Bachhuber/Citadel and Cemetery, 4. Cemeteries

Chapter 4 addresses the relationship between the living and the dead through two dominant interpretive concerns: (1) secondary interment activities and related ideologies, and (2) the consumption of wealth. The human remains of the dead were a significant presence and focus for veneration in these communities. Mortuary ritual united the living members of a village with the people of the past who had dwelt in the same village. Interaction with the dead reinforced social relationships within and between households and enforced a community’s historical claim to a landscape that had been farmed by people of their past. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the cemetery of Alacahöyük. The so-called ‘royal tombs’ represent a monumental expression of this ideology, but also a profound break or divergence from the social logic and ideology of villages.