Theme:
1. Artefacts, Buildings & Ecofacts
Session format:
Regular session
Title:
Symbolic Bodies – Understanding the Significance of Death and the Dead in Prehistoric Northern and Western Europe [PaM]
Content:
Upon death, the individual body presents a non-avoidable and arguably, vital agent in the funerary process. Societies have had to adjust around a flexible calendar of death, forging attitudes and belief systems regarding mortality.
The deliberate choices made in handling the corpse from an array of treatments (e.g., inhumation, cremation, excarnation) have made the body a vital source of information. The body can become a tangible, symbolic gateway between the living and the dead. Such variations in manipulations and care of the body have led archaeologists to investigate rich theoretical frameworks, which include personhood, ancestral beings, and of course, the tempo of the mortuary practices themselves.
This session seeks to explore the agency of the body in death as the driver behind funerary practices from the Mesolithic through Iron Age Northern Europe. This topic includes discerning societal structural rules and traditions as well as the more personal and intimate gestures performed during the funerary process.
We would welcome contributions presenting micro or macro studies, applying hard sciences as well as theoretical approaches, examining how the circumstance behind a death (e.g., good death vs bad death) reveals itself in the physical remains, not just of the body, but through the context of deposition (e.g., communal vs individual – preservation vs destruction). The timeframe of interaction between the living and the body may speak to the relationship and role of the dead in the wider funerary landscape and cosmology.
Beyond the human body and its accompanying embellishments, topics on the role of floral and faunal remains associated with the burial are also of interest. Overall, this session aims to further explore the influence of Death on prehistoric societies in Europe.
Keywords:
Funerary, body, ritual, corpse, materiality, liminality
Session associated with MERC:
no
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no
Session associated with CAA:
no
Session associated with DGUF:
no
Session associated with other:
PaM
Main organiser:
Elisabeth Chaumont Sturtevant (United Kingdom) 1
Co-organisers:
Rebecca Crozier (United Kingdom) 1
Marc Oxenham (Australia) 2
Affiliations:
1. University of Aberdeen
2. Australian National University (ANU)
THIS SESSION CAN NOT BE SELECTED AT THIS MOMENT