Original scientific paper
Grave - goods
Branko Đaković
; Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
Introducing the general cultural context of the custom of burying beside the bodies of the deceased, various objects, the author explains the need to approach this feature of a very complex structure by ethnological research as well.
He sums up the results reached by other researchers, who have sporadically, but never systematically, written about these problems, R. Kajmaković, S. Bajić, J Belošević, E. Pašalić, V. Novak and S.A. Tokarjev have given certain classifications of grave-goods according to criteria which, as they considered, make possible further analytical explora¬tion.
Taking into account the criteria of "to whom a gift is given", "what is given", "who gives it" and "why it is given", the author has classified posthumous gifts into the fol¬lowing groups:
A) - Gifts to older men and women
- Gifts to the young
- Gifts to children
- Gifts to persons having special social status: (seniors, pregnant women, widows, suicides, etc...)
B) - Money
- Food and drink
- Personal objects
- Religious objects
- Quantities of earth from farms
- Objects which were in touch with the deceased
C) - Gifts given by the family of the deceased
- Gifts given by others to the deceased
D) - Gifts given on behalf of a third family member, if someone has already died in the
same year
- Gifts given out of fear of the deceased in order that he shouldn-t come back or be¬come a vampire, or to pay him for something
- Gifts for his life on the other world
Analyzing, according to the above-established criteria, the custom of putting gifts into a grave, the author has found that the limits between the groups arc not fixed. Then the author brings forth a more systematic comparative analysis of this custom and concludes that we could to a whole range of new solutions if posthumous gifts were considered as symbols and messages belonging to the posthumous cycle and thus reflecting in them¬selves a whole range of ancient customs of diverse origins which arc extremely complex in structure and meaning.
Keywords
traditional culture; grave - goods; postumous gifts
Hrčak ID:
75820
URI
Publication date:
27.6.1989.
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