Working for the Dead: The Role of Gravediggers and Their Impact on Burial Practices as Evidence in Transylvanian, Hungarian-Szekler Communities (AD 1050–1800)

Summary

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 an extended relationship with the deceased and the mortuary landscape through initial placement as well as secondary placement when the initial grave is disturbed, as was common in medieval European cemeteries. This poster discusses the lived experience of gravediggers in medieval Europe through investigation of social expectations, folk accounts of the gravedigger experience, and bioarchaeological evidence of gravedigger actions. The Papdomb archaeological site in Transylvania, Romania (AD 1050–1800) acts as the archaeological case study and includes broad burial types (semi-disturbed graves, ossuary, grave shaft modifications) indicative of gravedigger choice and action. Correspondence analysis was run to compare burial type with age, sex, and location of each individual. The poster explores several possible interpretations ranging from the individual gravedigger’s experience to community expectations in an attempt to highlight an important but overlooked step in medieval mortuary practices.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39176.0