Jack Green
Institute of Archaeology, University College London
The Late Bronze Age in the Southern Levant is a period for which we really should know more about attitudes to death and funerary rites. Textual and iconographical sources from the Near East and Egypt provide little information on rites associated with activities occurring at the place of burial. Additionally, the archaeological interpretation of funerary rites is problematic, due to the partial nature of the burial record in initial selection and preservation of grave-offerings by the living. The Late Bronze-Early Iron Age cemetery at Tell es-Sa'idiyeh in the Jordan Valley provides an opportunity to explore aspects of funerary activities relating to key stages in a ritual sequence, going beyond temporally static representations of burials.
This paper attempts to situate these activities within a cross-cultural framework relevant to studies of death, burial and commemoration. Firstly, the preparation and manipulation of the body, as represented by body treatment and ornamentation. Secondly, the selection of particular objects for interment, including those implicated in 'feeding the dead' and ritually 'killed' objects. Finally, the maintenance of funerary installations represented by grave markers, 'libation' jars, and the periodic reuse of graves. Some of these rituals may relate to cosmological perceptions, but to what extent might they also represent and actively reproduce the ideological concerns of the living?
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