Building Bridges Between Burial Archaeology and the Archaeology of Death – Where Is the Archaeological Study of the Dead Going

Liv Nilsson Stutz

doi:10.37718/csa.2016.01

Abstract

Building Bridges Between Burial Archaeology and the Archaeology of Death : Where is the Archaeological Study of the Dead Going?

Highlights

When invited to write a keynote article on the contemporary archaeology of death and burial, I admit that I struggled to find the focus for such a potentially broad and complex theme
Burial archaeology continues to be a dynamic field that captures all the complexity of archaeology more broadly, ranging from the natural sciences to the humanities, continuously evolving to adapt to new and urgent research questions, even as it faces and has the potential to be transformed by especially urgent ethical challenges
Burial archaeology can be likened to a concentrate of archaeological scholarship, and as such it reflects a remarkable range of current problems and possibilities

Summary

INTRODUCTION

When invited to write a keynote article on the contemporary archaeology of death and burial, I admit that I struggled to find the focus for such a potentially broad and complex theme. As a part of this reassessment of the important current – and possibly future – developments in archaeological scholarship devoted to burials, I point out another growing trend – one that brings together methods and social theory perspectives emphasizing how the living handle death and the dead This trend involves bringing to the fore previously understudied archaeological materials. In Sweden, at least, this may be due to the fact that few Swedish archaeologists are specialized in the study of human remains, and they continue to pay more attention to the traces that interest them the most This omission of the human being in the grave may contribute to burial archaeology’s ongoing ethical challenges, a topic to which I turn in the following discussion of scientific methodologies in the archaeo logy of death and burial

ARCHAEOLOGICAL SCIENCE

BUILDING A COMPETENT ARCHAEOLOGY OF DEATH AND BURIAL

AND APOLOGIES