NMC320H1

The Archaeology of Death

Death is an unavoidable part of the human experience, and each culture has its own unique ways of handling the loss of family and community members and conceptualizing the relationships between the living and the dead. This course represents an intensive education in the archaeology of death. Participants in this class will read a variety of theoretical and methodological literature outlining several approaches to reconstructing the ways that people have disposed of the dead throughout history, and will use these frameworks to examine in detail the primary archaeological data for mortuary practices from sites in the ancient Near East.