Cremated Bodies and Memory of Quondam Bodies: Late Bronze Age Funerary Practices of Southwestern Serbia
Cremated Bodies and Memory of Quondam Bodies: Late Bronze Age Funerary Practices of Southwestern Serbia

Summary/Abstract: The southwestern part of Serbia—namely the Pešter plateau and neighbouring regions—are characterised by tumular necropolises, which started to be erected in the Bronze Age. The burial horizon initially connected with the final phase of the Middle Bronze Age and the beginning of the Late Bronze Age is represented by some graves with inhumed deceased in mounds at the sites of Gračanska Polja in Gračane and Latinsko Groblje in Glogovik. A different approach to these skeletal graves connects them to the necropolises of the Late Bronze Age Brnjica culture and recognises their restriction to the westernmost zone of the spread of the culture. The bearers of the Brnjica group, who settled the studied region of southwestern Serbia in the last centuries of the 2nd millennium BC, practiced cremation of the deceased. Their standard funerary practice included placing bodily remains in urns covered with large bowls, well protected by stone constructions inside smaller tumuli with peripheral stone enclosures. Potentially bi-ritual necropolises in Delimeđe, Glogovik, and Gračane, where some deceased were inhumed side by side with the majority of incinerated graves, can testify to a regional characteristic in the development of the Brnjica communities. This westernmost territory, separated from its original zone in the South Morava Basin and the main Central Balkan communication routes, was under strong influence from the neighbouring regions and different funerary traditions.

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