Mortuary archaeology (Other Keyword)
276-294 (294 Records)
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 Geophysics for Cemetery Delineation on DOD Installations: Practical Advice, Pitfalls, and Project Examples (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Application of Geophysical Techniques to Military Archaeology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cemeteries and burial grounds are a common feature of the historic landscape, and mapping cemeteries is a consistent and pressing land management need for DOD cultural resource managers. When a cemetery is involved, stakeholders may be diverse and the results can be emotionally charged. Land managers and the public may...
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...
Violence and Selected Funerary Treatment: Insights from a Collective Open Tomb of the Upper Nepeña Drainage, Peru (AD 1300–1500) (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Beyond the Ancestors: New Approaches to Andean "Open Sepulchers"" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The recent PARAMa project undertook the excavation of several open sepulcher funerary contexts in the Upper Nepeña Drainage, among which two structures were thoroughly excavated. Their content, predominantly skeletonized and partially mummified human remains, were analyzed, representing the first systematic...
Violence or Funerary Ritual? Performances of Life and Death in the Middle and Late Archaic Period of North Alabama (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study takes a holistic biocultural approach to re-conceptualize the forms and patterns of violence taking place at two neighboring Archaic Period shell mound sites on the Tennessee River in North Alabama, Mulberry Creek (1CT27) and Little Bear Creek (1CT8). Bioarchaeological documentation was supplemented by archival records in an attempt to...
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...
Ways of Death at Los Guachimontones (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Los Guachimontones was the largest site of the Teuchitlan tradition that flourished during the Late Formative and Classic periods (c. 300 BCE to 500 CE) in Western Mexico. The site exemplified the monumental architecture of the region - circular pyramid complexes and ball courts. Human burials have been excavated amongst these structures and at burial...
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...
What Lies Beneath: The Significance of a Midden Burial in Exploring Differential Mortuary Treatment of the Maya at Palenque (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The PREP: Urban Life at Palenque Project 2023 field season brought about unexpected findings regarding household mortuary practices. Two atypical burials were uncovered: (1) an isolated, articulated right arm boxed-in by large stones at the entrance of residential structure J37; and (2) a complete primary burial discovered on the south side of the same...
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 Died Prematurely?: A Demographic Profile of Middle and Late Period San Francisco Bay Area Juveniles (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study explores the demographic profile of a Middle and Late Period juvenile burial assemblage from a San Francisco Bay Area site, CA-ALA-329 (bearing the Muwekma Ohlone name of Mánni Muwékma Kúksú Hóowok Yatiš Túnnešte-tka, or Place Where the People of the Kúksú (Bighead) Pendants are Buried). Sex-ratio was established using a proteomics...
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...
Working for the Dead: The Role of Gravediggers and Their Impact on Burial Practices as Evidence in Transylvanian, Hungarian-Szekler Communities (AD 1050–1800) (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Parker-Pearson’s (1999) oft cited phrase, “the dead do not bury themselves,” has led to decades of broad investigation surrounding the created social perception of an individual in different contexts and at different scales (family, military, celebrity). However, little research exists on the last individual to physically place the dead. Gravediggers have...