Archaeological Perspectives on Burial Practices and Societal Change examines the relationships between burial practices and societal transformations in the past.
This book highlights the centrality of burials as archaeological material for the understanding of societal change. It critically reassesses past approaches, and suggests new ways of understanding the relationship between burial practice and change in archaeology. Particular attention is given to archaeological periods where change was especially intense: so-called transition periods. The volume has a wide chronological and geographical scope, spanning the Early Bronze Age to the present day, and ranging geographically from Cyprus to Scandinavia. Recent developments within archaeological methods and theory have sparked discussions about the mechanisms and reasons behind societal changes in the past. This book aims to revive interest in understanding and explaining these changes, which are fundamental questions to the discipline of archaeology. The volume is organised into three thematic parts. The first, Practices, Communities, and Agents of Change, examines the roles individuals and communities play in transforming burial customs, highlighting the non-linear and often chaotic nature of these changes. The second theme, Migration, Identities, and Narratives of Change, challenges traditional narratives of migration and identity formation, proposing more nuanced understandings of how burial practices encapsulate these complex processes. The final theme, Transitions, Tempos, and Complexities, explores the multifaceted nature of societal transitions, emphasising the importance of diverse tempos and scales in understanding these shifts.
Archaeological Perspectives on Burial Practices and Societal Change is for students and researchers in archaeology, primarily mortuary archaeology and archaeological theory.
Introduction; 1. Death and transformation: Burial practices and societal change; Theme 1: Practices, communities, and agents of change; 2. Mortuary practices and societal change in Early Mycenaean Greece; 3. Grave Participants: Rethinking Funerary Participation as Strategies for Social Change; 4. Change and continuity: Cremation and inhumation during the Christianisation period in Scandinavia (c. 800–1200 CE); 5. Dying Well in a Damaged Planet: Emergent Burial Practices and the Ecologies of the Dead; Theme 2: Migration, identities, and narratives of change; 6. The urning question – Cultural change in Roman-period Slovenia seen through the choice of funerary urns; 7. The Viking-Period burials of the Hebrides: The maritime landscape, grave goods, and change; 8. Narrating ethnic identity and competition in Lombard southern Italy through burial practices (6th-7th centuries); 9. Golden funerary masks and societal change narratives in Ancient Macedonia; Theme 3: Transitions, tempos, and complexities; 10. Building the Christian cemetery: Religious evolution in burial practices in the NW of the Iberian Peninsula; 11. Cypriot burial practices at the close of the Bronze Age: Continuities and changes in the light of the 12th century BCE transformations; 12. Changing burial practices in Late Antiquity: embracing complexities; 13. Rethinking burial practices and period transitions through a posthumanist and new materialist lens; Concluding remarks; 14. Death Changes Everything. Archaeology and the human scale of change.
Frida Espolin Norstein is a researcher in Archaeology at Stockholm University, specialising in Viking Age funerary practices in northern Europe with a particular interest in artefact studies, ritual practices, regional variation, and the process of Christianisation. She is currently researching the use of grave goods in the construction of personhood in Viking Age graves. Irene Selsvold is a postdoctoral researcher in Classical Archaeology at the University of Gothenburg, University of Leicester, and University of Oslo. She specialises in the funerary practices of late Roman Asia Minor and Italy and the Christianisation of urban spaces in Late Antiquity. An active field archaeologist, she has participated in excavations in Greece, Norway, Turkey, and Italy. She is currently involved in fieldwork in Vulci, Italy, with the Understanding Urban Identities (UUI) project.
