Raising the Veil: New Clues into Unique Burial Practices

Abstract

What makes a burial atypical and how are they identifiable? That is the central question of The Odd, the Unusual, and the Strange: Bioarchaeological Experiences of Atypical Burials, edited by Tracy K. Betsinger, Amy B. Scott, and Anastasia Tsaliki. The edited volume expands on the works of Eileen Murphy's (2008), Deviant Burial in the Archaeological Record, and Andrew Reynold's (2009), Anglo-Saxon Deviant Burial Customs, through nineteen case studies that investigate a variety of atypical burial treatments as well as inherent parallels in how death is treated by past peoples through time and space. By bringing together a diverse group of bioarchaeological scholars who use integrated biocultural approaches on contextual non-normative samples from several geographic regions and temporal periods, the edited volume asks questions about how we understand atypical burials and advances the study of the topic.