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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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    CABINET // Sacred Bones

    atlasobscura:

    Cabinet Magazine - Bones - Issue 28

    All bones, however, are not created equal. In different traditions, skulls, vertebrae, and shoulder blades (scapulae) are believed to harbor special powers that lend them ritual significance. The conviction that bones are living leads to the belief that they can communicate. One of the bones used widely in divination is the scapula. The practice of scapulomancy (also known as spatulamancy) is a form of divination that involves studying the pattern of cracks and fissures in bones that have been heated over an open fire. Though it dates back to ancient Babylon and is still practiced from Asia and India to Europe, one of the most intriguing instances of scapulomancy is practiced by the Montagnais-Naskapi on the Labradorean Peninsula in North America. Omar Moore describes the ritual: 

    Animal bones and various other objects are used in divination. The shoulder blade of the caribou is held by them to be especially “truthful.” When it is to be employed for this purpose the meat is pared away, and the bone is boiled and wiped clean; it is hung up to dry, and finally a small piece of wood is split and attached to the bone to form a handle. In a divinatory ritual the shoulder blade, thus prepared, is held over hot coals for a short time. The heat causes cracks and burnt spots to form, and these are then “read.” The Naskapi have a system for interpreting the cracks and the spots, and in this way they find answers to important questions. One class of questions for which shoulder-blade augury provides answers is: What direction should hunters take in locating game? This is a critical matter, for the failure of a hunt may bring privation or even death.4

    Cracks in bones, it seems, are hieroglyphs for those who know the code. The Montagnais-Naskapi read in the cracks the topography of the territory where they hunt. 

    Keep reading…

    Installing the bone chandelier

    It’s not often that Wellcome Collection hosts a work as physically imposing as Jodie Carey’s ‘bone chandelier’ In The Eyes of Others which features in Death: A self-portrait. Installing it was a challenge: the timelapse film above, by Ben Gilbert, shows the chandelier being assembled  over the course of a week. Our Exhibitions & Touring Manager Jane Holmes explains how we did it.

    The artwork In The Eyes of Others by Jodie Carey weighs 2 tonnes and is 13 and a half feet high. It is actually the smallest of three chandeliers that Jodie has created. Due to the weight and height, we could only situate the artwork in the atrium area of the gallery, which has two existing steel beams that could be used for support. We invited Jodie to see the space before installing the work: she was delighted with it, because she loved the idea of visitors encountering the chandelier unexpectedly, and also of the chandelier entirely inhabiting the space.

    After discussing the logistics of the installation with Jodie, the next step was to commission a structural engineer to work out the dimensions of a new structural beam with hook that could be supported off the two existing steel beams, enabling the chandelier to be centred in the space.

    The chandelier itself was installed using a block and chain placed over the beam. The central steel frame was put together at ground level and hoisted up to allow each plaster bone to be wired to the frame individually. As the number of bones on the chandelier grew and the framework was filled, the chandelier was hoisted a little higher towards the beam, to allow the artist to install the bones at the next level.

    When the chandelier was completely finished, we all watched anxiously as it was transferred from the hook of the tackle to the hook on the steel beam by a technician on a scissor lift. Thankfully the changeover was very smooth and we could all breathe out again!

    Death: A Self-portrait runs until 24 February.


    WANT!

    Dracula church where it’s raining bones! Debris from cliff-top graves falls on town after landslide It is the eerie old church that featured in Bram Stoker’s gothic novel Dracula. Now St Mary’s in Whitby has become the scene of real horror after human bones began to emerge from their  centuries-old graves. The grisly discovery was made when the church cemetery, which dates to 1110AD, began to subside and fall down the cliff last month following heavy rain. Many of the ancient graves were exposed – and among the debris tumbling on to the buildings below were a number of human bones, thought to be at least a century old. Stoker was inspired to use the cemetery – which has been closed to the public since 1865 – as the backdrop for some of Dracula’s horror scenes after visiting the North Yorkshire town in the 1890s. Resident Barry Brown, 56, told how he found several bones in the backyard of his kipper smokehouse, which sits under the cliff. He said: ‘When the subsidence began I went out and found a few pieces of bone. They’d been buried for God knows how many years because they were soft and yellow from being in the soil. ‘I managed to identify one hip bone, two pieces of skull and a large bone that looked like it was part of a leg. ‘It’s quite sad picking that sort of thing up, I expect the people who buried them thought they’d be there for ever. You can read more here.

