Mortuary archaeology (Other Keyword)
201-217 (217 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Textile Tools and Technologies as Evidence for the Fiber Arts in Precolumbian Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In most of the world ancient fabrics are not preserved, though much can be learned about garment systems, surface design and production techniques through tools, accessories and contemporary imagery. The Andean desert coast and mortuary traditions provide extraordinary conditions for textile...
Tracking the Dead: Archaeological, GIS, and Geomorphological Approaches to Recovering Caskets and Human Remains after Hurricane Ida (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Hurricane Ida barreled ashore in southeast Louisiana as a category 4 tropical cyclone on August 29, 2021. The winds and storm surge caused massive damage to many of the coastal parishes, forcing evacuations, destroying homes and businesses, and displacing hundreds of Louisiana’s dead from their final resting places. In the immediate aftermath of the storm,...
Two Individuals, One Urn Burial from La Real, Peru: A Bioarchaeological Investigation of Urn Burial Practices (2018)
The site of La Real, located in the southern, near-coastal region of Peru, was an elite burial ground where mortuary contexts reveal Wari imperial influence during the Middle Horizon (600-1000 CE). This study examines the mortuary treatment of two human fetus/neonate skeletons placed inside a decorated, ceramic urn and compares funerary treatment to Wari fetus/neonate burials and others in the Andes to evaluate the geographic reach, chronological depth, and cultural significance of this funerary...
Unidentified Oddity of the Petrous Portion of the Temporal Bone: A Case Study from a Historic Cemetery in Louisiana (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While there are several commonly tracked non-metric and pathological features of the temporal bone, rarely are they found on the internal petrous portion. In this case study, the bilateral presentation of perforations located on the internal, superior aspect of the petrous portion of the temporal bone are discussed. The lesions are laterally placed near to the...
Uniting the archaeological body: the bioarchaeological investigation of human remains and mortuary behaviors (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Future of Bioarchaeology in Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Bioarchaeology has the unique power to deeply investigate mortuary space not only to identify lived experiences from human remains but also to illuminate elements of mortuary ritual. However, these two aspects of bioarchaeology still remain conceptually separated: one is biological and the other socio-cultural, one is scientific and the other...
Urns, Mounds, Pyres, and Pits: The Many Pathways of Middle Bronze Age Bodies in Transylvania (2016)
Communities of the Wietenberg Culture in Middle Bronze Age Transylvania (2000-1500 BC) participated in diverse and dynamic social, economic, political, and ideological institutions. Traditional approaches to the mortuary practices of this period, however, have obscured diversity in the archaeological record in favor of a more homogeneous characterization of burial practices as cremation and burial in urn cemeteries. This paper traces the many different pathways that Middle Bronze Age...
Use and Reuse of Burial Space during the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age in Mongolia: A Case Study from Zaraa Uul (2021)
This is an abstract from the "New Directions in Mongolian Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the late second millennium BC, communities in the Gobi-steppe of Mongolia began to build unique burial structures made of stone. The Late Bronze Age builders of these mortuary features employed new forms of surface demarcation and for the first time in this region, individuals were interred in a prone position. At the turn of the...
The Use of Human Remains Detection Dogs to Locate Empty Gravesites after Cultural Exhumation Practices in a Nineteenth-Century Chinese Cemetery in Warren, Idaho (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Canine Resources for the Archaeologist" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological practice demands international preservation of the cultural integrity of Indigenous and historical burials informed by decedent communities. Therefore, it is paramount to explore efficient, minimally invasive methods limiting burial disturbance, while allowing documentation. Coupled with ground-penetrating radar (GPR), human remains...
Using GIS to investigate mortuary practice and identity at the historic Spring Street Presbyterian Church, Manhattan (2016)
This paper focuses on the use of a geographical information system (GIS) as a tool to identify the distribution and association of mortuary artifacts and skeletal remains within the Spring Street Presbyterian Church burial vaults (ca.1820–1846). The GIS study presented here is one component of a microhistorical approach to exploring a 19th century neighborhood in New York City’s 8th Ward during a period of rapidly changing urban, social, and economic landscapes. Viewing the city through the lens...
