Academic literature on the topic 'Burial practices; Mortuary theory'
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Journal articles on the topic "Burial practices; Mortuary theory"
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Ardika, I. Wayan, I. Ketut Setiawan, I. Wayan Srijaya, and Rochtri Agung Bawono. "Stratifikasi sosial pada masa prasejarah di Bali." Jurnal Kajian Bali (Journal of Bali Studies) 7, no. 1 (May 18, 2017): 33. http://dx.doi.org/10.24843/jkb.2017.v07.i01.p03.
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Mortuary practices might have represented social stratification during the prehistoric period in Bali. Disposal treatment of the decease, burial goods, and containers that were utilized for burials may correspond with social identity and social persona of the deads and their family. This article will explore social stratification on the basis of burial systems and burial goods that were utilized during the prehistoric period in Bali. Field survey and study on documents have also been done for data collection. In addation, Postprocessual theory has been applied in this study. It seems that global contacts and access for exotic goods might have stimulated the ranked or social stratification during prehistoric period in Bali. Metal objects, which raw materials are absence in Bali, including stone and glass beads, gold foil eye covers that were utilized as burial goods might have represent a status symbol during prehstoric period in Bali. Local elits in Bali utilized material objects as well as burial systems as a symbol for social differentiation and hierarchies in the soceity. Ranked society occurred prior to the apperance of Early State in Bali.
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Miniaci, Gianluca. "Multiple Burials in Ancient Societies: Theory and Methods from Egyptian Archaeology." Cambridge Archaeological Journal 29, no. 2 (December 6, 2018): 287–307. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s095977431800046x.
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The paper aims at providing theoretical models and data interpretation applied to multiple burials. Challenging the current fuzzy definition of multiple burials in ancient societies, the paper proposes a more accurate classification of multiple burials, with particular reference to ancient Egypt funerary culture, based on two main parameters, which may have influenced the association of bodies: p1) architecture; p2) time span, and three flexible sub-parameters that may be used to customize different scenarios, on occasion: sp1) number of deceased; sp2) age of deceased; sp3) nature of death/deposition. The body has been often considered the real ontological centre of the burial itself with all of the other countable objects intended as radiating projections supporting the body-nucleus. The practice of multiple burials disrupts such a perception as it juxtaposes horizontal, multidirectional perspectives: the role of a new body entering among older bodies and objects, and of the multiple bodies and objects themselves. The study of multiple burials, if correctly framed, can lead to insights into different religious, social, and economic reasons behind the mortuary programmes within a society. For instance, sequential multiple burials reinforce the transformation of dead bodies into part of the burial equipment itself, reducing the centrality of the body and disrupting the narrative tied to individual biographies, increasing an ‘artefactual’ perception.
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Cannon, Aubrey, and Katherine Cook. "Infant Death and the Archaeology of Grief." Cambridge Archaeological Journal 25, no. 2 (April 23, 2015): 399–416. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0959774315000049.
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To build a theoretical and empirical foundation for interpretation of the absence, segregation or simplicity of infant burials in archaeological contexts, we review social theories of emotion, inter-disciplinary views on the relationship between mortality rates and emotional investment, and archaeological interpretations of infant burial patterns. The results indicate a lack of explicit theory in most archaeological accounts and a general lack of consideration for individual variation and the process of change in mortuary practice. We outline the tenets of Bowlby's attachment theory and Stroebe and Schut's dual process model of bereavement to account theoretically for pattern, variation and change in modes of infant burial. We illustrate the value of this psychology-based perspective in an analysis of Victorian gravestone commemorations of infant burials in 35 villages in rural south Cambridgeshire, England, where individual and class-based variation, relative to falling mortality rates, is best explained as a function of coping strategies and contextually based social constraint on the overt representation of grief and loss.
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Rife, Joseph L. "The burial of Herodes Atticus: élite identity, urban society, and public memory in Roman Greece." Journal of Hellenic Studies 128 (November 2008): 92–127. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0075426900000070.
