The Funeral Kit: Mortuary Practices in the Archaeological Record [Paperback]

Studies of mortuary archaeology tend to focus on difference—how the researcher can identify age, gender, status, and ethnicity from the contents of a burial. Jill L. Baker’s innovative approach begins from the opposite point: how can you recognize the commonalities of a culture from the “funeral kit” that occurs in all burials, irrespective of status differences? And what do those commonalities have to say about the world view and religious beliefs of that culture? Baker begins with the Middle and Late Bronze Age tombs in the southern Levant, then expands her scope in ever widening circles to create a general model of the funeral kit of use to archaeologists in a wide variety of cultures and settings. The volume will be of equal value to specialists in Near Eastern archaeology and those who study mortuary remains in ancient cultures worldwide.

Jill L. Baker’s innovative approach to mortuary archaeology begins by identifying commonalities of a culture from the “funeral kit” that occurs in all of its burials, using examples from the Ancient Near East and comparing it to other cultures.

Jill L. Baker earned a Ph.D. from Brown University and is an independent scholar of Near Eastern Archaeology, based in Miami, Florida. She has taught at the University of Miami, held fellowships at the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem, and has worked on several excavations including the Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon and at Tel Zahara. Her research on Canaanite mortuary practices also appears in two articles published in the journal Levant.

List of FiguresPrefaceChapter 1: IntroductionChapter 2: The Archaeology of Death and Burial: Established Interpretations, Terminologies and DefinitionsChapter 3: The Funeral Kit ModelChapter 4: Beyond the Model: The Funeral Kit in Wider Canaan (Middle Bronze IIB/C-Late Bronze Age II)Chapter 5: The Genesis and Extinction of the Funeral Kit inlSk