| Abstract: |
Research work focusing on identifying strategies of remembrance, and the role of mortuary practices in constructing and reproducing social memories. The research highlights the importance of the rituals and material culture used in disposing and commemorating the dead, in defining links between ancient societies and their own conception of the past. Integral to this argument is the view that material culture was central in strategies of remembering and forgetting in past societies. Archaeological evidence, including the adornment and alteration of the body in life and death and the construction, use and reuse of monuments. makes it possible to identify and explore the significance of material remembrance through the uses of monuments, spaces, objects and the body. These ideas are developed through a variety of approaches made to a wide range of periods. Chapters address the issue of monumentality and commemoration; the re-use of objects and monuments in strategies of remembrance; and other aspects of past mortuary practices, such as human sacrifice, technologies of transformation and fragmentation of objects and the body. Includes |
