The manipulation of death: a burial area at the Neolithic Settlement of Avgi, NW Greece

In the Neolithic of Northern Greece the disposal of the deceased is strongly related to the community of the living, and in most cases to the built environment. Burials often occur in close proximity to, or underneath ‘domestic’ structures. The constant association of dead ancestors with the living social environment may indicate a particular desire by Neolithic people to negotiate their past by incorporating it into their own present. This paper addresses such issues, based on new evidence from the Neolithic settlement of Avgi, NW Greece. A group of cremations were recently located inside ten small pots buried in an open space in the Neolithic village. The burials consisted of tiny amounts of heavily burnt human bones and, in two cases, were accompanied by carbonized seeds. This paper will discuss the occurrence of the burial pots and the associated cremations as tokens of memory and of special links to the past represented by the dead ancestors.V zgodnjem neolitiku severne Grčije so umrli še vedno možno povezani s skupnostjo živih, v mnogih primerih z gradnjo naselji. Grobovi so pogosto blizu hiš ali pod njimi. Stalna povezava mrtvih prednikov in živega socialnega okolja lahko nakazuje željo neolitskih ljudi povezovati preteklost in sedanjost. V članku predstavljamo nove dokaze z neolitskega najdišča Avgi v severozahodni Grčiji. Upepeljeni ostanki so bili najdeni v desetih majhnih posodah, pokopanih v neolitski vasi. Drobni ostanki človeških kosti so možno ožgani; v dveh so našli karbonizirana semena. Analiziramo pojav grobnih posod in upepelitev, simbolov spomina in posebnih vezi s preteklostjo, ki jo predstavljajo mrtvi predniki