Intensive course Death in the Greek World (original) (raw)
The intensive and interdisciplinary course on the Archaeology of Death will take place in Greece in spring 2016. The aim of the course is to treat in depth various themes related to the study of death in the ancient world. The course will adopt a diachronic approach, starting from prehistory and ending with 19th century neoclassical funerary monuments or 20th century military cemeteries. The course will integrate different disciplines –archaeology, history, ancient literature, epigraphy, social theory, anthropology– and will combine both methodological (e.g. recent advances in excavation methodology, the bioarchaeological analysis of human remains, the study of inscriptions) and theoretical discussions (discussions on memory, personhood, age and gender, interpretation of ritual, attitudes to death, etc.), in order to reach a more global understanding of mortuary practices and changing attitudes to death. The course can be taken on its own (5 ECTS), or as part of the (MA and Research MA) course Archaeology of Death which is given in Groningen in the first half of second semester (in which case the students will get 10 ECTS).
Related papers
The study of burial practices is important for understanding the cultural development, religious ideas, and political culture of the Greek world. Since ceremonies connected with burial are well known only from the late Archaic period, the investigation of early Greek burials has to concentrate on cemeteries and objects found in graves; the survey otherwise is chronological with excurses on general topics such as funeral art or specific rituals.
A large body of evidence and important historical questions exist for the study of burial in the late antique Greek world. This slowly evolving field has long been influenced by trends in classical archaeology, the archaeology of Early Christianity, and folklore studies. The physical remains of funerary ritual, which have been unevenly studied and published, attest to the forms of interment, tombstones, the treatment of bodies and objects, and the topographic settings of burial. Variation in these remains reflects the expression of different identities, including status, family, profession, ethnicity, and the new Christian perspective on death. Mortuary variability can also be traced across space, both between and especially within regions, and over time from the Roman to Byzantine eras, which reveals a paradigm shift in the concepts and uses of burial in Late Antiquity.
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