Graveyards: a history of living with the dead

Abstract

"An arresting and poignant cultural history of graveyards, from early burial sites to now. Why, how and where do we inter our dead? How do we set out to remember them? The Pyramids of Giza, the catacombs and columbaria of Rome and the cenotaphs erected to the world's war dead are but some of the answers. In inimitable style, Roger Luckhurst probes the often moving, sometimes contested ways in which people throughout history have responded to the 'problem' of laying the dead to rest. Blending history, art, literature and popular culture, Graveyards explores the various different aspects of the treatment of the dead. Chapters range from early burials and the emergence of necropolises and catacombs, to grave-robbing, garden cemeteries and the perilous overcrowding of the urban dead, to monuments for deceased heroes and rulers and the development of modern memorial culture. The products of our persistent fascination with graveyards are everywhere in literature, art, film and television, and Luckhurst engages these cultural afterlives alongside grave sites' particular social and historical contexts. Illustrations throughout offer insights into the rich and unusual visual culture of the grave: helpful guides and provisions for the afterlife, tender dedications, gravestones and effigies sit with memento mori paintings, artistic visions of the underworld and stills from classic horror. Beautifully designed and carefully researched, this book takes a lyrical, unexpected look at graveyards as both site and symbol"--Publisher's description.

Contents

Introduction: meet you at the cemetery gates -- Part one. The origins of burial -- Graves before graveyards -- The emergence of the necropolis -- Megaliths, passage graves and barrows -- The Greek necropolis and the Roman cemetery -- Part two. Death and faith -- Anthropology and dark tourism -- Death and faith -- Judaism -- Christianity -- Islam -- Hinduism -- Buddhism -- Part three. The numberless dead -- A problem of modernity -- Burial reform and the rise of the garden cemetery -- Tombs for the rulers -- Recruiting the dead -- Afterword: graves after graveyards?