New information from old collections. Reevaluation of personal adornments made of hard animal materials from the necropolis of Cernica
New information from old collections. Reevaluation of personal adornments made of hard animal materials from the necropolis of Cernica

Summary/Abstract: The study of the personal adornments category proves to be vital for the understanding of individual and the means of treating the body, at Prehistory level. The purpose of this article is to reevaluate adornments made of hard animal materials, present in the Neolithic necropolis of Cernica. This was researched along a period of 13 years (1961-1974), benefiting also of a monograph, which offered a general picture regarding the disposal of the graves and of the funerary inventory from the necropolis, associated to each skeleton. In a first stage our study aimed to identify the raw materials from which were made the personal adornments from the necropolis of Cernica. In a second stage, in the created groups, were established the typological categories. For each of these was followed the reconstruction of the operational scheme and afterwards the identification of the possible usage marks, by a macro and microscopic analysis, which would indicate the use of the artifacts previously to the deposing of the funeral inventory. Most of the pieces from the Cernica necropolis present usage traces, this may mean that they have been worn also during the life of the individuals and consequently they do not constitute a funerary fitting stricto-senso. Thus we may assume that they were not created exclusively to be deposed as funerary inventory. Moreover, the fact that they present different usage degrees, in the composite adornments, especially when imitations intervene, prove that the broken and irretrievable pieces have been replaced during the “life time” of the adornment.

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