Beyond Death: Beliefs, Practice, and Material Expression

Beyond Death: Beliefs, Practice, and Material Expression

Patrick Ryan Williams, Gary M. Feinman and Luis Muro Ynoñán

 

 This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License. It is free to read, download and share on the BAR Digital platform. A wide-ranging treatment on the meaning of death, and its juxtaposition with life, from biological, cultural, and spiritual perspectives. Dozens of case studies accompany the principal essays written by scholars, Indigenous community members, and curators of the exhibition Death: Life’s Greatest Mystery. This volume offers a richly illustrated companion to the exhibition, produced by Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History, and contains full page photographs of the stunning objects in the exhibit, most from the Field Museum’s collections. This volume is intended to engage visitors to the exhibition and members of the general public who want to delve more fully into questions surrounding death and the multiple religious, historical, and cultural perspectives on it. Although not a comprehensive guide, the book touches on many world religions and case studies drawn from five continents. 

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Published: 2022

Publisher: BAR Publishing

Language: English

ISBN(s)

• 9781407360447 (ebook)
• 9781407360430 (paper)

BAR Number: S3104

Front Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Contents

List of Figures

1. Introduction

2. The Journey from Life to Death: Biology of the Human Life Cycle and Our Attempt to Control It

2B Daoist Immortals, the Lingzhi Fungus, and the Search for Immortality

2C On Health Disparities and Motherless Children

2D Response to the Pandemic: Creativity in the Face of Precarity

3. Soul and Vital Force: Vibrant Life Matters and Mortuary Arts in Africana Religions and Beyond

3B The Inca Capac Hucha

3C The Yorùbá Ere Ibeji: Reincarnation of Twins

3D Sex, Death, and Life Regeneration in the Moche World, 200–900 CE

4. Performing Death

4B Egyptian Mummification

4C The Ghanaian Fantasy Canoe Coffin: A Box with Proverbs

4D Tsavo Shrines

5. Jewish and Christian Perspectives on Death

5B The Guna, Molas, and Religious Syncretism

5C Death and the Reclining Buddha

5D Day of the Dead

6. Social Endurance beyond Human Death

6B The Mortuary and Commemorative Poles from Skidegate, British Columbia, Canada

6C The Hopewell Collective

6D Pyramids and Standing Stones: Monuments for the Dead

Appendix A: Spanish Translation of the Introduction (Chapter 1): Introducción

Back Cover

1A Big Questions: A Framework for Exploring Death

2A Sekishinsai Okada Tadaharu 赤心斎 岡田忠遥: Nine Stages of Bodily Decay (Kusōzu)

3A Mesoamerican Cosmologies: Death, Maize, and the Ballgame

4A Chancay Burials

5A The Chevra Kadisha

6A The Magdalenian Skeleton from Cap Blanc