11. Burials
This is not currently part of the peer-reviewed material of the project. Do not cite as a research publication.
Burials are highly complex phenomena which can provide evidence for various religious and cultural belief systems. They can comprise human remains and clothing, a burial context, furnishings and other material and spatial phenomena which may of interest individually or in connection with each other.
The electronic resource as already described can incorporate spatial data, objects and descriptive information, so that the physical phenomena of burials can in themselves be incorporated into the resource. The interpretation of the burials needs further elaboration and its full implementation is beyond the scope of the present paper; I will, however, present some ideas for representing some of the interpretative possibilities associated with burials.
An example is the Birka burial Bj. 834 which is discussed at length by Price (2002, 132-9) in relation to the pre-Christian practice of seiðr. This contains a woman’s skeleton and may have also contained a man’s, along with a number of objects including jewelry and an iron distaff. The connection between the skeletons, objects and their positions within the burial are what give rise to the interpretation.
Figure 14: Interpretation of a burial
Figure 14 maps some of the relevant phenomena to the interpretation of this burial. The physical objects and materials of the burial are entered in the normal table for these objects and connected to the site and burial using the collections table (with an appropriate type description). The objects are linked to a description of the burial (entered in the same category as descriptions of pictures) which should provide a non-interpretative description of the various objects and their placement. This in turn provides a means for linking the relevant attributes and the concept that is to be discussed in relation to this burial, namely seiðr. The structure can also be used to provide analysis and evidence for other phenomena.
An issue with this particular method is that the description removes the direct semantic connection between some of the objects and the attributes category (e.g. the iron staff). In such cases a direct link between the object and attribute can be made.
High-status burials such as Oseberg and Sutton Hoo represent much more complex phenomena. The overall features nevertheless fit roughly to the categories in the structure as currently conceived: real humans (here those buried rather than known authors or poets); objects which may individually or collectively represent cultural practices; attributes of the burial such as position of body and location in relation to other sites, objects and burials.