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Burial, also known as interment or inhumation, is a method of final disposition whereby a dead body is placed into the ground, sometimes with objects. This is usually accomplished by excavating a pit or trench, placing the deceased and objects in it, and covering it over. A funeral is a ceremony that accompanies the final disposition. Evidence suggests that some archaic and early modern humans buried their dead. Burial is often seen as indicating respect for the dead. It has been used to prevent the odor of decay, to give family members closure and prevent them from witnessing the decomposition of their loved ones, and in many cultures it has been seen as a necessary step for the deceased to enter the afterlife or to give back to the cycle of life.
Canopic jars are containers that were used by the ancient Egyptians during the mummification process, to store and preserve the viscera of their owner for the afterlife. The earliest and most common versions were made from stone, but later styles were carved from wood. The ritual use of the jars dates back as far as the Old Kingdom and stayed in practice until the Late Period or the Ptolemaic Period, by which time the viscera were simply wrapped and placed with the body. Canopic jars of the Old Kingdom were rarely inscribed and had a plain lid, but by the Middle Kingdom inscriptions became more usual, and the lids were often in the form of human heads. By the Nineteenth Dynasty each of the four lids depicted one of the four sons of Horus, actings as guardians for the respective organ in their jar.
Gibbeting is the use of a gallows-type structure from which the dead or dying bodies of criminals were hanged on public display to deter other existing or potential criminals. Occasionally, the gibbet was also used as a method of public execution, with the criminal being left to die of exposure, thirst and/or starvation. The practice of placing a criminal on display within a gibbet is also called "hanging in chains".
Necrophobia is a specific phobia, the irrational fear of dead organisms as well as things associated with death. With all types of emotions, obsession with death becomes evident in both fascination and objectification. In a cultural sense, necrophobia may also be used to mean a fear of the dead by a cultural group, e.g., a belief that the spirits of the dead will return to haunt the living.
Owen Davies is a British historian who specialises in the history of magic, witchcraft, ghosts, and popular medicine. He is currently Professor in History at the University of Hertfordshire and has been described as Britain's "foremost academic expert on the history of magic".
Roman funerary practices include the Ancient Romans' religious rituals concerning funerals, cremations, and burials. They were part of time-hallowed tradition, the unwritten code from which Romans derived their social norms. Elite funeral rites, especially processions and public eulogies, gave the family opportunity to publicly celebrate the life and deeds of the deceased, their ancestors, and the family's standing in the community. Sometimes the political elite gave costly public feasts, games and popular entertainments after family funerals, to honour the departed and to maintain their own public profile and reputation for generosity. The Roman gladiator games began as funeral gifts for the deceased in high status families.
A cillín is a historic burial site in Ireland, primarily used for stillborn and unbaptized infants. These burial areas were also used for the recently deceased who were not allowed in consecrated churchyards, including the mentally disabled, suicides, beggars, executed criminals, and shipwreck victims.
The Tellem were the people who inhabited the Bandiagara Escarpment in Mali between the 11th and 16th centuries CE. The Dogon people migrated to the escarpment region around the 14th century. In the rock cells of this red cliff, clay constructions shelter the bones of the Tellem as well as vestiges witnessing to their civilization, which existed well before that of the Dogons.
The settlement of Great Britain by diverse Germanic peoples led to the development of a new Anglo-Saxon cultural identity and shared Germanic language, Old English, which was most closely related to Old Frisian on the other side of the North Sea. The first Germanic-speakers to settle permanently are likely to have been soldiers recruited by the Roman administration, possibly already in the fourth century or earlier. In the early fifth century, after the end of Roman rule in Britain and the breakdown of the Roman economy, larger numbers arrived and their impact upon local culture and politics increased.
The archaeology of religion and ritual is a growing field of study within archaeology that applies ideas from religious studies, theory and methods, anthropological theory, and archaeological and historical methods and theories to the study of religion and ritual in past human societies from a material perspective.
