Archaeologists excavating burials often find that they are not the first
to disturb the remains of the dead. Graves from many periods frequently
show signs that others have been digging and have moved or taken away
parts of the original funerary assemblage. Displaced bones and
artefacts, traces of pits, and damage to tombs or coffins can all
provide clues about post-burial activities.
The last two decades have seen a rapid rise in interest in the study of
post-depositional practices in graves, which has now developed into a
new subfield within mortuary archaeology. This follows a long tradition
of neglect, with disturbed graves previously regarded as interesting
only to the degree they revealed evidence of the original funerary
deposit.
This book explores past human interactions with mortuary deposits,
delving into the different ways graves and human remains were approached
by people in the past and the reasons that led to such encounters. The
primary focus of the volume is on cases of unexpected interference with
individual graves soon after burial: re-encounters with human remains
not anticipated by those who performed the funerary rites and
constructed the tombs. However, a first step is always to distinguish
these from natural and accidental processes, and methodological
approaches are a major theme of discussion.
Interactions with the remains of the dead are explored in eleven
chapters ranging from the New Kingdom of Egypt to Viking Age Norway and
from Bronze Age Slovakia to the ancient Maya. Each discusses cases of
re-entries into graves, including desecration, tomb re-use, destruction
of grave contents, as well as the removal of artefacts and human remains
for reasons from material gain to commemoration, symbolic appropriation,
ancestral rites, political chicanery, and retrieval of relics. The
introduction presents many of the methodological issues which recur
throughout the contributions, as this is a developing area with new
approaches being applied to analyze post-depositional processes in
graves.
