Funerary Practices Research Articles

Funerary Practices in England and Wales. Julie Rugg-Brian Parsons 2018. Howard House: Emerald Publishing; Funerary Practices in the Netherlands Brenda Mathijssen, Claudia Venhorst 2019. Howard House: Emerald Publishing.

Funerary Practices in England and Wales. Julie Rugg-Brian Parsons 2018. Howard House: Emerald Publishing; Funerary Practices in the Netherlands Brenda Mathijssen, Claudia Venhorst 2019. Howard House: Emerald Publishing.

Wokół rzeczy ostatecznych. Obyczaje funeralne sowieckich elit partyjnych

Soviet funeral practices for members of the state elite are built on two factors. They use the achievements of antiquity and the Bible, and depend on the position of the deceased at the time of their death. On the one hand, ‘elite’ refers to the highest-ranked representatives of the Soviet authorities (primarily the first secretaries of the party and marshals of the army and sometimes very meritorious activists). The custom of mummification, which was taken from antiquity and the Bible, was used for Lenin and Stalin. However, what was done with the bodies of these two most important Soviets was actually thanatopraxis, which involves replacing blood in the bloodstream immediately after death by introducing in its place a fluid with a strictly protected chemical composition that preserves the corpse from the inside. Piłsudski’s body was also subjected to thanatopraxis after death. This method is still used today by families of various magnates and of important mafia people. The second factor is the evaluation of a given person by successors. When speaking of special burial sites, except for the two aforementioned figures, others were buried next to Lenin’s mausoleum (formerly, from 1953 to 1956, Lenin’s and Stalin’s, then only Lenin’s until modern times). All the first/general secretaries of the Communist Party are buried there, except Nikita Khrushchev. He did not deserve a proper burial as he had thrown Stalin’s body out of the mausoleum into an earthen grave and revealed a veil of state secrets in a secret report on the cult of personality and its disastrous consequences on the party elite, which at that time had only been bestowed by Stalin. He was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery. It is also a very prestigious burial place for many prominent Soviets. There are also several other Moscow necropolises, which served as the resting place of equally distinguished comrades as space at the Novodevichy Cemetery was reduced.

Transforming funeral practices: Rituality and necropower in mass death situations

Transforming funeral practices: Rituality and necropower in mass death situations

Iwolefu Funeral Insurance and the Socioeconomics of Burial Ceremony in Ikorodu area of Lagos State

Death is an inevitable aspect of human existence. Human beings have evolved the custom of honouring the deceased with organized burial arrangements. Each society, therefore, has a different tradition for funeral arrangements and burial ceremonies. Among the Yoruba people, the deceased is honored with elaborate funeral arrangements incurring huge expenses. Traditionally, these expenses are borne by the deceased’s lineage. The Ikorodu (Remo) sub-ethnic Yoruba group has a traditional form of funeral insurance that makes funeral arrangements and expenses a communal responsibility. This study microscopically examines aspects of burial arrangements among the people. It specifically concentrates on the traditional funeral insurance practice, locally known as iwolefu, among the people. The study argues that the traditional funeral insurance practice is among the main instruments by which the institutions of ẹbí (family) and ìdílé (lineage) are preserved among the aborigines of the Ikorodu area. The study uses historical and ethnographical approaches to data collation and interpretation.

Denied funeral rituals in pandemic times

The extremely high death rates in northern Italy during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic called for exceptional rules and suspension of funeral practices and burial rites. Additionally, forms of collective burial, typical of a wartime scenario, and mechanical methods and timing were reintroduced into the handling of corpses. Although several academic studies have highlighted how the absence of funeral ceremonies and ‘dignified burials’ has caused prolonged and deep suffering for the mourners and for many of the caregivers and health workers, few have so far focused on funeral workers. This article focuses on the intimate, emotional and ethical experiences of a group of funeral workers in northern Italy who handled COVID corpses and had to take the place of the mourners at the time of burial. Through an anthropological analysis of their oral memories, this work attempts to analyse their expressions of discomfort, frustration, fear and suffering.

