A Late Bronze Age burial from Gelja Ljut in Eastern Herzegovina

This paper presents a set of Late Bronze Age grave finds fromGelja Ljut, near Gacko in eastern Herzegovina. The assemblageconsists of a grip-tongue bronze sword, a spearhead and twosocketed axes. The primary focus of the study is the morphological,typological and stylistic analysis of the artefacts in relationto other similar known objects, in order to ofer a possible explanationfor the issue of their chronological positioning and a potentialplace of manufacture or, at the very least, a cultural context.Ultimately, the site of Gelja Ljut provides us with an assemblagethat was undoubtedly part of the inventory of a wealthy person. The selection of these items for deposition is evidence ofcareful curation relating to the representation of the deceased,and stands as a testament to the complex cultural connectionspresent in the form of a wider regional network during the 11thcentury BC. Furthermore, the interpretation of the ‘funerary set’enables us better to understand human actions in the past, particularlyfor an area where the archaeological heritage of thisperiod has, to date, been very poorly recorded.