A flat grave is a

burial Burial, also known as interment or inhumation, is a method of final disposition whereby a dead body is placed into the ground, sometimes with objects. This is usually accomplished by excavating a pit or trench, placing the deceased and objec ...

in a simple oval or rectangular pit. The pit is filled with earth, but the grave is not marked above the surface by any means such as a

tumulus A tumulus (plural tumuli) is a mound of earth and stones raised over a grave or graves. Tumuli are also known as barrows, burial mounds or ''kurgans'', and may be found throughout much of the world. A cairn, which is a mound of stones buil ...

or upstanding earthwork. Both intact human bodies (skeletal grave) and cremated remains (urn grave) were buried in the graves.

History

This simple method of burial was used often by

prehistoric Prehistory, also known as pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the use of the first stone tools by hominins 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use of ...

peoples. It was used during the

Funnelbeaker culture The Funnel(-neck-)beaker culture, in short TRB or TBK (german: Trichter(-rand-)becherkultur, nl, Trechterbekercultuur; da, Tragtbægerkultur; ) was an archaeological culture in north-central Europe. It developed as a technological merger of lo ...

and

Corded Ware culture The Corded Ware culture comprises a broad archaeological horizon of Europe between ca. 3000 BC – 2350 BC, thus from the late Neolithic, through the Copper Age, and ending in the early Bronze Age. Corded Ware culture encompassed a va ...

. It was characteristic of the

Urnfield culture The Urnfield culture ( 1300 BC – 750 BC) was a late Bronze Age culture of Central Europe, often divided into several local cultures within a broader Urnfield tradition. The name comes from the custom of cremating the dead and p ...

which stored cremated remains in

urn An urn is a vase, often with a cover, with a typically narrowed neck above a rounded body and a footed pedestal. Describing a vessel as an "urn", as opposed to a vase or other terms, generally reflects its use rather than any particular shape or ...

s and buried them in flat graves. Burial customs did not always follow a pattern of continuously increasing sophistication in history. During the early

La Tène culture The La Tène culture (; ) was a European Iron Age culture. It developed and flourished during the late Iron Age (from about 450 BC to the Roman conquest in the 1st century BC), succeeding the early Iron Age Hallstatt culture without any defini ...

the deceased were optionally cremated and then interred in tumulus tombs, but this changed during the later period. At that time tumulus tombs became rare and the interment of cremated remains in flat graves was the dominant method of burial again.

References

{{reflist, refs= {{cite book, last=Darvill, first=Timothy, authorlink=Timothy Darvill, title=Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology, year=2008, publisher=Oxford University Press, location=Oxford, England, isbn=9780191579042, page=382, url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gzEclkBq0u0C&pg=PT382 {{cite book, last=Hubert, first=Henri, authorlink=Henri Hubert, translator=M. R. Dobie, title=The Rise of the Celts, year=2002, publisher=Dover Publications, location=Mineola, NY, isbn=9780486422657, page=126, url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fClcIJoAiCsC&pg=PA126 Archaeology of death

History

See also

References