Mesolithic burials on the territory of Poland

Abstract

For many decades, archaeologists were wondering what the spiritual life of prehistoric peoples inhabiting Polish territories looked like. With the beginning of the Mesolithic period our knowledge of that issue significantly expands. This is primarily due to a growing number of new discoveries of burials associated with the Mesolithic peoples.
The main purpose of this paper is to present the graves of hunter-gatherers so far known in the literature that represent the Mesolithic stage of development on the territory of Poland. The article also makes an attempt to relate them to the various examples of burials in eastern and western Europe, and thus to interpret and to answer to some phenomena that are noticeable in the archaeological material such as: the numerous burials of women with small children, the specific arrangement of bodies and significant amounts of ochre found in burial pits in areas distant from natural deposits of this pigment. Although these phenomena are often quoted in the descriptions of Mesolithic burials, they still raise a number of questions.