Performing Death : Social Analyses of Funerary Traditions in the Ancient near East and Mediterranean

by Laneri, Nicola; Laneri, Nicola (CON); Morris, Ellen F. (CON); Schwartz, Glenn M. (CON); Chapman, Robert (CON)

• ISBN13: 9781885923509
• ISBN10: 1885923503
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-06-30
• Publisher: David Brown Book Co

Summary

This volume represents a collection of contributions presented by the authors during the Second Annual University of Chicago Oriental Institute Seminar "Performing Death: Social Analyses of Funerary Traditions in the Ancient Mediterranean," held at the Oriental Institute, February 17-18, 2006. The principal aim of the two-day seminar was to interpret the social relevance resulting from the enactment of funerary rituals within the broad-reaching Mediterranean basin from prehistoric periods to the Roman age. Efforts were concentrated on creating a panel composed of scholars with diverse backgrounds -- anthropologists, historians, archaeologists, art historians, and philologists -- and the knowledge and expertise to enrich the discussion through the presentation of case-studies linked to both textual and archaeological evidences from the Mediterranean region. Fundamental to the successful realization of this research process was the active dialogue between scholars of different backgrounds. These communicative exchanges provided the opportunity to integrate different approaches and interpretations concerning the role played by the performance of ancient funerary rituals within a given society and, as a result, helped in defining a coherent outcome towards the interpretation of ancient communities' behaviors.

Table of Contents

List of Abbreviations	p. ix
List of Figures	p. xi
List of Tables	p. xv
Preface	p. xvii
Introduction
An Archaeology of Funerary Rituals	p. 1
A Powerful Death: Exercising Authority Through the Enactment of Funerary Rituals
Sacrifice for the State: First Dynasty Royal Funerals and the Rites at Macramallah's Rectangle	p. 15
Status, Ideology, and Memory in Third-millennium Syria: "Royal" Tombs at Umm el-Marra	p. 39
Mortuary Rituals, Social Relations, and Identity in Southeast Spain in the Late Third to Early Second Millennia B.C.	p. 69
Combined Efforts till Death: Funerary Ritual and Social Statements in the Aegean Early Bronze Age	p. 81
Remembering and Forgetting in Early Bronze Age Mortuary Practices on the Southeastern Dead Sea Plain, Jordan	p. 109
Etruscan Style of Dying: Funerary Architecture, Tomb Groups, and Social Range at Caere and Its Hinterland during the Seventh-Sixth Centuries B.C.	p. 141
The Politics of Loss: Comments on a Powerful Death	p. 163
Memorializing the Ancestors: Death as a Form of Cultural and Social Transmission
Sumerian Funerary Rituals in Context	p. 167
Death and Dismemberment in Mesopotamia: Discorporation between the Body and Body Politic	p. 189
Death of a Household	p. 209
Achilles and the Sallis Wastais Ritual: Performing Death in Greece and Anatolia	p. 223
Ritualizing Death in Republican Rome: Memory, Religion, Class Struggle, and the Wax Ancestral Mask Tradition's Origin and Influence on Veristic Portraiture	p. 237
Archaeology of Funerary Rituals: A Theoretical Approach
Burial Treatment as Transformations of Bodily Ideology	p. 287
Mortuary Practices for the Third Millennium: 1966-2006	p. 299
Concluding Discussion	p. 309
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