question relating to Wielbark and Scandinavian burial customs

[Егоров Владимир]

********************

Hi Konrad!

I'd like to add some consideration to the topic. I seem you to 
overestimate the so-called IE origin for choosing a burial method. 
There are plenty peoples of the definitely IE origin, which never 
(as far as it is known archaeologically) used cremation, for 
instance Baltic tribes, Thrakians and Dacians, same Sarmatians etc., 
while other peoples of not less definite non-IE origins were 
attracted to cremation, for example the American Indians. 
Furthermore, numerous Italic tribes, which lived side by side on 
Apennines and spoke similar IE languages, applied both cremation 
and inhumation. I guess the actual environment and habitat are 
of much greater importance than a bygone "origin". Did you ever 
try to dig a pit within the depths of the forest? Interlacements 
of tree roots make this job impracticable; meanwhile same trees 
provide you with unlimited firewood and force you to burn a dead 
body. A question remains what shall you do with the burned remains? 
Some of old northern Slavic tribes, for example, left burned bones 
packed in jugs upon posts along roads. Funnily? Yes, but 
economically. And vice versa. If you live in the steppe or pampas 
and do not see a single tree many miles around, you would have 
no other way than to bury down a dead body into the pliable soil.

As to persons unworthy of cremation, those might include, besides 
obvious criminals and outlaws, also slaves, blissfuls, strangers 
(of course not from another continent, but from other tribe or clan), 
i.e. anybody who was not affiliated to the tribe or community.

Regards,
Vladimir



-----Original Message-----
From: gothic-l at yahoogroups.com [mailto:gothic-l at yahoogroups.com]On
Behalf Of akoddsson
Sent: Thursday, January 26, 2006 10:48 PM
To: gothic-l at yahoogroups.com
Subject: [gothic-l] Re: question relating to Wielbark and Scandinavian
burial customs


Hails Vladimir.

> Hi Konrad!
> 
> The question you have brought up for discussion is really very 
> interesting. I took an interest in a similar issue in connection 
> with the Chernyachov culture that is regarded nowadays as 
> a probable successor of the Wielbark culture. Characteristic for 
> the Chernyachov culture is arbitrary alternating cremations 
> and inhumations with totally almost equal ratio of both. 

Interesting.

> For this culture, with the "political" leadership of the Goths 
> and anthropologically fixed prevalence of Sarmatian population, 
> such a mixture looks natural as the nomads always used inhumation 
> while the Goths (and probably the Slavs as well, but I do not want 
> to incorporate the Slavic disputable topic into our consideration) 
> should cremate their decedents.

Yes, this would make sense. Now, Slavic peoples and Germanic peoples 
would both seem to have inherited cremation via a common IE source, 
but this is perhaps off-topic here. So my first question would be: 
is the Sarmatian population generally considered to be of IE origin?

> Nevertheless, I did not find any 
> specific researches on this matter though the overall impression 
> remains that the answer might be not so trivial.

Precisely. There must have been a standard of some kind about 
cremation/inhumation/etc. in law/social rules/religion/etc., one 
which was probably largely unquestioned, just like in modern times 
(most moderns receive essentially the same burial as their fellow 
countrymen of the same ethnicity/religion/etc. - it is mostly a 
matter of social custom, followed but largely unquestioned). I do 
not imagine that ancient peoples were forced to decide about the 
issue of what to do with the dead every time someone died, or that 
every person was just left to their own to invent some method or 
other of disposing of the dead, but rather that they inherited some 
fixed custom, which was largely followed unquestioned, like today. 

> However that 
> may be, dissemination of inhumations among cremations in 
> Scandinavia cannot be explained so simply. In respect of 
> the Chernyachov culture, I have suggested in due time three 
> possible reasons for possible replacements of incineration by 
> just burial. Those were:
>   (1) a decedent was unworthy of cremation;
>   (2) there was not enough fuel (firewood) at the time or at 
> the scene; 
>   (3) there was not enough time or available forces (people) 
> at the time.