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AbstractThis paper discusses the burial of Herodes Atticus as a well-attested case of élite identification through mortuary practices. It gives a close reading of Philostratus' account of Herodes' end inc. 179 (VS2.1.15) alongside the evidence of architecture, inscriptions, sculpture, and topography at Marathon, Cephisia and Athens. The intended burial of Herodes and the actual burials of his family on the Attic estates expressed wealth and territorial control, while his preference for Marathon fused personal history with civic history. The Athenian intervention in Herodes' private funeral, which led to his magnificent interment at the Panathenaic Stadium, served as a public reception for a leading citizen and benefactor. Herodes' tomb should be identified with a long foundation on the stadium's east hill that might have formed an eccentric altar-tomb, while an elegantklinêsarcophagus found nearby might have been his coffin. His epitaph was a traditional distich that stressed through language and poetic allusion his deep ties to Marathon and Rhamnous, his euergetism and his celebrity. Also found here was an altar dedicated to Herodes ‘the Marathonian hero’ with archaizing features (IGII26791). The first and last lines of the text were erased in a deliberate effort to remove his name and probably the name of a relative. A cemetery of ordinary graves developed around Herods' burial site, but by the 250s these had been disturbed, along with the altar and the sarcophagus. This new synthesis of textual and material sources for the burial of Herodes contributes to a richer understanding of status and antiquarianism in Greek urban society under the Empire. It also examines how the public memory of élites was composite and mutable, shifting through separate phases of activity — funeral, hero-cult, defacement, biography — to generate different images of the dead.
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Tomášková, Silvia. "Picture me dead. Moral choices reimagined." Archaeological Dialogues 17, no. 1 (May 4, 2010): 92–96. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1380203810000103.
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Shortly before her death, my grandmother expressed a strongly felt sentiment not to lie in the family tomb next to her sister-in-law. It was not quite clear what was to be done with the bones of the woman who by then had occupied the space next to her brother, my grandfather, for some five years. My mother resolved the issue by depositing the urn with my grandmother's ashes on the other side of my grandfather's coffin, stating matter-of-factly, ‘We are not about to toss the aunt out, and we will certainly not build a new tomb.’ Acting in a relational web of moral obligations and duties as a good daughter, my mother also proceeded as a rational modern individual in the universe of limited choices in Eastern Europe. Cremation replaced interment, therefore ‘lying next to’ was no longer an issue in a literal sense. At the same time, the filial duty of a proper burial in the family tomb was conducted with all the necessary ritual, wide kin in attendance. This incident came to my mind when reading about the archaeological dilemma of mortuary analysis described in Voutsaki's essay: to what extent do burials express the will, agency and station in life of the deceased as opposed to those of the wider kin relations responsible for burying them? Do the actions that archaeologists interpret on the basis of burials derive from choices by individual, cognizant agents, or do they represent a moral world in which adherence to certain practices defines a ‘good person’? I wish to address two issues from this presentation, one more philosophical and the other directly addressing the archaeological record of the Mycenaeans. First, I will consider whether the shift from agency to personhood (and back) proposed in this essay solves interpretive problems created by the recent embrace of agency. Second, I am intrigued by the question that Voutsaki poses about why images appear in this period, as it seems to me that a potential answer may lie in her detailed exposition of moral theory if one looks carefully, or extends it slightly beyond the intended meaning.
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Hausmair, Barbara. "Topographies of the afterlife: Reconsidering infant burials in medieval mortuary space." Journal of Social Archaeology 17, no. 2 (April 24, 2017): 210–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1469605317704347.
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Across societies, deaths which take place in early infancy often trigger distinctive responses in burial practices, signifying the ambivalent social status of those who died before they really lived. This paper focuses on burial practices in medieval Central Europe pertaining to children who died before, during or shortly after birth. It discusses the relationship between medieval laity, ecclesiastic power and social space, using three medieval cemeteries in Switzerland and Austria as examples. By integrating considerations of medieval practices of infant baptism, afterlife topography and social theories of space, a methodological and interpretative framework is outlined and employed for approaching burials of early-deceased infants, the social dimension of related local burial practices, and processes of power negotiation between medieval laypeople and church authorities.
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Rhodes, Jill A., Joseph B. Mountjoy, and Fabio G. Cupul-Magaña. "UNDERSTANDING THE WRAPPED BUNDLE BURIALS OF WEST MEXICO: A CONTEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF MIDDLE FORMATIVE MORTUARY PRACTICES." Ancient Mesoamerica 27, no. 2 (2016): 377–88. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0956536116000262.
