Graham E.J. 2011. Memory and materiality: re-embodying the Roman funeral. In V. M. Hope and J. Huskinson (eds.). Memory and mourning: studies on Roman death. Oxford, Oxbow, pp. 21–39. (original) (raw)

… they shift beneath our grasp, moving with the peculiar malleability of a corpse caught midway between death and putrefaction. It is an ugly task, yet what ugliness it has lies not in the proximity of the dead but in the intimacy it demands of us, this closeness with the fl esh and substance of their bodies.' (James Bradley, Th e Resurrectionist 1996, 4) It has recently been argued that 'the bodily aspect of death -and its profound impact on the living who must deal with it -is something that archaeologists have very successfully avoided' (Nilsson-Stutz 2003, 131). Although studies of past mortuary practices have incorporated the complex social dimensions of death and mourning into their theoretical and methodological approaches, Nilsson-Stutz points out that this has led to a marginalisation of the biological remains of humans, turning them into 'signs, symbols or indicators ' (ibid.,, 8; 2008). Th e disappearance of a living person and the emergence of a cadaver is an event with extreme consequences for the living, with their responses revealing 'attitudes toward the body, the self and other, the dead and the living, culture and nature, order and disorder, and the present, the future and the past' (ibid.,, 81). Nilsson-Stutz argues that these responses to the dead body help to structure mortuary events and the memories and identities of the participants, but are often overlooked. Consequently, in order to understand past mortuary practices more fully it is necessary to unite the social and biological aspects of death.