Social Implications of Unburied Corpses from Intergroup Conflicts: Postmortem Agency Following the Sandby borg Massacre
| Autor: | Clara Alfsdotter |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2019 |
| Předmět: |
Cultural Studies
010506 paleontology Archeology History 060102 archaeology Iron Age Sandby borg dead bodies 06 humanities and the arts Criminology 01 natural sciences Archaeology Agency (sociology) postmortem agency 0601 history and archaeology Arkeologi body politics Order (virtue) massacre 0105 earth and related environmental sciences |
| Zdroj: | Cambridge Archaeological Journal. 29:427-442 |
| ISSN: | 1474-0540 0959-7743 |
| DOI: | 10.1017/s0959774319000039 |
| Popis: | A massacre took place inside the Sandby borg ringfort, southeast Sweden, at the end of the fifth century. The victims were not buried, but left where they died. In order to understand why the corpses were left unburied, and how they were perceived following the violent event, a theoretical framework is developed and integrated with the results of osteological analysis. I discuss the contemporary normative treatment of the dead, social response to death and postmortem agency with emphasis on intergroup conflict and ‘bad death’. The treatment of the dead in Sandby borg deviates from known contemporary practices. I am proposing that leaving the bodies unburied might be viewed as an aggressive social action. The corpses exerted postmortem agency to the benefit of the perpetrators, at the expense of the victims and their sympathizers. The gain for the perpetrators was likely political power through redrawing the victim's biographies, spatial memory and the social and territorial landscape. The denial of a proper death likely led to shame, hindering of regeneration and an eternal state of limbo. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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