In the later Bronze Age almost all of Central Europe had "converted" from inhumation to cremation burial. This situation relates to the so-called "Urnfield period", known through numerous cemeteries of cremation burials in urns. This change - sometimes presented as a "religious revolution" - was as much about new understandings of the body as about "religion" in a modern sense. What did it mean to go from a world in which you usually buried the intact corpse of the deceased to one in which you almost always burned the dead body? What does this shift imply for the ways in which the body was constituted?  The routine, deliberate transformation of bodies into other substances at death indicates a radical shift in beliefs about what constituted the body and how its parts "belong" together after death. This shift took place in tandem with broad social and political changes. This exceptional period presents us with a remarkable reflection of change in attitudes towards the body.

Case studies of this project include: Cemetery of Pitten: Bz B-C [1600-1300 BC], Cemetery of Vollmarshausen: Ha A2-D [1100-575 BC], Middle Bronze Age Hungary: Bz B-C [1950-1650 BC], Lüneburg Region: Periode III+IV [1300-900 BC], Marburg Region: Ha A-B3 [1200-800 BC], Southern German Urnfields: Zuchering, Grundfeld, Bz D-B3 [1300-800 BC].

Timeframe of the case studies	Geographical scope of the case studies

Key findings

1. Traditions in transition: the change of funerary rites is a slow process taking several generations. Cremation does not come as a package, but gets integrated into local customs; traditional practises are abandoned step-by-step. We can identify a period of transition when burial practices undergo gradual but seminal changes, during which inhumations and cremations are often treated very similarly in a number of aspects. The transition period takes different forms in different regions, and does not happen simultaneously over the whole continent.

2. Cremation is followed by a range of activities and types of manipulation that take place after the burning of the body itself; this clearly shows that cremation is but one aspect, but not the final stage of the handling of the dead body. The physical remains of the cremated body require further treatment and remain the focus of the burial practises.

3. The ‘body re-imagined’: during the transitional period, much attention is given to the ’making whole’ of the body. Cremated bones are treated in a manner that focuses on re-creating likeness to the skeletal or fleshed body; the body becomes reconstituted as a kind of whole. The bones themselves can, for instance, be re-organised and laid-out in the shape of a body; or dress elements are used to annotate regions of the body.

Example of a cremated body treated similar to an inhumation. A ‘body-sized’ stone construction is built over the cremated bones, defining their outline, and dress fittings and gravegoods are placed in their ‘correct’ locations (grave 189 from Pitten, Austria; after Hampl, Kerchler & Benkovsky-Pivovarová 1981, Sørensen, M. L. S. & K. Rebay. 2007. Interpreting the body: burial practices at the Middle Bronze Age cemetery at Pitten, Archaeologia Austriaca 89 (2005): 153-175).

4. The transformation of the grave follows the changing understanding of the cremated body: a traditional grave form is useful for insisting on the wholeness of the body, both in terms of the graves’ traditional connotations and through their ability to literately mark out the body shape. We see enormous local variation in the gradual reshaping of the graves, which usually first affects size and dimensions.

5. Continuous engagement with the body during and after the funeral can often be observed, but port-funerary engagements with the body are particularly varied in their local execution. They can be broken down in two phases: the phase in which the dead body seems to still be perceived as a kind of living body, with needs that have to be catered for; and a second phase in which the physical body becomes irrelevant, and can be deprived of grave goods, robbed and disturbed.