An important Neolithic site, comprising both settlement and cemetery, dated to the late 5th millennium be and lying south of Bucure§ti, Rumania. In the settlement, a Boian II pit cuts superposed levels of the late Dude§ti and Boian I phases — one of the few such stratigraphic relationships noted in Muntenia. Adjoining the settlement is the key Boian I cemetery, the largest inhumation cemetery in the Balkan Middle Neolithic. Comprising over 350 graves, the Cernica cemetery contains zones of graves with richer grave goods, interspersed with ‘poorer’ grave goods. Richer graves contained marble, shell and bone beads, as well as some of the earliest copper ornaments in the Balkans. In contrast to most other Balkan burial rites of crouched inhumation, the Cernica burial rite is almost exclusively extended inhumation.
The Macmillan dictionary of archaeology, Ruth D. Whitehouse, 1983Copied