Cultural Behaviour or Natural Processes?

Cultural Behaviour or Natural Processes? Synopsis

This research focuses on the British Iron Age and challenging the current hypotheses of exposing the dead on five Iron Age sites in Hampshire and one from Dorset, England. Current theories are based on anthropological analogies and classical texts tounderstand and interpret the burial record. However, this research focused on understanding the formation of the burial record employing a new science-based methodology.

This new approach is both integrated and multidisciplinary, combining the osteological and context taphonomic physical or material evidence to discern cultural behaviour from natural processes. The approach utilises a wide range of forensic anthropology and taphonomy, including l'anthropologie de terrain or archaeothanatology,to identify archaeological signatures from three key and interrelated areas: the remains, the deposition context, and the relationship between the corpse and its deposition circumstance.

A new system of categorising Iron Age remains was developed todifferentiate funerary and depositional behaviour between sites.