Death Rituals, Social Order and the Archaeology of Immortality in the Ancient World

This volume, with essays by leading archaeologists and prehistorians, considers how prehistoric humans attempted to recognise, understand and conceptualise death.

Preface Colin Renfrew, Michael J. Boyd and Iain Morley; 1. 'The unanswered question': investigating early conceptualisations of death Colin Renfrew; Part I. Intimations of Mortality: 2. Non-human animal responses towards the dead and death: a comparative approach to understanding the evolution of human mortuary practices Alex Piel and Fiona Stewart; 3. Lower and Middle Palaeolithic mortuary behaviours and the origins of ritual burial João Zilhão; 4. Upper Palaeolithic mortuary practices: reflection of ethnic affiliation, social complexity and cultural turn-over Francesco d'Errico and Marian Vanhaeren; Part II. Mortality and the Foundations of Human Society: Sedentism and the Collective: 5. Gathering of the dead? The Early Neolithic sanctuaries of Göbekli Tepe, Southeastern Turkey Jens Notroff, Oliver Dietrich and Klaus Schmidt; 6. Death and architecture: the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A burials at WF16, Wadi Faynan, Southern Jordan Steven Mithen, Bill Finlayson, Darko Mari evi , Sam Smith, Emma Jenkins and Mohammad Najjar; 7. Corporealities of death in the central Andes (c.9000-2000 BC) Peter Kaulicke; 8. Mediating the dominion of death in Prehistoric Malta Simon Stoddart; 9. House societies and founding ancestors in Early Neolithic Britain Julian Thomas; Part III. Constructing the Ancestors: 10. Constructing ancestors in Sub-Saharan Africa Timothy Insoll; 11. Different kinds of dead: presencing Andean expired beings George F. Lau; 12. Putting death in its place: the idea of the cemetery Anthony Snodgrass; 13. Becoming Mycenaean? The living, the dead and the ancestors in the transformation of society in second millennium BC southern Greece Michael J. Boyd; Part IV. Death, Hierarchy and the Social Order: 14. Life and death in late-prehistoric to early historic Mesopotamia Karina Croucher; 15. The big sleep: early Maya mortuary ritual Norman Hammond; 16. De-paradoxisation of paradoxes by referring to death as an ultimate paradox: the case of the state-formation phase of Japan Koji Mizoguchi; 17. Death and mortuary rituals in mainland southeast Asia: from hunter-gatherers to the god kings of Angkor Charles F. W. Higham; Part V. Materiality and Memory: 18. How did the Mycenaeans remember? Death, matter and memory in the early Mycenaean world Lambros Malafouris; 19. Eternal glory: the origins of eastern jade burial and its far-reaching influence Li Shuicheng; 20. Eventful deaths - eventful lives? Bronze age mortuary practices in the late prehistoric Eurasian steppes of central Russia (2100-1500 BC) Bryan Hanks, Roger Doonan, Derek Pitman, Elena Kupriyanova and Dmitri Zdanovich; Part VI. Intimations of Immortality: Glimpsing Other Worlds: 21. Northern Iroquoian deathways and the re-imagination of community John L. Creese; 22. Locating a sense of immortality in early Egyptian cemeteries Alice Stevenson; 23. Buddhist mortuary traditions in ancient India: st pas, relics and the Buddhist landscape Julia Shaw; 24. Killing mummies: on Inka epistemology and imperial power Terence N. D'Altroy; Part VII. Responses and Reactions: Concluding Thoughts: 25. Death shall have no dominion: a response Timothy Jenkins; 26. Comments: death shall have no dominion Paul Wason; 27. The muse of archaeology Ben Okri.