Archaeologies of Remembrance: Death and Memory in Past Societies

Description

How did past communities and individuals remember through social and ritual practices? How important were mortuary practices in processes of remembering and forgetting the past? This innovative new research work focuses upon identifying strategies of remembrance. Evidence can be found in a range of archaeological remains including the adornment and alteration of the body in life and death, the production, exchange, consumption and destruction of material culture, the construction, use and reuse of monuments, and the social ordering of architectural space and the landscape. This book shows how in the past, as today, shared memories are important and defining aspects of social and ritual traditions, and the practical actions of dealing with and disposing of the dead can form a central focus for the definition of social memory. Front Matter....Pages i-xiv Introduction....Pages 1-24 Building from Memory....Pages 25-43 Rates of (Ex)change....Pages 45-63 Technologies of Remembrance....Pages 65-88 Tales from the Dead....Pages 89-112 Remembering Rome....Pages 113-140 Objects without a Past?....Pages 141-170 Iconoclasm, Belief and Memory in Early Medieval Wales....Pages 171-192 Memories in Stone....Pages 193-213 Memory, Salvation and Ambiguity....Pages 215-226 Remembering and Forgetting the Medieval Dead....Pages 227-254 Memories of the Early Medieval Past....Pages 255-280 Dyster står dösen....Pages 281-299 Back Matter....Pages 301-310