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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    Every year, Americans bury enough metal in the ground to rebuild the Golden Gate Bridge, says Vashon Island coffin maker Marcus Daly. His simple, handcrafted wooden coffins are an economical and environmentally friendly burial alternative. But Daly believes a coffin’s most important feature is that it can be carried. Here’s why.

    Special thanks to Marcus Daly of Marian Caskets. mariancaskets.com
    Original music by Jesse Solomon Clark. agentsdelfuturo.com
    Produced by Visual Contact visualcontact.com.

    ‘Body Worlds: Pulse’ at Discovery Times Square A man and woman, stripped of skin, are balanced in a balletic embrace, but their skulls and thoracic and abdominal cavities are open from behind and their spines are pulled backward, with organs and muscles attached. A woman stands erect, also skinless, a slightly melancholy expression emerging from her facial musculature, her belly sliced vertically so we can see her liver and intestines, along with a 5-month-old fetus in her womb. Another flayed body welcomes us into this new exhibition, “Body Worlds: Pulse” at Discovery Times Square, holding aloft, with pride, the complete coat of skin that has been removed from his body. These are not models (or allusions to “The Silence of the Lambs”) but actual people who, since 1983, have donated their bodies for such preservation and display. More than 13,200 of the living made such promises; 1,254 of them are deceased, and some of them (with organs from other sources) appear among the 200 specimens displayed here. You might assume that sliced and pulled-apart human cadavers, preserved in all the freshness of death by infusions of plastics and resin, no longer have the power to shock or amaze. After all, since the German anatomist Gunther von Hagens invented the process he calls plastination in 1977, then started the donation program with his Institute of Plastination, and finally began mounting specimens in “Body Worlds” exhibitions in 1995, some 36 million people have seen the shows in nearly two dozen countries in 11 different incarnations. (This one, “Pulse,” was designed for New York.) A competitor arose, Premier Exhibitions, and opened a series of successful exhibitions in the United States (including one that has been closed at the South Street Seaport since Hurricane Sandy. (Source: The New York TImes)

    ‘Body Worlds: Pulse’ at Discovery Times Square

    A man and woman, stripped of skin, are balanced in a balletic embrace, but their skulls and thoracic and abdominal cavities are open from behind and their spines are pulled backward, with organs and muscles attached.

    A woman stands erect, also skinless, a slightly melancholy expression emerging from her facial musculature, her belly sliced vertically so we can see her liver and intestines, along with a 5-month-old fetus in her womb.

    Another flayed body welcomes us into this new exhibition, “Body Worlds: Pulse” at Discovery Times Square, holding aloft, with pride, the complete coat of skin that has been removed from his body.

    These are not models (or allusions to “The Silence of the Lambs”) but actual people who, since 1983, have donated their bodies for such preservation and display. More than 13,200 of the living made such promises; 1,254 of them are deceased, and some of them (with organs from other sources) appear among the 200 specimens displayed here.

    You might assume that sliced and pulled-apart human cadavers, preserved in all the freshness of death by infusions of plastics and resin, no longer have the power to shock or amaze. After all, since the German anatomist Gunther von Hagens invented the process he calls plastination in 1977, then started the donation program with his Institute of Plastination, and finally began mounting specimens in “Body Worlds” exhibitions in 1995, some 36 million people have seen the shows in nearly two dozen countries in 11 different incarnations. (This one, “Pulse,” was designed for New York.) A competitor arose, Premier Exhibitions, and opened a series of successful exhibitions in the United States (including one that has been closed at the South Street Seaport since Hurricane Sandy.

    (Source: The New York TImes)

    Vatican denounces Mexico Death Saint

    A senior Vatican official has condemned the cult of Santa Muerte, or Holy Death, in Mexico as “blasphemous”.

    The president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Culture, Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, said worshipping Santa Muerte was a “degeneration of religion”.

    Cardinal Ravasi spoke at a series of events for believers and non-believers in Mexico City.

    The cult, which reveres death, has been growing rapidly in Mexico.

    It is represented by a cloaked female skeleton clutching a scythe.

    It is particularly popular in areas of Mexico that have suffered from extreme violence carried out by the country’s drug cartels.

    The cult is believed to date back to colonial times.

    It merges indigenous beliefs with the tradition of venerating saints introduced by Christian missionaries after the Spanish conquest of Mexico.

    (Source: BBC News)

    Why Georgians 'dine with the dead'

    In many Western countries graveyards are seen as sinister or even frightening but not so in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia.

