The emergence of hybrid funerary practices during the Post Talayotic: The case of Son Maimó

Abstract

The cave of son Maimó (Petra, Mallorca) is the chosen site to study the mortuary practices that were developed during the Late Iron Age or Posttalaiòtic period (550- 123 BC) because of the particularities of its register, consisting in two main horizons which show two different rituals; burials in wooden coffins and possibly quicklime incinerations combined with infantile inhumations in pottery urns. The aim of this paper is to identify the hybrid funerary practices that developed due to the cultural contacts between the indigenous population with foreign people and that resulted to new original ways of approaching death, which combined local and external elements but that were neither of them.