Transitions, Urbanism, and Collapse in the Bronze Age - Essays in Honor of Suzanne Richard - Jesse C. Long, Jr.
9. "Show Me How You Bury Your People": Dolmens, Burials and Social Development in the Early Bronze Age
Transitions, Urbanism, and Collapse in the Bronze Age - Essays in Honor of Suzanne Richard - Jesse C. Long, Jr.
Susanne Kerner [+]
University of Copenhagen
Susanne Kerner studied Near Eastern Archaeology, Ethnography and Ancient Oriental Languages at Free University Berlin. She was the director of the German Protestant Institute for Archaeology and History in Amman, Jordan until 1996. Since 2004 she is Lektor (Associate Professor) in Near Eastern Archaeology at the Carsten-Niebuhr-Section (now Department of Cross-cultural and Regional Reserach) in Copenhagen, Denmark. She has directed and co-directed several excavations and surveys in Jordan from the Neolithic to the Classic periods, including very different projects from Roman water systems to Chalcolithic villages. The Ritual Landscape of Murayghat is the latest project consisting of survey and excavation of dolmen, standing stones and other architecture. Research focus: social complexity, food and identity, gender archaeology, theoretical archaeology, rituals.
Description
The pattern of burials changes from the Late Chalcolithic to the Early Bronze Age, the latter being characterised by the existence of large, visible burial grounds, which take many different forms. They can consist of open air cemeteries as in Bab edh-Dhra or in dolmen fields as in several sites along the Jordanian plateau and lowland. The dolmen fields of Murayghat are introduced here and put in context with the social development during the Early Bronze Age I.