    As with other eastern Orthodox countries, it is common for Georgians to honour their deceased relatives by taking food and wine to cemeteries, and having feasts beside the graves.

    Although practised thoughout the year, Orthodox Easter is one of the busiest times for the tradition.

    Damien McGuinness joined families in the Georgian capital Tbilisi to find out more about dining with the dead.

    The Close-up series focuses on aspects of life in countries and cities around the world. What may seem ordinary and familiar to the people who live there can be surprising to those who don’t.

    (Source: BBC)

    Burial grounds are resource for living, charity Caring for God’s Acre says Burial grounds should be seen as a “resource and not a burden” for the living, a charity says. Four sites will be chosen in Wales by Caring for God’s Acre to be used as examples of how their conservation can help society. (Source: BBC News)

    Burial grounds are resource for living, charity Caring for God’s Acre says

    Burial grounds should be seen as a “resource and not a burden” for the living, a charity says.

    Four sites will be chosen in Wales by Caring for God’s Acre to be used as examples of how their conservation can help society.

    (Source: BBC News)

    Waterville ‘make-your-own-coffin’ class dead on arrival ‘Americans are really good at ignoring the fact that they’re going to die,’ says event organizer Chuck Lakin when no one shows up for seminar WATERVILLE — Americans are afraid of death. That’s probably why nobody signed up for Saturday’s scheduled make-your-own-coffin workshop at Barrels, in downtown Waterville. Natural-burial and home-funeral advocate Chuck Lakin, a woodworker from Waterville who had organized the 9 a.m. workshop, said he was disappointed that his planned event did not materialize, but he added that he understands. “Americans are really good at ignoring the fact that they’re going to die,” Lakin said from his home workshop on Barnet Street. “They don’t want to talk about it because most people have never been in a room with a dead person that wasn’t embalmed and sitting in a funeral home. “One hundred years ago, death was a part of life. The bodies were usually taken care of at home, so you saw death. It was a personal thing.” (Source: Morning Sentinel)

    Waterville ‘make-your-own-coffin’ class dead on arrival

    ‘Americans are really good at ignoring the fact that they’re going to die,’ says event organizer Chuck Lakin when no one shows up for seminar

    WATERVILLE — Americans are afraid of death.

    That’s probably why nobody signed up for Saturday’s scheduled make-your-own-coffin workshop at Barrels, in downtown Waterville.

    Natural-burial and home-funeral advocate Chuck Lakin, a woodworker from Waterville who had organized the 9 a.m. workshop, said he was disappointed that his planned event did not materialize, but he added that he understands.

    “Americans are really good at ignoring the fact that they’re going to die,” Lakin said from his home workshop on Barnet Street. “They don’t want to talk about it because most people have never been in a room with a dead person that wasn’t embalmed and sitting in a funeral home.

    “One hundred years ago, death was a part of life. The bodies were usually taken care of at home, so you saw death. It was a personal thing.”

    (Source: Morning Sentinel)

    Imagine the horror of lying on your death bed knowing you’d never made a bucket list What drives this list is the fear of dying with regrets for what you haven’t yet done I’m a firm believer in lists. Lists importantly titled “Things To Do (Urgent)”. Lists compiled in December of all the new people you met in the previous 12 months. Lists of unpleasant tasks to be undergone, cunningly salted with easily-crossed-off mini-tasks (“Ring emergency rising-damp people. Weigh self. Ring school to complain about child’s detention. Make ham sandwich…”) But there’s one list I can’t bring myself to make: the bucket list, of things you’d like to acquire or achieve before you die. According to new research by a tour-specialist company, 40 per cent of 39-year-olds now draw up bucket lists. Among those surveyed, a few simply want to make their first million before they die – a uniquely pointless ambition, under the circumstances. Some (one in five, apparently) want to own a Porsche. Others long to have daredevil fun with bungee ropes or lunar expeditions. “It was great,” said the researchers, “to see the emphasis placed on experiences over material aims.”     (Source: The Guardian)

    Imagine the horror of lying on your death bed knowing you’d never made a bucket list

    What drives this list is the fear of dying with regrets for what you haven’t yet done

    I’m a firm believer in lists. Lists importantly titled “Things To Do (Urgent)”. Lists compiled in December of all the new people you met in the previous 12 months. Lists of unpleasant tasks to be undergone, cunningly salted with easily-crossed-off mini-tasks (“Ring emergency rising-damp people. Weigh self. Ring school to complain about child’s detention. Make ham sandwich…”) But there’s one list I can’t bring myself to make: the bucket list, of things you’d like to acquire or achieve before you die.

