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The Social Archaeology of Funerary Remains

edited by Rebecca Gowland and Christopher Knüsel

Human bones form the most direct link to understanding how people lived in the past, who they were and where they came from. The interpretative value of human skeletal remains (within their burial context) in terms of past social identity and organisation is awesome, but was, for many years, underexploited by archaeologists. The nineteen papers in this edited volume are an attempt to redress this by marrying the cultural aspects of burial with the anthropology of the deceased. 320p (Oxbow Books 2006)

Review Quotes

"This volume demonstrates the power and potential of osteological analyses in the field of archaeology... Overall, the papers in this volume present a wide-ranging and inter-disciplinary contribution to the fields of archaeology and osteology."

Erin-Lee Halstad McGuire
The Kelvingrove Review (2008)

"This volume sets out some pioneering yet very readable examples... the editors are to be congratulated for bringing this rich material to a wider audience."

Andrew Chamberlain
Cambridge Archaeological Journal 17.2 (2007)

"In sum, this volume is indeed an impressive illustration of the strength of an interpretive approach to the past that is richly contextualized archaeologically, historically, and theoretically. The significance of human osteological data within this research regime is amply documented."

Jane E. Buikstra
Journal of Anthropological Research (2007)

"Gowland and Knüsel and all their contributing authors have made an important step...by highlighting the critical value of thorough osteological analysis for meaningful and secure archaeological interpretation."

Aubrey Cannon
Canadian Journal of Archaeology (2007)

"This well-illustrated volume demonstrates the vibrant contributions of physical anthropologists everywhere to archaeological attempts at understanding the past."

Marshall Joseph Becker
American Journal of Archaeology (2007)

"I would recommend this book for purchase by all university archaeology and anthropology libraries."

Sonia R Zakrewski
International Journal of Osteoarchaeology (2007)

Table of Contents

Introduction (Rebecca Gowland and Christopher Knüsel)
The intrinsic pattern of preservation of human skeletons and its influence on the interpretation of funerary behaviours (Silvia Bello and Peter Andrews)
Pattern in human burial practice (Peter Andrews and Silvia Bello)
L'archaeothanatologie ou l'archaeologie de la mort (Henri Duday)
Neolithic burial taphonomy, ritual, and interpretation in Britain and Ireland: a review (Jessica Beckett and John Robb)
Cremation ... the cheap option? (Jacqueline I McKinley)
Companions in death: the roles of animals in Anglo-Saxon and Viking cremation rituals in Britain (Julie M Bond and Fay L Worley)
La Tène dietary variation in Central Europe: A stable isotope study of human skeletal remains from Bohemia (John Le Huray, Holger Schutkowski, Mike Richards)
Immigrants on the Isle of Lewis - combining traditional funerary and modern isotope evidence to investigate social differentiation, migration and dietary change in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland (Janet Montgomery and Jane A Evans)
Ageing the past: examining age identity from funerary evidence (Rebecca Gowland)
Gender, bioarchaeology and human ontogeny (Joanna R Sofaer)
The gendered skeleton: anthropological interpretations of the bony pelvis (Pamela K Stone and Dana Walrath)
The osteology of monasticism in Mediaeval England (Simon Mays)
Text, space and the evidence of human remains in English Late Medieval and Tudor disease culture: some problems and possibilities (Isla Fay)
'Of no more use to men than in ages before?': the Investiture Contest as a model for funerary interpretation (Christopher J Knüsel)
Skeletal evidence and contexts of violence in the European Mesolithic and Neolithic (Rick Schulting)
Beneath the façade: A skeletal model of domestic violence (Shannon Novak)
Fragmentation of the body: comestibles, compost, or customary rite? (Christopher J Knüsel and Alan Outram)
Altering identities: body modifications and the pre-Columbian Maya (Pamela L Geller)
The living dead and the dead living: burials, figurines and social performance in the European Mid Upper Palaeolithic (Paul B Pettitt)

Related Titles

• Deviant Burial in the Archaeological Record
  edited by Eileen M Murphy

• Past Bodies: Body-Centered Research in Archaeology
  edited by Dusan Boric and John Robb

• The Archaeology of the Dead: Lectures in Archaeothanatology
  by Henri Duday, translated by Anna Maria Cipriani and revised by John Pearce

• Living through the dead: Burial and commemoration in the Classical world
  edited by Maureen Carroll and Jane Rempel with a preface by John Drinkwater

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