About Me

I'm a PhD student researching the role of the archaeological dead in contemporary British society. Think of this as a scrapbook of all the interesting links, snippets of information and random bits and bobs I come across pertaining to death, dying and the dead. Enjoy?!

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    Elegy for an urban graveyard AT QING MING, the annual two-week-long tomb-sweeping festival that culminates this year on April 4th, Bukit Brown springs to life. The biggest Chinese graveyard outside China, its expanse of lush greenery in the heart of Singapore is for much of the year the peaceful haunt of joggers, birdwatchers, cyclists, strollers and the descendants of those buried there. At Qing Ming, this last group expands. The cemetery becomes crowded with clusters of the filial, visiting their ancestors’ graves. They come because they do so every Qing Ming. But this year, their visits have a greater significance: Bukit Brown is in danger, and has become embroiled in a debate over what sort of country Singapore wants to be. They sweep their ancestors’s graves clean and slash back the foliage with which the jungle tries to reclaim untended tombs. They scrub the headstones and sometimes repaint the epitaphs. They burn joss and candles and strew coloured paper. They make bonfires of paper ghost-money and of gifts for the afterworld. One lucky grandmother this year got a new handbag, a pair of shoes and frock. A great-grandfather, dead these past 80 years, scored an iPhone5 (in replica but, one assumes, preloaded with all the apps a contemporary ghost might need). They leave offerings of fruit, cakes, tea and, sometimes, duck, fish, pork or cockles (to be consumed by the living, with the shells scattered about to symbolise money). Read more.

    Elegy for an urban graveyard

    AT QING MING, the annual two-week-long tomb-sweeping festival that culminates this year on April 4th, Bukit Brown springs to life. The biggest Chinese graveyard outside China, its expanse of lush greenery in the heart of Singapore is for much of the year the peaceful haunt of joggers, birdwatchers, cyclists, strollers and the descendants of those buried there. At Qing Ming, this last group expands. The cemetery becomes crowded with clusters of the filial, visiting their ancestors’ graves. They come because they do so every Qing Ming. But this year, their visits have a greater significance: Bukit Brown is in danger, and has become embroiled in a debate over what sort of country Singapore wants to be.

    They sweep their ancestors’s graves clean and slash back the foliage with which the jungle tries to reclaim untended tombs. They scrub the headstones and sometimes repaint the epitaphs. They burn joss and candles and strew coloured paper. They make bonfires of paper ghost-money and of gifts for the afterworld. One lucky grandmother this year got a new handbag, a pair of shoes and frock. A great-grandfather, dead these past 80 years, scored an iPhone5 (in replica but, one assumes, preloaded with all the apps a contemporary ghost might need). They leave offerings of fruit, cakes, tea and, sometimes, duck, fish, pork or cockles (to be consumed by the living, with the shells scattered about to symbolise money).

    Read more.

    Child bridegroom: Eight-year-old boy marries 61-year-old woman after ‘dead ancestors told him to tie the knot’ An eight-year-old schoolboy has married a 61-year-old woman because the ghost of his dead ancestor told him to. Sanele Masilela tied the knot with Helen Shabangu, who is already married and a mother-of-five. The boy, from Tshwane, South Africa, said he had been told by his dead ancestors to wed and his family, fearing divine retribution, forked out for a wedding. They paid £500 for the bride and a further £1,000 for the big day, which was organised in just two months.  Dressed in a bow tie and tiny silver suit, little Sanele, the youngest of five children, exchanged rings in front of 100 guests and even puckered up for a kiss. It’s already shocked the community but the family has defended the ceremony, saying it was just a ritual and not legally binding. Read more here.

    Child bridegroom: Eight-year-old boy marries 61-year-old woman after ‘dead ancestors told him to tie the knot’

    An eight-year-old schoolboy has married a 61-year-old woman because the ghost of his dead ancestor told him to.

    Sanele Masilela tied the knot with Helen Shabangu, who is already married and a mother-of-five.

    The boy, from Tshwane, South Africa, said he had been told by his dead ancestors to wed and his family, fearing divine retribution, forked out for a wedding.

    They paid £500 for the bride and a further £1,000 for the big day, which was organised in just two months.

     Dressed in a bow tie and tiny silver suit, little Sanele, the youngest of five children, exchanged rings in front of 100 guests and even puckered up for a kiss.

    It’s already shocked the community but the family has defended the ceremony, saying it was just a ritual and not legally binding.

    Read more here.

    Researchers, tribes clash over Native bones

    BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) — On a bluff overlooking a sweep of Southern California beach, scientists in 1976 unearthed what were among the oldest skeletal remains ever found in the Western Hemisphere.

    Researchers would come to herald the bones — dating back nearly 10,000 years — as a potential treasure trove for understanding the earliest human history of the continental United States. But a local tribal group called the Kumeyaay Nation claimed that the bones, representing at least two people, were their ancestors and demanded them back several years ago.

    For decades, fights like this over the provenance and treatment of human bones have played out across the nation. Yet new federal protections could mean that the vast majority of the remains of an estimated 160,000 Native Americans held by universities, museums and federal government agencies, including those sought by the Kumeyaay, may soon be transferred to tribes.

    (Source: dead-men-talking)

    First out of Africa, first into Asia and Australia… The first major genome analysis of Australian Aboriginal people reveals that their ancestors took part in the first human migration out of Africa. They were the first to arrive in Asia some 70,000 years ago, roaming the area at least 24,000 years before the ancestors of present-day Europeans and Asians appeared. They were also the first to live in Australia, according to DNA results of a 90-year-old hair sample of a young man that link Aborigines to the first inhabitants of  the region about 50,000 years ago. Just…wow.

    First out of Africa, first into Asia and Australia…

    The first major genome analysis of Australian Aboriginal people reveals that their ancestors took part in the first human migration out of Africa.

    They were the first to arrive in Asia some 70,000 years ago, roaming the area at least 24,000 years before the ancestors of present-day Europeans and Asians appeared. They were also the first to live in Australia, according to DNA results of a 90-year-old hair sample of a young man that link Aborigines to the first inhabitants of  the region about 50,000 years ago.

    Just…wow.