    According to new research by a tour-specialist company, 40 per cent of 39-year-olds now draw up bucket lists. Among those surveyed, a few simply want to make their first million before they die – a uniquely pointless ambition, under the circumstances. Some (one in five, apparently) want to own a Porsche. Others long to have daredevil fun with bungee ropes or lunar expeditions. “It was great,” said the researchers, “to see the emphasis placed on experiences over material aims.”    

    (Source: The Guardian)

    Marc Almond channels love and death in Ten Plagues at Wilton’s Music Hall Performed by former Soft Cell singer Marc Almond, writer Mark Ravenhill and composer Conor Mitchell’s song cycle about the 1665 London Plague (and by extension the ‘gay plague’, as Aids was initially known in some quarters) won a Festival First when it debuted in Edinburgh in 2011. Now relocated to the gorgeously distressed East End music hall Wilton’s, it may have found its ideal home, the venue’s scruffy opulence being perfectly matched to the dirty glamour of the haunted, disease-ridden world described by Almond’s narrator. Almond isn’t the greatest actor and he doesn’t always demonstrate the mastery of vocal technique required to get the most out of Ravenhill’s libretto, especially at first when he’s setting the scene to Mitchell’s on-stage piano accompaniment. But something magical happens a few numbers in when the music briefly veers off into more velvety, torch song territory – Tainted Love à la Schubert – and Almond is joined by a hallucinatory projection of an actor doing some sort of ‘Alas, poor Yorick’ routine. The feverish lament to desire and death that follows in Hester Chillingworth’s evocative, minimalist staging lacks variety but hits some huge emotional notes. In its final moments, Almond gets to show off his pop stardom-honed microphone technique as he belts out the life-affirming line ‘Sing the song’ and variations thereof – not the cleverest or most intricate words Ravenhill will ever pen but hard to resist when there’s a sudden choral swell all around you in the auditorium. Until May 18, Wilton’s. www.wiltons.org.uk (Source: Metro)

    Marc Almond channels love and death in Ten Plagues at Wilton’s Music Hall

    Performed by former Soft Cell singer Marc Almond, writer Mark Ravenhill and composer Conor Mitchell’s song cycle about the 1665 London Plague (and by extension the ‘gay plague’, as Aids was initially known in some quarters) won a Festival First when it debuted in Edinburgh in 2011.

    Now relocated to the gorgeously distressed East End music hall Wilton’s, it may have found its ideal home, the venue’s scruffy opulence being perfectly matched to the dirty glamour of the haunted, disease-ridden world described by Almond’s narrator.

    Almond isn’t the greatest actor and he doesn’t always demonstrate the mastery of vocal technique required to get the most out of Ravenhill’s libretto, especially at first when he’s setting the scene to Mitchell’s on-stage piano accompaniment. But something magical happens a few numbers in when the music briefly veers off into more velvety, torch song territory – Tainted Love à la Schubert – and Almond is joined by a hallucinatory projection of an actor doing some sort of ‘Alas, poor Yorick’ routine. The feverish lament to desire and death that follows in Hester Chillingworth’s evocative, minimalist staging lacks variety but hits some huge emotional notes.

    In its final moments, Almond gets to show off his pop stardom-honed microphone technique as he belts out the life-affirming line ‘Sing the song’ and variations thereof – not the cleverest or most intricate words Ravenhill will ever pen but hard to resist when there’s a sudden choral swell all around you in the auditorium.

    Until May 18, Wilton’s. www.wiltons.org.uk

    (Source: Metro)

    Dead and Buried is an innovative research project that enagaged a group of young people with the opportunity to work alongside Dr Hannah Rumble, from Bath University’s Centre for Death and Society and Charlotte Chapman, a facilitator from Kumiko Community Arts, to engage in a participatory arts project exploring death and natural burial. The project ran for 7 weeks, meeting one afternoon a week, at The Park local opportunity centre in Knowle West, Bristol. The participants ranged in age from 17 to 25 and all came from very different backgrounds.
    Through a series of structured workshops that provoked questioning and exploration around death and burial, the young people were encourgaed to think critically, to explore these themes and develop a “creative response”. 
    The result was a very successfull week long exhibition at Centrespace Gallery in Bristol in April 2013.

    (Source: Vimeo)