Funeral Rituals

The reconstruction of funeral rituals is the principal part of the history of ancient venets. To begin, the ceremony of cremation is more like a series of ceremonies made to carry the dead to the afterlife and as an assurance to the surviving family of life after death. The body, probably wearing the best clothes and valuables the person posessed, was covered by a sheet and was brought on top of a wooden platform surrounded by flowers which was then burned.

After cremation, the bones were gathered, selected and washed to be then placed in a container with other personal belongings. Archeological findings discovered pieces of cloth both inside and outside the bone container, perhaps suggesting that even the container was further covered by sheets.

Even the ashes of the wooden platform were gathered and placed in the cemetery in individual holes. As part of the funeral ceremonies the funeral banquet also served as an occasion to distinguish the social status of the dead's family. The tomb, almost always made of stones, but sometimes in wood, was used to bury the whole family, therefore many times it was reopened to insert the following dead. The fact that these tombs were often reopened is confirmed by several bone containers. Further analysis has highlighted that some containers included bones from different individuals, perhaps representing a conjunction of close people through the ceremony in the afterlife. Also the personal belongings found in the same containers included male, female and children's objects. The symbolic significance of the bone container, seen as the personification of the dead, is underlined by the fact that these containers were dressed with cloth, belts, jewelery, just as the living person might have. The archeological diggings, made with stratigraphic methodologies, has brought to light importance of objects made of depletable materials, such as wool, linen, clothings, belts, wooden artifacts and more objects dear to the dead.