EDITORIAL Archaeologists on contemporary death

Howard Williams

Williams, H. 2011. Archaeologists on Contemporary Death, Mortality 16(2): 91-97. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13576275.2011.560450

Introduction This Special Issue of the journal Mortality explores archaeological approaches to recent and contemporary death-ways. The six studies (four by archaeologists, one by two forensic archaeologists and one by a social anthropologist) focus on mortuary practices in Canada, Sweden, Denmark and the UK in recent times. Together, they investigate the rapidly changing practices and varying materialities of death during the twentieth century and the beginning of the third millennium.

It is beyond contention that mortuary has established itself as a powerful voice in the study of the death, disposal and commemoration from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. New data derives from the systematic scientific excavation and investigation of burial grounds, churchyards, and crypts and vaults beneath churches (e.g. Bashford & Sibun, 2007) to the detailed of grave memorials and mausolea (e.g. Mytum, 2002). When analysed and synthesised, these data are beginning to provide new windows onto the relationships between the body, material culture, monuments and landscape for the study of death, memory and identity in the modern world (e.g. Cherryson, 2010; Holtorf & Williams, 2006; Mytum, 2006; Tarlow, 1999).

Given the ethical and legal restrictions on digging recent graves outside of specific (usually forensic) circumstances, it may seem justified for mortuary archaeologists to avoid the study of death, burial and commemoration during the later twentieth century and early twenty-first centuries. However, I argue that contemporary archaeologies of death are already well-established and widely pursued, although largely unrecognised because they constitute a series of largely separate engagements with the contemporary past. I suggest that contemporary archaeologies of death deserve both full recognition and a clear research agenda.

Mortuary archaeology engages with contemporary death First, there are six ways in by which have already and frequently engaged with contemporary death-ways: 1. The private, individualised and medicalised nature of death in Western modernity is extensively used by archaeologists as the antithesis of funerals in past, pre- industrial, societies, challenging ‘common sense’ impositions of modern practice and attitudes onto past societies (e.g. Williams, 2009). 2. Yet many archaeological and heritage sites (from Stonehenge to Canterbury cathedral) require archaeologists to come face-to-face with modern practices surrounding burial, pilgrimage, mourning and commemoration. Contemporary mortuary behaviour is juxtaposed with, and sometimes instigates, archaeological research in these environments (e.g. Williams & Williams, 2007). 3. Furthermore, in archaeological discourse, present-day Western burial and commemoration has been used to warn against misleading interpretations of past mortuary practice (e.g. Ucko, 1969, pp. 264–265, 274–275). 4. Modern death-ways have also been widely utilised in comparative studies of particular themes in mortuary archaeology (e.g. Pollard, 1999; Sørensen & Bille, 2008). 5. Mortuary archaeologists today also widely draw their analogies and theories from recent historical, sociological and anthropological studies of deathways in the modern West as well as non-Western societies (Back Danielsson, 2009; for a different view, see Sayer, 2010a). 6. Some archaeologists have specifically targeted research projects to investigate modern mortuary practices and commemoration from an ethnoarchaeological perspective (Parker Pearson, 1982; see also Garazhian & Yazdi, 2008).

Mortuary archaeology contributes to contemporary death Mortuary archaeologists have also considered and investigated how the disciplines’ practice and ideas have influenced the development and character of death in Western modernity: 1. Mortuary archaeology has actively shaped modern Western thinking and practices surrounding death, including body-disposal, material cultures, architectures and landscapes (Back Danielsson, 2009, 2011; Crossland, 2009). 2. The material products of and archaeological practice (ancient mortuary monuments and material cultures) have been reused and replicated in profusion within contemporary death-ways (e.g. Holtorf, 1996; Holtorf & Williams, 2006; Williams, 2011). 3. Mortuary archaeological practice can be regarded as a distinctive mechanism by which memories and identities are constructed in contemporary society (Crossland, 2000; Filipucci, 2010; Kirk & Start, 1999; see also Williams & Williams, 2007). Archaeologists are here a form of modern-day mortuary ritual specialist mediating remembrance of the distant past. 4. Museum displays and media representations reveal the complex ambivalence, contested nature and popular appeal of the ancient dead in contemporary society, providing not only scientific knowledge about the human past but also informing attitudes towards death and the dead (Giles, 2009; Jenkins, 2010; Sayer, 2010a, 2010b; Williams, 2009). 5. Archaeologists are key stakeholders in current ethical, political and legal debates concerning death and the dead in contemporary society, including conflicts over claims for the repatriation and reburial of human remains and related artefacts kept in museums and archaeological research collections (e.g. Moshenska, 2008; Sayer, 2010a, 2010b; see Krmpotich, 2011).

