The Tombs of Forefathers

Neolithic long barrows in Bohemia were long neglected by archaeologists due to their destruction by modern intensive agricultural activity. This new analysis, resulting from a three-year interdisciplinary research project, of the phenomenon of Neolithic long barrows in Bohemia and Central Europe presents entirely new findings and data and tackles a number of previously unresolved questions. New discoveries, based primarily on remote sensing and targeted excavations, together with the revision of earlier archaeological records, allow us to define more accurately the construction and chronological development of these monuments, and to advance our knowledge of the southeastern boundary of this phenomenon's spread together with reconstruction of the social and religious significance of these monuments for the agricultural communities of Central Europe.

At the sacred places defined by the long barrows, ceremonies and rituals took place over millennia that confirmed the cohesion of the living with the ancestors and their faith in the gods. People, even many generations later, continued to venerate these ancient monuments, not as places of final rest for their direct ancestors but as places dedicated to mythical time, where the living meet the dead and honour the gods. It is not surprising, therefore, that people added the burials of their own ancestors to the embankments of ancient barrows and established their own funerary areas nearby even after several millennia.

All long barrows excavated within our project contained only one primary burial: in Bohemia these were not collective graves as found, for example, in the British Isles or Scandinavia. Given the monumentality of barrow construction, it can be presumed that the buried individuals represented a form of social elite, though not necessarily due to their individual social power. It seems that the primary burial played the role of an initiation sacrifice: a ritual of consecration of the ancestor sanctuary, which then no longer served for further burials that may have been taboo. Subsequent activities may have been related to forms of ancestral cult, but the primary burial was not followed by other funerary events. All evidence of later burials is at least 1000 years later than barrow construction.

In the region around the Czech mythical Mountain Říp, burial monuments from various prehistoric periods, including the Late Neolithic, abound. Residential and economic activities on the plains appear later. It can be assumed that this area was perceived as a ritual landscape in earlier prehistory in which long barrows played a significant role in structuring the farming landscape and as significant landmarks. Their monumentality initiated a long-standing tradition creating palimpsests of funerary and sacred sites near Mount Říp. The places where the long barrows were built played an important role in the lives of prehistoric communities, and their placement and orientation in the landscape was not random, indicating significant symbolic connotations with the surrounding landscape. The rituals and festivities held here allowed people to connect with the spiritual legacy of their ancestors, thus creating a significant spiritual tradition inscribed in the agriculturally colonised landscape.