8/27/18 8/29/18 Death in American pop culture Life After Death Facing Mortality in America Fear of Death and Dying Rats

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1 8/27/ billion people died since 8000 B.C. - Pon human phenomenon different cultural expectations, variations - Excavating burials who does it and why? - Profit v. knowledge - Social, historical, artistics, cultural, developmental, etc. - Concern with ancient, historical, modern, contemporary societies and the social organization (status), politics and impact of death - Ideologies of death and mortuary practices - What do they do? Why? Cannibalism? - Cross-culture companies and ethnographic approaches - Superstition and non-scientific beliefs, cultural rationales - Spatial organization (cemeteries) - Economic and technical organization (funeral industry) - Representation of death - Death tourism: dark tourism Holocaust 8/29/18 - Death in American pop culture - Sells newspapers and insurance policies - Plots for television programs - Homicide notes and other crime statistics - 80% of American believe they are going to heaven - What form? - Life After Death - Beliefs about immortality influence behavior - What form do we survive in? - Why/ how are people disposed to believe in post-mortem survival? - Is it irrational to desire immortality - Do you want to be alive forever? - Facing Mortality in America - Death is taboo - Try to make it humane hospice - Living will, advanced directives more common - Prevents disputes between family if medical treatment - Fear of Death and Dying - Giving up the enjoyment of life (v. Buddhism) - Uncertainty of what death is and what follows it (v. religion) - What if you don t have to die? - Immortality Project Data on near death experiences - Cryonics freezing of body upon death - Medical science will advance to bring back to life - Suspended animation emergency preservation - Rats - Brains of dying rats might have answers *tunnel of light* - Continued and heighten activity for 30 seconds - Hyperconsciousness neurological basis 1

2 - 4 stories we tell ourselves about death - I want to avoid it, want to be forever young - Resurrection second life - Spiritual immortality soul lives on - Will die, but legacy lives on - Body Worlds present - Plastination preserve human bodies in musculature - NPR 2006 Black Market Bodies - When should we display corpses and why? Cultural? Societal? 8/31/18 - Archeological Analysis of the Heaven s Gate Suicide (March 25, 1997). - Marshall Applewhite created a cult when you see a comet to jump and they would descend into heaven - Male members surgically castrated - Transition, not tragedy - Archeologists look at context, location, surrounding info to give insight to a society's cultural, social and political beliefs - Treatment of the body - Preparation of the disposal facility - Burical context in grave (Grave goods?) - Population profile and biological dimensions - Mutalitions? - Where is the facility in relation to others? - Burial patterns are conservative don t change a lot - Grave goods tell about the status of the body - Quantity v. quality? What is more valuable? - Most valuable is cloth in Ancient Peru - Obsidian - Heaven s Gate Suicide - Shroud, lying on back, hands crossed, tennis shoes, packed bags belief in afterlife; some status - Applewhite was separate from others, so maybe higher status, but very consistent - Documentation was provided stats on race, sex, age - Jonestown Mass Murder - Jim Jones: 1000 members to Guyana - Congressmen and his delegation were killed and Jim Jones persuaded 914 people to commit suicide - Jones shot himself after he persuaded or forced others to kill themselves 9/5/18 - Concept of Perfect Death - Greek mythology 2 sons helped their mom and their reward was dying at the height of their youth, glory, beauty, strength - Tutankhamun the boy King 1324 B.C. 19 years old - Sickle cell? - Eva Peron wife of Argentinian dictator 31 years old - Died in public, power to the body 2

3 - JFK, MLK, Robert F. Kennedy - Princess Diana anthropologically speaking - Most influential people have the most disruptive death - Makeshift memorials - Not Perfect Death - Elvis Presley died alone, old, not as famous, drug addict - Michael Jackson - Cahuachi - Peruvian site: good death - Mummy death, layers - Bad death: treated disrespectfully during death, buried far away - No grave goods, broken limbs, tied legs together - Witch Girl found in N Italy (13 y/o) - Buried face down, rejected from society, seen as a danger even in death - Death Practices in the Ancient World - To be human is to care for the dead - Neanderthals buried their dead not our ancestors - Was some interbreeding between the species and Homo Sapiens Sapiens - Burial attest to their humanity - No art, no language, little advancement in technology, massive brow ridge, riskier manner for hunting - Static lacking in change - Outcompeted by the Homo Sapiens Sapiens - Homo Sapien Sapiens Burial (25,000 years ago) - Wrapped in shroud, ochre painted skin, shell pendant - Headdresses, rabbit - Care, preparation, afterlife - Chinchorro (N. Coastal Chile) B.C - Earliest mummies in the sense of the artificial preservation B.C. black manganese B.C. red ochre - Family cemeteries - Take apart the skeleton, remove internal organs, stuff it, make an ash paste ½ thick, replace the human skin and repaint it - Egypt 2600 B.C. Between 4th and 5th Dynasty - Believe it was accidental (predynastic civilization) - Effect of sun, sand, dryness on bodies - Beliefs and Death Practices - Ka, lives on after death (soul) - Mummified the body to keep ka happy - Must be free from sin to enjoy afterlife - Embalming 1. Brain removed through nose, inwards removed from cut in the left side of the abdomen 2. Body and major organs were placed in matron for a month 3. Dye the body a. Red for men, yellow for women 4. Wrapped the body of aromatic of linen and stuff the body 3

