"The wreath you prepared for me"

Funeral wreaths as objects of interdisciplinary research

Abstract

Part 1: Funeral wreaths as an object group have been inadequately investigated until now. Research on them has mainly been ethnological defining them as criterion of a burial of an unmarried person. Since the 1990s funeral wreaths are also given attention as objects of archaeological research. This part of the contribution gives an overview of the first systematic collation and interpretation of funeral wreaths from graves in the federal states of Berlin, Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

Part 2: This part outlines the development of a funeral-wreath custom, in particular of its "above-ground" monuments from an ethnological viewpoint. It is based on hundreds of items as well as numerous written, pictorial or oral sources which were discovered and documented by the author in pioneering work over a long period. A partial comparison with the archaeological evidence was carried out.