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AbstractThis article reports on the discovery of an unusual type of secondary burial found at two Middle Formative sites in the Mascota valley of Jalisco, West Mexico. We examine these burials within a Middle and Late Formative period context as well as a broader temporal context of funerary customs and mortuary programs involving secondary-type burials. Tightly wrapped, elaborately processed bundled burials were recovered at the cemeteries of El Embocadero II and Los Tanques. We report on the human remains from both sites and examine burial context and biological identity to seek explanations. The individuals selected for this burial treatment are not associated with any markers of high status. These burials may represent a different ethnic, familial, community or ancestral identity, and we consider the broader secondary burial phenomenon as the possible expression of a ritual of seasonal interment associated with the use of a mortuary hut to curate and process the bodies.
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Frohlich, Bruno, David R. Hunt, and Jonsdottir Birna. "Aleut Mortuary Practices. Re-Interpretation of Established Aleut Burial Customs." Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University. History 64, no. 2 (2019): 499–524. http://dx.doi.org/10.21638/11701/spbu02.2019.207.
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Lieske, Rosemary. "COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF PRECLASSIC AND PROTOCLASSIC BURIAL PRACTICES AT IZAPA AND IN SOUTHEASTERN MESOAMERICA." Ancient Mesoamerica 29, no. 2 (2018): 289–307. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0956536118000226.
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AbstractExtensive investigation at the archaeological site of Izapa in southern Chiapas, Mexico, by the New World Archaeological Foundation yielded few burials at the site's core ceremonial precinct. Those found were located on the acropolis that supports Mound 30a and defines the north side of Izapa Group B. The majority of caches found in this zone date to the Protoclassic Hato and Itstapa phases (100 b.c.–a.d. 250). The shift in mortuary practices ca. 100 b.c. was accompanied by several changes to the site's occupation and architectural patterns. Study of these mortuary traditions provides important insights regarding the reconfiguration of Izapa's political organization at the turn of the millennium. Comparisons of mortuary practices at Izapa with those of neighboring civic-ceremonial centers El Ujuxte, Takalik Abaj, and Kaminaljuyu during the Preclassic and Protoclassic transitions contextualizes the practices found at Izapa at a regional level.
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Cullen, Tracey. "Mesolithic mortuary ritual at Franchthi Cave, Greece." Antiquity 69, no. 263 (June 1995): 270–89. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0003598x00064681.
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Mesolithic sites are rare in the Aegean, and Mesolithic burials are uncommon throughout Europe. The Mesolithic human remains from Franchthi Cave, that remarkable, deeply stratified site in southern Greece, offer a rare glimpse into the burial practices of early Holocene hunter-gatherers of the Mediterranean.
Dissertations / Theses on the topic "Burial practices; Mortuary theory"
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Shepherd, Gillian. "Death and religion in archaic Greek Sicily : a study in colonial relationships." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 1993. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/272571.
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Ewert, Courtney Dotson. "Nabataean Subadult Mortuary Practices." BYU ScholarsArchive, 2017. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/6316.
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This thesis provides the beginnings of further research on the correlation between Nabataean mortuary practices and specific biological age ranges. It seeks to answer the question of whether Nabataean infants were absent from, or under-represented, in Nabataean cemeteries. Several quantitative analyses and descriptive statistics were performed, comparing Nabataean adult and subadult burials from fourteen sites. Nabataean cemetery populations were also compared with Walter Scheidel's model life table. These analyses demonstrate that Nabataean burials typically consisted of either a single adult or multiple individuals of various age ranges. Subadults, individuals under the age of 20 years, were rarely found buried by themselves, and seldom with other subadults. The comparison of Nabataean cemetery populations with Scheidel's model life table reported lower than expected percentages of individuals between the age ranges of zero to 12 years. However, this discrepancy is likely due to decay, the destruction of skeletal remains, and poor excavation techniques.
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Crow, Michael Scott. "Mortuary practice in sociohistorical and archaeological contexts: Texas, 1821-1870." Thesis, Texas A&M University, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/1969.1/335.
