Session: #182

Content:

Mortuary remains provide key archaeological evidence not only for beliefs related to the treatment of the dead, but also for life courses and social existence. But in many periods and places, the full population is not represented in the burial record. In others, there is little archaeologically visible funerary activity at all, or evidence may be fragmented across the landscape.

Human remains are most readily recovered where active steps have been taken to make funerary depositions in graves or equivalent preserving spaces. However research now tries to go beyond immediate contexts to reconstruct the full stretch of mortuary processes, not only depositional acts. This can include alternative treatments of corpses, which may or may not end in whole or partial burial, or long-term preservation of bodily coherence, far exceeding the traditional dichotomy of cremation and inhumation. Further, graves may be complex features comprising several phases and post-burial actions, such as remodelling or retrieval of corporeal elements.

Moreover graves are far from the only destination: there is increasing recognition of the informational value of human remains and funerary acts in settlements or spaces otherwise considered non-mortuary. More attention is now given to times and places, or social groups within them, for whom burial was never a question, but where the dead were disposed of in ways which were not intended to leave lasting traces.

This session aims to open up discussion of funerary pathways beyond burial to explore variety in how past people related to the remains of the dead. The potential of different methodological approaches to capture and reconstruct signs of non-burial corpse treatments is a central question. We invite papers from all over the world presenting a wide spectrum of deathways and their material correlates, including those which by their nature are difficult to pinpoint in the archaeological record.

Session: #182

Theme & Session Format

Title & Content

Organisers