The fiery transformation of the dead is replete in our popular culture and Western modernity's death ways, and yet it is increasingly evident how little this disposal method is understood by archaeologists and students of cognate disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. In this regard, the archaeological study of cremation has much to offer. Cremation is a fascinating and widespread theme and entry-point in the exploration of the variability of mortuary practices among past societies. Seeking to challenge simplistic narratives of cremation in the past and present, the studies in this volume seek to confront and explore the challenges of interpreting the variability of cremation by contending with complex networks of modern allusions and imaginings of cremations past and present and ongoing debates regarding how we identify and interpret cremation in the archaeological record. Using a series of original case studies, the book investigates the archaeological traces of cremation in a varied selection of prehistoric and historic contexts from the Mesolithic to the present in order to explore cremation from a practice-oriented and historically situated perspective.
1: Howard Williams, Jessica I. Cerezo-Román, and Anna Wessman: Introduction: Archaeologies of Cremation Part 1: Relational Fiery Technologies 2: Amy Gray Jones: Cremation and the Use of Fire in Mesolithic Mortuary Practices in North-West Europe 3: Katharina Rebay-Salisbury: Rediscovering the Body: Cremation and Inhumation in Early Iron Age Central Europe 4: Ruth Nugent: Two of a Kind: Conceptual Similarities between Cremation and Inhumation in Early Anglo-Saxon England 5: Lynne Goldstein: Fiery Technology' and Transformative Placemaking: A Contextual Examination of a 'Crematory' at the Aztalan Site in Wisconsin 6: Douglas H. Ubelaker: Interpretation of Burned Human Remains: Lessons from Modern Forensic Case Part 2: Transforming and Commemorating with Cremation 7: Gabriel Cooney: Pathways for the Dead in the Middle and Late Bronze Age in Ireland 8: Anna Röst: Building by Stone and Bone: Handling Cremated Remains in Late Bronze Age Sweden 9: Jessica I. Cerezo-Román, Koen Deforce, Denis Henrotay and Wim Van Neer: From Life to Death: Dynamics of Personhood in Gallo-Roman Funeral Customs, Luxemburg Province, Belgium 10: Anna Wessman and Howard Williams: Building for the Cremated Dead: Ephemeral and Cumulative Constructions Part 3: Space and Time in Cremating Societies 11: Jarkko Saipio: The Emergence of Cremations in Eastern Fennoscandia: Changing Uses of Fire in Ritual Contexts 12: Lise Harvig: Land of the Cremated Dead: On Cremation Practices in Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Scandinavia 13: Kirsty E. Squires: Come Rain or Shine? The Social Implications of Seasonality and Weather on the Cremation Rite in Early Anglo-Saxon England 14: Howard Williams and Anna Wessman: The Contemporary Archaeology of Urban Cremation
Jessica Cerezo-Román is a College Fellow and Lecturer at the Department of Anthropology, Harvard University. She also wroks as a bioarchaeologist consultant for the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Centro INAH Sonora, Mexico. She completed her PhD at The University of Arizona in 2014. Anna Wessman is a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Helsinki and archaeologist and educator at the Espoo City Museum. Her PhD, entitled Death, Destruction and Commemoration which traced ritual activities in Finnish Late Iron Age cemeteries (AD 550-1150), was completed at the University of Helsinki in 2010. Howard Williams is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Chester. His research interests focus on medieval, post-medieval and contemporary mortuary archaeology, archaeologies of memory, and the history of archaeology. Howard has published over 80 book chapters and journal articles as well as edited books, including most recently Archaeologists and the Dead (OUP, 2016). He is author of the monograph Death and Memory in Early Medieval Britain (CUP, 2006).
Reviews for Cremation and the Archaeology of Death
In conclusion, this volume considerably advances our understanding of ancient cremation and the past peoples who practiced it * Carrie L. Sulosky Weaver, University of Pittsburgh , The Classical Journal * Cremation and the Archaeology of Death is as much about archaeological methods as cultural history...the volume brings together 13 case studies to explore issues such as fire technology, the use of pyre-goods, and the transformational power of burning the dead. On the evidence of this book, the study of cremation should accordingly occupy a much more prominent place in our study of past societies. * Stuart Brookes, Current World Archaeology *