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Historical accounts of mortuary display during the 19th-century and evidence from archaeological investigations at historic cemeteries can contribute substantially to our understanding of related chronological and social-status issues. An inadequate understanding of mortuary practice in Texas circa 1821 to 1870 frustrates assessment of site chronology and status-related interpretations. While there are numerous studies of individual cemeteries, there is, as of yet, no synthesis of historical and archaeological data pertaining to mortuary practices in early Texas. In response to this deficiency, this thesis provides a synthesis of mortuary practices and the availability of related paraphernalia in Texas circa 1821-1870. Data from numerous cemeteries are compiled to establish a chronology for mortuary practices and to develop a seriation of select burial furnishings as an aid in assessing status-related variation in mortuary display. Results of the study, as gleaned from archival and archaeological data, indicate that mortuary display in mid-19th-century Texas is not so much a proxy of wealth, as it is a measure of popular cultural trends and economic contexts. These findings are used to reassess cemetery chronologies and status indices, including several interments at Matagorda Cemetery (1835-present), which serve as case studies.
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Williams, Howard. "'The burnt Germans of the age of iron' : early Anglo-Saxon mortuary practices and the study of cremation in past societies." Thesis, University of Reading, 2000. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.342114.
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Bruner, David E. "Symbols for the living synthesis, invention, and resistance in 19th to 20th century mortuary practices from Montgomery and Harris County, Texas /." Diss., Online access via UMI:, 2007.
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Elmore, Lorien Stahl. "ENERGY EXPENDITURE AND MORTUARY PRACTICES AT LYON'S BLUFF, 22OK520: AN EVOLUTIONARY APPROACH." MSSTATE, 2008. http://sun.library.msstate.edu/ETD-db/theses/available/etd-04042008-115233/.
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Mortuary analysis has been used in the past to understand social status and social organization. The need for a scientific way to undertake mortuary analysis in achaeology is necessary because too often social status is assumed. This thesis attempts to demonstrate that there is a scientific approach that can be taken in mortuary analysis through the investigation of energy expenditure, a dimension that can measure the attributes of status. The mortuary analysis in this study is carried out using a scientific approach involving the amount of energy expended on burials by looking at burial type, grave goods, and special placement of the burials. Through the use of archival data, this thesis investigates differences seen in the burial population of Lyons Bluff (22OK520) in Oktibbeha County, Mississippi through mortuary analysis that looks at burial type, grave goods, and special placement of the burials. Local farmsteads are used as a comparative basis. Through the creation of a paradigm with dimensions of burial treatments and modes of grave goods, it is possible to place all burials at a particular site or group of sites in categories that show the amount of energy expended on burials. From this, comparisons can be made with age and sex, stature, cranial deformation, and spatial location that can aid in the interpretation of mortuary data at a site. The results of this research suggest that at Lyons Bluff and the farmsteads used in this study there is an increase in the energy expended on burials through time. This type of research is applicable to both past and future mortuary analysis when there is well-documented information on burial type and burial inclusions.
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Rucabado-Yong, Julio Billman Brian R. "Elite mortuary practices at San José de Moro during the transitional period the case study of collective burial M-U615 /." Chapel Hill, N.C. : University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2006. http://dc.lib.unc.edu/u?/etd,153.
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Thesis (M.A.)--University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2006.Title from electronic title page (viewed Oct. 10, 2007). "... in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of Anthropology." Discipline: Anthropology; Department/School: Anthropology.
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LaMotta, Vincent M. "Behavioral Variability in Mortuary Deposition: A Modern Material Culture Study." University of Arizona, Department of Anthropology, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/110099.
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1999 Dozier Award WinnerThis paper examines critically several key assumptions that have guided many archaeological interpretations of prehistoric mortuary assemblages. It is argued that more sophisticated models of mortuary deposition need to be incorporated into research that attempts to reconstruct community structure and other sociological variables from variation in grave assemblages. To illustrate this point, and to begin to build such models, a study of artifacts deposited in mortuary contexts was conducted by the author in a major urban center in Arizona in 1996. Several different behavioral pathways through which objects enter mortuary contexts are identified in this study, and some general material correlates for each are specified. This study also provides a vehicle for exploring preliminarily how, and to what extent, various forms of mortuary depostion are related to the social identities of the deceased. Finally, a synthetic model is developed which seeks to explain variation in mortuary deposition in terms of behavioral interactions between the living, on the one hand, and the deceased and various classes of material culture, on the other. It is hoped that the general models and material correlates developed through this study can be elaborated by prehistorians to bolster inferences drawn from specific mortuary populations and to explore previously-uncharted realms of mortuary behavior in the past.
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Kerr, Heather K. "Mortuary Variability in the Final Palatial Period on Crete: Investigating Regionality, Status, and “Mycenaean” Identity." Digital Archive @ GSU, 2012. http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/anthro_theses/60.
