Bioarchaeology has impacted how archaeologists reconstruct individual characteristics of past life-ways and behavior. Through detailed analyses of human remains in relation within their mortuary context, bioarchaeologists have contributed to understanding how social identity among the living (gender, status, occupation, social relations, etc) is represented in death. Analyses of grave goods and burial treatment have been brought to bear on aspects of gender, status, and social age for individuals from the Bronze Age Maros cemeteries of Mokrin and Ostojićevo of the Banat region of northeastern Serbia (ca. 2100-1600 BC). Here, I present my preliminary results from an in-depth osteological inventory of the Ostojićevo collection, housed at the Narodni Muzej Kikinda. Data collection, carried out over the past three summers, included analysis of skeletal completeness and preservation, biological sex, age at death, and dental and skeletal pathology (disease and/or trauma).
Despite similarities in the mortuary programs at Mokrin and Ostojićevo, the practice of burying newborns and infants in ceramic urns at Ostojićevo provides evidence for changing burial customs associated with broader economic and social transitions in the region. In a population where 33% of individuals died before their 6th birthday and 50% died before their 25th, death was an ever-present and important part of community life. This is reflected in the use of body treatment, body orientation, and material culture to differentiate individuals on the basis of gendered status likely associated with fertility, marital status, and possible evidence for inherited status.