Jar burial from Anza, Vardar River Valley. Early Neolithic, sixth millenium BC

(after Gimbutas 1976)

Because of the small number of the burials in ceramic vessels in the similarly scanty burial sample of the southeast European later prehistory as well as because of their sporadic appearance and usually unclear contexts in the archaeological record, they were more or less ignored in the general studies on the Neolithic and Chalcolithic. The single cases in this wide territory were normally dismissed as curious exceptions. However, an unbiased consideration of this specific mortuary practices showed that jar burial - which is one of the types of burial in ceramic vessels - is related to the earlier phases of regional cultural development and probably even to the neolithization itself. It seems related to certain later developments as the cremation burials in clay urns that were excavated in Thrace and Thessaly. Besides, if one consider these practices in the wider territorial framework of Anatolia and the Levant, it becomes obvious that parallels do exist and that they are more or less contemporaneous. It is in such a wide territorial and cultural context that burial in vessels should be examined in order to elucidate its origins, development and distribution as well as its symbolic contents and its place in the prehistoric mortuary practices.

This is why the choice of the Institut für Vor- und Frühgeschichte und Vorderasiatische Archäologie, Universität des Saarlandes, is so important for the successful completion of this research project: it covers the territorial, cultural and chronological boundaries of the subject and has the resources to support such a research project.

Krum Bacvarov, Ph.D.

Prehistoric burials in vessels in southeast Europe and the Near East

Research Project sponsored by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation