The Mesolithic cemetery at Mariënberg (NL), a rebuttal to alternative interpretations

<p>In 2006, the authors presented their final publication, in English, of a series of Mesolithic residential settlements, one of which was associated with six ‘sitting graves’. These were remarkable graves, at any rate to 20th-century researchers. The mainly anthropological connotations of such graves in the Western European context were extensively discussed. That final publication soon drew a great deal of attention, with the interpretation of the Mesolithic sitting graves evidently raising barelyveiled doubts and indeed incredulity with some readers. Some earlier, preliminary publications in Dutch and partial results and summaries had gone almost unnoticed. In fact, the first exceptions to this were the inclusion of Mariënberg (municipality of Hardenberg, province of Overijssel) in a European survey of Mesolithic graves (J.M. Grünberg 2000) and its mention in “The prehistory of the Netherlands” (L.P. Louwe Kooijmans et al., 2005).</p>