Bereavement and Commemoration: An Archaeology of Mortality

In this book, Sarah Tarlow provides an innovative archaeology of bereavement, mortality and memory in the early modern and modern period. She draws on literary and historical sources as well as on material evidence to examine the evolution of attitudes towards death and commemoration over four centuries.

The book argues that changes in commemorative practices over time relate to a changing relationship between the living and the dead and are inextricably linked to the conceptions of identity and personal relationships which characterize later Western history. The author′s approach is different from most previous work in this area not only because of its focus on material culture but also because of its incorporation of experiential and emotional factors into discussions of human relations and understandings in the past.

As well as introducing readers to the study of death and rememberance in the past, this book contributes to wider archaeological debates about the interpretation of meaning and the place of emotion and experience in archaeological study. It will be of interest to all scholars and students interested in critical and theoretically informed approaches to the study of people in the past.

List of Figures.

List of tables.

Preface.

1. A historical archaeology of death.

2. Towards an archaeology of bereavement and commemoration: death, emotion and metaphor.

3. Changing commemorative practices in Orkney.

4. A living memory and a corrupting corpse.

5. Remembering the dead in the nineteenth century: a love story.

6. War and remembrance.

7. Loved and lost.

Glossary.

References.

Index.

Sarah Tarlow is a Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Wales, Lampeter, where she teaches courses in the archaeology of death, later historical periods and aspects of archaeological method and theory. Since receiving her PhD in archaeology from Cambridge University, she has published articles on the later historical archaeology of Britain and on the archaeology of death. Her current research interests are in archaeologies of the human body and in utopian communities. She is co–editor of The Familiar Past? Archaeologies of Later Historical Britain (1998).

"An interesting and informative work." Choice

"This is a thoughtful study that attempts to deal with subjects of major import ... no one will come away from this book without new ideas and perceptions about the nature of bereavement, how it is commemorated through material culture and how these objects have been interpreted." Times Higher Education Supplement

"... [an] extremely important contribution to the fast–growing field of post–medieval death studies." Archaeological Journal

"A stimulating read." Post–Medieval Archaeology

"Tarlow′s book is heartening evidence that bereavement research need not stay in a narrow ghetto." Bereavement Care

"Throughout, there is a sense of the writer′s own humanity ... There is a great deal of interest to be found in this book and it is to be hoped that it will encourage others who choose death as their subject to be as humane in the way they write about it." Folklore