The Age of Death and Fire: Dating Burial Customs by Radiocarbon and Correspondence Analysis at the Late Bronze Age Cemetery of Inzersdorf, Austria

The Late Bronze Age is marked by an increasing homogenization of material culture and burial customs. The cemetery of Inzersdorf, situated in the Lower Traisen Valley, Lower Austria, serves as a case study to examine diachronic changes in burial practices. This paper interprets radiocarbon data from 49 calcined human bone samples and employs correspondence analysis of grave contexts. The carefully integrated dataset enables the precise delineation of the cemetery’s chronological structure in relation to the burial practices, which include body-sized graves, graves encircled by ditches and urn graves. Insights into rituals or ancestral veneration emerge from temporal discrepancies in graves with multiple occupation. The analysis indicates the cemetery’s early origin in around 1400 BC, at the transition from the Middle to the Late Bronze Age, and identifies two peak phases of activity before burial practices decline in around 950 BC. The integration of typo-chronological markers, ¹⁴C data, and comparisons with nearby contemporary cemeteries reveals a complex temporal framework, emphasizing the fluidity and regional variability of burial practices. This challenges assumptions of a linear development in mortuary rites and establishes an absolute and a relative chronology of the Late Bronze Age for eastern Austria.