Abnormal burial practices have long been a source of fascination and debate within the fields of mortuary archaeology and bioarchaeology. The Odd, the Unusual, and the Strange investigates an unparalleled geographic and temporal range of burials that differ from the usual customs of their broader societies, emphasizing the importance of a holistic, context-driven approach to these intriguing cases.
From an Andean burial dating to 3500 BC to mummified bodies interred in the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, Sicily, during the twentieth century, the studies in this volume cross the globe and span millennia. The unusual cases explored here include Native American cemeteries in Illinois, “vampire” burials in medieval Poland, and a mass grave of decapitated soldiers in ancient China. Moving away from the simplistic assumption that these burials represent people who were considered deviant in society, contributors demonstrate the importance of an integrated biocultural approach in determining why an individual was buried in an unusual way.
Drawing on historical, sociocultural, archaeological, and biological data, this volume critically evaluates the binary of “typical” versus “atypical” burials. It expands our understanding of the continuum of variation within mortuary practices, helping researchers better interpret burial evidence to learn about the people and cultures of the past.
A volume in the series Bioarchaeological Interpretations of the Human Past: Local, Regional, and Global Perspectives, edited by Clark Spencer Larsen
List of Illustrations
Foreword
Eileen Murphy
Deconstructing “Deviant”: An Introduction to the History of Atypical Burials and the Importance of Context in the Bioarchaeological Record
Amy B. Scott, Tracy K. Betsinger, Anastasia Tsaliki
1. Bodies Among Fragments: Non-Normative Inhumations among the Preclassic and Classic Period Hohokam in the Tucson Basin
Jessica I. Cerezo-Román
2. Interpreting a Multiple Burial in an Early Ancestral Pueblo Village
Ann L.W. Stodder
3. A Young Man Twice Burned: A Deviant Burial from West-Central Illinois
Della Collins Cook, Laura Gano, Kristin M. Hedman, Susan Spencer Helfrich, Andrew R. Thompson
4. The Odd Man Out in a Pioneer Cemetery at Seccombe Lake Park, San Bernadino, California
Patricia M. Lambert
5. Defining Non-Normative Practices in a Diverse Funerary Record: Insights from the Caribbean
Hayley L. Mickleburgh, Menno L.P. Hoogland, Jason E. Laffoon, Darlene A. Weston, Roberto Valcárcel Rojas, Anne van Duijvenbode, Angus A.A. Mol
6. Good, Bad, or Indifferent? A Unique “Deviant” Burial from the Formative Site of Aranjuez-Santa Lucía, South Central Andes
Olga U. Gabelmann, Lawrence S. Owens
7. The Hunchback, the Contortionist, the Man with the Stolen Identity, and the One Who Will be Born in the Afterlife: Pre-Hispanic Deviant Burials from Huarmey Valley, Peru
Wiesław Więckowski, Miłosz Giersz, Roberto Pimentel Nita
8. Friend or Foe? Investigating a Mass Burial at the Templo de la Piedra Segrada at Túcume, Peru
Barbara R. Hewitt
9. What’s the Norm? “Irregular” and “Regular” Burial Practices of the Early Iron Age in Central Europe
Nils Müller-Scheessel, Carola Benszin, Gisela Grupe, Annette Schwentke, Anja Staskiewicz, Thomas Tütken, Joachim Wahl
10. Burial in a Kiln: Transgression and Punishment in Late Antiquity
Anastasia Tsaliki
11. Variation Beyond the Grave: Contextualizing Unusual Burials in Early Medieval Bohemia
Lauren Hosek
12. Good and Bad Death in Early Medieval Times? Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to Non-Normative Burials in Finland in the Eleventh-Thirteenth Centuries AD
Ulla Moilanen
13. Atypical Burials in Early Medieval Poland: A Critical Overview
Leszek Gardeła
14. Does Health Define Deviancy? Non-Normative Burials in Post-Medieval Poland
Tracy K. Betsinger, Amy B. Scott
15. The “Vampires” of Lesvos: Detecting and Interpreting Anti-Revenant Ritual in Greece
Sandra Garvie-Lok, Anastasia Tsaliki
16. Natural Mummification as a Non-Normative Mortuary Custom of Modern Period Sicily (1600-1800)
Dario Piombino-Mascali, Kenneth C. Nystrom
Betsinger, et al.
17. Out of Range? Non-normative Funerary Practices from the Neolithic to the early Twentieth Century at Çatalhöyük, Turkey
Scott D. Haddow, Josh W. Sadvari, Christopher J. Knüsel, Sophie V. Moore, Clark S. Larsen, Selin E. Nugent
18. Deviant Treatment of the Body as a Mortuary Ritual: A Case from the Middle Jomon Period in Eastern Japan
Takeshi Ishikawa
19. Ancestors, Conflict, and Criminality in Ancient China and
Mongolia
Christine Lee
20. Dependent Deviance: Castration and Deviant Burial
Kathryn Reusch
Afterword
Andrew Reynolds
Contributors