Three Elite Burials of the Northern Zhou Period from Guyuan in Ningxia, China

The materials of elite burial complexes of the Northern Zhou period (557–581) discovered in the 1980–1990s in the vicinity of Guyuan City in the Ningxia-Hui Autonomous Region of China are analyzed in this article. Due to the epitaphs engraved on stone slabs found inside the tombs, the names of the buried individuals and the exact dates of the complexes are known: the tombs belong to high-ranking officials of Northern Zhou: Yuwen Meng (565), Li Xian (569) and Tian Hong (574). The complexes under consideration demonstrate a high degree of unification of the funeral rite, which is manifested in the similarity of tomb structures, decor and accompanying grave goods. The features of architectural structures and grave goods of these burials continue the traditions of the previous periods of the Sixteen Barbarian States and the Northern Wei. With a general similarity to the synchronous complexes of the Northern Qi (550– 577), the materials of these tombs allow to distinguish specific features of the Northern Zhou funerary practice: the absence of porcelain items, the use of ritual nephrites, and the secular nature of mural paintings. Against the background of the prevailing influence of the Chinese-Han funerary tradition, there are signs of the influence of the steppe (probably Xianbei) funeral and memorial rituals. Prestigious items imported from Iran, Central Asia, Byzantium testify to the significant role of contacts along the Silk Road in the economical and cultural development of Northern Zhou. Despite the available data from written and epigraphic sources, the problem of identifying the ethnicity of the buried has not yet been resolved. However, the version of their non-Chinese origin seems to be the most probable.

Use of Parts of Ram Carcasses in the Funerary Practices of the Baikal Region Population in the 13th–14th Centuries

In the 13th and 14th centuries, there was a custom of placing parts of a ram/sheep carcass in the grave as an offering in the Baikal region. Materials from three areas, which were then parts of the Mongol Empire, are described: southeastern Trans-Baikal, northern Khövsgöl, and southern Angara. Graves are described with a focus on sheep bones, their composition, and location in the grave. In the southern Trans-Baikal, the shank was usually placed near the buried person’s head. Scapulae and vertebrae are much less frequent than shank bones. The latter are most often found under the human pelvic bones or under the upper femur. In the Khövsgöl area, a ram’s shank was placed near the deceased person’s arm or leg. On the Angara, a ram’s head—or the entire dorsal part—was placed near the deceased’s legs. In the Sayantui type burials, located south of Lake Baikal and representing the Mongols’ funerary tradition of the imperial period, the most common offering was a ram’s shank, placed upright. Elsewhere in the Baikal region, other ways of arranging parts of a ram carcass are observed, apparently because of the absence of the Mongol population and its elite in those areas.

Deficit of skeletal remains belonging to infants and young children - but not at every cemetery!

A deficit of skeletal remains from infants and young children, especially those children in the first year of life, is often described in cemeteries and burial grounds for most time periods. Various reasons for this are proposed. The present study focuses on two Bronze Age cemeteries from northern Germany (Vechta and Uelsen), which illustrate that infant skeletal remains indeed remain preserved and is closely connected to funeral rites. In the Iron Age, the proportion of child burials in the cemeteries of Schleswig-Holstein clearly decreases compared to the Bronze Age, an observation that correlates with funerary practices, for example, different pyre temperatures as revealed in the proportion of primary carbon discolouration seen on cremated bone. Nevertheless, supposed deficits in child burials cannot simply be corrected for demographic evaluations, since the percentage of deceased children can fluctuate considerably and therefore general assumptions of a child mortality rate between 40 and 50% are invalid, as can be shown with various examples.

