Through painstaking investigation of parochial records, this thesis for the first time maps the fees for burial which represented a key element in the economics of metropolitan parishes and incumbents alike in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It reveals how changes in patterns of burial and sanitary reform impacted on this income and the response to such changes of clerics and parishes. The investigation exposes how the nature of both those interred (such as the numbers of paupers and children) and the type of burial (whether in the churchyard, under the church or in a non-parochial graveyard) affected parish incomes. Particular attention is given to the financial arrangements associated with intramural internment. Case studies of particular parishes with contrasting profiles (in terms of wealth, population, environment etc) establish that burial dues represented between 10% and 45% of parish income and a significant proportion of an incumbent's stipend. It was against this background that vestries and clerics responded to nineteenth-century initiatives to end inner city burials and the opening of rival cemeteries owned by joint stock companies. Clerical reaction to the related legislation of 1850 and 1852 is explored and explained, as well as the losses of income which resulted After 1852 the Church had to face the implications of possessing many redundant burial sites and spaces in the two cities. The thesis explores how parishes responded to these challenges, and how the money yielded by the sale of buildings and churchyards affected parish economies. The use of redundant crypts to generate income or to benefit the local community is examined, raising questions about the future use of such space

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Death is universal and all societies have developed some kind of death ritual which serves as a formalisation of the death and an opportunity to mourn the dead. After the death of a person, there is the need to deal with both the emotional and physical aspects of death, including the disposal of the deceased. In modern times, death is removed from human experience. We are no longer constantly faced with death, and when we are it is presented in a sanitised form. The death of a family member, a friend, a neighbour, provides us with the experience of death and a reminder of our existence and certain extinction. Death rituals reaffirm the central beliefs within culture. They are drawn on previous practices and memories. Cemeteries and funerary monuments act as physical memories; they become the focus of rituals and tie them to the social memory. The Garamantes flourished in the region of Fazzan in the period c.500 BC- c. AD 500. Classical sources provides a first contact with this civilisation, although as discussed in this thesis, archaeology is offering the opportunity to combine what Graeco-Roman writers understood the Garamantes to be and what they have left behind. My interest lays with their mortuary rituals, the Garamantian way of death and how, at the time of death, the Garamantes saw themselves as one culture, following a similar pattern of behaviour across time and space. The analysis of the cemeteries, place (structures) and burial rituals, the treatment of the deceased and the offerings linked with death provides information on the cultural identity of the Garamantes and their and social values, which have been transmitted through the funerary record.

This thesis is a study of Etruscan attitudes to the afterlife, based on analysis of the funerary archaeology, architecture, and iconography of death from the ancient city of Tarquinia. The focus on one settlement allowed for a more precise reconstruction of funerary attitudes; it also avoided the pitfalls of approaching Etruscan civilisation as uniform and homogeneous across its varied city-states; and it made clear when particular beliefs about the afterlife changed or developed. After a general discussion of approaches to the subject in the published literature and of the specific conditions at the site of Tarquinia, it proceeds through a series of case studies chosen from each of the major periods of Etruscan civilisation from the Villanovan to the Hellenistic period. The analysis is based on published excavations and studies, supplemented by fieldwork conducted in Rome and at Tarquinia. The case studies were chosen based on the type of information that they can give about the way the underworld was imagined. No one tomb can be used to illustrate the entire set of beliefs and traditions that occurred at one time. Throughout the course of this study, I focus on the changes and developments of funerary traditions over the nine centuries of Etruscan civilisation at Tarquinia. The main finding to emerge from these studies relates to the long term stability of funerary practices at Tarquinia. As elsewhere in Etruria, there are changes in the scale and design of tombs and in the subjects and manner of their decoration. Yet it is difficult to identify any sudden discontinuities of practice. In a number of cases, it is argued that motifs that are well attested only in later periods can already be seen in the earlier material, while few themes introduced into the repertoire are ever completely lost. Rather, the same motifs are occasionally represented in different form from period to period. Whether the explanation is to be sought in the conservative influence of a small number of ruling families, or in the absence of social revolutions of the kind that characterised some Greek poleis, or in a conscious desire to preserve local, i.e. Tarquinian, traditions and styles, it seems that the history of Etruscan death is –in this case at least –not to be written in terms of dramatic changes so much as of gradual evolution and development. On this basis, a tentative account of the (local) Etruscan underworld is offered as it emerges from material drawn from all the periods studied.

