The Materiality of Death Bodies, burials, beliefs
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loginThe Importance of Death:
Archaeology, as a humanist science studying the essence of humanity through history, is often faced with the ultimate expressions of humans’ perceptions of themselves in society and cosmos: death. The archaeological record consists of innumerable testimonies of how humans in different cultures at various times have solved and given answers to the inevitable. Nevertheless, despite the fact that everyone will die and all humans face the same ultimate end, the solutions to this common destiny are as different and varied as there are traditions, cultures, beliefs and religions. Even to us, in our present modern and presumed enlightened society, death is still something unknown that cannot be perceived, visualised or represented (Bauman 1992:2f). Still, death and the knowledge that our time on earth is limited affect our choices in life in many ways. The importance of death in life is, of course, historically situated and can take many forms (cf. Ariès 1974, Walter 1994): One can be obsessed with the question of how to delay the soul from vanishing while the dead body is dissolving, or how to secure a safe journey of the soul to a proper afterlife. In modern western secular society, some respond to the inevitable fact of death by seeking to prolong life long enough to make their persona indefinite (Taylor 2003:28).