Reimagining Death Education at Queen's University

University can be a tumultuous time for many students, bringing new opportunities, responsibilities, and independence into the forefront of our lives. This time of significant life change and can be stressful enough as is, but when you add grief and loss into the equation, things can become quickly overwhelming. Death is not given space in public discourse, resulting in a greater society that is in denial of the realities of loss, how it affects us and the inevitability that we will experience it in our lives. With the supervision of Dr. Dan Vena, I have created an online resource, Conversations with Death, designed to fill the gap on our campus, and provide critical, comprehensive and diverse information under the umbrella of grief, death and dying to stimulate open conversation and curiosity amongst our student body. Through consultations with various industry professionals such as funeral directors, charity organizers, death doulas, professors, and chaplains, I created various sections of this resource including international funeral practices, death positivity, body disposition, helpful grief practices and more. Furthermore, throughout this website there are a plethora of resources for students to investigate, whether this is for grief support or curiosity to learn more. By showcasing this resource, I wish to communicate how critical death education and death positivity are to creating a community on the Queen’s University campus where students are encouraged to be open about their experiences with death and grief while being supported by their peers and the university.

Funerary practices in megalithic tombs during the Argaric Bronze Age in South-Eastern Iberia: The cemetery of Los Eriales

The transition between the Copper Age and the Argaric Bronze Age in south-eastern Iberia has traditionally been understood in an evolutionary framework that would have involved the replacement of some cultural forms by others. The chronology of megalithic societies has changed this assumption, revealing that the continuity of ancestral funerary practices is also a key feature of the Bronze Age. In this context, the new radiocarbon series from Los Eriales discussed in this paper can be considered a key contribution. Three main aspects stand out according to their statistical analysis: i) Los Eriales should be considered the most recent Iberian megalithic cemetery, as ritual activity began in the last centuries of the third millennium cal BC; ii) funerary activity took place during short events of intensive ritual depositions spanning a few decades, mainly in the 21st and 18th centuries; and iii) Los Eriales cemetery was mainly used during the Argaric period, which means the coexistence of two very different funerary practices: collective megalithic rituals and individual intramural inhumations. The continuity of megalithic rituals can be explained in terms of resilience to the social fragmentation that characterised Argaric societies.

Multifactorial approach to describe early diagenesis of bones: The case study of the Merovingian cemetery of Saint-Linaire (France)

The excavation of the Merovingian cemetery of Saint-Linaire (France) was an opportunity to describe the completeness of the tombs preserved from soil erosion. An anthropobiological study was carried out on the osteological material and the different categories of graves. On the basis of a complete archaeo-anthropological corpus we have undertaken an analysis of the differential preservation of the bones according to the different archaeobiological parameters such as the type of bone, the individual age but also the type of grave such as earthen graves, coffin, or sarcophagus.In order to establish whether and how funerary practices had impacted the early diagenesis of the bones, FTIR was used to investigate the carbonate and fluoride content of the bones, and the infra-red splitting factor (SF), while XRD analysis was performed to estimate the crystallinity index (CI). In addition, the micro, macro and total porosity of the bones were measured by water adsorption, and bone carbon and nitrogen amounts were obtained by EA-IRMS. These diagenetic variables were analysed with regards to environmental (grave filling: humus, calcareous, clay), cultural (type of grave) and biological (mature versus immature individuals) factors. While there is a tendency of a better preservation of the skeletons in humus, and of juvenile bones to show less post-mortem alteration than the adult skeletons, the most important factor which determines the fate of the skeleton is the type of bone, with a preferential preservation of the ribs at Saint-Linaire.

The role of flowers in the personalization of Christian funerals in Denmark

Flowers are a common element in Danish funerals. Drawing on fieldnotes, interviews and survey data on funeral practices in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Denmark as well as theories of ritualization, meaning-making and practices, this article shows that flowers are not only a sine qua non in the funerals but are also used to make them more personal and to produce and reproduce social relations. Additionally, flowers are material objects and acquire their social meaning in the right ceremonial context. Outside this context they have no inherent meaning and might even obstruct the ceremony because, as physical objects, they have to be put somewhere in ceremonial space. Paradoxically, flowers are ubiquitous yet invisible.

