Question

How did neolithic people dispose off their dead members

Answer 1

During the Neolithic Period the dead were buried inside their houses -beneath the floor- or very close to them, at the limits of the settlements they had lived in. Burials were as a rule isolated, while cemeteries have rarely been encountered; the latter date from the Early (Soufli Magoula), Late(Soufli Magoula, Platia Magoula Zarkou) and Final Neolithic (Kephala-Kea, Tharrounia-Euboea, Yiali-Dodecanese).


There is evidence of three types of burial customs from excavations carried out in Greece: 
1. Primary internment of the dead in simple pits (simple inhumations), usually in a contracted but also crouched position

2. Cremation of the dead, partial (Early Neolithic) or complete (Late Neolithic), accompanied by vases, or cremations in which the cremated were in several cases placed in vases, the first known in Greece and some of the oldest in Europe, and 
3. Collecting the bones (skull, thighs, ribs) of the dead individual and burying these beneath the floors of the house (Prodromos in Karditsa) or in a specific part of a cave (a kind of ossuary in Alepotrypa in Diros). 
An exception to the burial customs of the Neolithic was the chamber tomb with a passage (dromos), discovered in the area of the Ancient Agora of Athens and this is the oldest example of its kind in Greece. The dead were accompanied by funerary items, such as pottery, stone tools, animal offerings, while from the Final Neolithic onwards figurines and jewellery were offered.

Burial practices reflected the beliefs of Neolithic societyconcerning death, which was not considered as simply a form of sleep continued inside the house of the dead, beneath the floor where their kinship continued their activities. Burial offerings of vases and other objects on the charred bodies of the dead suggests in fact a belief in life after death, in the immaterial and therefore indestructible soul!

Answer 2

The popular Neolithic burial chamber which was the long carriage was recovered from Southland and east of Britain from about 3800 BCE and remained in use till 3300 BCE.

Bones, which had gone for some form of defleshing, were stored in mortuaries which after which it was sealed off, either by heaping mud and pebbles over the chamber or by stopping the doorway with rocks. Before the barrow was locked, the bones were oftentimes passed nearby and disseminated over various chambers.

Historians believe that this was the important ritual of neolithic times because the bones of relatives were employed in considering formal social and familial relations.