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The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Death and Burial

Online ISBN:
9780191750144
Print ISBN:
9780199569069
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Book

The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Death and Burial

Liv Nilsson Stutz (ed.),
Liv Nilsson Stutz
(ed.)
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Sarah Tarlow (ed.)
Sarah Tarlow
(ed.)
Archaeology and Ancient History, University of Leicester
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Sarah Tarlow is Senior Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Leicester. Her research centres on the archaeology of death, archaeology of later historical periods, especially in Britain and Ireland, and archaeological theory. She has written and edited many books including Bereavement and Commemoration (Blackwell 1999) and Ritual, belief and the dead in early modern Britain and Ireland (Cambridge 2011) as well as many papers on aspects of the archaeology of death, and is an editor of the journal Archaeological Dialogues. She is currently working on a Wellcome Trust-funded project on the meanings and powers of the criminal corpse in early modernity.

Published online:
1 August 2013
Published in print:
1 May 2013
Online ISBN:
9780191750144
Print ISBN:
9780199569069
Publisher:
Oxford University Press

Abstract

The archaeology of death and burial provides a privileged source of insight into the lives of people in the past. This kind of archaeological feature commonly includes the material remains of the dead, containing biological information of age, sex, pathologies, DNA profiles, and isotopic signals of diet and migration. The analysis of burials also provides archaeological information about how the dead were treated as part of the mortuary ritual, which gives the archaeologist insight into ritual practice, belief, and emotional responses to death, and also speaks more generally about social relationships among the living including identity, gender, and social rank. This volume offers an introduction to all these dimensions of the archaeology of death and burial. Contributions range from historical overviews of several different significant traditions relating to burials in the history of the discipline of archaeology. Other chapters examine recent methodologies to retrieve and analyse biological information, and contemporary theoretical approaches to the study of central issues in our discipline such as the body, identity, gender, emotion, religion, and ritual. The volume has an international profile with contributions from leading scholars around the world, providing case studies from a range of different cultural contexts. The volume also recognizes the central place of ethical considerations in the excavation, analysis, and exhibition of human remains and ritual artefacts, and provides different perspectives on the ethical implications for any archaeologist working with this kind of material.

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