9 research outputs found
Hide, Tallow and Terrapin: Gold Rush-Era Zooarchaeology at Thompsonâs Cove (CA-SFR-186H), San Francisco, California
Sorting the sheep from the goats in the Pastoral Neolithic: morphological and biomolecular approaches at Luxmanda, Tanzania
Making the Dead Visible: Problems and Solutions for âBigâ Picture Approaches to the Past, and Dealing with Large âMortuaryâ Datasets
There can be few âbiggerâ questions than the nature and development of human experience and self-awareness and few better ways to study it than through the changing treatment of the dead over time. Funded by the John Templeton Foundation, the âInvisible Deadâ project (Durham University) is exploring diachronic changes in mortuary practices across two regions: Britain and the Levant. In doing so, it uses archaeology as a way to approach fundamental questions about the human condition. This paper explores the principal difficulties faced during the construction of a database for this project and their wider relevance for the development of robust and successful methods for the study of large âmortuaryâ datasets in the future. It discusses the issues and biases identified within the mortuary record and how the project has sought to mitigate some of these. By adopting a flexible and ultimately expandable approach to data entry and analysis, value can be added to legacy datasets and âgreyâ literature, allowing us to make comparisons between regions which are both geographically and chronologically distinct