The presented thesis examines dining practices associated with ancient funerary rites, and representations of meals that decorated Roman tombs. Evidence for dining, and its significance in mortuary rites, comes from various sources: from pagan, Christian and Jewish literary examples that describe funerary and commemorative events, and archaeological material of food remains and dining installations at the cemeteries, to pictures of meals depicted on different media: cinerary urns and altars, gravestones, frescoes, mosaics and sarcophagi. The aim of this thesis is to investigate available sources, focusing mainly on pictorial representations of late Roman and early Christian dining in order to assess the purpose of decorating the tombs with convivial images. The thesis begins with a discussion of how the Roman catacombs were used by early Christians, and how they were perceived by the post-sixteenth-century explorers and researchers. As our understanding of the development of the subterranean cemeteries has changed over the past centuries, so has our view of the late ancient societies and their funerary practices. Chapter 1 investigates both written and archaeological evidence for Roman funerary meals (silicernium and novemdiale) and commemorative rites during several festivals for the dead (e.g. parentalia0or0rosalia) performed by families and members of collegia. This Chapter also presents the development of the funerary Eucharist, and discusses evidence for early Christian funerary prayer. Chapter 2 focuses on memorials decorated with diners reclining on klinai, which were intended to represent the status of the deceased. Chapter 3 discusses painted collective meal scenes represented on stibadia, which are differentiated according to their interpretation: Elysian picnic scenes, images representing status of the deceased, or refrigeria (commemorative events) held by family and collegia. This section also includes an investigation into early Christian convivial images, which portray biblical stories and refrigeria. Chapter 4 presents convivial images from the catacomb of SS. Pietro e Marcellino, which provide evidence of a group of foreigners who migrated to Rome. Chapter 5, the final chapter, presents collective meal scenes on sarcophagi, which depict mythological events and picnic scenes reflecting elite villa life style. However, a small group of early Christian examples were also designed to portray honorary meals. In conclusion, the thesis provides evidence for shared funerary practices amongst different religious communities in the Roman world. Additionally, in the majority of cases the dining scenes focus on the representations of the deceased (their status or profession) rather than any particular religious affiliation; while both pagan and Christian images of refrigeria were designed to strengthen, or substituted for, actual commemorative rites.

This dissertation traces the concept of national memory through the five architectural spaces that have housed the dead body of Mustafa Kemal Atat&uuml / rk: the bedroom in Dolmabah&ccedil / e Palace, Istanbul, where he died on 10 November 1938 / the catafalque in the Grand Ceremonial Hall of Dolmabah&ccedil / e Palace used between 16-19 November 1938 / the official funeral stage in Ankara designed by Bruno Taut and used between 20-21 November 1938 / the temporary tomb in The Ethnographic Museum, Ankara / and Atat&uuml / rk&rsquo / s mausoleum, Anitkabir, in use since 10 November 1953. The dissertation firstly narrates the construction of a Turkish collective memory by means of architectural representation and politicization and secondly the physical and ideological maintenance of this memory by means of additions and subtractions to these spaces.

Atkins performed an archaeological relocation of a nineteenth century cemetery on behalf of Luminant Mining Company, within the Kosse Mine in Robertson County, Texas between the years of 2011 and 2012. The Head Cemetery offers unique opportunities to examine views of death and burial in rural, central Texas during the period of the early statehood until around 1900. The Head family and other members of the settlement were part of a pioneer community exhibiting clear expressions of family and community affiliations through spatiality and the material culture of burials. An analysis of coffin hardware and burial practices provides suggestions for dating and identifying unknown interments and exploring changing sentiments towards death by Anglo American settlers within the broader sociohistorical context of the nineteenth century. / text

This dissertation examines the cultural, political, and artistic role of polychrome wall painting from funerary contexts in South Italy during the critical period that spans the crisis of Greek hegemony and the consolidation of Roman power. Numerous painted tombs were built between the late fifth and the early second centuries BCE for local as well as Greek elite groups across Southern Italy. I investigate the ways in which the wall paintings, with their colors, iconographies, and technical features were both the expression of indigenous cultures and local artistic trends, and a part of a wider and more complex phenomenon, that is the diffusion of funerary wall painting in the Mediterranean during the late Classical and Hellenistic period. Why did polychromy become a crucial component in articulating funerary space in South Italy towards the end of the fifth century BCE, and how did this experience develop in the regions of Campania, Lucania, and Apulia, respectively? Ever since the South Italian painted tombs were discovered in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, scholars have interpreted their decoration as ideal representations of the deceased, their funerary ceremony, or their journey to the Underworld. They have focused on the relationship between the images and the individual deceased buried in the tomb or the restricted group of their family/clan. In my study, I seek to restore the polysemic character of the wall paintings. Each chapter analyzes the paintings from a different perspective and with a particular methodological approach, combining archaeological, anthropological, topographic, historical, and artistic evidence. I argue that the tombs with their painted decoration served to build and articulate collective memory, elaborating a message which was supposed to address the local community. I propose that the figural scenes depicted on the tomb walls staged ritual activities and initiation ceremonies which marked the life of the whole community. I also reconsider the artistic development of funerary painting in Southern Italy, showing that this phenomenon did not derive from globalizing trends of "Hellenization" or "Romanization", as has often been suggested, but it was intimately connected to indigenous artistic traditions and local or regional socio-political dynamics. / The Classics

