Funerary Archaeology

Funerary archaeology focuses on the social aspects of death by studying archaeological mortuary contexts, still often divided between those who start the interrogative process from the human remains and those who concentrate on the burial type and grave goods/inclusions. This treatment reviews the development of the subdiscipline of funerary archaeology while providing a context for the synthesis of the subject with archaeothanatology and its emphasis on the taphonomy of human remains and associated materials, as well as with human bioarchaeology, the study of human remains, to address grander themes in social archaeology.