Distributing the dead. Chapter 10: Sacred fictions. Interpretative reflections on settlement burials. (original) (raw)
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Despite the multitude of burial, cremation and disposal options now available in modern society, current western attitudes to death often bring with them expectations of ‘normality’. There is a general belief that, despite the distances of time and space that separate us, there will still be elements within ancient burial traditions that we can recognise, behaviour that we can easily interpret as being respectful towards the dead. Many of the beliefs that underpin these expectations of ‘normality’ or ‘respect’, draw substantially on Judaeo-Christian traditions, which took shape in the Levant1 during the latter half of the 1st millennium BC and 1st millennium AD. These beliefs differ substantially from those of past societies in the region, as witnessed by references in the Old Testament (Isaiah 65.2-6), which highlight the difficult relationship between the requirements of monotheism and the traditional cult of the dead. The ‘Invisible Dead’ Project, carried out at Durham University between 2012-2014 and funded by the John Templeton Foundation, has sought to chart the long-term development of attitudes to the dead, from c. 4000 BC down to 400 AD (Chalcolithic to the end of the Roman period), through an examination of documentary and archaeological evidence for the form, scale, and significance of mortuary practices. This paper aims to presents some initial results from the project. We will explore some of the emerging trends in treatment of the human body and wider developments in society, economy and religious belief. We also seek to consider the ways in which scholarly attitudes to the dead, as an object of study, have impacted upon the kind of questions asked of the material and the various lenses through which burial has been examined, in particular by researchers working on different periods. As this paper will demonstrate, burial practices and the beliefs behind them differ across space and time, and the treatment of human remains in the past cannot simply be understood as a direct equivalent of ‘burial’ as understood today
Chapter 1. Siting, Sighting, and Citing the Dead
Archeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association, 2008
From the Middle Archaic through Mississippian periods of the prehistoric American Midwest (ca. 7000-700 B.P.), the specific location, form, and intensity of funerary activity varied through time, but always within a limited, yet evolving, range of alternatives. This material record can be understood as resulting from the interaction of traditional (i.e., meaningful) symbolic systems, the agency of the participants, and specific (i.e., historical) social, economic, and political contexts. In particular, we examine the shifting emphasis on mortuary ritual versus ancestor cult and how this is manifested in terms of the location and form of burial mounds and cemeteries.
1999
Social anthropology has largely focused upon kinship and institutionalized economic interests that influence death rituals, primarily to benefit elites within stratified societies. It is the goal of this work to: Dlook for common factors emphasizing the philosophical and cosmological beliefs in the development and origination of burial customs that are not necessarily specific to elites ; 2)determine whether these beliefs may have contributed to the origination of secondary burial practices or harboring of the corpse or its dismembered parts in living space for a limited or indefinite period of time ; 3) search for the concept of the sacred, if any, suggested by the spatial placement of the dead and their associated symbologies; 4) determine the significance, if any, that fear of the dead plays in secondary burial practices. Ackxiowl edgxnent s I wish to thank my committee for the support and guidance they gave me in shaping this thesis : to my Chair, Professor Katherine Weist, for ...
The remembrance of dismembered bodies
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For nearly three decades, the United States has pursued a border security strategy that has precipitated the deaths of thousands of migrants. Most of these deaths transpire unseen in remote stretches of the Sonoran Desert, where individuals are reduced to disarticulated bones. Endeavoring to overcome political indifference to these deaths, religious leaders, artists, and activists have joined in public works of mourning. These works strive to lend visibility to an otherwise invisible crisis and to grieve otherwise ungrieved lives. Thus, they usher the dead back into the polis and confound the boundaries between insiders and outsiders. However, the effort to re-present the dead runs the risk of making a spectacle out of the violence perpetrated against migrant bodies, inuring us to their witness or, worse, eliciting a perverse enjoyment. This article seeks first to offer a theological justification for political acts of mourning, before going on to articulate a strategy for resisting...