This dissertation presents an analysis of Preclassic period (1000 B.C. – A.D. 250) funerary attributes of three Maya sites in northern Belize, Central America: Colha, Cuello, and K’axob. The dataset is comprised of 133 interments from Colha, 131 interments from Cuello, and 98 interments from K’axob for a total of 362 Preclassic interments. Analysis has been conducted on a suite of 12 variables representative of this dataset and their interrelatedness: age, sex, artifact material type, artifact material form, cranial orientation, burial position or posture, functional designation of architecture in which an interment is placed, presence or absence of indications of burning, presence or absence of red mineral pigmentation, functional designation of artifacts, presence or absence of a cross motif, and presence or absence of a head cover (vessel covering the cranium). This research project has four main objectives: 1) provide a structured presentation of Preclassic interment data for Colha, Cuello, and K’axob, 2) present a thorough and cogent analysis of the interrelatedness of the suite of variables abovementioned, 3) document any significant trends and anomalies that are evidenced within the funerary attributes of these sites, and finally 4) to offer an interpretation of those patterns and deviations seen within the analysis as they relate to intrasite and intersite social differentiation and dynamics through the Preclassic. The analysis within this volume demonstrates that the elaboration and variation of interment attributes increase over time in Preclassic at the three sites of study. This is paralleled by a development of ritual and ceremonial architecture for public activities. Differential access to materials and forms is indicated throughout the Middle, Late and Terminal Preclassic, with the level of disparity between the apparent elite and non-elite increasing over time. Adult males are generally accompanied by higher numbers and a greater variety of goods than are females and subadults. This indicates a power and/or status differential between the two sexes and age groups, with male adults being the most highly esteemed individuals within the social stratification system. This study demonstrates the dynamic and multifaceted material representations with which Preclassic Maya of Northern Belize expressed their identity in death. / text

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

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Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Esta tese busca compreender o que os rituais funerários contemporâneos revelam sobre as maneiras com as quais as pessoas têm lidado com a morte e o morrer na atualidade. Desse eixo central se ramificam reflexões sobre a relação dos homens com o tempo, com o envelhecimento e com a finitude. Evidenciando que os modos atuais de lidar com a morte e o morrer envolvem flagrantes processos de mercantilização, patologização, medicalização e espetacularização. O crescente uso de serviços funerários de tanatoestética apontam não somente técnicas de maquiagem dos mortos, mas também estratégias de maquiagem da morte. O investimento financeiro, antes direcionado às preocupações transcendentes com o futuro da alma do morto, se reverte em intervenções físicas no corpo morto, de maneira que ele não emita sinal algum da morte que o tomou e proteja os sobreviventes do contato com a finitude. Essa dissimulação é sinalizada pela redução progressiva do espaço que a sociedade contemporânea tem destinado ao luto e ao sofrimento, categorias com cada vez mais frequência equiparadas a condições patológicas. Utilizando metodologia qualitativa, com pesquisa de campo realizada tanto no Brasil como em Portugal, durante período de doutorado sanduíche no exterior, observou-se um acentuado estreitamento entre as realidades morte e consumo. Indicando uma transposição da lógica comercial de mercado às práticas funerárias tradicionais. Assim, funções simbólicas dos rituais fúnebres vem sendo modificadas e regidas pela lógica do consumo, apresentado na atualidade como alternativa unidimensional para a imperativa vivência initerrupta do prazer e da felicidade. Constatou-se que - apesar da crescente popularização de discussões sobre o tema morte no meio acadêmico, na área da saúde e na mídia - não há aceno de ruptura no seu enquadramento como tabu. Apenas é permitido socialmente que ela ocupe locais determinados: o lugar de espetáculo, de produto, da técnica, da banalização ou mesmo do humor publicitário. As observações e as reflexões realizadas em todo o processo de construção desta tese nos inclinam a considerar que continua vedado o aprofundamento de questões ligadas à expressão de sentimentos de dor e de pesar diante das perdas. Assim como se acentuam os processos de patologização do luto e de distanciamento das demandas existênciais promovidas pela consciência da própria finitude e da passagem do tempo; do tempo de vida de cada um / This thesis aims to understand what the contemporary funeral rituals reveal about the ways used by people to deal with death and dying nowadays. From that central concept, new reflections ramify about the relation-ship between men and time, related to growing old and being finite. Its made evident that the modern ways of dealing with death and dying involve flagrant marketing, pathological, medical and speculative processes. The fast growing presence of tanatoaesthetics in funerary services points out not only some make-up techniques of the dead, but also the existence of make-up strategies of death. The financial investment, directed in the past to transcendental worries such as the future of the deceaseds soul, is reverted into physical interventions in the deceaseds body, so it wont show any signal of the death that took it and, in that way, protect the living from the contact with the finite. That conceal is marked by the progressive reduction of the space that our modern society assign to the mourning and the suffering, categories that each day are more often compared to pathologies. Using a qualitative methodology ̶ sustained by a field study developed both in Brazil and Portugal during a doctorate exchange period ̶, we observed an emphasized narrowing between the realities of death and consumerism. It indicated a transposition of the market commercial logic to the traditional funerary practices. Therefore, the symbolic functions of funerary rituals have been modified and regulated by the consumerism logic, present nowadays as a one-dimensional alternative to the imperative experience of the never-ending placer and happiness. We have confirmed that ̶ although the growing popularization of arguments about death as a topic in the Academic, health and media environment ̶ there isnt a breaking point from its definition as a taboo. Society only allows it to occupy specific places such as: a show, a product, a technic, a triviality and even a humorous topic in publicity. The observations and reflections developed while writing this thesis incline us to consider the existence of a banned deepening in subjects connected to expressing feelings of pain and sadness when facing the loses. Also, the process of considering as pathologic the mourning as well as the distance from the existential demands promoted by the consciousness of the finite and the passing of time; each of us lifetime