Rituals, feasts, beliefs

‘With prayers and vows I called upon the families of the dead’

Rock paintings and pottery or stone figurines, emphasising the importance of fertility, are the traces the Palaeolithic transcendent world has left behind. The rites and traditions connected to these figurines and the anthropomorphic vessels, sometimes featuring only a body part or two (a face or breasts), have persisted for millennia, manifesting, at the end of the Copper Age, as idols with changeable heads and steles.

Bronze Age symbolism revolved around maintaining contact with the celestial sphere, as attested by motifs like the Sun Ship and the Sun Wagon, figurines depicting elements of the astral world, and bird-shaped vessels (askoi) and rattles. Conceptions of the other world formed beliefs later, too. Perhaps the image of an ‘upside-down’ world is reflected in the custom of rendering objects useless (like Celts had folded the swords of their warriors before burying them in the grave) or placing them in the grave in irregular positions (see the graves of some Hungarian warriors where the kaftan was loosened, the boots were pulled off the feet, and the sabre was placed beside the deceased with the tip instead of the handle at hand). A mirror in the grave may hint at the other world having been imagined as a mirror image of that of the living. Trephination (surgically drilling a hole in the skull) may hint at a belief in soul dualism (that humans have a ‘body soul’ and a ‘free soul’).

Partial and complete horses buried with nomadic warriors in the Migration Period hint at the idea of the ‘afterlife journey’. Magical amulets protected people from harmful spirits and disease. These could be made from materials found in nature (pendants made by piercing a stone, a canine, a cowrie shell, or a wild boar tusk) or metal (double-axe or labrys and lead pendants). The experience enjoyed in mass rituals was improved by dance and enhanced looks (by wearing a headdress or a mask, tattoos, or body painting or stamping); besides, its impression was made more lasting by hiding or publicly destroying jewellery, weapons, tools, and pottery or metal tableware sets.