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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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    China imprisons four men for ‘ghost marriage’ corpse bride trafficking Yanchuan court jails men for digging up and selling bodies in afterlife custom of matching dead women to deceased bachelors Photograph: @mr.jerry/Getty Images/Flickr RF A county court in central China has sentenced four men to prison for digging up and selling corpses on the black market to enable “ghost marriages”, a millennia-old custom of burying deceased bachelors alongside newly deceased wives so that they will not grow lonely in the afterlife. On Saturday, the Xi’an Evening News reported that the Yanchuan county court in Yan’an City, Shanxi province, sentenced each of the men to more than two years in prison for stealing 10 female corpses, cleaning them up and counterfeiting their medical records to boost their prices, and selling them on the black market for a total of £25,000. Ritual ghost marriages, which may date back to the 17th century BC, are increasingly rare in contemporary China – Mao Zedong tried to eliminate them when he assumed power in 1949 – but they are still practised in rural parts of Shaanxi, Shanxi, Henan, Hebei and Guangdong provinces. Families often employ a matchmaker to help find a suitable spouse for their deceased loved ones. The four men, with surnames Pang, Bai, He and Zhang, exhumed the corpses in the winter of 2011 from a smattering of arid, coal-rich counties in Shanxi and Shaanxi provinces. The state-run Global Times newspaper reported in 2011 that an influx of coal money to parts of northern Shaanxi province bolstered the area’s underground corpse trade, with a newly wealthy but superstitious demographic suddenly being able to afford high prices for desirable postmortem mates. Some are known to purchase their corpse brides straight from hospitals, where they cut deals with grieving families. This is not the first time that ghost marriage intermediaries have fallen on the wrong side of the law. One woman died over the lunar new year in February 2012 and was sold by her family to the family of a recently deceased young man for about £3,700; soon afterwards, police caught a graverobber selling her twice-exhumed body to another family for slightly less. In 2009, a grieving father in Xianyang City, also in Shaanxi province, paid a team of graverobbers £2,700 to find a suitable bride for his son, who had died in a car crash. They were arrested for exhuming the remains of a teenage girl who had killed herself not long after failing her college entrance exams. According to the Global Times, less affluent families who desire ghost marriages may use a non-human proxy for the corpse bride, such as a silver statuette or a doughy human-shaped biscuit with black beans for eyes. Some may buy an old, rotten corpse at a discounted price, dress it in clothing and reinforce its skeleton with steel wire. The tradition has its own set of customs and rituals, including postmortem marriages with sumptuous feasts and dowries, according to the report.

    China imprisons four men for ‘ghost marriage’ corpse bride trafficking

    Yanchuan court jails men for digging up and selling bodies in afterlife custom of matching dead women to deceased bachelors

    Photograph: @mr.jerry/Getty Images/Flickr RF

    A county court in central China has sentenced four men to prison for digging up and selling corpses on the black market to enable “ghost marriages”, a millennia-old custom of burying deceased bachelors alongside newly deceased wives so that they will not grow lonely in the afterlife.

    On Saturday, the Xi’an Evening News reported that the Yanchuan county court in Yan’an City, Shanxi province, sentenced each of the men to more than two years in prison for stealing 10 female corpses, cleaning them up and counterfeiting their medical records to boost their prices, and selling them on the black market for a total of £25,000.

    Ritual ghost marriages, which may date back to the 17th century BC, are increasingly rare in contemporary China – Mao Zedong tried to eliminate them when he assumed power in 1949 – but they are still practised in rural parts of Shaanxi, Shanxi, Henan, Hebei and Guangdong provinces. Families often employ a matchmaker to help find a suitable spouse for their deceased loved ones.

    The four men, with surnames Pang, Bai, He and Zhang, exhumed the corpses in the winter of 2011 from a smattering of arid, coal-rich counties in Shanxi and Shaanxi provinces.

    The state-run Global Times newspaper reported in 2011 that an influx of coal money to parts of northern Shaanxi province bolstered the area’s underground corpse trade, with a newly wealthy but superstitious demographic suddenly being able to afford high prices for desirable postmortem mates. Some are known to purchase their corpse brides straight from hospitals, where they cut deals with grieving families.

    This is not the first time that ghost marriage intermediaries have fallen on the wrong side of the law. One woman died over the lunar new year in February 2012 and was sold by her family to the family of a recently deceased young man for about £3,700; soon afterwards, police caught a graverobber selling her twice-exhumed body to another family for slightly less.

