Funerary Archaeology: what can it do for us?

Discussion chaired by Emily Wright.

"From its very beginnings, Aegean archaeology has been haunted by graves" (Cavanagh 2008, 327), and the region's rich funerary record provides us with a range of different datasets - from disposal and deposition practices, to tomb architecture, to grave assemblages, and the human remains themselves. Whilst considering the uses to which all this data has been and can be put, this discussion will also seek to ask not just what funerary archaeology can do for us, but what we can do for funerary archaeology. How do we take this field forward? In theory and in method, how do we develop new approaches and interpret this data in new ways? If the Aegean is truly "haunted by graves", how do we make the most of them?

The suggested readings have been selected to try to demonstrate a range of issues. Cavanagh offers a good, short summary of Bronze Age Aegean funerary archaeology; Morris presents an early engagement with and challenge to established funerary archaeological theory, through the evidence from 5th century BC Athens; Boyd, Ruppenstein, and Lagia are examples of recent work developing very different approaches to the Aegean funerary record, with varying degrees of success; and Nilsson Stutz demonstrates where funerary archaeology is going, without the Aegean

There is no requirement to read all or any of the papers in order to participate in the discussion; just turn up and we shall see where the conversation leads.

Suggested readings:

CAVANAGH, W. 2008 'Death and the Mycenaeans' in C. Shelmerdine (ed) The Cambridge Companion to the Aegean Bronze Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 327-341

BOYD, M. J. 2014 'The materiality of performance in Mycenaean funerary practices', World Archaeology 46.2, 192-205

NILSSON STUTZ, L. 2015 'A Proper Burial: some thoughts on changes in mortuary ritual, and how archaeology can begin to understand them' in J. R. Brandt, M. Prusac and H. Roland (eds) Death and Changing Rituals: Function and Meaning in Ancient Funerary Practices. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 1-16

RUPPENSTEIN, F. 2013 'Cremation burials in Greece from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age: continuity of change?' in M. Lochner and F. Ruppenstein (eds) Cremation Burials in the Region Between the Middle Danube and the Aegean, 1300-750 BC. Wein: Verlag der Osterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 185-196

LAGIA, A. et al. 2013 'Cremations of the Early Iron Age from Mound 36 at Voulokalyva (ancient Halos) in Thessaly: a bioarchaeological appraisal' in M. Lochner and F. Ruppenstein (eds) Cremation Burials in the Region Between the Middle Danube and the Aegean, 1300-750 BC. Wein: Verlag der Osterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 197-219

MORRIS, I. 1991 'The Archaeology of Ancestors: The Saxe/Goldstein Hypothesis Revisited', Cambridge Archaeological Journal 1.2, 147-169