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Individuality, Collectivity, and everything in between: Burial practices in the Bronze Age Levant Jennie Bradbury As a species we have been concerned with the dead and their post-mortem treatment for the past hundred thousand years, if not more. Although a shared human experience, the realities surrounding the death of a community member and the necessity of dealing with their corpse provokes a huge variety of responses; from the hasty disposal of the deceased through to elaborate and lengthy funerary rites. Moreover, despite attempts to identify a “normative” burial practice for any given period, in reality we encounter a truly dazzling spectrum of ways in which the living can deal with the dead, in both the modern and ancient world. This paper shines a light on the diversity of burial practices present in the ancient Levant, embracing the messiness and variability of the archaeological record. Zooming in on the Bronze Age, I will focus on several major themes, the manipulation and treatment of the
