MORTUARY ARCHAEOLOGY

Mortuary archaeology is the study of the social processes and cultural practices between death and burial (and sometimes beyond). Bodies, graves, objects, and burial monuments all provide important material evidence that archaeologists use to understand life and death in past societies. Mortuary practices mediate social norms, relationships, and identities in the past. From a methodological perspective, I emphasize the temporal and spatial relationships among the material traces of mortuary behavior. Combining radiocarbon dating, network analyses, geospatial techniques, and chemical sourcing of grave goods, a scientific approach to the funerary record provides important data necessary to test theories and hypotheses about the roles of mortuary practices in the past. My work on mortuary archaeology has primarily focused on prehistoric Romania and Ireland.

BIOARCHAEOLOGY

In recent decades, scientific innovations have made it possible to develop increasingly detailed biographies from skeletons. Working with a large collaborative team of specialists, I examine the lives of people in the past through osteological analyses of age, sex, health, and trauma, isotopic analyses of prehistoric diet and mobility, FTIR analysis of cremated remains, and ancient DNA. I currently co-direct the MARBAL Project, a bioarchaeological and mortuary archaeological investigation into the emergence of social inequality in Bronze Age Transylvania.

Examples:

Ciugudean, H., A. Waterman, J. Beck, C.P. Quinn, and D. Peate. (2025). The Highlanders of Western Transylvania and their Neighbors: An Interdisciplinary Study of the Early Bronze Age Tumulus at Meteș, Romania. In The Bronze Age at the Edge of the Carpathian Basin: Archaeological Studies Dedicated to Carol Kacso on his 80th Birthday, edited by H. Ciugudean and B. Rezi. pp, 39-101. Editura Mega, Cluj-Napoca.

Ciugudean, H., C.P. Quinn, C. Uhnér, and J. Beck. (2023). From East to West and West to East: Yamnaya Migration and Interaction with Copper Age Carpathian Communities in Transylvania. In Steppe Transmissions: The Yamnaya Impact on Prehistoric Europe. B. Preda Bălănică, M. Ahola, and P. Włodarczak. pp. 204-245. Archaeolingua, Budapest.

Beck, J., H. Ciugudean, and C.P. Quinn. (2020). Bioarchaeology and Mountain Landscapes in Transylvania’s Golden Quadrangle. Bioarchaeology International 4(2): 89-110.

Quinn, C.P. and J. Beck. (2016). Essential Tensions: A Framework for Exploring Inequality through Mortuary Archaeology and Bioarchaeology. Open Archaeology 2(1): 18-41.

Quinn, C.P. (2015). Returning and Reuse: Diachronic Perspectives on Multi-Component Cemeteries and Mortuary Politics at Middle Neolithic and Early Bronze Age Tara, Ireland. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 37: 1-18.

Kuijt, I., C.P. Quinn, and G. Cooney. (2014). Transformation by Fire: The Archaeology of Cremation in Cultural Context. Amerind Series at the University of Arizona Press: Tucson.

Quinn, C.P. and I. Kuijt. (2013). The Tempo of Life and Death During the Early Bronze Age at the Mound of the Hostages, Tara. In: Tara: From the Past to the Future. M. O’Sullivan (ed.). pp. 154-164. Wordwell and UCD School of Archaeology: Bray, Co. Wicklow.

Kuijt, I. and C.P. Quinn. (2013). Biography of the Neolithic Body: Tracing Pathways to Cist II, Mound of the Hostages, Tara. In: Tara: From the Past to the Future. M. O’Sullivan (ed.). pp. 130-143. Wordwell and UCD School of Archaeology: Bray, Co. Wicklow.