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This project investigates in depth and from a multi-disciplinary perspective the phenomenon of deviant burials and anomalous disposal of the dead with emphasis on necrophobia (fear of the dead; the term is introduced by the author for use in the disciplines of anthropology and archaeology). A list of criteria and a recording form for the identification of deviancy in burial contexts have been compiled and are suggested as a potential general methodology scheme. Theories of death, deviancy, and necrophobia are examined and are elaborated with case studies from Greece and cross-cultural comparison data. The project also evaluates whether the burial or disposal context and the physical condition & health status of the body are related, if their analysis reveals information on the individual's social status in life and death, and how necrophobia influences burial customs. An attempt has been made to: 1. Explain the deviant treatment of human remains considering and combining the burial customs, socio-religious factors including superstitious beliefs and social violence, burial context, and the palaeodemographical & palaeopathological data;2. Give emphasis to the concept of necrophobia and to its relation to cases of unusual burial treatment;3. Investigate temporal and spatial patterns of deviancy in the burial record;4. Emphasise the need for precise recording of burials and their context;5. Identify the limitations of the project. The project provides a novel multidisciplinary approach to the study of deviancy and necrophobia in the burial record; such a study has not, to the author’s knowledge, previously been conducted on as wide a scale against a detailed contextual background, and it is the first comprehensive study on Greek unusual burials. The research has potential for future development through the study of additional empirical data from different cultures & periods, and its theory and methodology may have forensic applications. Isotope analysis of the deviant individuals is also suggested as a method to provide information on diet and place of origin.

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Each year around 55,000 Londoners are buried or cremated within one of 122 municipal cemeteries and 17 crematoria. The 32 London boroughs, the Corporation of London and 7 borough joint committees and boards run these separately. This report was completed to determine whether there is a case for these 40 separate municipal agencies, and the one cemetery run by the Government's Royal Parks Agency, being put under a single London Burial and Cremation Authority. The way in which municipal cemeteries and crematoria are run reveal myriad of problems that the current providers have not been able to address as individual burial and cremation authorities. The main problems faced may be summarized as follows: London is running out of burial space: by 2010 most of central London will have run out of space for new graves; the absence of any coherent policy and resources to deal with the hundreds of thousands of old gravestones that are dilapidated and unstable, making cemeteries unsafe places to visit; the deterioration of historic cemetery landscapes and a continual decline in the fabric and infrastructure of London's cemeteries, most of which date back to the nineteenth century; annual deficit of £5M per annum on London's municipal cemeteries and crematoria; inequality in burial and cremation fees and charges for Londoners. No pan-London strategic approach to the control of pollution from cemeteries and crematoria; and no career structure to facilitate professional development or to attract high calibre people. These problems are inter-related and feed-off each other and have led to the idea of a single authority. They are also dated and no sustained attempt has been made to address them in a sensible and realistic manner. The absence of any Government response is put down to the fact that the disposal of the dead is a taboo subject with no political kudos. Cemeteries and crematoria became the remit of the London boroughs by political default and a political unwillingness to address strategically a highly sensitive public concern. This also occurred due to the relatively small nature of these services (in terms of physical size, financial implications and the number of people dependent upon the service at any one time) which are 'lost' in the massive scale of metropolitan local government. However, when considered on a pan-London basis, the important and significant role that municipal cemeteries and crematoria play, in the lives of Londoners and London per se, is evident. Their impact upon the urban landscape is formidable. Unfortunately, they are not seen or treated as such at the borough level. A third of Londoners come into contact with a cemetery or crematorium each year and ultimately everyone is dependent upon these services: they deserve more than they are getting and this is only likely to be achieved by the boroughs acting on a collective basis. Ideally, the provision of cemeteries and crematoria should come under the new Greater London Authority, which provides the right and natural platform for a pan-London approach. However, such a proposal has been rejected by the Minister for London and the Government Office for London, and would also be strongly opposed by the Association of London Government and the London Boroughs generally. Political reality dictates that any attempt to pursue such a proposal would be unlikely to gain the support and co-operation of the boroughs, which would be necessary for the initiative to work. For these reasons and on the basis that the proposal is unrealistic, the possibility of the GLA taking a major role in the provision of municipal cemeteries and crematoria has been discounted.