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Charles Wolfe, “The Burial of Sir John Moore after Corunna”

Catherine Robson

in Heart Beats: Everyday Life and the Memorized Poem

This chapter resurrects “The Burial of Sir John Moore after Corunna.” Charles Wolfe's poem, a reimagining of the hasty interment of a fallen general after one of the land battles in the Napoleonic ... More

This chapter resurrects “The Burial of Sir John Moore after Corunna.” Charles Wolfe's poem, a reimagining of the hasty interment of a fallen general after one of the land battles in the Napoleonic wars, was repeatedly quoted by soldiers and other individuals during the American Civil War when they found themselves having to organize, or witness, the burials of dead comrades. In recent years, cultural historians of Great Britain have tried to account for the massive shift in burial and memorial practices for the common soldier that occurred between 1815 and 1915. The chapter argues that the presence of Wolfe's poem in the hearts and minds of ordinary people played its part in creating the social expectations that led to the establishment of the National Cemeteries in the United States, and thus, in due course, the mass memorialization of World War I.Less

The Social and Demographic Framework

SHEILAGH OGILVIE

in A Bitter Living: Women, Markets, and Social Capital in Early Modern Germany

Childcare often makes intensive use of women's time, so this chapter examines the demographic and familial framework in the pre-industrial German society under analysis in this book and sets it in a ... More

Childcare often makes intensive use of women's time, so this chapter examines the demographic and familial framework in the pre-industrial German society under analysis in this book and sets it in a broader European context. It begins by exploring the potential influence of reproductive responsibilities on women's work by examining marriage ages, celibacy rates, and illegitimacy ratios. It then proceeds to investigate the sexual division of labour within the family by analysing household structure, the female life cycle, and sex ratios in different household roles. Finally, it conducts a multivariate analysis of burial donations to assess the determinants of social esteem for individuals of both sexes at different points in the life-cycle. These findings are used to draw preliminary conclusions regarding biological, technological, cultural, and institutional hypotheses about the determinants of women's economic position in pre-industrial societies.Less

Purgation in the Sixth and Seventh Centuries

Isabel Moreira

in Heaven's Purge: Purgatory in Late Antiquity

This chapter examines writers on purgatory in the sixth and seventh centuries, including Julianus Pomerius, Caesarius of Arles, and Gregory the Great. It also examines ideas about postmortem ... More

This chapter examines writers on purgatory in the sixth and seventh centuries, including Julianus Pomerius, Caesarius of Arles, and Gregory the Great. It also examines ideas about postmortem purgation as expressed in minor works of the seventh century including De ordine creaturarum and in visions of the afterlife and in hagiography. It concludes by looking at rituals of sacramental purification, especially baptism and penance, and discusses purgation in funeral liturgies, burial practices, and prayers for the dead.Less

Criteria for the Presence of Barbarians in the Population of Early Olbia

S. D. KRYZHITSKIY

in Classical Olbia and the Scythian World: From the Sixth Century BC to the Second Century AD

Historians of the ancient states of the north coast of the Black Sea were often faced by the challenge on how to estimate the presence of barbarians in the populations of early communities. Although ... More

Historians of the ancient states of the north coast of the Black Sea were often faced by the challenge on how to estimate the presence of barbarians in the populations of early communities. Although it is generally understood that there was indeed a presence of barbarians in the early Mediterranean communities, the problem is there is no systematic means to gain material remains that may shed light on the numbers and social-ethnic characteristics of such non-Greek components. Although attempts have been made to generalize the existence of barbarians through archaeological evidence, such methods have failed due to lack of firm methodology. This chapter examines cities wherein the barbarian cultural level cannot be clearly established. It focuses on the two aspects of the issue of barbarian presence in Olbia. It examines the artefacts and assemblages, and how much materials can attest the presence of such ethnicities in Olbia. This qualitative approach examines the presence of dug-out dwelling places, handmade potteries, burial practices, jewellery and prosopography. The second aspect uses a quantitative approach which examines the statistics and percentages of particular ethnicities in Olbia. In these considerations and examinations, no objective criteria that would establish the number of barbarians in Olbia have been established. Although specific cultural features may be connected with the barbarians, they are otherwise represented slightly and in a fragmented fashion which nullifies the argument that Olbia contained substantial barbarian social stratum.Less

Death and Burial in the Greek World

Carrie L. Sulosky Weaver

in Bioarchaeology of Classical Kamarina: Life and Death in Greek Sicily

Chapter 1 is devoted to background and contextual material. It provides an overview of death rituals and burial practices in the Greek world, which includes customs derived from the mainland as well ... More

