challenges contemporary distinctions between domestic-funerary space, whole bodies-fragmentary parts, the world of the living-the realm of the dead. These results are relevant for the contemporary society, by showing alternative ways of dealing with death and the dead than modern practices.
The project achieved all its research objectives: an analysis of the variability of bodies depositional patterns in Neolithic settlements in the Balkan area, a recreation of post-mortem biographies of these human remains, and an analysis of the relationship between the world of the living and the dead in the studied Neolithic communities.
