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In the present as in the past, the dead have been deployed to promote visions of identity, as well as ostensibly wider human values. Through a series of case studies from ancient Egypt through prehistoric, historic, and present-day Europe, this book discusses what is constant and what is locally and historically specific in our ways of interacting with the remains of the dead, their objects, and monuments. Postmortem interaction encompasses not only funerary rituals and intergenerational engagement with forebears, but also concerns encounters with the dead who died centuries and millennia ago. Drawing from a variety of disciplines such as archaeology, bioarchaeology, literary studies, ancient Egyptian philology, and sociocultural anthropology, this volume provides an interdisciplinary account of the ways in which the dead are able to transcend temporal distances and engender social relationships. Until quite recently, literary sciences and archaeology were generally regarded as incommensurable in their aims, methodologies, and source material. Although archaeologists and literary critics have been increasingly willing to borrow concepts and terminology from the other discipline, this book is one examples of a genuinely collaborative endeavor. This is an open access book.

Archaeology --- Anthropology --- Literature: history & criticism --- mortuary archaeology --- dead-body politics --- memory studies --- agency of the dead --- archaeological theory --- literary studies --- medieval relics --- mass graves --- burial monuments --- prehistoric graves --- History of Egyptian Sepulchral Monuments --- Iron Age in Northern Central Europe --- Historic Sources about the Uses of the Dead --- Literary Tombs in the Twelfth Century --- Archaeological Traces in Beowulf --- National Identity through Merovingian Burials --- Skeletal Remains of Saint Erik --- Dissolving Subjects in Medieval Reliquaries --- Shakespearean Exhumations --- Archaeology. --- Physical anthropology. --- Literature --- Physical-Biological Anthropology. --- Literary History. --- History and criticism. --- Appraisal of books --- Books --- Evaluation of literature --- Criticism --- Literary style --- Biological anthropology --- Somatology --- Human biology --- Archeology --- Auxiliary sciences of history --- History --- Antiquities --- Appraisal --- Evaluation