| |
Volume 103 No. 2
April 2000
 |
Abstract |
 |
|
|
|
 |
Archaeologies of Life and Death
Lynn Meskell
The Egyptian village of Deir el Medina, well attested in the New Kingdom as a settlement site (ca. 1550-1070 B.C.), continued to be the focus of mortuary and ritual practices from the Third Intermediate period into Late Antique and Islamic times. Data from the site are particularly rich and offer a rare opportunity to witness large-scale temporal change in mortuary practice. To date, no comprehensive syntheses have addressed the range of funerary practices in terms of specific age, status, or sex groups for various time periods. In this paper I consider the social dimension of burial at the site, drawing on statistical analyses from a range of mortuary data (tomb construction, decoration, burial goods, and bodily treatments). I suggest that the mortuary sphere shifted from a representational focus on the living world in the 18th Dynasty (ca. 1550-1295 B.C.) to an emphasis on the next world in the Ramesside period (ca. 1295-1070 B.C.). Despite the significant individual variation present in the material, it is possible to see patterns surrounding the broad themes of life and death. Finally, the substantial evidence for bodily preparations suggests that it is possible to conduct an archaeology of the body at Deir el Medina, considering cultural, social, and economic factors.
|
|
