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Title Death as a process : the archaeology of the Roman funeral / edited by John Pearce and Jake Weekes
Published Havertown : Oxbow Books, 2017
©2017

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Description 1 online resource (ix, 300 pages) : illustrations, maps
Series Studies in funerary archaeology ; vol. 12
Studies in funerary archaeology ; v. 12.
Contents Cover; Title; Copyright; Contents; Preface; List of contributors; 1. Introduction: Death as a process in Roman funerary archaeology: John Pearce; 2. Space, object, and process in the Koutsongila Cemetery at Roman Kenchreai, Greece: Joseph L. Rife and Melissa Moore Morison; 3. Archaeology and funerary cult: The stratigraphy of soils in the cemeteries of Emilia Romagna (northern Italy): Jacopo Ortalli; 4. Funerary archaeology at St Dunstan's Terrace, Canterbury: Jake Weekes; 5. Buried Batavians: Mortuary rituals of a rural frontier community: Joris Aarts and Stijn Heeren
6. 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-Rost7. Some recent work on Romano-British cemeteries: Paul Booth; 8. 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; 9. Animals in funerary practices: Sacrifices, offerings and meals at Rome and in the provinces: Sébastien Lepetz
10. "How did it go?" Putting the process back into cremation: Jacqueline I. McKinley11. Afterword -- Process and polysemy: An appreciation of a cremation burial: Jake Weekes
Summary 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
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references
Notes Print version record
Subject Funeral rites and ceremonies -- Rome.
Human remains (Archaeology)
Funeral rites and ceremonies, Ancient.
Excavations (Archaeology)
Burial -- History -- To 1500
Social archaeology.
Burial -- Rome
excavation (process)
HISTORY / Ancient / Rome.
Burial
Excavations (Archaeology)
Funeral rites and ceremonies
Funeral rites and ceremonies, Ancient
Human remains (Archaeology)
Social archaeology
Rome (Empire)
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
Author Pearce, John, editor
Weekes, Jake, editor
LC no. 2017016253
ISBN 9781785703249
1785703242
9781785703263
1785703269
9781785703256
1785703250