Practici funerare în cultura Hamangia - sacrificii de animale
Funerary practices in the Hamangia culture - animal sacrifices

Summary/Abstract: Communities Hamangia are individualized in relation to other Neo-Eneolithic cultures of SE European area by the practice of animal offerings. Present both in settlements and especially in cemeteries, animal offerings betray totemic ancestral beliefs, the individuals killed unrepresenting only species present in the normal diet of these communities. Among the wild species it distinguishes Equus hydruntinus, the large number of fauna remains making Hamangia sites as providing the richest group of neo-Eneolithic European fauna. Spatial arrangement of graves with offerings, in the necropolis of Durankulak, highlights once again interpretation errors: artificial timings for human groups with same funeral customs, differences between stages of Hamangia I-II and Hamangia III being determined arbitrarily, based only on pottery typology. Also, the consideration of rich funeral offerings as an indicator for higher welfare status has proved erroneous, in tombs rich with symbols of power being absent. Present both in graves - of any age or gender – and also in settlements, the offerings of animals, especially in the form of skulls/parts of skulls betray the existence of complex rituals in which, the ritual consumption of slaughtered animals represented an important moment in Hamangia I-III communities. In the last stage - Hamangia IV - this practice is forgotten, communities being heavily contaminated by Boian-Marica "Fashion". Much more hierarchical, with richer and varied funerary inventory, the community adopts also new and religious concepts, which suggests more than mere cultural exchanges. The cohabitation of the local group Hamangia with an intrusive group, came from the complex of graphitized ceramics area, gradually leads to loss of cultural identity, the last phase representing in fact a stage of transition towards Gumelnita-Karanovo VI.

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