Burial Articles

II:85. Their fashions of mourning and of burial are these: Whenever any household has lost a man who is of any regard amongst them, the whole number of women of that house forthwith plaster over their heads or even their faces with mud. Then leaving the corpse within the house they go themselves to and fro about the city and beat themselves, with their garments... [continue reading]

The Roman funeral was a rite of passage that signified the transition between the states of life and death. It was very important to conduct the proper ceremonies and burial in order to avoid having a malicious spirit rising from the underworld. While no direct description of Roman funerary practices has been passed down, numerous ancient sources exist that... [continue reading]

A great deal has been written about why the prehistoric monument of Stonehenge, in Wiltshire, southern England, was constructed. Perhaps it was designed as a temple to the ancestors, an astronomical calendar, a healing centre or a giant computer? Could it even have functioned as all of these things at various stages during its 1500 year history? How... [continue reading]

In antiquity, apart from thieves, tombs were also damaged by people of low economic status. While thieves damaged tombs for burial gifts and the clothing of the dead, some people opened tombs of strangers to bury members of their own families or dismantled them in order to use pieces to make a new tomb. Grave monuments were also damaged to make milestones... [continue reading]

The Mayan religious text, the Popol Vuh (known by many names, among them, The Light That Came From Beside The Sea) is the story of creation written down in the early 18th century by the Spanish priest Francisco Ximenez from much older tales. As most of the books of the Maya were burned by the Bishop of the Yucatan, Diego de Landa, in July of 1562, this... [continue reading]

Material Objects & Cultures Material objects convey volumes about the people who possessed them. Cultures and societies in every generation are in part classified - either correctly or incorrectly - by the objects or symbols they select and how they are displayed. Typically, the formal study of society is the purview of anthropologists and social scientists... [continue reading]

Of the many great archaeological finds in the 20th century, one of the grandest is the discovery of Emperor Qin Shihuangdi’s terracotta army. The ruler of the state of Qin, King Cheng, proclaimed himself the First Emperor of China in 221 BC taking the name Shihuangdi (first sovereign). After hundreds of years of open warfare between the different... [continue reading]

This paper surveys textual and physical evidence of disease and mortality in the city of Rome in the late republican and imperial periods. It emphasizes the significance of seasonal mortality data and the weaknesses of age at death records and paleodemographic analysis, considers the complex role of environmental features and public infrastructure... [continue reading]