Societies Without Ancestors? Why Are So Few Graves Found in the European Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic?

Abstract

Societies Without Ancestors? Why Are So Few Graves Found in the European Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic?

Most specialists agree that the classical explanations (taphonomic and demographic factors; forms of treatment of the bodies leading to, all other things being equal, the non-preservation of remains) are not sufficient to explain the small number of burials and human remains known for the Upper Palaeolithic-Mesolithic sequence. The explanation could well lie in the preponderance, at that time, of a funerary system reflecting an assumed desire to remove and forget the dead, considered to be, at least for the most part, potentially harmful entities for the living. This system is that of »societies without ancestors«, or »ghost societies«, which we attempt to characterise in this article via a diversion through ethnology. From at least the Mesolithic onwards, it coexists with a second system, that of »ancestor societies«.