    In 2009, a grieving father in Xianyang City, also in Shaanxi province, paid a team of graverobbers £2,700 to find a suitable bride for his son, who had died in a car crash. They were arrested for exhuming the remains of a teenage girl who had killed herself not long after failing her college entrance exams.

    According to the Global Times, less affluent families who desire ghost marriages may use a non-human proxy for the corpse bride, such as a silver statuette or a doughy human-shaped biscuit with black beans for eyes. Some may buy an old, rotten corpse at a discounted price, dress it in clothing and reinforce its skeleton with steel wire.

    The tradition has its own set of customs and rituals, including postmortem marriages with sumptuous feasts and dowries, according to the report.

    South Korea Adopts New Mourning Tradition

    Death in any culture has predominately become a paradox of emotions. Throughout our lives we learn that death is inevitable and that it should be approached with acceptance, on the other hand, when someone close to us dies, we are filled with grief – even as we get older, our perception of death is one of trepidation. To overcome these feelings, we’ve turned to commemorating the memory of our loved ones withkeepsake memorials, from memorial tattoos to the revival of Tear Bottles.

    However, for Kim Il-nam, his grief was one that he endured every day since the death of his father 27 years ago. In fact, his loss led  Kim to make a startling decision. Digging up the grave, he had his father’s bones cremated and paid $870 to have the ashes transformed into gem-like beads.

    Another great article from Mysendoff - click through to read the rest!

    polandfromtheinside:

    ZADUSZKI - Polish contemporary equivalent of the pagan holiday “Dziady” (look out: Adam Mickiewicz “Dziady”). It is on 2nd November, after the All Saints’ Day (Wszystkich Świętych). That day people recall everyone which departed from this world, Polish Catholics are praying for all faithful deceaseds which souls according to their faith are staying now in the purgatory. At present graves are being visited rather in the All Saints’ Day which is public holidays. In the All Saints’ Day we light up torches to facilitate dead souls access to purgatory, in Zaduszki it’s the symbol of remembrance of a soul. We also put flowers on graves.

    (via fuckyeahcemeteries)

    nuestrahermana:

    Dia De Los Muertos Is Not Your Halloween by Nuestra Hermana

    As we all know, Halloween in America is right around the corner. Kids & adults alike will be dressed up in costumes, consuming candy, attending parties, navigating through haunted houses and thoroughly enjoying their night. Think about your last Halloween and look at the images above.

    These are still shots of Dia De Los Muertos in Mexico, Guatemala, Ecuador, California & Arizona. They are small snippets of a vibrant, important and REAL holiday for Latin@s. This is not your Halloween.

    Dia De Los Muertos developed out of over 2,500 years of indigenous ritual celebrating death and paying respects to loved ones who have passed away. Scholars state that the Aztecs originally held a month long festival dedicated to the goddess Mictecacihuatl, the ruler of the afterlife.

    After Spanish colonization and many attempts to eradicate the rituals & festival, a new merging with the Catholic holidays All Souls Day & All Saints Day developed over time to what is now Dia De Los Muertos.

    Dia De Los Muertos is celebrated November 1st & 2nd (in alignment with All Saints Day & All Souls Day respectively). It is NOT celebrated on October 31st, it is not tied in with Halloween in America at all.

    In Mexico, November 1st is dedicated as Dia De Los Inocentes, a day to honor and respect the innocents, children & infants to be more specific. November 2nd is Dia De Los Muertos, the day to honor deceased adults.

    On these days, altars are made in honor of them. People build them on their loved ones graves, at home or anywhere they find rightful to honor their loved ones. They make ofrendas (offerings) to the dead of their favorite foods, toys (for children), pictures, pan de muertos, sugar skulls and many other things that help guide the spirits of the dead safely to the altars. Marigolds, known as the flowers of the dead, are usually prominent in the altars.

    In Mexico, many people sleep overnight at the graves. Every ritual & altar is not the same everywhere. Many places have their own traditions and ways of honoring the dead. One thing is for sure, Dia De Los Muertos is not Halloween. It is a sacred time and holiday for Latin@s everywhere.

    So, when you’re dressing up for Halloween remember: doing this, this, this or this is not only disrespectful but it is also a erasure of someone’s real life culture. Think before you walk out of that door.

