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.

    Grave at ‘Alfred the Great’ Winchester church exhumed An unmarked grave has been exhumed at a church where the remains of King Alfred the Great are thought to be buried. Human remains from the grave at St Bartholomew’s Church in Winchester have been removed to secure storage. A church spokesman said no scientific investigation of the remains had been permitted yet. It is thought the bones of the Saxon king could have been moved to the church from the ruins of the nearby Hyde Abbey in the 19th Century. A Church of England spokesman said the decision to exhume on Monday and Tuesday was taken to “counter the risk of theft from or vandalism to the grave”. Read more here.

    Grave at ‘Alfred the Great’ Winchester church exhumed

    An unmarked grave has been exhumed at a church where the remains of King Alfred the Great are thought to be buried.

    Human remains from the grave at St Bartholomew’s Church in Winchester have been removed to secure storage.

    A church spokesman said no scientific investigation of the remains had been permitted yet.

    It is thought the bones of the Saxon king could have been moved to the church from the ruins of the nearby Hyde Abbey in the 19th Century.

    A Church of England spokesman said the decision to exhume on Monday and Tuesday was taken to “counter the risk of theft from or vandalism to the grave”.

    Read more here.

    Secrets from the grave of Brazil’s first emperor: Dom Pedro I and his two wives exhumed (with one woman so well preserved she still had hair, nail and eyelashes) The remains of the first emperor of Brazil Dom Pedro I and his two wives have been exhumed 180 years after he died which could re-write the history of the country.  Tests were carried out in secrecy between February and September 2012 by historian and archaeologist Valdirene Carmo Ambiel at the University of Sao Paulo who hopes to shed more light on the Imperial family.  Over three mornings, the remains were transported from the Brazilian Imperial Crypt, in Independence Park, to the university’s medical school. Read more here.

    Secrets from the grave of Brazil’s first emperor: Dom Pedro I and his two wives exhumed (with one woman so well preserved she still had hair, nail and eyelashes)

    The remains of the first emperor of Brazil Dom Pedro I and his two wives have been exhumed 180 years after he died which could re-write the history of the country. 

    Tests were carried out in secrecy between February and September 2012 by historian and archaeologist Valdirene Carmo Ambiel at the University of Sao Paulo who hopes to shed more light on the Imperial family. 

    Over three mornings, the remains were transported from the Brazilian Imperial Crypt, in Independence Park, to the university’s medical school.

    Read more here.

    The last Medici may not have died of syphilis after all Exhumed bones of Anna Maria Louisa de’ Medici show no signs of late-stage syphilis. In 1743, the last member of the family that had ruled Florence for almost 300 years died a slow and painful death. Historical documents suggest that Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici suffered from syphilis or breast cancer. But a first look at samples of her bone suggests that syphilis may not have killed her. In 1966, the tombs of the Medici family were swamped in mud during severe flooding of Florence, which many feared had damaged the bodies. But Anna Maria Luisa’s skeleton was found to be mostly intact when it was exhumed last October as part of a research collaboration between the University of Florence in Italy and the Reiss Engelhorn Museum in Mannheim, Germany. The first pictures from the exhumation were released at a press briefing today. An exhibition, ‘The Medici: people, power and passion’, opens at the Reiss Engelhorn Museum on 17 February — the day before the 270th anniversary of Anna Maria Luisa’s death. It brings together art, history and science to present the lives of the Medici family, which ruled Florence from the fifteenth century until the death of Anna Maria Luisa’s brother in 1737 and which produced four popes. Anna Maria Luisa married Johann Wilhelm II, ruler of the Electoral Palatinate, a territory of the Holy Roman Empire that is now in Germany’s Rhineland. After her husband’s death in 1716, she returned to live in Florence; however, researchers were surprised to discover that she was buried in the crown of the Palatinate, rather than the death crown of the Medicis. Read more here.

    The last Medici may not have died of syphilis after all

    Exhumed bones of Anna Maria Louisa de’ Medici show no signs of late-stage syphilis.

    In 1743, the last member of the family that had ruled Florence for almost 300 years died a slow and painful death. Historical documents suggest that Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici suffered from syphilis or breast cancer. But a first look at samples of her bone suggests that syphilis may not have killed her.

    In 1966, the tombs of the Medici family were swamped in mud during severe flooding of Florence, which many feared had damaged the bodies. But Anna Maria Luisa’s skeleton was found to be mostly intact when it was exhumed last October as part of a research collaboration between the University of Florence in Italy and the Reiss Engelhorn Museum in Mannheim, Germany. The first pictures from the exhumation were released at a press briefing today.

