The Oxford Handbook Of The Archaeology Of Death And Burial

"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."--

This handbook reviews the state of mortuary archaeology and its practice with 44 chapters focusing on the history of the discipline and its current scientific techniques and methods. Written by leading scholars in the field, it derives its examples and case studies from a wide range of time periods and geographical areas.