Now, about the first: I would venture to guess that this was 
probably true, although I have no direct attestation of it - I can 
well imagine, for instance, that criminals, for instance, were 
deemed unworthy of cremation (see here the VestrGautalog, for 
instance, the laws of west Gautland, were thieves are to be hung - 
something which was, no doubt, not specific to Gautland, but likely 
a general practice). I doubt they received cremations. Also, in 
India, non-cremation is major insult to the dignity of the dead (it 
would seem to equal: denial of entry to the land of the fathers), 
but as far as I understand, this is extremely uncommon in modern, 
liberal India. About the second, lack of fuel is thought to be the 
major cause for the decline of cremations toward the end of the 
viking age, when Scaninavians had become more spread-out, such that 
many lived in areas where there was not enough wood to cremate - 
thus, we would seem to have here a later example of the second 
reason you mention. About number three, my first thought is that 
warriors who survived battles and raids, for instance, where the 
dead were left to rot by necessity, might have tried to return to 
the site later and cremated their dead (compare the Illiad on how 
the armies of the Achaians and Trojans stopped fighting in order to 
cremate their dead), but were perhaps often unsuccessful (not all 
wars were as orderly as in Homer, perhaps). Perhaps warriors cried 
and shamed themselves for being unable to cremate their companions 
who died, raising instead monuments and proclaiming them heroes and 
better men than those that lived.  

> Due to attestation of Ibn-Fadlan ("the funerals of a noble Rus" 
> in the description of his Travels to Volga), it has been accepted 
> that cremation provided to the dead a direct way to Elysium. 

Interesting that you should mention this source - I have combed it 
several times for information about burial practices. 

> Accordingly, the right to set fire to a pile has been considered 
> as an honor granted usually to a next of kin or close friend. 

Yes, Ibn mentions the son of the dead walking ritually backward 
toward the bale and lighting it. Whether it was backward, forward, 
or thrice around the bale (as in India), the next of kin would 
indeed seem to have lit the funeral pyre, just as you mention (a 
very Indo-European custom, no doubt ;)

> And you should keep in mind that stocking a pile with amount 
> of firewood sufficient to reduce a body to ashes is a heavy task. 
> It requires time and many hands. Not always both are present 
> in time.

Interesting point. I have often wondered about the knowledge about 
this that we have lost. My thinking is that ancients must have had 
the practice down to a contemporary science - that they must have 
known what type of wood to burn, how to build the pyre, how to best 
light it, how to place the dead in relation to the pyre, how to cut 
and transport the wood, etc.., whereas we know little about this, in 
general. I wonder how many attendants of a typical ancient cremation 
actually engaged in the work and how long the cremation took, for 
instance, and about the wood, etc..

> Perhaps the widely known Scandinavian custom of 
> the Viking Age to burn up seafarers in their ships was born in 
> woodless areas where there was no other fuel. 

An interesting insight - connecting ship-burning with lack of other 
available wood. 

> (The same used 
> to do the ancient Greeks long before the Vikings if we entrust 
> to the film "Troy".)

Ah! Had I known that you would mention the Greeks (see above). 
Indeed, cremation would seem to be the IE method of disposing of the 
dead, attested so widely among IE peoples as to be the only real 
option for how the Proto-Indo-Europeans disposed of their dead. Lack 
of cremation is, I suppose, a clear sign that a) the dead was not of 
Indo-European descent (although some non-IE cultures also cremate, 
such that cremation does not automatically mean the dead was IE) or 
b) that the dead, if of IE descend, had lost his/her traditional 
culture/religion and been absorbed into a non-IE culture/religion. 

> I believe some of my argumentations are applicable to the Wielbark 
> culture as well as Scandinavia.

This would make sense. I suppose that the logical conclusion, as 
evidenced by the archeaological record and their germanic origins, 
is that the Gothic method of disposing of the dead was cremation. I 
suspect that the Goths considered cremation to be essential to their 
culture, whether or not their neighbors practiced it. I suppose that 
a good question to ask would be: what did the Goths call cremation? 
My first guess would probably be *branjo, a fem. jo-stem from the 
verb *brannjan (to burn, as in to actively set fire to something). I 
am not sure if it is attested, but I can check. On the other hand we 
have Go. fem. o-stem brinno (a fever, heat, etc.), which is not from 
the same verb, but from *brinnфn (someting burns of itself, not the 
act of setting fire to). I will check to see if these verbs are, in 
fact, attested - in not, then they should be carefully reconstructed 
for Go., as is the academic practice. azgo (ash) is attested. When I 
get home I will check my sources on these words. Thanks, Vladimir, 
for the interesting insights and comments above.

Regards,
Konrad. 

> Regards,
> Vladimir
> 
> 


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