Chapter 1 is devoted to background and contextual material. It provides an overview of death rituals and burial practices in the Greek world, which includes customs derived from the mainland as well as the colonies. Special attention is given to the topics of funerary rituals, festivals of the dead and beliefs in the afterlife.Less

Where the Ancestors Live: Shrines and Their Meaning among the Classic Maya

Jon B. Hageman

in The Archaeology of Ancestors: Death, Memory, and Veneration

This chapter describes the creation of ancestors in imagery and changing burial patterns in Preclassic Maya farming villages. Referencing the large corpus of Maya art and epigraphy, the chapter ... More

This chapter describes the creation of ancestors in imagery and changing burial patterns in Preclassic Maya farming villages. Referencing the large corpus of Maya art and epigraphy, the chapter traces how symbols were later used by Classic Maya kings to appropriate ancestral powers and to institutionalize and legitimize their rule through communication and physical contact with previous kings. Commoner ancestral symbols differ in meaning from their royal counterparts and may have implications for our understanding of ancient Maya gender.Less

Feasting and Burials on the Peruvian Central Coast at the Onset of the Middle Horizon

Giancarlo Marcone

in Ritual and Archaic States

Drawing from ethnohistorical sources, many Andean scholars have modeled Inca expansion as a highly ritualized political process, with feasting and ritual performance as its principal components. This ... More

Drawing from ethnohistorical sources, many Andean scholars have modeled Inca expansion as a highly ritualized political process, with feasting and ritual performance as its principal components. This model was long projected onto all Andean societies on the assumption that feasting activities were similarly important and played similar political roles across societies over time. Other voices have proposed that burial practices and ancestor veneration were also of central political importance in the Andean states’ expansionist projects. Ancestor veneration was thought to be the ideological base that upheld these entire systems. Increasingly, however, new voices are proposing that ancestor veneration and burial practices need to be understood in relation to feasting practices. It is only in this relational way that we can fully understand their political and social meanings. In chapter 5, Flores proposes that this is particularly true in cases where local communities interact with expansionist polities. He argues, based on evidence from Lote B, a small rural settlement in the Lurín Valley, that the increase of feasting activities is related to the suppression of funerary practices or vice-versa. This inverse correlation not only informs us about the nature of an expansionist project but also about the compromise that takes place between local communities and expansionist polities in turn.Less

Scattering Ashes

Mark Michael Rowe

in Bonds of the Dead: Temples, Burial, and the Transformation of Contemporary Japanese Buddhism

This chapter moves outside the idiom of Buddhist graves and memorials to consider the scattering of ashes, an innovative burial practice that began around the same time as eternal memorial graves. ... More

This chapter moves outside the idiom of Buddhist graves and memorials to consider the scattering of ashes, an innovative burial practice that began around the same time as eternal memorial graves. Despite that fact that more than 99 percent of all Japanese are cremated today, scattering is still a very recent and controversial practice. After tracing the modern development of scattering and the civic group that has been instrumental in its promotion, this chapter will explore a wide range of responses and consider what further insights they may offer into the relationship between Buddhist doctrine, families, and burial. It is also shown here that despite demographic, household, and economic shifts weakening the hold of temples on Japanese deathways, Buddhist identity in Japan is still intimately connected to the central role of temple priests in mortuary rites.Less

Variety Is the Spice of Life: Introduction and Discussion

Joanne M. A. Murphy

in Death in Late Bronze Age Greece: Variations on a Theme

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 ... More

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.Less

Claiming Social Identities in the Mortuary Landscape of the Late Bronze Age Communities of Macedonia

Sevi Triantaphyllou and Stelios Andreou

in Death in Late Bronze Age Greece: Variations on a Theme

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 ... More

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.Less

Exploring Status and Identity in Later Iron Age Britain: Reinterpreting Mirror Burials

Jody Joy

in Atlantic Europe in the First Millennium BC: Crossing the Divide

Mirror burials have been viewed as the female equivalent to male warrior burials. As mirrors were relatively rare until modern times and often impressive objects, they have been seen as indicators of ... More

Mirror burials have been viewed as the female equivalent to male warrior burials. As mirrors were relatively rare until modern times and often impressive objects, they have been seen as indicators of status and mirror burials are most often interpreted as the graves of wealthy or high-status women. However, recent data has shown that this dominant interpretation may be overly simplistic; that it does not reflect diversity in the burial data. As a regional case study of later Iron Age burial practice, this chapter reinterprets the archaeological evidence. It suggests that people were buried with elaborate objects such as mirrors for multiple reasons and that mirrors were not just a passive reflection of status. These objects played an active role in graves in the creation and reformulation of identity in the later Iron Age.Less

