Mortuary Archaeology of the Râmeț Bronze Age Landscape (MARBAL)
MARBAL is a collaborative bioarchaeology and mortuary archaeology project that I co-direct with Horia Ciugudean (Muzeul Național al Unirii din Alba Iulia), and Colin Quinn (Hamilton College). Our project investigates mortuary practices, identity, and lived experience in one of richest resource procurement zones in Europe. So far we have conducted:
Pilot mapping season of the cemetery of Râmeț-Gugu in October 2016
Off-mound excavations at Râmeț-Gugu in summer 2018 + more bioarch data collection
Excavations of the southwestern quadrant of the major tomb in July-August 2019
Excavations of the southeastern quadrant of the major tomb in May-June 2022
Excavations of the northeastern quadrant of the major tomb in July–August 2023
Related publications: Ciugudean, Hora, Colin Quinn, Clae Uhnér, and Jess Beck. 2023. From west to east: Interaction between Copper Age Carpathian communities and Yamnaya groups seen in the funerary record. In Steppe transmissions. The Yamnaya Impact on Prehistoric Europe. Edited by Bianca Preda-Bălănică, Marja Ahola, Piotr Włodarczak, pp. 205–245. Archaeolingua: Budapest. Beck, Jess, Horia Ciugudean, and Colin Quinn. (2020). A bioarchaeological approach to contested mountain landscapes in Transylvania’s Golden Quadrangle. Thematic Issue “Living and Dying in Mountain Landscapes,” co-edited by J. Beck and C.P. Quinn Bioarchaeology International, 4(2): 89–110.
Quinn, Colin, Horia Ciugudean, and Jess Beck. (2020). The Politics of Placing the Dead in the Mining Landscapes of Bronze Age Transylvania. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 34: 1–14.
Los Melgarejos
I am continuing my work in Iberia as the bioarchaeologist on the Los Melgarejos project. Los Melgarejos is an enclosure settlement from Getafe, Madrid, Spain, excavated by the firm Área Arqeuológía in 2017–2018. The site is broadly dated to the Copper Age (c. 3250-2200 cal BC), and contains seventeen mortuary features which incorporate at least 49 distinct burials or deposits of human remains, plus nine deposits of human bones dispersed throughout the site in ‘non-funerary’ contexts such as ditches or other site features. I analysed the human skeletal remains from the site in 2018 and 2019 and am currently writing up the results of this project.
Related publications Beck, Jess, and Julien Riel-Salvatore. (2023). Trickle-down equity: Reply to Shott (2022). The Society for American Archaeology Archaeological Record. 23(3): 33–46.
Beck, Jess, Erik Gjesfjeld, and Stephen Chrisomalis. (2021). Prestige or Perish: Publishing Decisions in Academic Archaeology. American Antiquity, 86(4): 669–695.