Burial Mounds in Europe and Japan: Comparative and Contextual Perspectives

Burial Mounds in Europe and Japan brings together specialists of the European Bronze and Iron Age and the Japanese Yayoi and Kofun periods for the first time to discuss burial mounds in a comparative context. The book aims to strengthen knowledge of Japanese archaeology in Europe and vice versa. The papers demonstrate many methodological and interpretive commonalities in the archaeology of burial mounds in Japan and Europe and provide a series of state-of-the-art case studies highlighting many different aspects of burial mound research in both regions. Topics addressed by both European and Japanese specialists include research histories, excavation methods, origins and development of graves with burial mounds, the relationship of burial mounds to settlements and landscape, and above all administrative power and ritual.