Unusual Death and Memorialization

Burial, Space, and Memory in the Post-Medieval North

Titta Kallio-Seppä, Sanna Lipkin, Tiina Väre, Ulla Moilanen

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781800736023
• eBook ISBN: 9781800736030
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Social Sciences

Most cultures and societies have their own customs and traditions of treating their dead. In the past, some deceased received a burial that deviated from tradition. The reasons for unusual burial could result from reasons such as outbreaks of epidemics or wars, or from premature births, distinctive social status, or disability. Authors present a selection of cases addressing the issue of unusual deaths, burials, or ways to remember the deceased. Chapters explore theoretical views related to social memory of death and memorializing the deceased and their resting places during modern period. The case studies introduce varied views on 'otherness' that are visible in burial customs and memorialization.

Table of contents

• Unusual Death and Memorialization
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Introduction — In Search of the Unusual in Early Modern and Modern Burial Traditions: Titta Kallio-Seppä, Sanna Lipkin, Annemari Tranberg, Tiina Väre, and Ulla Moilanen
• Part I — Memorials, Graveyards, Epidemics: Inequality, Disease, and Sudden Death
• Chapter 1 — Forgotten and Remembered: Unusual Memorial Practices at Buffalo’s Old Cemeteries
• Chapter 2 — Reactions to Tragedy: Familial and Community Memorials to Sudden Occupational Deaths in Britain and Ireland
• Chapter 3 — Memory of Epidemic Diseases in Finland: Old Disease Cemeteries and Modern Urban Planning
• Chapter 4 — Freethinkers’ Cemeteries and Local Secular Burial Culture in Fnland
• Part II — Peculiar Burial Places
• Chapter 5 — Death during Retreat: The Burials of Carolean Soldiers in Jämtland and Trondelag (Sweden and Norway)
• Chapter 6 — Taken to the Island: Temporary Burials in Early and Late Modern Periods in Finnish Periphery
• Part III — Memories and Folklore of Unusual Death
• Chapter 7 — “On the Apparitions of Drowned Men”: Folklore and the Memory of Unnatural Death at Haffjardarey, Western Iceland
• Chapter 8 — Death Lives with Us: Witchcraft on the East Coast of Bothnian Bay during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
• Part IV — Unusual Cause of Death
• Chapter 9 — The Cause of Death—Arsenic or Mercury?: Investigation of Human Remains from Entombments in the Moscow Kremlin (Sixteenth–Early Seventeenth Century)
• Chapter 10 — Sawed Skulls: Archaeological Evidence of Medicolegal Autopsies in Finland
• Afterword
• Index