Becoming Dead: Burial Assemblages as Vitalist Devices

Abstract

This text comprises a critical discussion of assemblage theory and its application to burial studies. In recent research, burials have been viewed as fluid and indeterminate assemblages that ‘become’ in varied ways depending on different perceptions (concepts and ideas) and apparatuses (e.g. excavation tools and measuring instruments). The past and the present are thus mixed in potentially ever-new configurations which run the risk of replacing epistemological relativism with ontological fluidity. It is argued here that the hypothetical mutability of burial assemblages can be reduced significantly by addressing the varying speed and degree of the involved processes of integration and disintegration. By doing this, the main focus is shifted to the animacy of such processes and how they may have been understood and utilized in burials. Using both general and specific examples, it is argued that cremation burials can be studied as carefully compiled amalgamations that utilize the properties and animacies of different materialities to deal with death, corpses and the afterlife.

Social distinctions during the south Indian Neolithic: changing mortuary practices in a late prehistoric cemetery at Maski

“…Indeed, for more than a century, anthropologists and sociologists (e.g. Hertz 1960; Metcalf & Huntington 1991; Fahlander 2020) have acknowledged that mortuary ritual centres around a problem constituted by the material properties of the human corpse: that of decay and decomposition. Yet, it is the confluence of these material and biological processes with culturally inflected practices, values and knowledge systems (e.g.…”

Retrieving, Curating and Depositing Skulls at Pitted Ware culture Sites

“…Skulls could then perhaps be viewed as one of several possible components or 'ingredients' in depositional assemblages made up of a range of materials that were combined in order to affect the world in various ways by a drawing together of their properties (e.g. Pauketat 2013:41;Fahlander 2013Fahlander , 2020. By focusing on the skulls themselves, and acknowledging the varied treatment of crania, mandibles and isolated cranial fragments in different depositional contexts, we can suggest a practice in which skulls were acquired as depositional resources to be either used directly or kept for later use.…”

Interdisciplinary Explorations of Postmortem Interaction: An Introduction

“…Interaction with the dead can take place 'face to face' or over long distances, mediated by tangible or intangible agents. As a consequence, the study of postmortem interaction is related to a vast field of interconnected research strands: dying, care, and death (Das & Han, 2016;Farman, 2020;Green, 2008;Laqueur, 2015;Robben, 2018;Troyer, 2020); memory and commemoration (Hallam & Hockey, 2001;Jones, 2007;Koselleck, 2002;Williams, 2006); postmortem agency (Crandall & Martin, 2014;Crossland, 2017;Harper, 2010); bodies and embodiment (Hamilakis et al, 2002;Houston et al, 2006;Scheper-Hughes & Lock, 1987;Sofaer, 2006); personhood, ontologies, and assemblages (Alberti, 2016;Carr, 2021;Fahlander, 2020;Fowler, 2004Fowler, , 2013Harrison-Buck & Hendon, 2018); emotion and politics (Ahmed, 2004;Mark, 2010;Stavrakopoulou, 2010;Tarlow, 2012;Verdery, 1999); formation processes, object biographies, and object networks (Appadurai, 1986;Knappett, 2011;Meskell, 2004;Schiffer, 2010;Walker, 1995); landscape and monuments (Bradley, 1998;Díaz-Guardamino et al, 2015;Holtorf, 1998;Tilley, 1994); the agency of objects and materials (DeMarrais et al, 2004;…”

“…One should also be aware of the fact that these newly created deposits and the materials inserted into them create new assemblages (cf. Fahlander, 2020;Fowler, 2013) that will only ever represent the ideals of the society that undertook the redeposition. This book provides numerous examples for these reemergent dead in the form of bodies and objects from reopened graves and shrines as well as charnel houses (Chaps.…”