    An exhibition, ‘The Medici: people, power and passion’, opens at the Reiss Engelhorn Museum on 17 February — the day before the 270th anniversary of Anna Maria Luisa’s death. It brings together art, history and science to present the lives of the Medici family, which ruled Florence from the fifteenth century until the death of Anna Maria Luisa’s brother in 1737 and which produced four popes.

    Anna Maria Luisa married Johann Wilhelm II, ruler of the Electoral Palatinate, a territory of the Holy Roman Empire that is now in Germany’s Rhineland. After her husband’s death in 1716, she returned to live in Florence; however, researchers were surprised to discover that she was buried in the crown of the Palatinate, rather than the death crown of the Medicis.

    Read more here.

    Yasser Arafat: 10 other people who have been exhumed The remains of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat have been exhumed to investigate allegations he was murdered. The bodies of many well-known people have been dug up in the course of history, for myriad reasons. Here is a selection.

    Yasser Arafat: 10 other people who have been exhumed

    The remains of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat have been exhumed to investigate allegations he was murdered. The bodies of many well-known people have been dug up in the course of history, for myriad reasons. Here is a selection.

    • Posted 5 months ago
    • December 18th, 2012

    2 Likes & Reblogs

    theossuary: Since exhumations are all the rage right now, I thought I’d share my favorite: Elizabeth Siddal, artist and model to the Pre-Raphaelites.Siddal died of a laudanum overdose at the age of 32 in 1862 in London. Her husband, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, left a journal containing the only copies of many of his poems in her coffin, tucking it away in her famous red hair. Rossetti, drug- and alcohol-addled by the end of the 1860s, became obsessed with retrieving those poems so that he could publish them. Or, it seems, Rossetti’s agent, the slightly (or totally) shady Charles Augustus Howell, became obsessed with this. In any case, Howell exhumed her coffin in the middle of the night at Highgate Cemetery. Howell reported back to Rossetti that she was remarkably well preserved and still beautiful. Whether this was actually true or not, the manuscript didn’t make it out so well preserved. A worm had burrowed through the entire book, leaving behind a big old wormhole. More here and here.

    theossuary:

    Since exhumations are all the rage right now, I thought I’d share my favorite: Elizabeth Siddal, artist and model to the Pre-Raphaelites.

    Siddal died of a laudanum overdose at the age of 32 in 1862 in London. Her husband, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, left a journal containing the only copies of many of his poems in her coffin, tucking it away in her famous red hair.

    Rossetti, drug- and alcohol-addled by the end of the 1860s, became obsessed with retrieving those poems so that he could publish them. Or, it seems, Rossetti’s agent, the slightly (or totally) shady Charles Augustus Howell, became obsessed with this. In any case, Howell exhumed her coffin in the middle of the night at Highgate Cemetery. 

    Howell reported back to Rossetti that she was remarkably well preserved and still beautiful. Whether this was actually true or not, the manuscript didn’t make it out so well preserved. A worm had burrowed through the entire book, leaving behind a big old wormhole.
    More here and here.

    (via lostinhistory)

    Smithsonian.com: The Great New England Vampire Panic

    theossuary:

    Exhumations! Shenanigans! Connecticut! Read all about it:

    Children playing near a hillside gravel mine found the first graves. One ran home to tell his mother, who was skeptical at first—until the boy produced a skull.

    Because this was Griswold, Connecticut, in 1990, police initially thought the burials might be the work of a local serial killer named Michael Ross, and they taped off the area as a crime scene. But the brown, decaying bones turned out to be more than a century old. The Connecticut state archaeologist, Nick Bellantoni, soon determined that the hillside contained a colonial-era farm cemetery. New England is full of such unmarked family plots, and the 29 burials were typical of the 1700s and early 1800s: The dead, many of them children, were laid to rest in thrifty Yankee style, in simple wood coffins, without jewelry or even much clothing, their arms resting by their sides or crossed over their chests.

    Except, that is, for Burial Number 4.

    Read more. Via Powered by Osteons.

    The Great New England Vampire Panic

    Photo by Landon Nordeman, Smithsonian.com.

    Grave Trade

    History in the UK is set to explore death and burial through the lens of a family-run business in Grave Trade from ITV Studios.

    History, the joint venture between A+E Networks and BSkyB, has commissioned the six-part, one-hour episode series which is currently in production and scheduled to broadcast in the fall.