Mortuary archaeology investigates contemporary death However, in at least six further ways, many overlapping with those cited above, archaeologists have begun, albeit recently and tentatively, to directly focus research on contemporary death itself: 1. Forensic archaeologists alone have an exclusive legal remit to employ archaeological techniques to investigate the mass graves resulting from war crimes and the burials of modern murder victims. Archaeologists have explored the impact of these investigations on politics and identity in the present (e.g. Crossland, 2000) but these studies might also shed light on broader attitudes and practices surrounding contemporary death (see Davenport & Harrison, 2011). 2. Archaeologists have long explored the landscapes, monuments and material cultures of conflict and disasters, as well as the materialities by which these events and their dead are remembered (Legendre, 2001; Walls & Williams, 2010; see also Walls, 2011). 3. Contemporary archaeologists have sometimes investigated cemeteries found in association with recent, abandoned ‘ghost-town’ settlements of very recent times (Andreassen, Bjerck, & Olsen, 2010, pp. 40, 46–47, 198). 4. Archaeologists are themselves subject to archaeological study, focusing on how they are mourned and commemorated in relation to the sites and material cultures they study (Holtorf, 2003; Back Danielsson, 2011). 5. Although primarily focused on sixteenth to nineteenth century memorials, architectures and landscapes (e.g. Mytum, 2006; Tarlow, 1999), some historical archaeologists have systematically investigated mortuary monuments in cemeteries, churchyards and burial grounds over the longue durée and right up to recent decades (Mytum, 2002, 2004). 6. Crucially, some studies have recently begun to explore contemporary death as a subject of investigation in its own right (e.g. Sørensen, 2010, 2011).

Discussion Contemporary mortuary practices have yet to receive sustained and coherent archaeological research. To some extent, this explains how many studies of contemporary archaeology, including the first English-language review of the burgeoning field of contemporary archaeology by Harrison and Schofield (2010), overlook the study of contemporary mortuary practices beyond forensic studies and . Perhaps for the same reason, despite the emphasis on materiality and corporeality in recent sociological, anthropological and historical investigations of modern death-ways, the potential of archaeological theories, methods and techniques have been largely ignored (e.g. Hallam & Hockey, 2001; Hockey, Komaromy, & Woodthorpe, 2010). On the contrary, I suggest that the studies cited above provide justification for a coherent research agenda for the archaeological investigation of death in the recent and contemporary past.

In pursuing this research, archaeologists must be rightly attentive to the legislation, ethics and politics of studying practices and attitudes surrounding death in the recent past (e.g. Moshenska, 2008; Sayer, 2010b) and aware of existing debates and research in death studies. Yet archaeology is arguably well placed to both enhance and transform the study of the attitudes and practices surrounding death today. Archaeology not only offers a comparative and deep time perspective on recent and present-day mortuary practice (see Sayer, 2010a), it provides a substantial new avenue for investigating mortality’s present- day materialities. From here, it is only a step for mortuary archaeologists to move beyond the present to explore the future of death-ways; how they are imagined, planned for, and emerge in the material cultures, monuments and landscapes of contemporary society. I contend that mortuary archaeologists can study the past, present and future of disposal and commemoration through contemporary material traces. Conclusion This brief review has barely the space to do justice to the range of previous and current research, let alone to chart the potential and directions of future research. I advocate an archaeological research agenda for the investigation of contemporary death-ways in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. While its character or scope must be discussed in detail elsewhere, I do suggest that archaeological theories, methods and techniques can not only explore ‘traditional’ spaces of death, burial and commemoration including crematoria, cemeteries, churchyards and burial grounds, but also ‘new’ material cultures and landscapes of death that have arisen in recent decades, from natural burial grounds to animal sanctuaries, from public parks to private gardens, from the virtual material cultures of social network sites to the virtual cemeteries on the world wide web. Archaeology allows the study of the big picture through quantification, and the local material contexts by which the dead are experienced, managed and remembered. As mortal beings, we cannot escape death; as archaeologists often joke, we all eventually join the archaeological record. Likewise, the material culture of death cannot escape archaeological scrutiny no matter whenever, wherever and however it is manifest. Archaeology can reveal and explore new, rich, complex and localised narratives about mortality today.

Acknowledgements This Special Issue of Mortality derives from a session I co-organised with Samuel Walls entitled ‘The Archaeology of Contemporary Commemoration’, held at the 30th Theoretical Archaeology Group conference which took place at the University of Southampton, 15–17 December 2008. I am indebted to Sam for his support in the early stages of this project. I extend my sincere thanks to all the contributors, Ing-Marie, Anna, Karl, Cara, Tim and Sam, for their contributions but also for their dedication, enthusiasm and dialogue over critical issues. Further thanks go to the Mortality editorial team and the many anonymous referees who provided such considered and insightful comments on each submitted paper. Special thanks are due to Cornelius Holtorf, Duncan Sayer, Estella Weiss-Krejci, Anna Wessman and Kate Woodthorpe for their support, suggestions and guidance. Finally, I dedicate my work on this special themed edition to my wife Elizabeth and my daughters Jemimah and Adah. Without the time, inspiration and humour they have constantly provided, this volume would never have seen the light of day.

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