Ritual Dogs and Buried Children
Archaeologists in Bulgaria, used to attracting the world's attention with discoveries of gold jewellery, Roman forts and saints' burials, appear to find the habit difficult to shake. Their most recent announcement is the discovery of a Chalcolithic necropolis near Ruse complete with evidence for the ritual sacrifice of dogs!
If true, it would be a most interesting discovery, but unfortunately a closer examination of the find does not appear to support their dramatic press release. When you look at it in detail, what they have found is three graves, one containing the skeleton and gravegoods of an adult and the others of children. There are also the ruins of a burned-down building and, finally, a pit containing an unspecified number of dog skeletons.
I'm afraid that in my version of English, three graves do not a necropolis make. Furthermore, to assert - as the archaeologists do - that the burned-out building was "most likely used for burial rituals" is to go so far beyond the available evidence that the evidence is completely out of sight! Unless there is more - considerably more - than what they have announced, the building is simply a building. As for the dog skeletons ...
The evidence would be adequately explained by the violent history of the Balkans. Raiders come across a lonely farmhouse, massacre everyone in it - an adult and two children - and kill the family dogs which are attempting to defend the family. When they leave, after robbing the place, they set fire to the building. A survivor or survivors returns, buries the victims, throws the dogs into a separate pit and then goes off to find work in the big city. (Er - the last is sarcasm. More likely the survivor/s go off and join another group on the basis of safety in numbers.)
I am reminded of the short clay tube on display in the Manchester University Museum, which for many years was labelled "Ritual Object" - until a knowledgable bee-keeper came along and told the museum authorities that the object was, in fact, an antique beehive. On his insistence it was examined again and to their astonishment the experts found a tiny lump of beeswax half-way down the inside - and just to put the matter beyond doubt, trapped in the beeswax was a bee's hind leg!
Quite why archaeologists have this compulsion to see rituals in every little thing I do not know. Although it is true that primitive people, as evidenced by anthropological studies in Africa or New Guinea, do use magical rituals far more than modern western man, not everything they do has a ritual significance. Frequently the explanations archaeologists (and anthropologists) offer have more to do with their own psyche and their own lack of a belief system than with tribal world views. There is a good deal of truth in the cynical remark that when men cease to believe in God, they don't believe in nothing - they believe in anything!
© Kendall K. Down 2009
