Cultural Implications of Artificially Modified Human Remains from Northwestern Mexico

Author(s):  
George W. Gill
1977 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 317-327 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rowan Whimster

Over 45 years have now elapsed since attention was first drawn to an apparent paucity of pre-Roman Iron Age funerary sites in southern Britain (Hawkes and Dunning 1930). This remarkable lacuna, contrasting with a wealth of Bronze Age burial forms, received little further attention until Hodson defined an absence of burials as a ‘negative type-fossil’ of his insular and otherwise prolific Woodbury Culture and emphasized the cultural implications of this uncomfortable gap in the archaeological record (Hodson 1964). With the exception of supposedly intrusive continental disposal forms in restricted areas of Yorkshire and south-eastern England and a third rather hazy rite from the extreme south-west, the British Iron Age was characterized by an embarrassingly invisible method of disposal that could neither be compared nor contrasted with contemporary continental traditions. Although efforts have been made to explain this absence in terms of hypothetical practices that would leave no archaeologically recognizable traces, there have been few attempts to consider in detail the scattered references to human remains that have slowly accumulated in the literature. A reconsideration of this evidence in the light of more recently excavated material suggests that the dearth of funerary remains is to an extent illusory and that further distinctive disposal rituals can now be added to those already recognized. It is also apparent that certain shared characteristics may force a general reconsideration of the origins of these different rites.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Clegg
Keyword(s):  

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh ◽  
Ventura Perez ◽  
Heidi Bauer-Clapp

1986 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
D Lehane
Keyword(s):  

Summary Three cists were discovered during the rebuilding of a house in Tayvallich. They appear to have been inserted into a roughly oval pit. All three cists contained cremated human remains and Cist 3 also contained a food vessel with beaker affinities. Lithics from among the cairn material appear to be a redeposited Mesolithic assemblage.


2003 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-169
Author(s):  
Paul R. J. Duffy ◽  
Olivia Lelong

Summary An archaeological excavation was carried out at Graham Street, Leith, Edinburgh by Glasgow University Archaeological Research Division (GUARD) as part of the Historic Scotland Human Remains Call-off Contract following the discovery of human remains during machine excavation of a foundation trench for a new housing development. Excavation demonstrated that the burial was that of a young adult male who had been interred in a supine position with his head orientated towards the north. Radiocarbon dates obtained from a right tibia suggest the individual died between the 15th and 17th centuries AD. Little contextual information exists in documentary or cartographic sources to supplement this scant physical evidence. Accordingly, it is difficult to further refine the context of burial, although a possible link with a historically attested siege or a plague cannot be discounted.


2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-187 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucy Talbot

The Metropolitan Police’s Crime Museum, famously known as the Black Museum, exhibits evidence from some of the most appalling crimes committed within English society from the late-Victorian era into modernity. Public admittance to this museum is strictly prohibited, preventing all but police staff from viewing the macabre exhibitions held within. The physical objects on display may vary, but whether the viewer is confronted with household items, weaponry or human remains, the evidence before them is undeniably associated with the immorality surrounding the performance of a socially bad death, of murder. These items have an object biography, they are both contextualized and contextualize the environment in which they reside. But one must question the purpose of such a museum, does it merely act as a Chamber of Horrors evoking the anomie of English society in physical form, or do these exhibits have an educational intent, restricted to their liminal space inside New Scotland Yard, to be used as a pedagogical tool in the development of new methods of murder investigation.


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