Gedanken zu den kaiserzeitlichen Grabhügeln der Nordwestprovinzen

Abstract

The custom of burial beneath tumuli in the Late Iron Age and Roman period in North-East Gaul and Britain is a phenomenon that provides insights into the mechanisms and course of a cultural development that we subsume under the term Romanisation. The appearance of tumulus burials during the period characterises phases of deep socio-economic dynamics, and is to be observed in societies whose culture and structure developed gradually from within as a result of Mediterranean influence. It is thus certainly no coincidence that in its rhythm the appearance of tumuli corresponds closely with other changes that were the direct or indirect result of contacts with the South, for example the development of proto-urban and urban centres, or forms of economic organisation based on the production of surpluses. Already in the Late Iron Age, the re-appearance of tumuli went hand-in-hand with the phenomenon of elite burial. Like the elite burials themselves, the tumuli are restricted to the periphery of the sphere of Mediterranean influence. Chronologically, their first appearance ran more or less parallel to the adoption of southern imports among the native symbols of prestige, in itself a potential indication of a direct or indirect connection between the two phenomena. Initially, burial practices and funerary customs remained generally unaffected by such influences, and at first cultural contacts were reflected exclusively in the adoption of individual elements of foreign material culture and their integration into native practices and customs. Against this background, the tumulus as a form of there presentation of status firmly anchored in cultural memory was a type of funerary monument that was very much oriented on tradition, even if its renaissance does not have to imply direct continuity from the earlier Iron Age. The process of acculturation then only affected immaterial culture secondarily, and led to a gradual change in customs of re presentation and beliefs that can be clearly traced in burial finds; in the case of burials beneath tumuli increasingly so from the Augustan period. Tumuli remained a peripheral phenomenon during the early imperial period, and their distribution is restricted to the corresponding cultural liminal regions. In a native context they were still restricted to the land-owning upper class. The Roman army also seems to have played an important role as impulse for the form and distribution of tumuli. However, well beyond this it was the closeness of contacts between the individual funerary communities and Rome, as well as their economic prosperity, that very clearly determined the form of funerary representation of status, and above all the level of Romanisation. Accordingly, over the course of time the proportion of tumuli with a surrounding wall and a burial chamber gradually increased, and their distribution was closely connected to the environment of urban centres. Since the process of Romanisation differs chronologically in the various provinces and regions, so too the distribution of burial mounds directly reflects native customs, or in the case of tumuli and circular monuments of Roman type the varying socio-economic conditions. The end of the tumulus custom in the 2nd and 3rd centuries can be clearly observed at the moment in cultural development when native culture was subsumed completely into the Roman provincial, and new forms of funerary status representation became of importance to the native population. Alternatively, there may also be a connection with a situation of crisis, in particular of economic decline. Over the entire period under consideration here, the tumulus had a function as a symbol of identity and prosperity that had its roots in local tradition that was only lost and went out of fashion with increasing Roman influence and the establishment of new semiotic codes. (D.W.-W.)