    Dracula church where it’s raining bones! Debris from cliff-top graves falls on town after landslide

    It is the eerie old church that featured in Bram Stoker’s gothic novel Dracula.

    Now St Mary’s in Whitby has become the scene of real horror after human bones began to emerge from their  centuries-old graves.

    The grisly discovery was made when the church cemetery, which dates to 1110AD, began to subside and fall down the cliff last month following heavy rain.

    Many of the ancient graves were exposed – and among the debris tumbling on to the buildings below were a number of human bones, thought to be at least a century old.

    Stoker was inspired to use the cemetery – which has been closed to the public since 1865 – as the backdrop for some of Dracula’s horror scenes after visiting the North Yorkshire town in the 1890s.

    Resident Barry Brown, 56, told how he found several bones in the backyard of his kipper smokehouse, which sits under the cliff.

    He said: ‘When the subsidence began I went out and found a few pieces of bone. They’d been buried for God knows how many years because they were soft and yellow from being in the soil.

    ‘I managed to identify one hip bone, two pieces of skull and a large bone that looked like it was part of a leg.

    ‘It’s quite sad picking that sort of thing up, I expect the people who buried them thought they’d be there for ever.

    You can read more here.

    Give Santa back! Turkish professor calls for return of St Nicholas’ bones which were taken to the Vatican in the 11th century With an address at the North Pole, every child knows where Santa Claus lives. But the ancient remains of the person on whom the mythical figure of Father Christmas is based are at the centre of a tug-of-war. An archaeologist has called on the Vatican to return the bones of St Nicholas, the original Santa Claus, to his home town in Turkey. Professor Nvzat Cevik said the bones of the third century saint were taken out of the country in 1087 ‘by force’ and buried in Italy. Cevik has called on the Vatican to voluntarily give up the religious artifact and return them to his grave in the town of Demre in the southern province of Antalya. Read more here!

    Give Santa back! Turkish professor calls for return of St Nicholas’ bones which were taken to the Vatican in the 11th century

    With an address at the North Pole, every child knows where Santa Claus lives.

    But the ancient remains of the person on whom the mythical figure of Father Christmas is based are at the centre of a tug-of-war.

    An archaeologist has called on the Vatican to return the bones of St Nicholas, the original Santa Claus, to his home town in Turkey.

    Professor Nvzat Cevik said the bones of the third century saint were taken out of the country in 1087 ‘by force’ and buried in Italy.

    Cevik has called on the Vatican to voluntarily give up the religious artifact and return them to his grave in the town of Demre in the southern province of Antalya.

    Read more here!

    Skeletons at an ossuary reveal Hythe's hidden history

    A church in Kent has literally more skeletons in its cupboards than any other in England.

    The ossuary in St Leonard’s church in Hythe houses bones and skulls that were dug up from local graveyards around 700 years ago, possibly to clear space for the vast numbers of people who perished during the Black Death.

    Shaun Williamson finds out about the different theories as to why such a large collection of skeletons is housed in the ossuary.

    He also finds out what the bones tell us about the lives and deaths of our ancestors.

    Great little video from the BBC on one of the few surviving ossuaries in the UK. 

    What happens if you find human remains in your garden?

    When a set of bones was discovered at a property in Dorset this month, experts confirmed they were “bones of antiquity”. But what happens when you find human remains in your back garden?

    Imagine you have got the builders in and they are digging up your garden.

    Then suddenly work stops, and the contractors tell you they have uncovered a set of bones.

    This is what happened to a woman from Preston, near Weymouth, who was having an extension built.

    The news would probably trigger a whirlwind of questions: Are the bones animal? Are they human? And if so - are they ancient or evidence of a recent murder?

    Most pertinently, what happens next?

    Some handy advice from the BBC - good to know! ;o)

    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)

    Traditional physical autopsies -- not high-tech 'virtopsies' -- still 'gold standard'

    oldowan:

    TV crime shows like Bones and CSI are quick to explain each death by showing highly detailed scans and video images of victims’ insides. Traditional autopsies, if shown at all, are at best in supporting roles to the high-tech equipment, and usually gloss over the sometimes physically grueling tasks of sawing through skin and bone.

