The odd, the unusual, and the strange : bioarchaeological explorations of atypical burials

Abnormal burial practices have long been a source of fascination and debate within the fields of mortuary archaeology and bioarchaeology. The Odd, the Unusual, and the Strange investigates an unparalleled geographic and temporal range of burials that differ from the usual customs of their broader societies, emphasizing the importance of a holistic, context-driven approach to these intriguing cases. From an Andean burial dating to 3500 BC to mummified bodies interred in the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, Sicily, during the twentieth century, the studies in this volume cross the globe and span millennia. The unusual cases explored here include Native American cemeteries in Illinois, "vampire" burials in medieval Poland, and a mass grave of decapitated soldiers in ancient China. Moving away from the simplistic assumption that these burials represent people who were considered deviant in society, contributors demonstrate the importance of an integrated biocultural approach in determining why an individual was buried in an unusual way. Drawing on historical, sociocultural, archaeological, and biological data, this volume critically evaluates the binary of "typical" versus "atypical" burials. It expands our understanding of the continuum of variation within mortuary practices, helping researchers better interpret burial evidence to learn about the people and cultures of the past. A volume in the series Bioarchaeological Interpretations of the Human Past: Local, Regional, and Global Perspectives, edited by Clark Spencer Larsen Cover Title Page Copyright Page Contents List of Figures List of Tables Foreword Series Foreword Acknowledgments 1. Deconstructing “Deviant”: An Introduction to the History of Atypical Burials and the Importance of Context in the Bioarchaeological Record 2. Bodies among Fragments: Non-Normative Inhumations among the Preclassic and Classic Period Hohokam of the Tucson Basin 3. Interpreting a Multiple Burial in an Early Ancestral Pueblo Village 4. A Young Man Twice Burned: A Deviant Burial from West-Central Illinois 5. The Odd Man Out in a Pioneer Cemetery at Seccombe Lake Park, San Bernardino, California 6. Defining Non-Normative Practices in a Diverse Funerary Record: Insights from the Caribbean 7. Good, Bad, or Indifferent? A Unique “Deviant” Burial from the Formative Site of Aranjuez-Santa Lucía, South Central Andes 8. The Hunchback, the Contortionist, the Man with the Stolen Identity, and the One Who Will Be Born in the Afterlife: Pre-Hispanic Deviant Burials from Huarmey Valley, Peru 9. What Is the Norm? “Irregular” and “Regular” Burial Practices of the Early Iron Age in Central Europe 10. Burial in a Kiln: Transgression and Punishment in Late Antiquity 11. Variation beyond the Grave: Contextualizing Unusual Burials in Early Medieval Bohemia 12. Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to Non-Normative Burials in Finland in the Eleventh–Thirteenth Centuries AD 13. Atypical Burials in Early Medieval Poland: A Critical Overview 14. Does Health Define Deviancy? Non-Normative Burials in Post-Medieval Poland 15. The “Vampires” of Lesbos: Detecting and Interpreting Anti-Revenant Ritual in Greece 16. Natural Mummification as a Non-Normative Mortuary Custom of Modern Period Sicily (1600–1800) 17. Out of Range? Non-Normative Funerary Practices from the Neolithic to the Early Twentieth Century at Çatalhöyük, Turkey 18. Deviant Treatment of the Body as a Mortuary Ritual: A Case from the Middle Jomon Period in Eastern Japan 19. Ancestors, Conflict, and Criminality in Ancient China and Mongolia 20. Dependent Deviance: Castration and Deviant Burial Afterword List of Contributors Index This volume focuses specifically on non-normative or atypical mortuary practices situated within a contextually-driven understanding of social and cultural norms surrounding the process of interment. Drawing on examples from North and South America, Europe, and Asia, this comprehensive volume stresses the commonality between non-normative or atypical treatments spanning millennia. Additionally, this volume strives to employ a holistic understanding of non-normative burials both in terms of assessing the significance and interpretation of individual cases of atypical interments, as well as to better understand the overall phenomenon of these mortuary practices, which continue to be the source of fascination and debate within mortuary archaeology This volume describes the ways Native American populations accommodated and resisted the encroachment of European powers in southeastern North America from the arrival of Spaniards in the sixteenth century to the first decades of the American Republic. Tracing changes to the region's natural, cultural, social, and political environments, Charles Cobb provides an unprecedented survey of the landscape histories of Indigenous groups across this critically important area and time period