Motherhoodinprehistory.wordpress.com Website Review

Flames at least two meters high, a smoke column thrice that height, and a so much radiating heat that it’s impossible to go close – a pyre truly is an impressive experience. However, that is not the reason why we decided to reconstruct an Urnfield culture cremation. An archaeological experiment provides the means to reconstruct reasonable scenarios under specified conditions, make observations, docu*ent the results and therefore (if everything goes as planned) offers possible explanations for existing data. archaeozoologists (Herbert Böhm,  Karina Grömer, Michael Konrad, Andrea Stadlmayer, Ingrid Schierer and me) dressed a naturally deceased and post mortem injured pig in multiple layers of cloth and bronze costume attire and put it, together with some pyre goods, on a pyre. Our goal was to get some answers to questions about how clothing influences a cremation, how and why some goods are or are not altered by the fire, and what information can be obtained from burnt bones. Personally, I conducted the experiment because I wanted to destroy some bronzes – replicas of Bronze Age dress and jewellery items, of course no antique artefacts! In Urnfield culture cremation burials, we often encounter burnt findings. While burnt ceramics are reasonably easy to recognise because they show discolorations, cracks and deformations, burnt bronzes are not as easy to identify. Depending on the particular alloy, the melting point of bronze varies around 950°C, a temperature which is not expected to be reached everywhere in a pyre. Therefore, some burnt bronze objects show considerable alterations and some may show none at all. and a knife) bronze objects on various locations on the pyre so that some might survive apparently unaltered, some deformed, some partially and some completely melted. The objective was to produce as many different results as possible, an*lyse them, and construct a comparative basis for the original bronze findings. Except for determining whether specific bronzes were burnt or not we might be