Search Results

The chapter shows how several scenes, paralleling prevalent early Jewish and Christian exegetical traditions, depict Eve as accountable for inflicting death on Adam and all humanity. Simultaneously, other scenes subtly portray Eve as playing a beneficial role in the context of Adam’s death, such as caring for his body, mourning his decease, pleading for his soul, and witnessing his final ascent to heaven. The chapter demonstrates how these later portrayals resonate with a broad range of culturally esteemed funerary practices and conceptions associated with women, well established in the multicultural landscape in which the GLAE emerged. With attention to relations between social practices and narrativation, the chapter further suggests that, by associating Eve with valued funerary practices, the GLAE representations undermine traditions of Eve’s liability, emphasize countertraditions about her positive role in the aftermath of Adam’s death, and ultimately assert an ideological stance concerning the valued standing of Eve in the context of contrasting views.

The chapter examines a small subgroup of decorated metal bowls, typically referred to as “Phoenician,” that bear inscriptions on them, as an avenue into the corpus as a whole, and delves into the material association of ornamentation and inscription on vessels designed for pouring and/or drinking liquids in a funerary context. The presence of an inscription that names a person activates memories in a self-conscious manner. The bowls elicit, even demand, an ongoing remembrance on behalf of the named individual. The representational decoration drew user-viewers into its figured world, enacting and reenacting social, familial, and power relations through time. That these vessels appear in burial contexts from Iran to Italy points to shared cultural practices of communal feasting. Yet, the inscribing of personal names and the declaration of ownership in numerous languages and scripts found on metal bowls around the Near East and Mediterranean from the transitional period at the end of the Late Bronze Age into the Iron Age suggest a new role for funerary practices, in which emerging communal identities were increasingly being expressed through ethno-linguistic affiliation and a metaphor of ancestral kinship.

This chapter provides the historical background to the cultural practices of bereavement and the cultures of grief that were dominant in Britain during the Second World War. It traces British ‘cultures of death’ from the elaborate funerals of mid 19^th century Britain to the end of the Great War. By this point, expectation of bereavement had moved from the often elaborate, formal rituals of the mid 19^th century to the restrained funerary practice and bereavement rituals that dominated the mid 20^th century. The Great War, it argues, strengthened existing patterns of growing restraint and simplicity in funerary and bereavement practice, and shaped the ways that people could, or could not, give voice to grief in public.

In archaeology, funerary practices are a quintessential element in the process of interpreting ancient societies because of the widespread presence in the archaeological record of remains associated with mortuary depositions. For this reason, throughout the twentieth century, archaeologists have debated both methodologically and theoretically what value to assign to the remains of funerary rituals enacted by ancient communities in relationship to other social and cultural domains. The aim of this chapter is to define the canon of ancient Near Eastern funerary practices through a detailed interpretation of the relationship between funerary practices, socioeconomic organization, and religious beliefs. With the use of a diachronic perspective, transformation in one of these domains is shown to have had a direct impact on the others. Case studies test how specific aspects of mortuary and funerary practices among prehistoric through first-millennium BCE Near Eastern communities have become canonical.

In the classroom we can light incense, listen to dirges, watch videos of funerals, and pass around a cremation urn, but these encounters with the intersection of death and religion are taken out of their social context. By moving students beyond the classroom, we force them to step beyond the comfort of academic distance and encounter religion and death on their own terms. This chapter describes the pedagogical benefits of site visits and how they can enhance the study of death from a “lived religion” perspective. It also explores ethical issues arising from site visits and suggests practical ways to maximize the success of the site visit, from planning the trip to student preparation through the follow-up analysis. Lastly, it offers specific suggestions for visits to the most common sites used in death courses, namely cemeteries and funeral homes.

This book is a study of contemporary Japanese Buddhism and the care of the dead. It shows how religious, political, social, and economic forces over the course of the twentieth century led to the emergence of new funerary practices in Japan and how this has made the care of the dead the most essential challenge to the continued existence of Japanese temple Buddhism. This challenge extends beyond the economic, demographic, and social forces of change into the realm of more existential doubts about the role of the tradition and the true meaning of Buddhist understandings of death. Secondarily, it is a study of the primary overseers of shaping tradition within Japanese Buddhism today; of the interplay and tensions between Buddhist ideals, as reflected in the activities of Buddhist intellectuals; and the often conflicting practical needs of temple priests in the context of their daily responsibilities as caretakers for the dead.

The rugged, mountainous landscapes dividing the Parthian and Roman Empires routinely served as an arena for military campaigns and violent conflict between empires competing for territorial expansion. Local alliances were cyclically forged, broken, and mended, yet these interactions are rarely represented in the archaeological record. How were military campaigns conducted in the Caucasus frontier? How did foreign soldiers interact with local communities? This chapter examines the case study of an unusual first century CE burial that integrates aspects of both Roman and Parthian funerary practice and is associated with large-scale feasting events at the site of Oğlanqala in Naxçıvan, Azerbaijan. By integrating osteological and isotopic analyses with a regional approach to funerary practice, this chapter sheds light on underrepresented local experiences and intersectional identities in response to Roman campaigns.

This chapter examines the funerary practices in Brittany. It highlights the scarcity of preserved human remains and discusses evidence for multiple burials and collective tombs and the model for the development of Neolithic funerary practices proposed by Christine Boujot. It also describes the collected human remains from the Neolithic burial south of the Loire and the Normandy passage graves.

