Doors to the dead. The power of doorways and thresholds in Viking Age Scandinavia

2013 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marianne Hem Eriksen
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Domestic Architecture ◽  
Mortuary Practices ◽  
Viking Age ◽  
Mortuary Practice ◽  
Profound Impact ◽  
The Dead

AbstractMortuary practices could vary almost indefinitely in the Viking Age. Within a theoretical framework of ritualization and architectural philosophy, this article explores how doors and thresholds were used in mortuary practice and ritual behaviour. The door is a deep metaphor for transition, transformation and liminality. It is argued that Viking Age people built ‘doors to the dead’ of various types, such as freestanding portals, causewayed ring-ditches or thresholds to grave mounds; or on occasion even buried their dead in the doorway. The paper proposes that the ritualized doors functioned in three ways: they created connections between the dead and the living; they constituted boundaries and thresholds that could possibly be controlled; and they formed between-spaces, expressing liminality and, conceivably, deviance. Ultimately, the paper underlines the profound impact of domestic architecture on mortuary practice and ritual behaviour in the Viking Age.

The History of the Judahite Bench Tomb

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Suriano
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Mortuary Practices ◽  
Iron Age Ii ◽  
Gradual Development ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Insight Into

The history of the Judahite bench tomb provides important insight into the meaning of mortuary practices, and by extension, death in the Hebrew Bible. The bench tomb appeared in Judah during Iron Age II. Although it included certain burial features that appear earlier in the Middle and Late Bronze Ages, such as burial benches, and the use of caves for extramural burials, the Judahite bench tomb uniquely incorporated these features into a specific plan that emulated domestic structures and facilitated multigenerational burials. During the seventh century, and continuing into the sixth, the bench tombs become popular in Jerusalem. The history of this type of burial shows a gradual development of cultural practices that were meant to control death and contain the dead. It is possible to observe within these cultural practices the tomb as a means of constructing identity for both the dead and the living.

scholarly journals The object of memory and the memory of the object: refugee crisis in the news on September 2nd 2015.

2017 ◽  
pp. 221-231
Author(s):  
Rooney F. Pinto ◽  
Isabel Maria Freitas Valente ◽  
Maria João Guia
Keyword(s):  
Pilot Study ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Refugee Crisis ◽  
Object Memory ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Impact

This article aims to contribute on reflecting about the strict relation between an object (an image) and the memory, particularly regarding the memory in the news on September 2nd 2015 about the refugee crisis. Every year, Porto Editora (a Portuguese press company) holds a survey with ten words in order to elect the word of the year, and, for 2015, the elected one was “Refugees” (Palavra do Ano, 2015); this would be one more evidence of the impact of this issue in the news. The photo of a dead Syrian child on a beach in Turkey has become one of the most striking images of the refugee crisis in 2015. Curiously, Muerte a las puertas del paraíso (Death on paradise’s gates) was the headline exactly fifteen years ago, on September 2nd 2000, when photojournalist Javier Bauluz caught the image of a dead immigrant who tried to cross illegally, facing down the sand on a beach in Spain. In both cases, could we say the image overcomes the news? Which one is to be considered the object of the memory: the refugee crisis itself or the image of the dead Syrian child as an icon of this crisis? The theoretical framework stands on a threefold argument: 1. Object, memory and discourse; 2. The memory of the news; 3. Europe, migration and refugee crisis. Finally, two interviews were undertaken (as part of the pilot study) in order to verify if the memory of the object were sufficient enough to turn it into the object of the memory, as well as, whether one’s memory were somehow relevant to establish a collective memory.

scholarly journals The Emergence of Extramural Cemeteries in Neolithic Southeast Europe: A Formally Modeled Chronology for Cernica, Romania

Radiocarbon ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 319-346 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Stratton ◽  
Seren Griffiths ◽  
Raluca Kogălniceanu ◽  
Angela Simalcsik ◽  
Alexandru Morintz ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Careful Consideration ◽  
Southeast Europe ◽  
Late Neolithic ◽  
Mortuary Practice ◽  
Mortuary Ritual ◽  
Repeated Use ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Freshwater Reservoir

ABSTRACTThe emergence of separate cemeteries for disposal of the dead represents a profound shift in mortuary practice in the Late Neolithic of southeast Europe, with a new emphasis on the repeated use of a specific space distinct from, though still often close to, settlements. To help to time this shift more precisely, this paper presents 25 dates from 21 burials in the large cemetery at Cernica, in the Lower Danube valley in southern Romania, which are used to formally model the start, duration of use and end of the cemetery. A further six dates were obtained from four contexts for the nearby settlement. Careful consideration is given to the possibility of environmental and dietary offsets. The preferred model, without freshwater reservoir offsets, suggests that use of the Cernica cemetery probably began in5355–5220 cal BC (95% probability)and ended in5190–5080 cal BC (28% probability)or5070–4940 (67% probability). The implications of this result are discussed, including with reference to other cemeteries of similar age in the region, the nature of social relations being projected through mortuary ritual, and the incorporation of older, Mesolithic, ways of doing things into Late Neolithic mortuary practice.

African Interventions

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emizet F. Kisangani ◽  
Jeffrey Pickering
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Military Intervention ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
African History ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Profound Impact ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Historical Methods

Foreign military intervention has had a profound impact on post-colonial African history and politics. Interventions have destabilized borderlands, overthrown governments, and taken a devastating toll on populations. Emizet F. Kisangani and Jeffrey Pickering advance a new theoretical framework and combine quantitative, qualitative, and historical methods to shed fresh light on these important but understudied events. Their detailed analysis brings understanding to supportive and hostile interventions and to interventions by former colonial states, non-colonial foreign actors, and African countries. Kisangani and Pickering also analyse military incursions into ungoverned territories and lands engulfed in civil war. Showcasing a variety of examples from the Second Congo War to the Ethiopian-Eritrean conflict, the book offers a rich and accessible examination of military intervention on the continent.