Burial in Anglo-Saxon England refers to the grave and burial customs followed by the Anglo-Saxons between the mid 5th and 11th centuries CE in Early Mediaeval England. The variation of the practice performed by the Anglo-Saxon peoples during this period, included the use of both cremation and inhumation. There is a commonality in the burial places between the rich and poor – their resting places sit alongside one another in shared cemeteries. Both of these forms of burial were typically accompanied by grave goods, which included food, jewelry, and weaponry. The actual burials themselves, whether of cremated or inhumed remains, were placed in a variety of sites, including in cemeteries, burial mounds or, more rarely, in ship burials.
Jar burial is a human burial custom where the corpse is placed into a large earthenware container and then interred. Jar burials are a repeated pattern at a site or within an archaeological culture. When an anomalous burial is found in which a corpse or cremated remains have been interred, it is not considered a "jar burial".
Resurrectionists were body snatchers who were commonly employed by anatomists in the United Kingdom during the 18th and 19th centuries to exhume the bodies of the recently dead. Between 1506 and 1752 only a very few cadavers were available each year for anatomical research. The supply was increased when, in an attempt to intensify the deterrent effect of the death penalty, Parliament passed the Murder Act 1752. By allowing judges to substitute the public display of executed criminals with dissection, the new law significantly increased the number of bodies anatomists could legally access. This proved insufficient to meet the needs of the hospitals and teaching centres that opened during the 18th century. Corpses and their component parts became a commodity, but although the practice of disinterment was hated by the general public, bodies were not legally anyone's property. The resurrectionists therefore operated in a legal grey area.
The London Association for the Prevention of Premature Burial was an association that was co-founded in 1896 by William Tebb and Walter Hadwen. In the 1800s, it was not common nor mandatory for a physician to examine a body after death and declare the person deceased. The absence of a final check by a competent person for signs of life led to fears of premature burial. The London Association for the Prevention of Premature Burial was created to bring attention to the perceived problem of this state of affairs. The association campaigned for improvements in death certification and for the building of "safety coffins" with warning devices that could be activated by a person mistakenly declared dead and buried.
Dawn Marie Hadley is a British historian and archaeologist, who is best known for her research on the Anglo-Saxon and Viking Age periods, the study of childhood, and gender in medieval England. She is a member of the Centre for Medieval Studies and the department of archaeology at the University of York.
Toloy is the name given to the first occupants of the Bandiagara Escarpment in Mali. Since the 15th century, this area has been known as Dogon country.
Marilyn Palmer, is a British historian, archaeologist and academic, who specialises in landscape history and industrial archaeology. Having been a school teacher, she moved into academia and taught at Loughborough College, Loughborough University, and Leicester University. She was the United Kingdom's first Professor of Industrial Archaeology.
Prehistoric religion is the religious practice of prehistoric cultures. Prehistory, the period before written records, makes up the bulk of human experience; over 99% of human experience occurred during the Paleolithic period alone. Prehistoric cultures spanned the globe and existed for over two and a half million years; their religious practices were many and varied, and the study of them is difficult due to the lack of written records describing the details of their faiths.
Funerary archaeology is a branch of archaeology that studies the treatment and commemoration of the dead. It includes the study of human remains, their burial contexts, and from single grave goods through to monumental landscapes. Funerary archaeology might be considered a sub-set of the study of religion and belief. A wide range of expert areas contribute to funerary archaeology, including epigraphy, material culture studies, thanatology, human osteology, zooarchaeology and stable isotope analysis.
References
- 1 2 Tarlow, Sarah (2000). "Emotion in Archaeology1". Current Anthropology. 41 (5): 713–746. doi:10.1086/317404. S2CID 147669942.
- 1 2 3 "Dr. Sarah Tarlow". University of Leicester. Retrieved 26 November 2018.
- ↑ "The Powerful Corpse: Dr. Sarah Tarlow on England's Criminal Corpses". Atlas Obscura. Retrieved 26 November 2018.
- ↑ "Editorial Advisory Board". Antiquity. Retrieved 14 August 2023.