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The Late Bronze Age on the island of Crete saw a period of strong administrative and religious control by the palace at Knossos, which also controlled a vast trade network with the rest of the eastern Mediterranean. After the collapse of the palace of Knossos, the Final Palatial period (1490 - 1320 BCE), was a time of sociopolitical transition and change, witnessing an explosion in number and variety of mortuary practices used, even within the same cemetery. In this thesis I analyze Final Palatial burial practices in a more systematic method than has been previously attempted, in order to gain a better understanding of how the Minoans chose to use the mortuary sphere as a platform for constructing and negotiating their social and political identities in the dynamic socio-political climate of the Final Palatial period.
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Jelsma, Johan. "A bed of ochre : mortuary practices and social structure of a maritime archaic Indian society at Port au Choix, Newfoundland /." Groningen : Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, 2000. http://dissertations.ub.rug.nl/faculties/arts/2000/j.jelsma/.
Full textBooks on the topic "Burial practices; Mortuary theory"
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Mortuary practices in the process of Levantine neolithisation. Oxford, England: John and Erica Hedges, 2007.
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Jelsma, Johan. A bed of ochre: Mortuary practices and social structure of a maritime archaic Indian society at Port au Choix, Newfoundland. Groningen: Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, 2000.
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Dillehay, Tom D. Tombs for the living: Andean mortuary practices : a symposium at Dumbarton Oaks 12th and 13th October 1991. Edited by Dumbarton Oaks. Washington, D.C: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2011.
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Death management and virtual pursuits : a virtual reconstruction of the Minoan cemetery at Phourni, Archanes: Examining the use of tholos tomb C and burial building 19 and the role of illumination in relation to mortuary practices and the perception of life and death by the living. Oxford: Archaeopress, 2010.
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Suriano, Matthew. Death as Transition in Judahite Mortuary Practices. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190844738.003.0002.
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Death is transitional in the Hebrew Bible, but the challenge is in understanding how this transition worked. The ritual analysis of Judahite bench tombs reveals a dynamic concept of death that involved the transition of the dead body. The body would enter the tomb during primary burial; there it would receive provisions as it rested on a burial bench. Eventually the remains of the dead would be secondarily interred inside the tomb’s repository. This final stage, the repository, is marked by the collective burial of bones. The transition of the dead, therefore, involves the body in different conditions, first as an individual corpse and then as a collection of bones. The process of burial and reburial inside the bench tomb offers new insight into the idea that postmortem existence in the Hebrew Bible is predicated on the fate of the body.
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Daniell, Christopher. Later Medieval Death and Burial. Edited by Christopher Gerrard and Alejandra Gutiérrez. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198744719.013.35.
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This chapter discusses medieval burial ritual, including the act of burial, cemeteries and burial location, and the grave goods of priest, bishops, nobility, and royalty which included a wide range of clothing and objects associated with their office. The burial of Richard III illustrates how much bioarchaeology can now reveal to us about the biography of the body in the grave. Also outlined here are the distinctive mortuary practices of, for example, Jews, lepers, heretics, and suicides as well as the mainstream Christian tradition of heart burials. Commemorative monuments of all levels of society are described, from medieval royal tombs to the graves of the poorest parishioner, though minor monuments within the graveyard are only rarely discovered.
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Suriano, Matthew. A History of Death in the Hebrew Bible. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190844738.001.0001.
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In the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, a good death meant burial inside the family tomb, where one would join one’s ancestors in death. This was the afterlife in biblical literature; it was a postmortem ideal that did not involve individual judgment or heaven and hell—instead it was collective. In Hebrew scriptures, a postmortem existence was rooted in mortuary practices and conceptualized through the embodiment of the dead. But this idea of the afterlife was not hopeless or fatalistic, consigned to the dreariness of the tomb. The dead were cherished and remembered, their bones were cared for, and their names lived on as ancestors. This book examines the concept of the afterlife in the Hebrew Bible by studying the treatment of the dead, as revealed both in biblical literature and in the material remains of the southern Levant. The Iron Age mortuary culture of Judah is the starting point for this study, and the practice of collective burial inside the Judahite rock-cut bench tomb is compared to biblical traditions of family tombs and of joining one’s ancestors in death. This archaeological analysis, which also incorporates funerary inscriptions, will shed important insight into biblical literature concerning such issues as the construction of the soul in death, the nature of corpse impurity, and the concept of Sheol. Death was a transition managed through ritual action. The connections that were forged through such actions, such as ancestor veneration, were socially meaningful for the living and ensured a measure of immortality for the dead.