    (via mexicanisimo)

    jennifuchs: Happy Hallowe’en 31 October 2011 It’s Hallowe’en again. Ok, so that’s maybe stating the obvious, and anyway, what does that have to do with museums? I’ve noticed that Hallowe’en has become quite a big thing here in Germany. Last time I lived here, it was virtually unknown, now there’s hardly a shop that hasn’t jumped in on the game. It’s pumpkins and movie inspired costumes all round, and looks very much like its been imported kit and caboodle from America. I wonder how many people here actually know about its cultural origin? So, to get back to museums, I’ve also noticed lots more museums doing Hallowe’en events, though I don’t know if this has actually increased over the years, or whether it just seems like more because I now hear about everyone’s events on Twitter. But it reminded me of a discussion on the GEM (Group for Education in Museums) discussion list several years back, where some felt it inappropriate for museums to be celebrating Hallowe’en because it was seen as promoting devil worship. At the time, I’d responded with my Scottish Ethnologist hat on, which went something like this:Many of our modern Hallowe’en customs and derivations of them stem from the Celtic celebration of the New Year, which falls on 1st November, Hallowe’en thus being the Celtic New Year’s Eve. The Celtic year is divided into two halves or seasons: a light half and a dark half. The beginning of the Celtic New Year is also the beginning of the dark half of the year and of a new cycle (Beltane, on 1st May, marks the beginning of the light half). Samhain or Samhuinn as it is called (there are different pronunciations in the various Celtic languages) literally means summer’s end. Naturally, as with our modern New Year’s Eve, it was associated with celebrations and customs, as well as also being one of the Celtic fire festivals of which there are several throughout the Celtic year to mark various calendar customs. Night time was always a time when the veil between the world of the humans and the world of the spirits was thinner, and Samhain was one of the nights in the year which was regarded as a liminal space where the veil was at its thinnest. It was believed that both spirits and humans were able to pass over the threshold on that night, and traditional folklore holds many tales of spirits returning to visit their kin, and the doors to the “fairy realm” being opened. As with our New Year Eve’s, divination was common at Samhain, and customs and rituals were performed to thank the gods for a good harvest, and to seek protection for livestock, homes and families throughout the dark half of the year. And so these old customs and traditions gave us many of the games and customs still practised at Hallowe’en today, though often out of context, as well as the idea of having bonfires and candle lit lanterns, and dressing up as supernatural beings. But far from devil worshipping or any of the like, the opposite was in fact the case: protection was being sought from evil spirits, and safekeeping from any harm throughout the harsh winter months, alongside celebrating and giving thanks for the end of a fruitful year and commemorating the dead. Later on with the rise of Christianity, as with so many other pagan festivals, Samhain was “incorporated” into Christian customs – Hallowe’en literally means Hallow’s Eve, i.e. the eve of All Hallows Day, or All Saints Day as it is now called. But, of course, as with e.g. Christmas and Easter, the old pagan customs didn’t die out. In many places that celebrate Hallowe’en it has been reduced to dressing up and the Americanised “Trick or Treat”, but its origins actually go back to the old Celtic festival and its customs. In several places pagan communities in Scotland still celebrate Samhain/ Hallowe’en in the traditional way today. So, there you have it. As with the TV, telephone and Tarmac, yet another thing the Scots can take credit for^^ I, for one, am quite thankful that the American pumpkin has replaced the more traditional turnip lantern as it takes just an evening rather than a whole week to carve and you don’t do yourself nearly as much damage!

    jennifuchs:

    Happy Hallowe’en

    31 October 2011

    It’s Hallowe’en again. Ok, so that’s maybe stating the obvious, and anyway, what does that have to do with museums? I’ve noticed that Hallowe’en has become quite a big thing here in Germany. Last time I lived here, it was virtually unknown, now there’s hardly a shop that hasn’t jumped in on the game. It’s pumpkins and movie inspired costumes all round, and looks very much like its been imported kit and caboodle from America. I wonder how many people here actually know about its cultural origin?

    So, to get back to museums, I’ve also noticed lots more museums doing Hallowe’en events, though I don’t know if this has actually increased over the years, or whether it just seems like more because I now hear about everyone’s events on Twitter. But it reminded me of a discussion on the GEM (Group for Education in Museums) discussion list several years back, where some felt it inappropriate for museums to be celebrating Hallowe’en because it was seen as promoting devil worship. At the time, I’d responded with my Scottish Ethnologist hat on, which went something like this:

    Many of our modern Hallowe’en customs and derivations of them stem from the Celtic celebration of the New Year, which falls on 1st November, Hallowe’en thus being the Celtic New Year’s Eve. The Celtic year is divided into two halves or seasons: a light half and a dark half. The beginning of the Celtic New Year is also the beginning of the dark half of the year and of a new cycle (Beltane, on 1st May, marks the beginning of the light half). Samhain or Samhuinn as it is called (there are different pronunciations in the various Celtic languages) literally means summer’s end.

