Ritual Cooperation and Ritual Collectivity: The Social Structure of the Middle and Younger Funnel Beaker North Group (3500 – 2800 BC)

Abstract

A model about the social development of a TRB society – the change from a society with individual and group diversity around 3400 BC to a more stratified social formation around 3000 BC –  is shown to be the outcome of both burial evidence on the North Friesian Islands as well as information on enclosures, decoration diversity and economic variables from further regions of the southern TRB North group.

While the former is linked to ideological concepts of “ritual cooperation”, the later ideology might be labelled “ritual collectiveness”. Expressions of “ritual cooperation” are causewayed enclosures  and different burial customs, the means of “ritual collectiveness” passage graves.