Death as Transition in Judahite Mortuary Practices

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Suriano
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Final Stage ◽  
The Body ◽  
Mortuary Practices ◽  
Dead Body ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Insight Into

Death is transitional in the Hebrew Bible, but the challenge is in understanding how this transition worked. The ritual analysis of Judahite bench tombs reveals a dynamic concept of death that involved the transition of the dead body. The body would enter the tomb during primary burial; there it would receive provisions as it rested on a burial bench. Eventually the remains of the dead would be secondarily interred inside the tomb’s repository. This final stage, the repository, is marked by the collective burial of bones. The transition of the dead, therefore, involves the body in different conditions, first as an individual corpse and then as a collection of bones. The process of burial and reburial inside the bench tomb offers new insight into the idea that postmortem existence in the Hebrew Bible is predicated on the fate of the body.

Pathways for the Dead in the Middle and Late Bronze Age in Ireland

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriel Cooney
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Social Behaviour ◽  
Entire Population ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Physical Treatment ◽  
Mortuary Practice ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Population Treatment ◽  
Over Time

Because of its diversity and visibility the mortuary record of the Early Bronze Age (2400–1500 cal. BC) has long dominated interpretation of that period in Ireland (e.g. Cooney and Grogan 1994; Waddell 1998; Brindley 2007) and burials from Bronze Age cemeteries represent over 70 per cent of the burial record from Irish prehistory (Murphy et al. 2010). The explosion of development-funded excavation in the period from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s provided a settlement balance to that picture and also evidence for additional cemeteries (e.g. Grogan et al. 2007; McQuade et al. 2009). This suggests that Early Bronze Age cemeteries served as local foci for communities. From the evidence of the numbers interred over a number of generations the dead buried in the cemeteries represent what Mary Helms (1998) has usefully called the ‘distinguished dead’ from communities, not the entire population. Treatment of the dead within the cemeteries is complex and there are clear indications of change over time. Interpretative models had associated inhumation with males and a broader shift over time from inhumation to cremation relying on a view of cremation and inhumation as opposed, separate mortuary rites (e.g. Mount 1997). However, the evidence indicates a much more complex set of pathways in the postmortem treatment of the dead in which cremation and inhumation were employed as complementary mortuary rites with an increasing focus on cremation over time (e.g. Cahill and Sikora 2011). This new picture has important implications for the increasing significance of the the pyre and the transformation of the dead (Mizoguchi 1993: 232). In looking at the period after 1500 cal. BC we see continuity in aspects of mortuary practice and use of sites, but in other ways mortuary practice changed dramatically. Cremation is now the dominant mortuary rite. Burial in the Middle and Late Bronze Age (down to 600 cal. BC) has been widely discussed as less visible, and hence much less important as an aspect of social behaviour (e.g. Cooney and Grogan 1994: 144). But it is more useful to think in terms of shifting emphases in mortuary practice. In a recent discussion Lynch and O’Donnell (2007: 107) have described this period as being characterized by ‘an incredibly intricate and variable physical treatment of the dead’.

‘Fiery Technology’ and Transformative Placemaking: A Contextual Examination of a ‘Crematory’ at the Aztalan Site in Wisconsin

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynne Goldstein
Keyword(s):  
Single Site ◽  
Mortuary Practices ◽  
Mortuary Practice ◽  
The North ◽  
Archaeological Method And Theory ◽  
Cultural Implications ◽  
Archaeological Method ◽  
Changing Practices ◽  
A Site ◽  
Over Time

In their Introduction to this volume, the editors note that the contextual analysis of cremation requires an understanding that is broader and more complex than we generally assume. This chapter examines what has been termed a crematory at one site, and tries to determine the accuracy of this label and its cultural implications. The research included in this chapter is not European in focus, but instead looks at the North American site of Aztalan in southern Wisconsin. Aztalan has been excavated, studied, and interpreted over a period of more than 150 years, and serves as a useful contrast to some of the European sites in this volume because research at Aztalan has drawn on different kinds of analogies, modern allusions, and different histories of development of archaeological method and theory. However, because Aztalan is also a site that represents a widespread, structured, complex, agriculturally based society, it should provide a useful comparison with similar European groups, and expand the range of understanding and examples of cremation and fiery technologies. Of course, there is not a formal link between this site and those in Europe, but many of the same kinds of processes, and especially modern allusions and interpretations, apply to both. A discussion of cremation, copper working, and fiery displays is presented first, followed by details of the Aztalan example and the feature originally labelled a crematory (Rowe 1958). Following this, an outline of the range of Aztalan mortuary practices and pertinent ethnographic and ethnohistoric data highlights the importance of both copper and fire in the Mississippian context. Rather than simply looking at the Aztalan structure as an alternative mortuary location, this chapter tries to place the feature contextually in a much broader social, physical, landscape, and behavioural frame. Since 2000, archaeological approaches to the analysis of mortuary sites have become more sophisticated, both theoretically and analytically. In this process, scholars have begun to focus on the fact that cremation practices have often been presented and interpreted as nothing more than an alternative mortuary practice, and the presence of both cremation and inhumation in a single site is often seen as representing no more than choice or a reflection of changing practices over time.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document