Death as a process : [the archaeology of the Roman funeral] / edited by John Pearce and Jake Weekes.

Format
Book
Language
English
Published/​Created
Oxford ; Havertown, PA : Oxbow Books, 2017.
Description
ix, 300 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm.

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Firestone Library - Classics Collection DG103 .D43 2017 Browse related items Request

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    Summary note
    The study of funerary practice has become one of the most exciting and rapidly developing areas of Roman archaeology in recent decades. This volume draws on large-scale fieldwork from across Europe, methodological advances and conceptual innovations to explore new insights from analysis of the Roman dead, concerning both the rituals which saw them to their tombs and the communities who buried them. In particular the volume seeks to establish how the ritual sequence, from laying out the dead to the pyre and tomb, and from placing the dead in the earth to the return of the living to commemorate them, may be studied from archaeological evidence. Contributors examine the rites regularly practised by town and country folk from the shores of the Mediterranean to the English Channel, as well as exceptional circumstances, as in the aftermath of the Varian disaster in Augustan Germany. Case studies span a cross-section of Roman society, from the cosmopolitan merchants of Corinth to salt pan workers at Rome and the rural poor of Britannia and Germania. Some papers have a methodological focus, considering how human skeletal, faunal and plant remains illuminate the dead themselves and death rituals, while others examine how to interpret the stratigraphic signatures of the rituals practised before, around and after burial. Adapting anthropological models, other papers develop interpretive perspectives on the funerary sequences which can thus be reconstructed and explore the sensory dimensions of burying and commemorating the dead. Through these varied approaches the volume aims to demonstrate and develop the richness of the insights into Roman society and culture which may be won from study of the dead.
    Notes
    Subtitle from front cover.
    Bibliographic references
    Includes bibliographical references.
    Contents
    • Introduction: death as a process in Roman funerary archaeology / John Pearce
    • Space, object, and process in the Koutsongila Cemetery at Roman Kenchreai, Greece / Joseph L. Rife and Melissa Morison
    • Archaeology and funerary cult: the stratigraphy of soils in the cemeteries of Emilia Romagna (Northern Italy) / Jacopo Ortalli
    • Funerary archaeology at St Dunstan's Terrace, Canterbury / Jake Weekes
    • Buried Batavians: mortuary rituals of a rural frontier community / Joris Aarts and Stijn Heeren
    • They fought and died but were covered with Earth only years later: mass graves on the ancient battlefield of Kalkriese / Achim Rost and Susanne Wilbers-Rost
    • Some recent work on Romano-British cemeteries / Paul Booth
    • Funerary complexes from imperial Rome: a new approach to anthropological study using excavation and laboratory data / Paola Catalano, Carla Caldarini, Flavio De Angelis and Walter Pantano
    • Animals in funerary practices: sacrifices, offerings and meals at Rome and in the provinces / Sébastien Lepetz
    • How did it go? Putting the process back into cremation / Jacqueline I. McKinley
    • Afterword: process and polysemy: an appreciation of a cremation burial / Jake Weekes.
    ISBN
    • 9781785703232 ((pbk.))
    • 1785703234 ((paperback))
    LCCN
    2017000884
    OCLC
    981508692
    Other standard number
    • 40027346628
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