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Birth and death: infant burials from Vlasac and Lepenski Vir

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 March 2015

Dušan Borić  and
Sofija Stefanović
Dušan Borić
Affiliation:
Center for Archaeology, Columbia University, 961 Schermerhorn Extension 1190 Amsterdam Avenue, MC 5538, New York, NY 10027, USA. (Email: db2128@columbia.edu)
Sofija Stefanović
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Čika Ljubina 18-20, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia and Montenegro. (Email: smstefan@f.bg.ac.yu)
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Abstract

Why were infants buried beneath house-floors at the Mesolithic and early Neolithic site of Lepenski Vir? Undertaking a new analysis of the neonate remains at Vlasac and Lepenski Vir the authors reject the idea of sacrificial infanticide, and demonstrate a consistency of respect in these burials. They suggest that the deaths were mourned and the dead, like the living, were given protection by the houses they were buried in. The treatment of mothers and children suggests increasing social cohesion from the Mesolithic at Vlasac to the early Neolithic at Lepenski Vir.

Keywords

MesolithicNeolithicDanube GorgesLepenski Virinfant burial
Type
Research
Information
Antiquity , Volume 78 , Issue 301 , September 2004 , pp. 526 - 546
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 2004

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