4 5. Canopic jars a. Place organs back in jars 6. Body wrapped in cloth and shroud 7. Trinkets and jewelry 8. Put your portrait of the sarcophagus so the gods know who you are a. Book of the Dead - Weighing of the Heart - Book of the Dead years of history and story many versions 9/7/18 - Death Practices in the Ancient World (Peru) - Paracas Peninsula preceramic village 7000 B.C. - Wrapped their dead (significant) - Beginning of that tradition. Flexed fetal position - Fiber matting, vicuña (a kind of llama) - Llamas live in the mountains and these people are by the sea so they go to great lengths to get it for their dead - Paracas Peninsula 300 B.C. to 100 A.D - Most complex societies with intensive agriculture and what not - Paracas is in the desert - Tp of the hill is tombs (Cavernas) - Dwellings at the bottom - Mummy bundles at the bottom of bottle shaped holes - Early Occupation: Cavernas People - Later Occupation: Necropolis people - 2 different people in same area - Necropolis people bury their dead in the abandoned homes of the cavernas people - Julio C. Tello found 429 mummy bundles that were in the Cerro Colorado hillside habitation zone - Necropolis people are intrusive to Cavernas - Why were the Necropolis Dead buried in the garbage of the earlier people? - Camping out on the peninsula? Necropolis people don t live permanently in Paracas Bay - Where did they come from? Why not bury them in their homes? Nearby civilization? Walked across the desert? - Reburial Theory - Spanish enter Peru in 1532, first 100 years came upon a cemetery and wanted to rebury them so they won t be destroyed and burned - How weird the bodies are - Nasca Trophy Head Taking 100 to 800 A.D. - Cahuachi (Nazca Drainage) in Peruvian Inland - Lots of temples and plazas, burlap bag with a head in it. Fiber rope was textile - Trophy Heads decapitated human heads - Painted on pottery, cultural marker - Hole in forehead so you can carry the heads 4

5 - Late Nazca shift in society - Hair grabbing common in pottery - Early gods, deities - Later warriors, chiefs - Do they reflect warfare? Evidence? Fortifications? Human sacrifice? Antemortem or postmortem? - Largest cache of trophy heads ever found: 48 - Camo Canapo cranial deformation - Ethical marker (permanent) - Death and regeneration of life - Head symbolizes of fertility and rebirth - Death is a source of life, eah death makes possibility of life 9/10/18 - Castro of Monte Mozinho N Portugal (romanization, hybridized culture) - Castro Culture - Early as the 4th century BCE - Celtic origin, settled during Iron Age - Continued tradition of hills, forts, pagan customs until arrival of the Romans ~100 BCE. - Unique blending of cultures in landscapes and archaeologically - Organic circle houses, central plaza celtic - Post- Roman square homes - Extractions - Originally conducted in 1930s continued from 1970s to 1990s - Separation from dead and living - Historically, anything below the ground is owned by the government - Plaza for meetings, walls 3 ½ feet thick - Pre and Proto Romanization - Necropolis flat and layed in, elongated similar to modern burials - Burial Goods - Post Romanization - Alters, cremated remains, middle of central plaza - Grave goods on display in central/ center of community - Parafield Museum - Amazing interpretive center, lot of $ into culture, heritage - More realistic idea of the necropolis 1m 2 - Grave Goods and Artifact Display - Match artifacts to individual graves - Pre to post glass was all Romanization - Social rank, prepare them for next time - Necropolis Reconstruction - Cremated remains next to shroud - Burial jars, plates, good - Discolored sand to make a plot for the goods - Neolithic and stuff is good - Worried about human remains - Main person is missing. Missing? Removed? Proper Catholic Burial? 5