Beskrivelse
In 1993 and 2008-12, hundreds of high and late medieval burials were excavated at the former Franciscan friary and at the cathedral in Ribe. The digitized and phased material sheds light on many and diverse aspects of medieval burial practice.This paper will present the variation in burial forms and their development over time, but also try to point out several other, perhaps less obvious aspects of the material:
Patterns in the distribution of religious objects in the graves may indicate a special religious dedication for some groups. At the same time, there seems to be a correlation between gender and age distribution in relation to which burials contain objects, and sometimes also in relation to the location of the graves (inside/outside).
The location of the burials, their physical setting and the presence of certain objects in some cases challenge the dogma that everyone was equal before God in death. On the contrary, there is some evidence that all these attributes could indeed be used to signal qualities such as piety or status, both in the worldly life one left behind, but also – and perhaps just as importantly – in the afterlife/purgatory.
Burials with two or more individuals in the later phases of burial may represent the few traces we have of epidemics, but are these grave types merely a practical solution in a situation with many dead bodies? Or could the dead support each other through physical proximity? The idea of care both for, but also between the dead may also underlie the gathering of bones from disturbed graves in special pits, or the deliberate placement of bones from other individuals in newly constructed graves.
| Periode | aug. 2023 |
|---|---|
| Begivenhedstitel | EAA 2023 Belfast: European Association of Archaeologists Annual Meeting |
| Begivenhedstype | Konference |
| Konferencenummer | 29th |
| Arrangør | European Association of Archaeologists |
| Placering | Belfast, StorbritannienVis på kort |
| Grad af anerkendelse | International |