My paper on early medieval corpses, grave goods, and the relationship between the two, is now available online in the European Journal of Archaeology!
tinyurl.com/vttx9gs
Summary below 👇 1/
tinyurl.com/vttx9gs
Summary below 👇 1/
This paper stemmed from dissatisfaction in the way we commonly talk about mortuary practices, often from the perspective of the mourner, and the society they leave behind. But what about the corpse itself? There are plenty of societies where corpses maintain a social presence 2/
Societies like the Sa’dan Toraja people of Indonesia keep corpses in the home for years after death. Corpses may have changed, but they still resemble the person they were during life, and so there’s a lot of emotion connected to them. 3/
In societies where corpses are considered people, wouldn’t something of their wishes and identity make its way into funerary rites, rather than them just being forms of conspicuous consumption, or displays of an idealised social identity? 4/
In the early medieval period (c.5th-7th century), the fact that bodies were laid out in a semblance of life, and that there was a reluctance for graves to intercut each other, could suggest some continuing personhood was attached to the corpse. 5/
Pivoting to grave goods: there are loads of reasons why objects might end up in a grave. Interpretations have swung away from the idea of personal possessions of the deceased, but I don’t think it should be entirely dismissed. 6/
People have different kinds of relationships with different kinds of objects. Some objects don’t have much connection with their owner, and are easily given away. Other objects are much more significant, and some are almost a part of the person’s body, like glasses 7/
These meaningful possessions, and especially ones which are a part of the body, are much more likely to end up in the grave. 8/
Across the 7th and 8th centuries there’s a trend towards minimal, if any, grave good deposition, right across Europe, but not all objects decline at the same rate. Compare the decline in overall numbers (red=lots of objects, yellow=relatively few)… 9/
… with the decline in personal accessories (things like knives). Personal accessories remain commonly placed in graves for far later, more so than any other object, including dress accessories. 10/
The same trends can be seen in a bit more detail in the cemetery of Pleidelsheim, in Baden-Wurttemberg. There, you also see a tendency over time for objects to move away from the body, to be placed next to it, rather than in direct contact with the corpse. 11/
I interpret these changes as a reduction in the personhood of the corpse; it gradually loses its possessive capability, but its links with the most meaningfully owned objects last the longest. 12/
The loss of personhood also means that there’s no need to lay the body out as it was during life, hence the shifting location of objects. 13/
There’s also evidence in contemporary Christian writings for changing ideas about the corpse: the separation of body and soul has always been important, but the way the sources stress it suggest that it wasn’t commonly believed. 14/
Authors in the late sixth and seventh century put much more emphasis on how the corpse was buried, and purgatory becomes a more common destination in the afterlife. This happens at the same time as the decline in grave goods, and may be linked. 15/
This paper isn’t open access, so I’m happy to send a pdf to anyone who doesn’t have access to the EJA. Alternatively the accepted version (pre-proofreading and formatting) is freely available here: doi.org/10.17863/CAM.4…
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