Using Metallurgical Analysis Of Funerary Hardware To Inform On Production Techniques (2023)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Investigating Cultural Aspects of Historic Mortuary Archaeology: Perspectives from Europe and North America", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The 2017 excavation of the First Baptist Church of Philadelphia’s burial ground (1702-1859) recovered handles and funerary artifacts from just under 500 burials. Funerary hardware recovered matches at least seven types of coffin handle grip plate from the Tuesly and...
Wari’s Hallowed Ground: Interpreting the Mortuary Complex of Cotocotuyoc, Cuzco, Peru (2018)
The Wari settlement of Huaro, located southeast of the Cuzco Valley in the Southern Highlands of Peru, contains a mortuary complex known as Cotocotuyoc. This towering plateau site, which overlooked the entire Huaro Wari settlement, was one of several urban components that made up a more than nine hectare Wari center, occupied for over 500 years. Excavations at Cotocotuyoc generated telling evidence for who built and occupied this settlement and how they were treated upon their deaths and in the...
What Can Artifacts Do: A Case Study of Miniaturized Architectural Models in Early China Tombs (2018)
One major shift in mortuary practices that happened over the Han dynasty (202 BCE-220 CE) China, from burying bronze/pottery vessels to burying miniaturized architectural models, was usually explained as a result of the contemporary ideology of "treating the dead as alive", or as a reflection of the social-economic transformation. While these previous interpretations invariably presumed that artifacts were passive representations and projections of ideological/social conditions of their...
When Dogs and People Were Buried Together (2018)
Throughout prehistory, dogs and humans have sometimes been interred together in the same grave, in different locations in the world. This practice raises the question of why this practice was so prevalent. Circumstances leading to this practice were variable, but its consistency suggests an underlying factor in common. Using one of the earliest known cases as a point of departure, Bonn-Oberkassel from Germany, we suggest that this underlying factor in common is that dogs and people were regarded...
Where the Temple Meets the Road: Salvage Burial Excavation in San Ignacio, Cayo District, Belize (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. No country is immune to crumbling infrastructure and (un)predicable weather that exposes archaeology. How we deal with these sudden assemblages and how we use the information gained from these quick and limited excavations can be a place of growth in our field. This can be most crucial in salvage burial excavations. The biological, especially the human,...
Where's your Mummy? The Business of Mummification in Late and Roman Period Egypt (2015)
It is often said that the practice of mummification became a veritable business during the Late and Roman periods, when it was extended to include not only the elite, but also those on the lower end of the status scale. The increase in the number of bodies being embalmed led to the widespread adoption of more expeditious techniques, sometimes resulting in mummies that, though outwardly pleasing in appearance, concealed nothing but a jumbled mess of bones beneath their wrappings. The non-elite...
Who Wants to Live Forever? The Practice of Mass Human Sacrifice During Early State Formation in the Nubian Classic Kerma Period (2015)
As the ancient Nubian Classic Kerma kings undertook military campaigns into Egyptian territory (1700-1550 BCE), their mortuary practices grew to include mass inhumation of their subjects within their burial tumuli. The tumulus of the second Classic Kerma king (KX) contains over 300 human sacrifices and is the largest group found at the site. The sacrificed Kermans were arranged in the tumulus corridor alongside Egyptian statues taken as spoils of war, emphasizing the king’s control of internal...
Women, Sex and Sacrifice in Moche Iconography (2018)
Moche iconography depicts women in ritual roles as priestesses, objects of sacrifice, and possibly as deities; however, the roles of ordinary women have received much less attention from archaeologists. This paper explores the nature of women’s power in Moche society as represented in iconography and as inferred from bioarchaeological data, contrasting the roles of women in elite and non-elite contexts. With the exception of elite women performing rituals, Moche ideology inextricably linked...