Covid-19 and the mediatization of the funeral industry in Australia and Denmark

This article focuses on the mediatization of funeral practices and customer relations in a business with human care and contact at its centre: the funeral industry. We analyse the impact of Covid-19 on the use of digital media in a comparative study of the deathcare sector in Australia and Denmark. Using surveys within the national funeral industries, qualitative interviews with funeral directors, and news media archives for 2020–2021, we identify four areas of mediatization: adaptations of specific technologies; interactions with the bereaved; transformations of funeral rites; and communications beyond the funeral service. In conclusion, we suggest that the mediatization process is a negotiation of, on the one hand, the need and growing demand for digital media into a traditions-bound business, and on the other hand, the funeral directors’ wish to care for the bereaved families through tactile, in-person relationships and emotional support.

From excavating bones to reconstruct funerary practices: Contextualizing skeletal evidence for the post-funerary treatment of the dead at the Pre- and Protopalatial Petras cemetery (2900–1700 BCE), Siteia, Crete

This paper explores the character of the Petras human bone deposits in order to identify and reconstruct the original burial conditions and subsequently understand the social processes that resulted in the formation of a variable burial record. The Petras cemetery, located on the northeast coast of Crete, consists of 24 excavated House Tombs. The site was in use from Early Minoan IB (2900–2650 BCE) until Middle Minoan IIB (1850–1700 BCE), providing an excellent opportunity for the study of Prepalatial and Protopalatial mortuary practices. Drawing on existing research in social bioarchaeology, this study implements an integrated bioarchaeological approach involving the analysis of funerary taphonomy such as aspects of bone preservation, anatomical articulation and the position of skeletal remains. This way the given paper aims to reconstruct the funerary practices and their embedded meaning. Results suggest that all members of the community, were secondarily manipulated, while fully or partially decomposed, often inside the original burial location. A few intact primary burials present an exception which may attest to an ancestral population. The skeletal remains, even the ones placed inside funerary vessels, were reduced and re-arranged in commingled piles of bones in order to create room for new burials. Beyond practical considerations, the latter acts were also part of a ritual program, as the deposition of complete vases to fragmentary remains infer. Moreover, the Petras House Tombs attest to diachronic variability in group size, patterns of use and spatial arrangements of the human remains. Yet, these distinct choices were part of a single narrative which stressed the importance of a collective past, as the constant choice of the burial locale, the successive building upon old tombs and the commingled, unindividuated masses of bones indicate.

Lipac – nalazi iz grobova finalnog bronzanog doba sjeverne Bosne

During the final stages of the Late Bronze Age (9th–8th century BC) the territory of northern Bosnia wascharacterised by remarkable cultural dynamics, visible primarily in the distribution of metal finds: weapons, tools,jewellery, and functional costume objects. A new type of funeral practice – inhumation – emerged here, with thisperhaps being an important factor in the formation and social stratification of communities living in this areaat the end of the Late Bronze Age and the beginning of the Early Iron Age. In this paper, a group of remarkableobjects is presented for the first time. The collection of chance finds from Lipac, near Doboj, consists of a groupof metal functional-decorative objects of high craftsmanship, and a smaller group of ceramic vessels, most likelyfound as part of a burial inventory dated to the early 8th century BC. In addition to basic information on thedistribution and chronological framework of certain pieces of ornaments themselves, the grave finds from Lipacprovide us with exceptional insight into possible local technological innovations and adaptations based on localtraditions, models and aesthetic criteria established among communities from this period. Objects in the gravecan be divided into two groups: objects related to food and drink, and bronze ornaments related to personal attire.

Kinship practices in Early Iron Age South-east Europe: genetic and isotopic analysis of burials from the Dolge njive barrow cemetery, Dolenjska, Slovenia

The burial of multiple individuals within a single funerary monument invites speculation about the relationships between the deceased: were they chosen on the basis of status, gender or relatedness, for example? Here, the authors present the results of aDNA and isotope analyses conducted on seven individuals from an Early Iron Age barrow at Dolge njive, south-eastern Slovenia. All seven individuals are close biological relatives. While the group composition suggests strict adherence to neither patrilineal nor matrilineal structures, the funerary tradition appears highly gendered, and family links through both the male and female lines seem important in structuring of the community. The results have implications for understanding of kinship and funerary practices in late prehistoric Europe.

