his study compares ethnic, age, and gender differences concerning attitudes and behaviors toward death, dying, and bereavement among Caucasian, African, Hispanic, and Asian American adult participants in north Texas with the results of a 1976 study by Kalish and Reynolds on death attitudes and behaviors of Caucasian, African, Mexican, and Japanese American adult participants in Los Angeles, California. A modified version of Kalish and Reynolds' study questionnaire was administered to 526 respondents (164 Caucasian, 100 African, 205 Hispanic, and 57 Asian Americans) recruited from community and church groups. Findings of this study were compared with those of Kalish and Reynolds in specific areas, including experience with death, attitudes toward one's own death, dying, and afterlife, and attitudes toward the dying, death, or grief of someone else. Data was analyzed employing the same statistical tools as those used by Kalish and Reynolds, i.e., chi square calculations, frequencies, percentages, averages, and analyses of variance. As compared with the earlier study, results indicated that this study's participants were less likely to have known as many persons who had died recently or to state they would try very hard to control grief emotions in public. Present study participants were more likely to have visited dying persons, to want to be informed if they were dying and believe that others should be informed when dying, to prefer to die at home, to have made arrangements to donate their bodies or body parts to medicine, to have seriously talked with others about their future deaths, to consider the appropriateness of mourning practices and the comparative tragedy of age of death from a relative standpoint, and to want to spend the final six months of their lives showing concern for others. Between study differences were found in ethnic group, age group, and gender group comparisons. Within study differences in death and dying attitudes were also found in this study among ethnic, age, and gender groups.

Although funerals are seen as universal rituals to honor the death of a loved one, their value in facilitating the grief process is not known. The present study explored the relationships between cause of death, feelings and attitudes toward the funeral, and subsequent bereavement adjustment.

Four hundred and thirty-eight participants who had lost a close friend or family in the last 2 years completed questionnaires regarding their experiences with the funeral. Results indicated individuals emotionally close to the deceased person reported higher levels of participation in funeral rituals and greater levels of bereavement adjustment. Those emotionally distant from the deceased person reported greater satisfaction with the funeral. Individuals who viewed the deceased person as a central figure in their lives had greater participation in the funeral. Those who viewed the deceased person as a peripheral figure had higher levels of bereavement adjustment. Additionally, those who viewed the death as unpreventable reported greater satisfaction with the funeral, and had higher levels of bereavement adjustment.

No description available.

Thesis (doctoral)--Uppsala University, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 389-402) and index.

Nautical archaeology has made remarkable advances since its inception half a century ago, but one area in need of more attention is the examination of cultural aspects of seafaring. This dissertation advances understanding of eighteenth- through early-twentieth century British and American maritime culture by exploring traditional memorialization practices. Interpretations are based primarily on analysis of 412 maritime memorials recorded during two archaeological surveys in Great Britain and the United States. In addition, primary accounts from the Age of Sail are utilized to place maritime memorialization into its proper cultural and historical context. Research reveals three major themes in Anglo-American maritime memorialization. First, memorials show a striking concern for the dangers and hardships of life at sea. Numerous memorials describe the perils of the natural world and the group values that mariners developed to cope with the ever-present possibility of sudden death. Such values include attention to duty, courage, group loyalty, self-sacrifice, and pride. Second, maritime communities faced the problem of commemorating those who never returned from the sea. Many sailors were lost at sea or died aboard ship or in distant lands. In the vast majority of such cases, the body was never returned home, and many did not receive proper burial. As a result, family members and fellow sailors created memorials to honor the lost and to symbolically lay the deceased to rest. Evidence indicates, however, that such attempts were not entirely satisfactory. Many epitaphs lament the fact that empty graves cannot provide an adequate substitute for missing bodies. Finally, investigation revealed a significant increase in religious sentiment on maritime memorials from the mid-nineteenth century until the end of the Age of Sail. It is suggested that the increase in maritime religious sentiment was linked to nineteenth-century religious reform movements. The prevalence of religious imagery and inscriptions on maritime memorials during this time, however, probably does not indicate that most sailors became religious. Rather, most religious maritime memorials were erected by sailors' families. This suggests that maritime families turned to religion as a source of comfort when faced with the deaths of loved ones at sea.

