Individual Burial and Communal Rites: the Manifold Uses of Monumental Architecture in the North Adriatic Bronze Age

The recent excavation of the tumulus of Mereto di Tomba, near Udine in Friuli-Venezia Giulia, offers fresh data to the research of the prehistoric monumental landscape. Some proposed connections between the tumuli of north eastern Italy and those diffused in a wider area including the Balkan-Adriatic regions, on the one hand, and the Aegean, on the other hand, seem to be strengthened. Furthermore, according to recent trends in the field of research on mounds and barrows, the recent evidence sheds new light on the emergence of tumuli in the northern Adriatic area by suggesting that these monuments do not constitute a homogeneous and monolithic phenomenon; both chronologically and functionally they are part of a palimpsestic landscape, provided with monumental signs dating to different period and focusing on different ritual occasions, which involved individual funerals as well as communal ritual ceremonies.Borgna Elisabetta. Individual Burial and Communal Rites: the Manifold Uses of Monumental Architecture in the North Adriatic Bronze Age. In: Ancestral Landscape. Burial mounds in the Copper and Bronze Ages (Central and Eastern Europe – Balkans – Adriatic – Aegean, 4th-2nd millennium B.C.) Proceedings of the International Conference held in Udine, May 15th-18th 2008. Lyon : Maison de l'Orient et de la Méditerranée Jean Pouilloux, 2012. pp. 279-289. (Travaux de la Maison de l'Orient et de la Méditerranée. Série recherches archéologiques, 58