Investigating interactions with the dead in early medieval Central and Eastern Europe from 5th to 8th centuries CE

The dead do not always ‘rest in peace’…

…cross-culturally, the reopening of graves has been documented in diverse ritual, religious, socio-political and mundane contexts. In many cultures past and present, interaction with human remains and objects in and from graves is not seen as a taboo, despite how it has frequently been regarded in much archaeological interpretation.

The ERC PresentDead project investigates re-entries into inhumation graves of early medieval central and eastern European cemeteries, dating from the 5th to 8th centuries CE. Archaeological evidence from this period is dominated by cemeteries, sometimes with hundreds of graves, where the dead were buried in single graves, frequently along with an assortment of lavish objects including weapons, ornaments, tools and pottery. These graves provide the main sources for this period as textual sources and evidence for habitation are rare, and are used to infer information regarding many aspects of early medieval life, such as identities, social organisation, ideology, migration and mobility, and arts and crafts.

A large proportion of the graves show evidence for human intrusion that took place whilst the cemeteries were still in use, often within only a few years or, at most, just decades after burial. Graves were reopened for a variety of reasons, including for example consecutive burial and the manipulation of human remains, but most frequently for the removal of grave goods. In these graves the skeletal remains and artefacts were either found to be disordered or damaged, or else were missing. Overall, the tendency has been, and often still is, to see such interferences as a hindrance to archaeological research and to interpret the removal of objects as materialistically motivated and unlawful plundering against the customs of that time. New research, however, has emphasised regularities in the practice, which has led to the hypothesis that the removal of artefacts could be part of practices related to the dead (Klevnäs et al., 2021).

Building on this research, the aim of the PresentDead project, then, is to investigate practical, conceptual and emotional dimensions of diverse human interactions with the materials of the dead in early medieval central and eastern Europe (from the fifth to eighth centuries CE). Based on archaeological and written records, PresentDead sets out to identify and investigate all types of re-entries into inhumation graves and the diverse other types of engagements with the remains of the dead to understand the motivations and beliefs connected with these activities and with their individual material substances. The analysis of post-burial activities in the archaeological evidence of graves and cemeteries, as well as in contemporary textual descriptions, will provide different perspectives on the relationship between the living and the dead in the early medieval period. In all, the PresentDead project contributes to our understanding of early medieval mortuary practices, the role of tombs, human remains and objects from graves both before and after burial.