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Mortuary Practices and Social Identities in the Middle Ages. Bristol Phoenix Press, 2009.
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Mortuary Practices and Social Identities in the Middle Ages. Bristol Phoenix Press, 2012.
Find full textBook chapters on the topic "Burial practices; Mortuary theory"
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Grotti, Vanessa, and Marc Brightman. "Hosting the Dead: Forensics, Ritual and the Memorialization of Migrant Human Remains in Italy." In Migrant Hospitalities in the Mediterranean, 69–104. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56585-5_4.
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AbstractIn this chapter we consider the afterlife of the remains of unidentified migrants who have died while attempting to cross the Mediterranean from Albania and North Africa to Italy. Drawing on insights from long-term, multi-sited field research, we outline paths taken by human remains and consider their multiple agencies and distributed personhood through the relational modalities with which they are symbolically and materially engaged at different scales of significance. The rising number of migrant deaths related to international crossings worldwide, especially in the Mediterranean, has stimulated a large body of scholarship, which generally relies upon a hermeneutics of secular transitional justice and fraternal transnationalism. We explore an alternative approach by focusing on the material and ritual afterlife of unidentified human remains at sea, examining the effects they have on their hosting environment. The treatment of dead strangers (across the double threshold constituted by the passage from life to death on the one hand and the rupture of exile on the other) raises new questions for the anthropology of death. We offer an interpretation of both ad hoc and organized recovery operations and mortuary practices, including forensic identification procedures, and collective and single burials of dead migrants, as acts of hospitality. Hosting the dead operates at different scales: it takes the politically charged form of memorialization at the levels of the state and the local community; however, while remembrance practices for dead strangers emphasize the latter’s status as a collective category, forensic technologies of remembrance are directed toward the reconstruction of (in)dividual personhood. These ritual and technological processes of memorialization and re-attachment together awaken ghosts of Italian fascism and colonialism.
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Harding, Dennis. "Mortuary practices, problems, and analysis." In Death and Burial in Iron Age Britain. Oxford University Press, 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199687565.003.0007.
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Archaeological investigation is sometimes likened to opening a window on to the past. The problem is that, except in cases of unexpected and sudden disaster, for example where a shipwreck has been preserved untouched or a town was engulfed by volcanic ash, the archaeologist never examines a site as it was in its living heyday, only as it was after it had been abandoned, leaving only what survives of what its occupants chose to leave behind. Burials likewise represent only what communities chose to deposit for whatever reason, modified by taphonomic factors that determine the state of surviving evidence. Other ephemeral forms of disposal, and any elaborate or protracted rituals that preceded the final act of deposition that did not involve substantive structures, will pass unremarked in the archaeological record. It has been suggested in Chapter 1 that human remains may have been buried either in a dedicated cemetery where the dead were segregated or confined, perhaps in the equivalent of consecrated ground, or integrated within the environs of settlements, whether as complete or near-complete bodies or as fragmented parts or individual bones. A third option, of course, and one which would certainly contribute to the difficulty of tracing a regular burial rite archaeologically, would be segregated burial on an individual basis rather than in a community group, however small or selective. The concept of a cemetery assumes a degree of social cohesion in Iron Age practice which may not have been universal. An obvious question must be why should there have been these alternatives, and what might have governed the decision as to which alternative should be adopted? Ethnographic analogies suggest that the spirits of the dead could have been regarded as malevolent, more especially during the interim phase between death and completion of decomposition. So it might make sense to consign the dead directly to a dedicated cemetery that was detached from the settlement, or to confine them initially within a secure location, such as a hillfort, for excarnation or interim burial, before final disposal.
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Murphy, Melissa S., Maria Fernanda Boza, and Catherine Gaither. "Exhuming Differences and Continuities after Colonialism at Puruchuco-Huaquerones, Peru." In Colonized Bodies, Worlds Transformed. University Press of Florida, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.5744/florida/9780813060750.003.0002.
