Key research themes
1. How do mortuary practices and burial sites reflect social organization, religious beliefs, and political contexts in past societies?
This research area investigates the multifaceted determinants of mortuary practices, emphasizing the roles of social hierarchy, philosophical-religious beliefs, and political frameworks. By examining burial customs, archaeologists and anthropologists elucidate social complexity, identity, and cultural worldviews embedded within funerary behaviors. It also explores the influence of colonial histories, legislation (e.g., NAGPRA), and ethical concerns shaping mortuary archaeology research.
2. In what ways do cemeteries serve as dynamic cultural landscapes mediating memory, identity, and socio-political discourses?
This theme explores cemeteries as 'deathscapes' or necrogeographies, conceptualizing them as active spaces shaped by and shaping living communities' identities, power relations, and cultural politics. Cemeteries mediate social relations, commemorate traumatic histories, and engage with postcolonial and heritage processes, extending beyond burial sites to sites of memory, tourism, and ideological discourse.
3. What are the material and biographical dimensions of burial architecture and grave monuments, and how do they inform on social identity and cultural continuities?
Focusing on the physical structures of burial – crypts, vaults, tomb monuments, and commemorative gravestones – this theme examines how these elements evolve, manifest social status, family lineage, and cultural identity, and facilitate ongoing interactions with the commemorated dead. The biographical approach contextualizes these structures within their use-life, alteration, and symbolic significance across time and space.