Inequality and mobility: Funerary practices during the Bell Beaker era from the Rhine Valley to the Seine Valley
Texte intégral
1The geographical landscape stretching between the Rhine and the Seine Valleys is recognized as a cultural crossroads between Central Europe and the Atlantic coast. This strategic position renders it a particularly suitable context for studying the spread of the Bell Beaker culture across Europe. The wide diversity of Bell Beaker funerary remains, together with local cultural expressions, reflects social hierarchies at both the individual and population levels. Moreover, funeral practices provide valuable insights into the mobility of both ideas and individuals.
2This on-going research (Master 2 & newly started PhD) synthesizes and presents existing studies on Bell Beaker burials in the Rhine and Seine valleys. The dataset has been pre-selected according to both geographical and archaeological criteria. The study area is defined on the basis of geological data in order to mitigate biases arising from current geopolitical divisions. Additionally, the burials were selected according to a polythetic set of criteria, ensuring that only securely attributed Bell Beaker contexts were included, while preserving the diversity of practices.
3This poster presents the geographical distribution of a selected group of Bell Beaker burials from a transnational perspective, with particular attention to cultural variability. A detailed map will illustrate the diversity of funerary practices, the variety of Bell Beaker burial types identified, as well as their spatial distribution within the study area. Consequently, these data will provide a clearer understanding of the cultural and social differences evident during this period, along with indications of mobility. On this basis, this research offers a preliminary interpretation of exchange networks as an initial outcome of the PhD research. Future work will integrate published genetic data and generate new isotopic data to further refine our understanding of mobility and social inequality during this period.
Pour citer cet article
Référence électronique
Lisa Gaignard, François Giligny, Clément Nicolas et Alessandra Varalli, « Inequality and mobility: Funerary practices during the Bell Beaker era from the Rhine Valley to the Seine Valley », Bulletins et mémoires de la Société d’Anthropologie de Paris [En ligne], 38(S) | 2026, mis en ligne le 16 décembre 2025, consulté le 08 mars 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/bmsap/17061 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/15hhz
Haut de pageDroits d’auteur
Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont susceptibles d’être soumis à des autorisations d’usage spécifiques.
Haut de page