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Murphy and colleagues highlight the study of mortuary practices after conquest and colonialism- Inca and Spanish- and how bioarchaeologists might integrate mortuary data with data on morbidity and mortality in the interpretation of the effects of colonialism in chapter two. They describe early postcontact burials from the cemetery of 57AS03 at the site of Puruchuco-Huaquerones and explore why a subsample of these funerary contexts were interred in an atypical fashion, departing from the traditional Late Horizon/Inca burial pattern. Many of the individuals buried atypically had perimortem injuries; however, they did not possess distinctly higher frequencies of nonspecific indicators of stress or signs of infectious diseases (porotic hyperostosis, cribra orbitalia, periosteal reactions, abnormal bone loss) than those individuals who were interred in traditional mortuary fashion.
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Triantaphyllou, Sevi, and Stelios Andreou. "Claiming Social Identities in the Mortuary Landscape of the Late Bronze Age Communities of Macedonia." In Death in Late Bronze Age Greece, 171–97. Oxford University Press, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190926069.003.0009.
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Burial practices in Late Bronze Age Macedonia do not manifest particularly elaborate traits in terms of grave architecture and prestigious items accompanying the dead. In contrast to practices in the southern mainland, local communities adopted subtler and less homogeneous forms of treating the deceased in an attempt to signify their particular identities in the cultural, political, and symbolic landscape. Recent research has established a special focus on descent in extramural cemeteries, such as the cist grave cemetery with multiple burials at Spathes on Mount Olympus, the tumuli of Western Macedonia and Southern Pieria, the burial enclosures of Faia Petra, and the tumuli at Exochi and Potamoi in Eastern Macedonia. In Central Macedonia, on the other hand, where tell settlements dominate the natural and symbolic landscape, burial practices possess a less prominent place in the social space. The dominant trait here seems to be the absence of formal mortuary practices. Burials may occur within the settlement without special care regarding the treatment of the dead, but with a desire to mark out the links of the deceased with particular residential groups. The handling of death in Late Bronze Age Macedonia emerges therefore as a powerful practice, which was manipulated in different modes by the living communities in order to claim a diverse set of social identities and significant properties in the diverse cultural landscape and the varied political scenery of the area.
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Schallin, Ann-Louise. "Rituals and Ceremonies at the Mycenaean Cemetery at Dendra." In Ritual and Archaic States. University Press of Florida, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.5744/florida/9780813062785.003.0004.
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Chapter 4 focuses on the ritual practices connected with the burials at the Late Bronze Age cemetery at Dendra in the Argolid in Greece, ca. 1600–1100 B.C. During this time, the central Argolid became an archaic state with a pronounced site hierarchy, with Mycenae at the top. In the settling process of this power structure, the various practices, including mortuary ritual, were characterized by competition and the negotiation of sociopolitical positions. Part of the material evidence connected with mortuary practices at the Dendra site and its surrounds is used in Schallin’s analysis of the components of the rituals as she proposes a possible scenario of how the burial practices were materialized at Dendra and how they can be seen as a constituent part in the strategies of elite legitimation. In short, Schallin examines material evidence to identify various components in the mortuary ritual at the Dendra cemetery while suggesting how this ritual linked with the network-type political system at Mycenae.
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Obladen, Michael. "For whom no bell tolled." In Oxford Textbook of the Newborn, edited by Michael Obladen, 391–96. Oxford University Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/med/9780198854807.003.0056.
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This chapter describes infant burials and their history. When cities were established in Mesopotamia in the fifth millennium b.c.e., particular burial places evolved: adults and older children were interred in cemeteries outside the dwelling sites, infants were disposed of within their natal homes. On the Greek island of Astypalaia, a specific cemetery for newborns was used from 750 b.c.e. At the Athenian Agora, 449 fetal and neonatal skeletons were uncovered in a well. In Roman Italy, deceased infants were mostly disposed of in mass graves. From the 5th century, burial in church-associated cemeteries became the usual pattern in Anglo-Saxon Britain. Funeral rites included viewing of the deceased, prayer and religious service, procession to the gravesite, and burial. For deceased newborn infants, the adult rite was often practised in a simplified form. During the 19th century, burial clubs providing funds for funeral expenses were abused to make money from infanticide. The maintenance of unique mortuary practices lasting millennia suggests that newborns, especially when preterm or malformed, were considered unfinished, and of little societal importance.
