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The Materiality of Death
Bodies, burials, beliefs
Edited by
Fredrik Fahlander
Terje Oestigaard
BAR International Series 1768
2008
175602660.001.png
This title published by
Archaeopress
Publishers of British Archaeological Reports
Gordon House
276 Banbury Road
Oxford OX2 7ED
England
bar@archaeopress.com
www.archaeopress.com
BAR S1768
The Materiality of Death: Bodies, burials, beliefs
© the individual authors 2008
ISBN 978 1 4073 0257 7
Printed in England by Butler and Tanner
All BAR titles are available from:
Hadrian Books Ltd
122 Banbury Road
Oxford
OX2 7BP
England
bar@hadrianbooks.co.uk
The current BAR catalogue with details of all titles in print, prices and means of payment is available
free from Hadrian Books or may be downloaded from www.archaeopress.com
Contents
Chapter 1.
The Materiality of Death: Bodies, Burials, Beliefs
1
Fredrik Fahlander & Terje Oestigaard
Bodies
Chapter 2.
More than Metaphor: Approaching the Human Cadaver in Archaeology
19
Liv Nilsson Stutz
Chapter 3.
A Piece of the Mesolithic. Horizontal Stratigraphy and Bodily
29
Manipulations at Skateholm
Fredrik Fahlander
Chapter 4.
Excavating the Kings’ Bones: The Materiality of Death in Practice
47
and Ethics Today
Anders Kaliff & Terje Oestigaard
Chapter 5.
From Corpse to Ancestor: The Role of Tombside Dining in the
59
Transformation of the Body in Ancient Rome
Regina Gee
Burials
Chapter 6.
Cremations, Conjecture and Contextual Taphonomies:
71
Material Strategies during the 4th to 2nd Millennia BC in Scotland
Paul R J Duffy and Gavin MacGregor
Chapter 7.
Ritual and Remembrance at Archaic Crustumerium. The Transformations
79
of Past and Modern Materialities in the Cemetery of Cisterna Grande
(Rome, Italy)
Ulla Rajala
Chapter 8.
Reuse in Finnish Cremation Cemeteries under Level Ground
89
– Examples of Collective Memory
Anna Wickholm
Chapter 9.
Life and Death in the Bronze Age of the NW of Iberian Peninsula
99
Ana M. S. Bettencourt
Chapter 10.
Norwegian Face-Urns: Local Context and Interregional Contacts
105
Malin Aasbøe
Chapter 11.
The Use of Ochre in Stone Age Burials of the East Baltic
115
Ilga Zagorska
Beliefs
Chapter 12.
“Death Myths”: Performing of Rituals and Variation in Corpse
127
Treatment during the Migration Period in Norway
Siv Kristoffersen and Terje Oestigaard
Chapter 13.
Reproduction and Relocation of Death in Iron Age Scandinavia
141
Terje Gansum
Chapter 14.
A Road for the Viking’s Soul
147
Åke Johansson
Chapter 15.
A Road to the Other Side
151
Camilla Grön
Chapter 16.
Stones and Bones: The Myth of Ymer and Mortuary Practises with
155
an Example from the Migration Period in Uppland, Central Sweden.
Christina Lindgren
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Chapter 1
The Materiality of Death:
Bodies, Burials, Beliefs
Fredrik Fahlander & Terje Oestigaard
The Importance of Death
about necessary social change. Moreover, the conceptions
of death and the transformations of death into life and
new social structures in society, together with beliefs of a
life hereafter or realms where the ancestors are living or
other transcendental states of being, are not merely
spiritual or ideological, but they are materialised by the
descendants and the living (fig. 1).
Archaeology, as a humanist science studying the essence
of humanity through history, is often faced with the
ultimate expressions of humans’ perceptions of
themselves in society and cosmos: death. The
archaeological record consists of innumerable testimonies
of how humans in different cultures at various times have
solved and given answers to the inevitable. Nevertheless,
despite the fact that everyone will die and all humans face
the same ultimate end, the solutions to this common
destiny are as different and varied as there are traditions,
cultures, beliefs and religions. Even to us, in our present
modern and presumed enlightened society, death is still
something unknown that cannot be perceived, visualised
or represented (Bauman 1992:2f). Still, death and the
knowledge that our time on earth is limited affect our
choices in life in many ways. The importance of death in
life is, of course, historically situated and can take many
forms (cf. Ariès 1974, Walter 1994): One can be obsessed
with the question of how to delay the soul from vanishing
while the dead body is dissolving, or how to secure a safe
journey of the soul to a proper afterlife. In modern
western secular society, some respond to the inevitable
fact of death by seeking to prolong life long enough to
make their persona indefinite (Taylor 2003:28).
Death, Burial and the Grave
Burial archaeology, or the archaeology of death, is in
many respects, not at least in popular beliefs, nearly
synonymous with archaeology itself. Indeed, much of our
data and material come from funerary contexts, and
perhaps in reality we know more about death than of life
in prehistory. It could even be argued that archaeologists
are too occupied with death and burial, blind to the fact
that we strive to develop representations or fictions of a
living society. When Ian Morris worked with his thesis
on Greek Iron Age burial customs he tried to explain to a
neighbour, a researcher in modern history, what he
worked with. When Morris described the nature of his
research his neighbour looked confused and asked:
“…what a lot of graves had got to do with history”
(Morris 1992:xiii). Morris’ neighbour’s confusion is quite
understandable from a layman’s point of view, but to
employ burial evidence in order to reconstruct or interpret
past social structures, hierarchies, traditions, social
identities, or sex/gender relations is seldom questioned by
most archaeologists. This is a somewhat remarkable
standpoint as making the switch from the realm of the
dead to reconstruct the ways and ideas of the living may
not be possible in many cases. Either way, any attempt to
do so is bound to involve complex and intricate
procedures. It is evident that excavating and analysing
funerary contexts calls for some special methods and
modes of reasoning in order to cope with the possibilities
and constraints of complex burial data.
Indeed, death is an analytical entrance to humanity and
humans’ beliefs and perceptions of what matters most:
life. The ideas of the essence of humanity as perceived by
humans are manifested in death, and consequently, death
highlights cultural values, morals and ethics apart from
religious beliefs. Thus, death is more than just a question
of the destiny of the deceased. Death lies at the bottom of
all facets of humanity, and hence, it is a crucial factor in
the development of societies (Parker Pearson 2001:203).
“Death is the origin and centre of culture” (Assmann
2005:1) because death is not only threatening society
(Hertz 1960, Goody 1962:26), but the solutions and
responses to death are socially constitutive and formative
for the future in a given society. Of course, death does not
necessarily constitute a social problem, but might also
offer other possibilities (Oestigaard & Goldhahn 2006).
In a personal sense, death can be longed for, and even a
relief for people in chronic pain. In a social sense, the
death of the Other may open a social space and bring
What a grave actually represents, how a burial is
performed and by whom, and how we should interpret
different properties and interments of a grave are
complicated and difficult questions (fig. 2). Although
there are a number of general approaches and theories
which can be employed, we still need to recognise that
1

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