1st Edition

Archaeological Perspectives on Burial Practices and Societal Change Death in Transition

Edited By Frida Espolin Norstein, Irene Selsvold Copyright 2025
254 Pages 41 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

254 Pages 41 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

Archaeological Perspectives on Burial Practices and Societal Change examines the relationships between burial practices and societal transformations in the past. This book highlights the centrality of burials as archaeological material for the understanding of societal change. It critically reassesses past approaches, and suggests new ways of understanding the relationship between burial... Read more

1. Death and Transformation: Burial Practices and Societal Change

Frida Espolin Norstein, Irene Selsvold, and Sofia Voutsaki

Theme 1 Practices, Communities, and Agents of Change

2. Mortuary Practices and Societal Change in Early Mycenaean Greece

Sofia Voutsaki

3. Grave Participants: Rethinking Funerary Participation as Strategies for Social Change

Brian Costello and Reanna S. Phillips

4. Change and Continuity: Cremation and Inhumation During the Christianisation Period in Scandinavia (c. 800–1200 CE)

Frida Espolin Norstein

5. Dying Well in a Damaged Planet: Emergent Burial Practices and the Ecologies of the Dead

Troy Fielder

Theme 2 Migration, Identities, and Narratives of Change

6. The Urning Question: Cultural Change in Roman-Period Slovenia Seen through the Choice of Funerary Urns

Kaja Stemberger Flegar

7. The Viking-Period Burials of the Hebrides: The Maritime Landscape, Grave Goods, and Change

Joseph Thomas Ryder

8. Narrating Ethnic Identity and Competition in Lombard Southern Italy through Burial Practices (6th–7th Centuries)

Giulia Zornetta

9. Golden Funerary Masks and Societal Change Narratives in Ancient Macedonia

Jessica Clementi

Theme 3 Transitions, Tempos, and Complexities

10. Building the Christian Cemetery: Religious Evolution in Burial Practices in the North-West of the Iberian Peninsula

Patricia Valle Abad and Laura Blanco-Torrejón

11. Cypriot Burial Practices at the Close of the Bronze Age: Continuities and Changes in the Light of the 12th-Century BCE Transformations

Teresa Bürge

12. Changing Burial Practices in Late Antiquity: Embracing Complexities

Irene Selsvold

13. Rethinking Burial Practices and Period Transitions Through a Posthumanist and New Materialist Lens

Rachel J. Crellin

Concluding Remarks

14. Death Changes Everything: Archaeology and the Human Scale of Change

Liv Nilsson Stutz

Biography

Frida Espolin Norstein is a researcher in Archaeology at Stockholm University, specialising in Viking Age funerary practices in northern Europe with a particular interest in artefact studies, ritual practices, regional variation, and the process of Christianisation. She is currently researching the use of grave goods in the construction of personhood in Viking Age graves.

Irene Selsvold is a postdoctoral researcher in Classical Archaeology at the University of Gothenburg, University of Leicester, and University of Oslo. She specialises in the funerary practices of late Roman Asia Minor and Italy and the Christianisation of urban spaces in Late Antiquity. An active field archaeologist, she has participated in excavations in Greece, Norway, Turkey, and Italy. She is currently involved in fieldwork in Vulci, Italy, with the Understanding Urban Identities (UUI) project.