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The World Heritage Site of Wanar in Senegal features 21 stone circles, remarkable not least because they were erected in the twelfth and thirteenth century AD, when Islam ruled the Indian Ocean and Europe was in its Middle Ages. The state of preservation has benefited the exemplary investigation currently carried out by a French-Senegalese team, which we are pleased to report here. The site began as a burial ground to which monumental stones were added, perhaps echoing the form of original funerary houses. Found in a neighbouring field were scoops left from the cutting out of the cylindrical monoliths from surface rock. While the origins of Wanar lie in a period of state formation, the monuments are shown to have had a long ritual use. The investigation not only provides a new context for one of the most important sites in West Africa but the precise determination of the sequence and techniques used at Wanar offers key pointers for the understanding of megalithic structures everywhere. Keywords: Senegal, protohistoric, second millennium AD, megaliths, mortuary ritual, Introduction The megalithic phenomenon in Senegambia belongs to the protohistoric period, early second millennium AD, which is closely linked to the context of emerging states (Bocoum 2000). Megaliths were erected [...]

From the late-19th to the early-20th centuries, immigrant laborers from a wide range of countries were brought to Hawai'i by white plantation owners who were in need of a large and inexpensive labor force. Initially hired as indentured servants and segregated by ethnic group in plantation contexts, these workers continued to maintain strong ethnic/national identities, even after settling in Hawai'i. In contemporary Hawai'i, identities that developed in the plantation context have combined with the Hawaiian culture of aloha and diversity to form a distinctive 'local' culture, in which ethnic identity and local birth are simultaneously prized. A survey of grave markers of the Chinese worker cemetery associated with Pahala Plantation has revealed the ways in which these markers were used to negotiate the eventual formation of the 'local' culture in present day Hawai'i.

The manner in which Neolithic mortuary and ritual practices using certain images and structures like plastered skulls to connect social memory of the dead with time is discussed. They supported the communities' concepts of bodily regeneration and recirculation using practices that facilitated an initial remembrance and a gradual forgetting of the dead.

The authors study burials of the medieval period in western Mongolia shortly before the emergence of Genghis Khan. They find that both inhumation and cremation are practised, with a variety of accompanying rituals. Systematic micro-analysis of bone fragments on the one hand, and the accounts of early travellers on the other, allow these researchers to propose detailed explanations of mortuary practice in thirteenth century Altai that will be highly suggestive to prehistorians working elsewhere. Keywords: Mongolia, Egyin Gol, Genghis Khan period, funeral practices, cremation, burial, Introduction The sites presented in this paper are located in northern Mongolia, and specifically in the Egyin Gol valley near the Egyin Gol river, (Figure 1), some 20km upstream from [...]

ABSTRACT In Eastern Uganda, a married woman should be buried at her husband's home, raising questions such as: which husband? were they really married? These questions become urgent when a [...]

ABSTRACT This paper presents a brief summary of a program of study of the archaeology of caves and rock shelters in East Kalimantan, especially the results of recent fieldwork along [...]

ABSTRACT The excavation of Ban Rai rock shelter (Pang Mapha district, Mae Hong Son Province, northwestern Thailand) has uncovered evidence relating to changing patterns of prehistoric human activity. Analyses of [...]

ABSTRACT This paper reports on the principal archaeological results of a renewed program of fieldwork in the Niah Caves (Sarawak) by an interdisciplinary team of archaeologists and environmental scientists. The [...]

Abstract Several aspects of mortuary customs in Ireland have already been studied in detail. This paper focuses on the role of hospitality on the occasion of death from the seventeenth [...]

The role of birds in mortuary practices and in the ideological beliefs of Stone Age northern Europe is examined through an exploration of burial sites at Ajvide (Gotland, Sweden) and Zvejnieki (Latvia). Bird remains at the burial sites indicate similarities in the perception of birds and their symbolic roles during the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods.

The literature of pastoral care, by the second half of the fourteenth century, manifests interest in the particular ways and means of dying. The article explores the elements of late medieval death culture as it is presented in Julian of Norwich's works as she uses pastoral discourses originally intended to teach all Christians about death in order to establish a commonality with all of her readers.

The bakeries and breweries attached to Senwosret III's mortuary temple in Abydos, Egypt are investigated for understanding about the secular activities provided by the temple. The investigation on the 'shena', the economic wing which coordinated the provisioning and distribution of supplies to the temples, presents a glimpse of how archaeological study can further help in the understanding of the economic and administrative organization of religious institutions.

This paper uses a "dates as data" approach to understand how grave good use and cemetery space changed across the early medieval period in England. A series of composite kernel density estimations were created, based on a dataset of nearly 1100 graves with associated radiocarbon dates, from between the fourth and ninth centuries AD. This modeling revealed a previously unrecognized peak in grave furnishing around 600 AD, which coincides with a peak in isolated burials, and a low point for unfurnished graves and for small cemeteries. It argues that this peak is unrecognized as previous models of chronological change have focused only on graves containing chronologically distinctive artifacts and highlights the importance of radiocarbon dating as a way of avoiding this limitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to present a method to facilitate age-at-death estimation of older individuals (generally those aged 50+ years) in a representative cemetery sample. The purpose of disaggregating catch-all categories, such as 50+ years, is to enable the exploration of the elderly (those in their 50s, 60s, 70s or 80s) in the context of mortuary archaeology, bioarchaeology and/or palaeopathology. The methodological steps include the following: (1) assessment of occlusal tooth wear in an Anglo-Saxon cemetery sample from Worthy Park, UK; (2) seriation of the sample, from youngest to oldest, based on the degree of tooth wear; (3) selection of an ethnographically derived model (known mortality profile) by which seriated individuals in the Worthy Park sample could be reallocated to more realistic or appropriate age classes; (4) reallocation of individuals in the seriated Worthy Park sample to the model age classes. A Hadza, Tanzania, hunter-gatherer profile was chosen to model the Worthy Park sample, although others are available. By using this model, some 66% of the entire adult sample, originally allocated to the single final age category of 45+ years, was distributed across four new age categories from the mid-40s to mid-70s. Relatively straightforward, this approach provides a way to identify those individuals, 50+ years old, not normally sensitive to traditional age-at-death estimation methodologies currently available. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the early Anglo-Saxon period, dressing and displaying the body in life and death played an important role in shaping and reinforcing identities and ruling social norms. Studies of the past decades have particularly highlighted the social significance of dressing and staging the body for the event of the funeral. This paper addresses how the production of dress items, the daily act of dressing, and the individuals involved in these practices helped shape the same identities that were enacted in the funeral. It argues that we must consider more explicitly how certain elements of dress became objects of identification through the social dialogue between groups of people who engaged with such objects at earlier stages of their lifecycle. This must include not only those who used dress items as grave goods but also those who produced and wore them. It works towards a framework that captures more fully the social communication and exchange of ideas that shaped and transformed notions of identity. Using data from the author's research on early Anglo-Saxon girdle-hangers, this paper addresses how different forms of socio-material communication, and different actors involved, can be addressed through the material record of burials. Together these formed the mental networks in which meanings and values were created. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]