    Grave Trade focuses on T Cribbs & Sons, one of the UK’s longest running funeral businesses. The series follows the inner workings of the family-run business as well as a team of archaeologists as they excavate bodies from Roman, Saxon, medieval and post-medieval sites from across the country. Each episode will have a theme that ties together the contemporary funeral directors and the archaeologists at work.

    “We’re very excited about this commission as ITV Studios have found a really original way to tackle this sensitive subject matter, one that is rarely seen on television,” said Rachel Job, head of acquisitions and commissioning, History and Military History at A+E Networks UK. “Death is a hugely important and ritualistic part of any society and the archaeologists’ discoveries, contrasting with the busy contemporary funeral trade, will capture a revealing insight into how our perceptions of death have changed throughout history.”

    This sounds FAB! Can’t wait.

    Police ‘protect identity of the dead’ by covering headstones with bubblewrap as they exhume pauper’s graveDetectives bizarrely wrapped more than 20 graves and headstones in bubble-wrap and tape at a cemetery to ‘protect the identities’ of the dead. Police officers painstakingly covered each tombstone in plastic sheeting to spare any of those buried - most decades ago - from being identified. The operation was carried out on Friday before detectives started exhuming the body of a man from a pauper’s grave… I really loathe posting stories from the Daily Fail, but y’know, needs must and all! 

    Police ‘protect identity of the dead’ by covering headstones with bubblewrap as they exhume pauper’s grave

    Detectives bizarrely wrapped more than 20 graves and headstones in bubble-wrap and tape at a cemetery to ‘protect the identities’ of the dead.

    Police officers painstakingly covered each tombstone in plastic sheeting to spare any of those buried - most decades ago - from being identified.

    The operation was carried out on Friday before detectives started exhuming the body of a man from a pauper’s grave…

    I really loathe posting stories from the Daily Fail, but y’know, needs must and all! 

    theossuary:

    A great documentary from 2001—“Changing Tombs”—is available in four parts on YouTube.

    It chronicles the work of the London Necropolis Company, who were hired to exhume the remains of about 1,500 dead folks from the graveyard and crypt of the 18th-century St. Luke’s Church in London, to make way for its refurbishment as a London Symphony Orchestra facility. 

    Highlights:

    • Part One (above): Astonishingly well-preserved remains exhumed from the site, dating from the mid-19th century
    • Part Two: An overview of the 19th-centurty “burial crisis” in the U.K. and some choice passages from George Alfred Walker’s Gatherings from Graveyards; and details about Necropolis job requirements, which include a smallpox inoculation (something the British public stopped receiving in the early 1970s)
    • Part Three: A Necropolis employee explains how his work helped him lose his religion; the difficulty of getting Chinese food delivered to a cemetery; and a sweet-ass Volvo hearse
    • Part Four: Conclusion of the project and reburial of all the St. Luke’s remains in their new home, a mass grave outside London

    Hope you enjoy as much as I did!

    (via theossuary)

    biomedicalephemera: Exhumed cadaver. Buried 10 months. 150 years before the start of the Body Farm at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, medical anthropologists in France were (legally) exhuming cadavers of vagrants and unidentified persons. They were examining the postmortem changes in the body when the circumstances of death were known, and the body was buried or stored in various conditions. By studying known cases, they were more able to examine and identify cadavers of unknown origin, and re-examine exhumed cadavers when a death is deemed suspicious after burial. The science of forensic anthropology languished and was largely ignored during most of the Victorian era, at least in the “Western” world. Even so, the work done by French physicians at the end of the 18th and into the 19th century provided a solid scientific foundation for when the field found much renewed interest, around the turn of the 20th century. Trait des Exhumations Juridiques. M. Orfila and M. O. Lesueur, 1834.

    biomedicalephemera:

    Exhumed cadaver. Buried 10 months.

    150 years before the start of the Body Farm at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, medical anthropologists in France were (legally) exhuming cadavers of vagrants and unidentified persons. They were examining the postmortem changes in the body when the circumstances of death were known, and the body was buried or stored in various conditions. By studying known cases, they were more able to examine and identify cadavers of unknown origin, and re-examine exhumed cadavers when a death is deemed suspicious after burial.

    The science of forensic anthropology languished and was largely ignored during most of the Victorian era, at least in the “Western” world. Even so, the work done by French physicians at the end of the 18th and into the 19th century provided a solid scientific foundation for when the field found much renewed interest, around the turn of the 20th century.

    Trait des Exhumations Juridiques. M. Orfila and M. O. Lesueur, 1834.

    (via theossuary)