    Naturally, as with our modern New Year’s Eve, it was associated with celebrations and customs, as well as also being one of the Celtic fire festivals of which there are several throughout the Celtic year to mark various calendar customs. Night time was always a time when the veil between the world of the humans and the world of the spirits was thinner, and Samhain was one of the nights in the year which was regarded as a liminal space where the veil was at its thinnest. It was believed that both spirits and humans were able to pass over the threshold on that night, and traditional folklore holds many tales of spirits returning to visit their kin, and the doors to the “fairy realm” being opened. As with our New Year Eve’s, divination was common at Samhain, and customs and rituals were performed to thank the gods for a good harvest, and to seek protection for livestock, homes and families throughout the dark half of the year.

    And so these old customs and traditions gave us many of the games and customs still practised at Hallowe’en today, though often out of context, as well as the idea of having bonfires and candle lit lanterns, and dressing up as supernatural beings. But far from devil worshipping or any of the like, the opposite was in fact the case: protection was being sought from evil spirits, and safekeeping from any harm throughout the harsh winter months, alongside celebrating and giving thanks for the end of a fruitful year and commemorating the dead. Later on with the rise of Christianity, as with so many other pagan festivals, Samhain was “incorporated” into Christian customs – Hallowe’en literally means Hallow’s Eve, i.e. the eve of All Hallows Day, or All Saints Day as it is now called. But, of course, as with e.g. Christmas and Easter, the old pagan customs didn’t die out.

    In many places that celebrate Hallowe’en it has been reduced to dressing up and the Americanised “Trick or Treat”, but its origins actually go back to the old Celtic festival and its customs. In several places pagan communities in Scotland still celebrate Samhain/ Hallowe’en in the traditional way today.

    So, there you have it. As with the TV, telephone and Tarmac, yet another thing the Scots can take credit for^^

    I, for one, am quite thankful that the American pumpkin has replaced the more traditional turnip lantern as it takes just an evening rather than a whole week to carve and you don’t do yourself nearly as much damage!

    Halloween reflections

    Piece by Chris Catling, via Current Archaeology

    Just now, the streets are full of excited children dressed as witches and ghosts, and, though Halloween will be a distant memory by the time you read this, it is interesting to reflect on the inexorable rise in popularity of this relatively new custom at the expense of Guy Fawkes Night. For an archaeologist or cultural historian, witnessing the replacement of one autumn festival by another is fascinating to watch: here is cultural change in action, rituals literally evolving before our very eyes.

    The place of Guy Fawkes Night as a national celebration has steadily declined since 1859, when the 1606 Thanksgiving Act, making it compulsory to celebrate the uncovering of the 1605 Gunpowder Plot, was finally repealed. More recently, health and safety concerns have led to the demise of private parties remembering the Fifth of November in favour of ‘Bonfire Nights’ run by local charities on the nearest Saturday. Gunpowder, treason and plot have been written out of the story – how do you explain the political and religious issues behind the burning of a group of Catholic conspirators in this secular, multi-cultural, anti-historical age?

    Dressing up as a ghost or ghoul seems a relatively harmless activity by contrast with the inflammatory implications of burning a religious fanatic, especially to children brought up on a diet of Harry Potter and TV vampires. Unlike Guy Fawkes, Halloween seems to have escaped from its religious origins to become a wholly secular occasion, no longer associated with the Christian feasts of All Saints and All Souls (though these are still widely observed in Catholic Europe and Latin America with cemetery visits and the placing of flowers on graves). Big retail chains have played their part in the usurpation of Guy Fawkes: while restrictions on firework sales mean that supermarkets can profit little from Bonfire Night, Halloween tills ring merrily as children pester parents into buying themed sweets, cloaks, masks, and witches hats. Pumpkins – once a semi-mythical fruit known only to English schoolchildren through the stories of Mark Twain – are now as ubiquitous as Christmas trees. Folklorists like to trace Halloween back to the festival of Samhain (meaning ‘summer’s end’), still celebrated in Gaelic-speaking parts of northern Europe until well into the 20th century with bonfires and rituals to ward off evil spirits. Exported to America by Irish migrants, it evolved into today’s Halloween.

    Call it Samhain, All Saints, Guy Fawkes, or Halloween, what does not seem to have changed is the basic human desire to do something communal and festive at the beginning of the darker weeks of the year.