The Tumulus in European Prehistory: Covering the Body, Housing the Soul

Résumé En

Our conference is concerned with tumuli, burial mounds, barrows, kurgans; and in most cases the papers deal with their appearance in specific areas of Europe. But the concept of covering the dead body with a mound of earth or stones is so widespread that larger issues are at stake. The late Marija Gimbutas argued 50 years ago that burial in a kurgan was a characteristic of what became the Indo-European phenomenon, a set of material traits that were unique to a particular group of people whom she called the Kurgan people, who arose during the Late Neolithic or Copper Age on the Russian steppe. On her analysis, the wave of tumulus building that followed in the Early Bronze Age could be seen as deriving from this kurgan ancestry; and so did the Tumulus Culture of the Middle Bronze Age. This theory has been influential and much discussed, even though there are many problems – geographical, chronological – which beset it. But there is certainly a core of truth in it, in the sense that burying people under a mound of earth is a rather specific behavioural trait. What does this mean, however, in terms of attitudes to the body? On the one hand, the mound of earth served as a means of covering the dead, of disposing of the corpse so that its decaying remains would not be a problem to the senses of the living. On the other, the practice is not the most obvious or labour-saving method of doing this. It is a cultural practice. It serves as a permanent marker of the dead person or people; it has an existence of its own by virtue of its visibility; it can be said to have had its own biography or life, going through various stages of existence. It was more than just a covering for the body; it housed more than just the corporeal remains of a person; it housed that person in the memory of those who lived on, the soul or essence of that person’s being; and in doing that, it can be said almost to have become that person. The paper will look at some of these aspects cross-culturally, and indicate some possible lessons for our understanding of the tumulus in central, southern and south eastern Europe.