Çatalhöyük is most well known for its Neolithic settlement, but the site also served as a cemetery during the Bronze Age, as well as the Roman, Byzantine, and Islamic periods. During the Neolithic, Çatalhöyük is distinctive as a place for both the living and the dead, but thereafter the site becomes more closely associated with the dead. This chapter discusses four examples of non-normative burials from different time periods at the site, including two Neolithic burials: one of a mature male buried with a sheep and another of a young male with a congenital deformity; a Roman period double burial with an atypical grave orientation; and an isolated twentieth-century burial of a woman from the local village, which represents the last known burial on the mound. Osteobiographical information and sociocultural context are used to assess the significance of each burial. We also question how normative and non-normative burials are typically defined in the archaeological record.

Many near-death experiences (NDEs) were found in Polynesia and Melanesia, alongside claims that afterlife beliefs derived from them, and numerous relevant myths. Religious rituals and beliefs often incorporated knowledge of NDEs, and revitalization movements often had NDE origins and themes. Shamanic practices included otherworld journeys, soul-retrieval, mediumship, and invited spirit possession. Micronesia and Australia, in contrast, yielded very few NDEs, or statements that beliefs originated in them. In Micronesia, the dead were brought to the living via possession and mediumship, while Australians practiced otherworld journey shamanism. Such practices took preference over interest in NDEs, while fulfilling similar socioreligious functions. The differences between the regions also reflected different funerary practices: in Polynesia and Melanesia they often facilitated the possibility of the soul’s return, while in Micronesia and Australia they were frequently designed to prevent such a return.

The numerous archaeological excavations recently carried out around Paris (Ilede-France) have made this part of France a privileged area for new studies of the Iron Age. In particular, it offers great potential for fresh interpretation of La Tène funerary practices as well as the role of human deposits in storage pits and the manipulation of human remains. This chapter uses the data from this region to explore the meanings of such evidence within Iron Age societies. Human deposits, often referred to as ‘relegation burials’, underlining the apparent second-rate nature of the tomb, are inferred as representing the alienation of certain individuals in death. However, the excluded dead play an important role understanding religious worship during this period, first via the post-mortem treatment of body itself and ultimately via the manipulated skeletal remains during the decomposition process.

This chapter examines tombs and stone monuments in Brittany during the Late Neolithic Period. It describes different tomb types and their relationship to variations in funerary practices and highlights the presence of engraved motifs and features carved in raised relief in Neolithic megalithic tombs. It also discusses the symbolism of the Late Neolithic tombs in relation to the ‘great houses’ of third millennium Brittany and the structural similarities between tombs and houses.

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.

To situate Naṣīḥat al-mulūk in the religious culture of the tenth-century Samanid domains, this chapters explores the orientations and practices of the Samanid amirs from the later ninth century onwards. It portrays the proclivities towards austerity (zuhd) and religious devotion (ʿibāda) of the earlier amirs, especially the generation of Naṣr I and his brothers, the memory of whose conduct significantly shaped Pseudo-Māwardī’s conception of good governance. The chapter presents the efforts of this generation of amirs to develop mutually supportive relations with the religious scholars, and their active participation in the public religious sphere, in, for example, the hearing and transmission of ḥadīth and participation in the funerary rites of prominent scholars. It treats the social prominence and economic means of religious scholars and renunciants, whose support and co-operation Pseudo-Māwardī urges the king to cultivate. The chapter concludes with a discussion of religious developments during the reign of Naṣr II.

Most scholars have approached Book 6 in piece-meal fashion, exemplified by the tendency to translate the word politeia as 'constitution', even though Polybius includes elements which could not be called constitutional such as funerary practices. This chapter shows how Book 6 explains the success of Rome (and by implication the failure of Greek communities) holistically: elements often ignored by scholars, such as the account of enrolment for the Roman army and the Roman camp, are in fact part of a strategy of emphasizing Roman efficiency. Likewise, the overriding focus on the state's interests over those of the individual is reflected in Polybius' accounts of military discipline, and in the Roman response to the dispatch of prisoners to Rome by Hannibal after Cannae which ends the book.

From 2006 to 2008 The Canadian Institute in Greece sponsored the excavation of a Mycenaean chamber tomb cemetery at Ayia Sotira near Koutsomodi in the Nemea Valley. The five modest tombs excavated by the project were undoubtedly associated with the nearby settlement of Tsoungiza, and offer a picture of the mortuary practices associated with this settlement. The practices at Ayia Sotira describe both local funerary customs and more generally “Mycenaean” ones observable throughout Mainland Greece and the Aegean. Explanations for the local character are found in the economic conditions of the nearby settlement, in the local geology, and presumably local customs. These were documented through careful recovery of the stratigraphy and contents of the tombs, including paleobotanical, phytolith, organic residue, and micromorphological analysis. The remarkable similarity of these tombs and their contents to those excavated at neighboring Zygouries confirm the local character of chamber tomb inhumation. Yet comparison with other chamber tomb cemeteries, notably nearby Aidonia, but also with examples in the Corinthia, Argolid, and elsewhere, demonstrate the general features of a common “Mycenaean” practice. Overall, burial practices in the chamber tombs at Ayia Sotira fits our reconstruction of the inhabitants of Tsoungiza being incorporated into a social and political system dominated by the inhabitants of Mycenae during the LH IIIA2–B periods.