    But according to two  and body imaging experts at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, the notion that “virtopsy” could replace traditional autopsy— made popular by such TV dramas — is simply not ready for scientifically vigorous prime time. The latest virtual  — including full-body computed tomography (CT) scans,  (MRI), ultrasound, X-ray and  — are helpful, they say, but cannot yet replace a direct physical inspection of the body’s main organs.

    (Source: theolduvaigorge)

    Prehistoric bones: A cottage industry in Siberia

    oldowan:

    It’s hard to imagine, looking out at the frozen expanses of Yakutia, in North Eastern Siberia, that 30,000 or so years ago, so many animal species, now extinct, roamed the Pleistocene grasslands. From 12-foot tall, five-ton wooly mammoth bulls to tiny rodents, an Ice Age hunter would have found as many as 100 animals in each square mile he tracked, at least according to Sergei Zimov, our Ice Age expert, geo-physicist and guide during our recent visit.


    (Source: theolduvaigorge)

    Spending Time with the Family In Pomuch, Mexico a visit to the grandparents involves more skull cleaning then you might think. When you die in Pomuch, you are really only taking a short rest. After a three year rest underground, it’s time for you to get back to work. Your family comes to visit on the third Day of the Dead since you died and digs you back up. (This can be a rather traumatic experience for the relatives, but it is their duty to your memory.) Once out of the ground, your bones are cleaned with brushes, transferred to a wooden crate, and placed on display in the cemetery. The more your relatives care the more work they put into your display, creating a slightly competive atmosphere. You may be dead but you still have to keep up appearances. The ritual which is said to help deal with the pain of death and keep the family together, is also tied to a belief that a poorly taken care of relative can “become angry and wonder lost through the streets.” There is some concern that as the youth of Campeche become more modernized they will abandoned the tradition of cleaning the dead. In the words of one local man speaking of his children “I can’t make them do it, but if they don’t, I don’t know where I’m going to end up.”  Via Atlas Obscura

    Spending Time with the Family

    In Pomuch, Mexico a visit to the grandparents involves more skull cleaning then you might think.

    When you die in Pomuch, you are really only taking a short rest. After a three year rest underground, it’s time for you to get back to work. Your family comes to visit on the third Day of the Dead since you died and digs you back up. (This can be a rather traumatic experience for the relatives, but it is their duty to your memory.) Once out of the ground, your bones are cleaned with brushes, transferred to a wooden crate, and placed on display in the cemetery. The more your relatives care the more work they put into your display, creating a slightly competive atmosphere. You may be dead but you still have to keep up appearances.

    The ritual which is said to help deal with the pain of death and keep the family together, is also tied to a belief that a poorly taken care of relative can “become angry and wonder lost through the streets.” There is some concern that as the youth of Campeche become more modernized they will abandoned the tradition of cleaning the dead. In the words of one local man speaking of his children “I can’t make them do it, but if they don’t, I don’t know where I’m going to end up.” 

    Via Atlas Obscura

    Studying old bones — preservation or perversion?

    A cross-border battle is brewing over 500-year-old bones belonging to some of Ontario’s original inhabitants — a case descendents describe as academic grave robbing.

    The Huron-Wendat Nation is demanding that Louisiana State University return the “stolen” remains of about 200 people. They say researchers improperly gathered the bones from an Ontario ossuary to use for unauthorized student research.

    “It’s a feeling of loss — and I get angry a little bit too because (remains) have no business being in universities or museums,” says retired translator Heather Bastien of Wendake, Que., whose prehistoric ancestors first hunted, fished and farmed in southern Ontario 15,000 years ago.

    The unusual dispute raises questions about the best way for academics to be culturally sensitive — particularly when studying human remains — in a CSI generation that considers bones a DNA treasure trove of clues to scientific, historic, medical and, sometimes, criminal puzzles.

    Unearthing the World's Best-Preserved Skeletons

    ellamorte:

    theblogofdeath:

    In The Empire of Death: A Cultural History of Ossuaries and Charnel Houses, Dr. Paul Koudounaris gives us an intimate understanding of the sites where bones of dead people are placed together en masse. What may seem like a gory theme for a book and photo series is actually a beautiful treatment of the culturally touchy subject of death.