Session: #336

Regular session

Several cultures through space and time placed burials in ruins of a rather recent past still remembered in memory, e.g. burials in monumental ruins of the Classical Maya period or early medieval burials in the ruins of Roman villae. Frequently this locational choice for the dead is explained by the ruin as a haunted place, where the corpse as a haunted object or person is „naturally“ at home. But isn't this interpretation much inspired by romantic and Gothic appreciation and perceptions of the ruin?
Other explanations are possible. Is the ruin as a place of gradual decay especially suited for the dead body in decay as well? Both are processes of transformation of a cultural entity that came out of use into something different, a new status certainly less cultural, but more „natural“. Or were ruins as objects of devastation perceived as places where death cannot be ignored, as Siegmund Freud already stated in 1915? Do ruins introduce death into the „equation of reality“ (Realitätsgleichung)?
On the other hand, only a small selection of dead were buried in ruins and in many cases we don't know whether these bodies were especially privileged or discriminated against by this location. Were they selected at all? Were they treated in a special way?
In this session we want to explore the widespread phenomenon of burial in ruins of a recent past on a transcultural level. Both case studies and comparative papers are welcome.

Ruins, Collapse, haunted places, transformation

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Thomas Meier (Germany) ^1,2

Sam Turner (United Kingdom) ³
Natalia Moragas Segura (Spain) ^4,5
Kathrin Müller (Germany) ⁶