A piece of research challenges the view that Neolithic societies were egalitarian

Heritage Daily ^ | May 1, 2015 | Heritage Daily

[OK Sun]

The data obtained by Teresa Fernández-Crespo in seven megalithic graves in La Rioja and Araba-Álava suggest that certain individuals were excluded from burial on the basis of age and sex.

The research Demographic evidence of selective burial in megalithic graves of northern Spain by Teresa Fernández-Crespo and Concepción de la Rúa of the Department of Genetics, Physical Anthropology and Animal Physiology of the UPV/EHU-University of the Basque Country challenges the widely-held view that societies were egalitarian during the late Neolithic and Chalcolithic ages.

This work, published in the leading Journal of Archaeological Science, comes from Fernández-Crespo’s PhD thesis entitled Antropología y prácticas funerarias en las poblaciones neolíticas finales y calcolíticas de la región natural de La Rioja (Anthropology and funeral practices in late Neolithic and Chalcolithic populations in the natural region of La Rioja).

The data obtained by Teresa Fernández-Crespo in seven megalithic graves in La Rioja and Araba-Álava suggest that certain individuals were excluded from burial on the basis of “criteria relating to age and possibly sex”. So the existence of a funerary recruitment system that marginalised a considerable proportion of the population, according to the UPV/EHU researcher, could be pointing to the fact that the collective use of a shared burial area, which has often been understood as an egalitarian sign of megalithic societies, could in actual fact be masking the privileges of communities that were starting to become hierarchized. . . .

[Adder]

funerary recruitment system

What?

Neanderthal recruiters?
“Sign up today and, in addition to wild flowers, we will throw in sea shells, bone beads and a dusting of red ochre at no cost to you or the loved ones left behind. [Flowers, depending on the season at time of death. All offers subject to local rules and shamen decrees. Offer not valid in the tribal areas of Gorman, El Castillo or La Rioja. Buyer pays all taxes and fees.]

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks 1010RD!

[Texan5]

Interesting article-thanks for posting it-I’m not sure why anyone in the archaeological community would think even the earliest human societies did not have social mores that were not egalitarian, since even groups of animals have a hierarchy.

There have to be leaders and followers and a social order, or it is total chaos-humans would not have survived with everyone just alike in status, skipping around, picking and eating plants and rushing large animals with spears in a group with no leader to devise a strategy. It may be a pretty fiction, but it certainly isn’t reality...

[Texan5]

I doubt people-Neanderthal from Europe, Homo Sapiens from Africa, Denisovan or whatever-were much different from the primitive tribes that still survive in remote places today. Humans have probably always been curious, loved to trade and coveted the foreign and unusual female.

I doubt the Romans were the first to realize the value of their women as bargaining chips for lucrative alliances with foreigners in mutual defense and trade. And I doubt those women had any more choice in the matter than women in Roman, Greek or Egyptian times did-she still was carried off and forced into having sex with a stranger of another race, tribe, etc, and I don’t doubt rape happened more often than not...