A popular cultural trend developed in late 18thand 19th-century American mortuary practices. Called “the beautification of death,” this Romantic movement idealized death and heaven through ideological, behavioral, and material transformations. The appearance of mass-produced coffin hardware in archaeological contexts throughout North America may be linked with this popular movement. Archaeologi...

Conquest of indigenous peoples in North America is understood primarily through ethnohistorical documents, archaeological evidence, and osteological analyses. However, in the Central Andes, the colonial enterprise and its effects are understood only from postcontact historical and ethnohistorical sources. Few archaeological and bioarchaeological studies have investigated Spanish Conquest and co...

Scholarship on life in medieval European monasteries has revealed a variety of factors that potentially affected mortality in these communities. Though there is some evidence based on age-at-death distributions from England that monastic males lived longer than members of the general public, what is missing from the literature is an explicit examination of how the risks of mortality within medi...

This article surveys the botanical composition of 40 Muslim graveyards in northern Israel, accompanied by an ethnobotanical study of the folkloristic traditions of the use of these plants in cemeteries. Three groups of plants were found to be repeated systematically and were also recognized for their ritual importance: aromatics herbs (especially Salvia fruticosa and Rosmarinus officinalis), wh...

Throughout most recorded history, human societies have used various types of cemeteries for burial purposes; this theme points to humanity’s need to construct a meaning behind death and reflect life into the places where the dead are interred. Whether the bodies of the deceased are placed in the ground, within elaborate tombs, or simply in the presence of ancient or contemporary monuments, thei...

The site of Jebel Moya, excavated in the early twentieth century, represents arguably the largest pastoral mortuary complex in Africa. Jebel Moya is resituated in relation to the neighbouring Meroitic-era agro-pastoral settlements and the only known Meroitic trading station (Sennar) in the southern Gezira Plain, Sudan. It is the first time that the known localities in the southern Gezira and so...

Cemeteries in the UK and Ireland are typically viewed as a final ‘place of rest’ for deceased where their remains will not be disturbed. This sense is at least some part created by norm in-perpetuity grave rights these countries. Yet while ‘in-perpetuity’ suggests fixity, it defined managed varying ways different settings, including an ultimate fixed term graves cemeteries. Over decades, cemete...