Body and Soul, Specimen and Commodity: meaning, interpretation and treatment of human remains and funerary objects
Jane Hubert, Department of Psychiatry of Disability, St. George’s Hospital Medical School, Cranmer Terrace, London SW17 ORE, UK. Tel: +44 181 725 5504, Fax: +44 171 383 2572, email: jhubert@sghms.ac.uk.
Ben Rhodd, Box 846, Hill City, SD 57745, USA. Fax: +1 605 538 4315
The aim of this symposium is to examine the different meanings and significance that have been attributed to human remains and funerary objects, now and in the past, by different cultures or groups, including indigenous people, archaeologists, museum curators and scientists. Topics of relevance to this symposium include:
different beliefs, attitudes, treatment and uses of human remains and funerary objects
the social, economic and political consequences of conflicting beliefs
how and why beliefs change over time
people as objects, objects as people
boundaries between life and death
the compatibility or otherwise of scientific and non-scientific interests.
Past and present social perspectives on medical uses of the dead (dissection, organ donation, etc.)
The body of the ‘other’ in the history of dissection
rights of the dead and claims on the body
ownership of the dead
papers:
Author 1 Author 2 Title
Ako Ebot Definitions of Death
Ako-Ebot On the dead and their possessions: variety and change in practice and belief
Bondarev Attitude to human remains among the Kanuri: beliefs changing over time.
Fortibui Cultural Importance of Reburial and Reclamation of Human Skeletal Remains in Some Ethnic Groups in the Western Grassfields
Rollo-Koster Commemorating the Dead. A New Regard on the Late Middle Ages
Schanche Sami burials from prehistoric to Medieval times: Transformation of a religious cosmology?