Nautical archaeology has made remarkable advances since its inception half a century ago, but one area in need of more attention is the examination of cultural aspects of seafaring. This dissertation advances understanding of eighteenth- through early-twentieth century British and American maritime culture by exploring traditional memorialization practices. Interpretations are based primarily on analysis of 412 maritime memorials recorded during two archaeological surveys in Great Britain and the United States. In addition, primary accounts from the Age of Sail are utilized to place maritime memorialization into its proper cultural and historical context. Research reveals three major themes in Anglo-American maritime memorialization. First, memorials show a striking concern for the dangers and hardships of life at sea. Numerous memorials describe the perils of the natural world and the group values that mariners developed to cope with the ever-present possibility of sudden death. Such values include attention to duty, courage, group loyalty, self-sacrifice, and pride. Second, maritime communities faced the problem of commemorating those who never returned from the sea. Many sailors were lost at sea or died aboard ship or in distant lands. In the vast majority of such cases, the body was never returned home, and many did not receive proper burial. As a result, family members and fellow sailors created memorials to honor the lost and to symbolically lay the deceased to rest. Evidence indicates, however, that such attempts were not entirely satisfactory. Many epitaphs lament the fact that empty graves cannot provide an adequate substitute for missing bodies. Finally, investigation revealed a significant increase in religious sentiment on maritime memorials from the mid-nineteenth century until the end of the Age of Sail. It is suggested that the increase in maritime religious sentiment was linked to nineteenth-century religious reform movements. The prevalence of religious imagery and inscriptions on maritime memorials during this time, however, probably does not indicate that most sailors became religious. Rather, most religious maritime memorials were erected by sailors' families. This suggests that maritime families turned to religion as a source of comfort when faced with the deaths of loved ones at sea.

Thesis (doctoral)--Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat zu München, 1935. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. [2-5]).

This study investigates the archaeological and social contexts of early Christian burial practices at Ostia Antica, Rome’s port city, through a case study of the cemeterial basilica at Pianabella. Built on a pagan necropolis in ca. 400 AD, the Pianabella Basilica is one of the few unambiguously Christian monuments from Ostia in the Late Antique period. Consequently, it provides evidence for the continuities and transformations of late Roman culture during the period of Christianity’s rise to prominence. Examination of the construction of the basilica, as well as its rich iconography and epigraphy, proceeds through a social approach within a holistic view of material culture, showing that the physical characteristics of Christian burial were acquired through selective appropriation of common pagan mortuary practices while also adjusting to changing cultural assumptions. The Pianabella inscriptions show the persistence of patronage, while the construction of the basilica and its dedication to a nameless saint show the increasing importance of the suburbium for the city’s religious topography. The semi-monumental nature and advantaged location of this basilica made it an important meeting place for the Christians, whose appropriations can be seen in three aspects: (1) epigraphy suggests that patronage by the institutional church gradually replaced that by important families; (2) patterns of sarcophagus use point to attempts at social improvement while showing clear preference for less iconic forms of sarcophagi; and (3) the arrangement of the burials in the basilica’s main funerary enclosure and epigraphy emphasize the prominence of the saint to whom the basilica was dedicated. The basilica thus took on much of the ritual and social creativity that had belonged to the family tomb, where reunion in death did away with death’s sting, while providing Christians with a sense of community. The organization of funerary space at Pianabella suggests further that the focus of mortuary provision was ultimately on the living. Taken together, it seems that funerary processions to the basilica provided a sphere in which local Christians could benefit from communal meals and the spectacle of status display, while pointing to God as a new and improved type of paterfamilias. / text

No description available.