The Skull in the Oven : An unusual variant of the skull cult from the Late Copper Age

Various forms of the skull cult have been attested since the Palaeolithic across immense and geographically often distant regions. Several variants of this distinctive rite dating from the later fourth millennium BC have been documented in the Carpathian Basin: skulls placed in inhumation burials and skulls or skull fragments buried in separate graves, as well as skull fragments or mandibles deposited in pits, wells or other settlement features. Any assessment of skull cults is ultimately based on finds of intact or fragmented neurocraniums (ossa cranii cerebralis) and the viscerocraniums (ossa cranii visceralis), while mandibles are rarely found in this context. Yet, no matter which fragment of the skull is found in a burial or some other feature, the entire skull was needed for removing the portions necessary for performing the rite. The large-scale excavations conducted during the past years have yielded further evidence for the practice of this rite from several sites in Hungary. Here, we shall discuss a new element, namely the deposition of human skull fragments in ovens.