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Murphy, Joanne M. A. "Variety Is the Spice of Life." In Death in Late Bronze Age Greece, 1–25. Oxford University Press, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190926069.003.0001.
Full textAbstract:
The goal of this volume is to generate discussion on the variability in burial practices in Greece during the Late Bronze Age (LBA) and to create a more nuanced understanding of the society by bringing together a group of scholars who are either excavating newly discovered tombs or reexamining older excavations of LBA tombs. The data from these recent excavations and renewed studies suggest that the patterns of burial may contain more variety than has been recognized in earlier scholarship, and indicate the need for a detailed comparison of these burial practices combined with a synthetic comparative study of the tombs. Attention to variations in the mortuary practices can enrich current understanding of the range of connections between tombs and their respective communities, adding nuance to accepted interpretations of the LBA mortuary customs and their related societies. With variability in local burial practices as their initial commonality, broader themes and topics were revealed in the chapters assembled in this volume, including the rich connection between tombs and the political economy; their role in power and identity creation; the differences between palaces and second-order sites; the changing focus and identity of the various communities throughout the LBA; the combination of older more traditional practices with new ones in the tombs; social differences between genders; and varied emphasis on family lines.
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Girella, Luca. "Middle Minoan III—Late Minoan IIIB Tombs and Funerary Practices in South-Central Crete." In Death in Late Bronze Age Greece, 248–81. Oxford University Press, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190926069.003.0012.
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This chapter explores the funerary data of South-Central Crete, with particular consideration of Western Mesara, in the Neopalatial, Final, and early Postpalatial period (16th–13th century BC). Previous studies have focused mostly on tomb types and categories of funerary artifacts, while there has been a lack of a broader analysis that explores aspects of mortuary data at different temporal levels. By drawing together the evidence derived from tombs architecture, burial assemblages, and cemeteries distribution, this chapter aims to reconstruct the cultural and political changes that occurred in this part of the island during the period corresponding to the ceramic phases LM I to LM IIIB. In particular, the transformation during the constitution of the second Palatial period and the marginal role of funerary rituals, the introduction of mainland-derived mortuary symbolisms during the hegemony of Knossos, and the decline of mortuary ostentation after the collapse of Knossian power are discussed.
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Garvie-Lok, Sandra, and Anastasia Tsaliki. "The “Vampires” of Lesbos." In The Odd, the Unusual, and the Strange, 292–311. University Press of Florida, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.5744/florida/9781683401032.003.0015.
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Greece has a long tradition of vampire beliefs that often involved treating corpses or graves to dispel vampires, practices that should be archaeologically visible and fairly common. However, proposed archaeological cases are surprisingly few. Here we review normative burial traditions in early modern Greece, as well as documentary and ethnographic evidence for vampire-related mortuary ritual. This clarifies the archaeological signs these rituals should leave behind and their deeper significance as attempts to restore the smooth course of a disrupted death journey. Two Ottoman-era burials recovered on the island of Lesbos are discussed as likely instances of vampire ritual, and we consider why vampire burials might be underreported archaeologically and offer some suggestions for their improved detection and study in the future.
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Shelton, Kim. "“You Can’t Take It with You”." In Death in Late Bronze Age Greece, 45–59. Oxford University Press, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190926069.003.0003.
Full textAbstract:
Using evidence from the extensive cemeteries at the palatial center of Mycenae and at Prosymna, a second tier settlement site within the territory of Mycenae, this chapter examines the burial practices, patterns, and traditions within the sociopolitical context of the Palatial period itself, but also with a longer diachronic lens toward what came before and what follows. In the form and scale of burial architecture, in the treatment of interments, and among the objects associated with burial practices, significant changes occur. During the period of state formation, tomb architecture and burial practices exhibit diverse and potentially competitive characteristics. The variety of exotica and specialized ceramic sets suggest conspicuous consumption and differential access to status as much as do the weapons and jewelry in valuable materials. A sociopolitical flourishing comes with the Palatial period. While there is great expansion in the numbers of tombs, at the same time the patterns of use both stabilize and standardize. Remarkable at both sites is a pronounced contraction of investment in the mortuary sphere when the Palatial period is at its height—burial traditions are simplified and streamlined including characteristics from constructional details down to a marked decline in grave provisions, especially among higher value and status materials and exotica. This previews by several generations the characteristics of the Postpalatial period, when a dramatic decline in material culture generally is reflected also in tomb construction and use.