Increasing research interest in the reconstruction of life histories of objects, humans and animals within the Mesolithic funerary sphere is helping to shape new understandings of hunter-gatherer mortuary practices. Across Europe, large burial grounds to single/isolated burials are being investigated with a broad suite of scientific techniques, e.g. aDNA, stable isotopes, ZooMS, osteology, zooarchaeology, provenancing, technological and traceological studies, microscopy analysis of soil samples etc., enabling new, socially-driven narratives relating to the life histories of individuals and their grave assemblages to be told.

Here, we invite researchers working on burial archaeology to contribute a paper framed around the concept of “life history”, with a view to establishing how different methods and theories (old/new) can be employed to reconstruct past lifeways, including those of objects, within mortuary contexts.