Insights into the frontier zone of Upper Seine Valley (France) during the Bronze Age through subsistence strategies and dietary patterns

The Upper Seine Valley sees during the Bronze Age an increase in settlements and cemeteries characterized by a variety of architectures and funerary practices. This variability originates from the coalescence of two cultural traditions, the Atlantic culture from the northwest and the Continental culture from the east, which find its roots in the Upper Rhine area. In this context, our research aims to understand the cultural identity of these communities by reconstructing subsistence economy and palaeodietary patterns and to trace human mobility, which influenced lifestyle and social–economic dynamics. Adding new 10 AMS dating and using multi-isotope (δ13C, δ15N, δ34S) and multi-proxy (botanical, animal and human remains) biochemical investigations, we detected changes in dietary habits throughout the Bronze Age linked to varying C3 and C4 plant consumption and diverse animal protein intake by humans. Three main outcomes are highlighted: (1) a variety of farming strategies with different manuring intensity according to the cereal species; (2) site-specific dietary patterns; (3) an increase in millet and animal protein intake during the Late Bronze Age. Moreover, results from one cemetery reveal that individual mobility is more significant for males. These dietary variations, differential agricultural strategies and mobility are consistent with other western Europe research, supporting major global changes in all of Europe at the end of the Bronze Age.

Magical practices? A non-normative Roman imperial cremation at Sagalassos

Many thousands of burials have been excavated from across the Roman world, documenting a variety of funerary practices and rites. Individual burials, however, sometimes stand out for their atypical characteristics. The authors report the discovery of a cremation burial from ancient Sagalassos that differs from contemporaneous funerary deposits. In this specific context, the cremated human remains were not retrieved but buried in situ, surrounded by a scattering of intentionally bent nails, and carefully sealed beneath a raft of tiles and a layer of lime. For each of these practices, textual and archaeological parallels can be found elsewhere in the ancient Mediterranean world, collectively suggesting that magical beliefs were at work.

Use of cinnabar in funerary practices in the Central Pyrenees. Analysis of pigments on bones from the prehistoric burial of the Cueva de la Sierra cave in Campodarbe (Huesca, Spain)

The appearance of red pigments in prehistoric burial sites is frequent. In the study presented herein, the composition and provenance of the pigment sprinkled in a burial dated between the Late Neolithic and Early Chalcolithic periods in the Cueva de la Sierra, in Campodarbe (Huesca, Spain), were characterized through X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy coupled with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, X-ray powder diffraction, and sulfur (δ34S) isotope analysis. The chemical composition of the pigment used in the burial could be unequivocally established as cinnabar, and the S isotope signature pointed to an origin in the ores of the Northwestern Iberian Peninsula, ca. 500 km far from the burial site, suggesting an alternative provenance to the Almadén outcrop, the main cinnabar source in the Iberian Peninsula. The presence of cinnabar in the Ebro valley, on the southern slope of the Central Pyrenees, forces us to rethink the complex processes of interaction between communities that populated the north of the Iberian Peninsula during the final moments of the 4th millennium BC.

Archaeoastronomy and Conflict: On the Orientation of Prehistoric Funerary Monuments in Western Sahara

A variety of Prehistoric dry-stone monuments are ubiquitous in Western Sahara, a region delimited by the boundaries of the former Spanish colony. With either burial or ritual functions, these monuments are spread throughout the Sahara Desert creating sacred landscapes and housing the memory of millennia of occupation. Previous research has explored the role of the sky in various aspects of the life of early inhabitants, such as their religious beliefs or funerary practices. These have been identified by the patterns of location and orientation of these constructions and their relation to particular astronomical events. This work presents a statistical analysis of the orientation of more than 200 prehistoric dry-stone monuments in Western Sahara occupied by Morocco, currently the biggest sample ever studied in this area and the first unique sample obtained in situ. The results show that the orientations follow similar trends observed in other areas of North Africa and the Mediterranean and that they fit with the visibility of particular celestial objects. This provides new insights into the ideas about space, time, and death and the cultural changes and mobility of those peoples and contributes to the preservation of a highly threatened heritage that is immersed in a vast land currently under dispute.