On some aspects of the Late Bronze Age burial costume from north Albania

Sur certains aspects du costume funéraire du Bronze récent de l'Albanie du nord

Rovena Ruka Kurti (1)

1 AOROC - Archéologie et Philologie d'Orient et d'Occident

This paper aims to offer an outline of the main elements of the Late Bronze Age burial costume from northern Albania, focusing more specifically on the dress and body ornaments. The study is based on the funerary evidence from previous publications of the different necropoleis excavated in the area, which consist exclusively of tumuli. In the context of a rich and updated literature from the neighboring regions, we have tried to reexamine the dating of some of the costume components from this part of the Albania, which appears inconsistent in the Albanian literature. Furthermore, the direct observations of the ornaments helped for a better understanding of their morphological features, and together with a closer analysis of the respective grave assemblages, they were all essential for a closer chronological framing. On one hand, these investigations revealed the presence of a modest, but still, an important corpus of Late Bronze Age ornaments, which allow tracking some of the main characteristics of the burial costume of this period. In a wider context, they offer important clues for the small- and largescale inter-regional relations and how these are reflected in the burial costume of this period. However, on the other hand, we should stress from the beginning, that the available fragmentary data does not allow us to develop a full discussion on all the types of costumes present, or on the social identities expressed through them in the funerary ritual. Among the obstacles, it should be noted the total lack of anthropological data, some inconsistencies in the methods of documentation of the excavated tumuli, and particularly the fact that the tumuli of Çinamak, from the north-east corner of Albania, and to which belongs the most important part of the ornaments, remain still unpublished systematically.

Domaines: Archéologie et Préhistoire

Rovena Ruka Kurti. On some aspects of the Late Bronze Age burial costume from north Albania. NEW ARCHAEOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES IN THE ALBANIAN REGIONS, Institut d'Archéologie de l'Albanie (Tirana), Jan 2017, Tirana, Albania. pp.207-242. ⟨halshs-01695818⟩