Stonehenge and sky burial
Posted by Ken West The archaeology at Stonehenge is all about digging up funerary artefacts so is it possible to consider how those funerals occurred? Stonehenge is unique, the only certain stone circle in Britain aligned to the solstices. Forget the Druids, as they did not exist in the Neolithic period and never had any involvement […]
While you’re at it, why not lob another ancestor cult into the pot?
As you don your sad-rags, zombie gear, horror clobber, skeleton onesie or whatever it is that floats your boat at this season which sees the ungainly coupling of All Hallows Day, Samhain and the Mexican Dia de los Muertos enhanced/corrupted by commercialism and rendered incoherent by cheap thrills and facepainting, the team here at the […]
Reaching the Fathers
The second in a series of guest posts which consider the question, ‘What is the purpose of a funeral?’ by Jenny Uzzell The first ‘purpose’ of funerals that I am going to consider is the one that, arguably, has the least relevance to most people in the modern western world. For most of human history […]
RICHARD III – ILLEGALLY EXHUMED?
Posted by John Bradfield ED’s note: John Bradfield, founder of the Alice Barker Trust and author of the groundbreaking Green Burial, the DIY Guide, campaigns, together with Teresa Evans, for the legal rights of the bereaved. Here he argues that Richard III was illegally exhumed. He presents this argument in the context of his and Teresa’s wider […]
Yet more exhumation news
Posted by Richard Rawlinson Not Richard III this time but the remains of the woman believed to have inspired Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, Lisa Gherardini. A dig at the now-derelict Convent of St Orsola in Florence is said to be getting close to discovering the buried remains of the noblewoman with the enigmatic smile. But […]