Sawed Bones - Archaeological History of Autopsies in Finland

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Burial, Space, and Memory of Unusual Death" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

The 18-19th century laws and regulations in Sweden and Finland stated that an autopsy should be carried out in suspected criminal cases to determine cause of death. According to contemporary sources, non-anatomical autopsies were quite rare, and only performed to a distinct group of people: those who had committed suicide, died in hospital or prison, were homeless beggars, or suspected murder victims. All these were usually also considered socially marginal people, whose burial customs may have differed from the norm. According to folklore, murder victims and people who had committed suicide were also social outcasts, who were not allowed to be buried in the consecrated cemetery. The paper presents archaeological evidence of autopsies and craniotomies in historical Finland, and seeks to study who were the people that received post-mortem examinations and how they were actually treated in death.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2019   •
• Burial, Space, and Memory of Unusual Death

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 251