Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory
A modern, professional cremation will reduce an adult male to about seven or eight litres of ashes and bone material, and slightly less for an adult female. The Viking-Age cremations rarely contain more than a litre of remains. Nobody knows what this means. Did the funeral involve a partition of the ashes—some to the family or onlookers and mourner
... See moreNeil Price • The Children of Ash and Elm
Human funerary practices began with simple necrophoresis – removing the dead, slipping them into fissures or pushing them into the back of rock shelters; sometimes scooping out a hollow, laying plants over them to cover them up. Then there was burial, with beads and ochre. Then there was – all manner of things, from cannibalism to cremation, mummif
... See moreAlice Roberts • Ancestors
The humanist philosopher Harold Blackham wrote about the British fixation on the dead body in a 1966 essay on re-evaluating ritual: In our own culture the ritual disposal of the corpse accentuates the end, the loss, and at the same time attempts to assuage the grief by the company and sympathy of the mourners and the words of comfort publicly decla
... See moreAlice Roberts • Ancestors
A few decades ago, it was rare for anyone but men to work in the business of funerals; the stereotypical mortician conjures an image of an older man who has been running the family funeral home business for decades. But today, 65 percent of funeral service education students are women and the emerging “death positive” movement is mostly attributed ... See more