The Archaeology of Ancestors

Erica Hill and Jon B. Hageman

in The Archaeology of Ancestors: Death, Memory, and Veneration

This chapter provides an overview of archaeological approaches to ancestor veneration in the past. Two major works (by Patricia McAnany and Mary Helms) moved the study of ancestors beyond the ... More

This chapter provides an overview of archaeological approaches to ancestor veneration in the past. Two major works (by Patricia McAnany and Mary Helms) moved the study of ancestors beyond the processual insights of Arthur Saxe and Lynne Goldstein and laid the conceptual foundations for more nuanced and ethnographically informed work of the twenty-first century. The chapter reviews the ways in which archaeologists have identified and studied ancient ancestors in China and Europe, and discusses Whitley’s charge that there are “too many ancestors” in the British Neolithic. Finally, the chapter outlines the kinds of archaeological evidence that have been used to identify ancestors in the archaeological record and to reconstruct the roles of ancestors in past societies. These lines of evidence include funerary remains and burial practices; archaeological features and landscapes; representational imagery; and documentary sources.Less

In Search of a Better Death: Transnational Landscapes for Aging and Dying

Sarah Lynn Lopez

in The Remittance Landscape: Spaces of Migration in Rural Mexico and Urban USA

This chapter examines the material culture of aging and death for migrants facing “retirement,” whose years working to remit are behind them. Migrants live in the U.S. with persistent questions about ... More

This chapter examines the material culture of aging and death for migrants facing “retirement,” whose years working to remit are behind them. Migrants live in the U.S. with persistent questions about if and when they will “return” to their hometowns. In anticipation of return, some are building old age homes in Mexico. Examining emigrants’ construction of an asilo anciano (old age home) in Los Guajes in preparation for their retirement in Mexico exposes the Mexican state’s ambivalence regarding its responsibility toward emigrants who can no longer work. This chapter argues that long-distance building practices require an expanded notion of the public to include new administrative capacities and services that care for norteños now integral to the community but physically absent from it.Less

Burial

Michael Jackson

in How Lifeworlds Work: Emotionality, Sociality, and the Ambiguity of Being

The author discusses the burial practices and funerary rites of the Kuranko.

Reflections on the Politics of Religious Freedom, with Attention to Hawaii

Greg Johnson

in Politics of Religious Freedom

Using the legal battles surrounding care for ancestors in Hawaiˋi, Johnson queries whether a focus on the politics of religious freedom actually disenfranchises marginalized groups whose religious ... More

Using the legal battles surrounding care for ancestors in Hawaiˋi, Johnson queries whether a focus on the politics of religious freedom actually disenfranchises marginalized groups whose religious practices have long been considered suspect by the mainstream.Less

“You Can’t Take It with You”: The Sociopolitical Context of Changing Burial Traditions during the Palatial Period at Mycenae

Kim Shelton

in Death in Late Bronze Age Greece: Variations on a Theme

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 ... More

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.Less

Introduction: Tragedy, the City, and Its Dead

Jonathan Strauss

in Private Lives, Public Deaths: Antigone and the Invention of Individuality

The introduction traces the relations between burial practices and the rise of the polis in ancient Greece to show that the creation of the city-state was accompanied by an exclusion of dead bodies ... More

The introduction traces the relations between burial practices and the rise of the polis in ancient Greece to show that the creation of the city-state was accompanied by an exclusion of dead bodies from urban zones. The city, it seems, was grounded in the difference between life and death. The chapter also describes the importance of tragedies to the civic life of fifth-century Athens, since they were spectacles that staged the state's origins and pondered the legitimacy of its legal structures. In a dissimulated way, the status of the individual and the value of his or her private life played a crucial role in these deliberations. Sophocles's Antigone exemplifies these issues, and to better understand the relations between tragedy, the city, death, and individual life, we should consider not only the play and its historical context, but also the long and rich history of its exegesis, especially in the wake of Hegel's pivotal analysis.Less

Archaeological Context and Controversy: The Bones of James Unpacked

Byron R. McCane

in Resurrecting the Brother of Jesus: The James Ossuary Controversy and the Quest for Religious Relics

This chapter examines the issue of authenticity. It situates the ossuary both within Jewish burial practices of the Roman period and the modern dynamics of the antiquities market. The chapter argues ... More

This chapter examines the issue of authenticity. It situates the ossuary both within Jewish burial practices of the Roman period and the modern dynamics of the antiquities market. The chapter argues that the absence of an archaeological context for the James Ossuary complicates the means to connect it to Jesus of Nazareth in a responsible manner. The evangelical celebration of the ossuary's discovery is juxtaposed with the willful disregard for the role of looters, who unceremoniously discarded the bones of the decedent. This rationalization of exploitation and desecration amounts to archaeological pornography, and highlights the theological commercialization of Holy Land material culture.Less