This subject investigates cultural approaches to the single event which occurs to all humankind: death. While concentrating on the archaeology, art and textual evidence of Greco-Roman antiquity, the subject also draws upon case studies from later periods and other societies to illustrate the richness, variety and complexity of cultural responses to death, employing modern ethnographic parallels to aid the interpretation of past practices. Topics covered include the role of burial practices in defining living societies through declarations of social status, age, gender and ethnicity in funerary procedures and monuments constructed to commemorate the dead. You will learn about the ideas, literature and art surrounding the afterlife, ghosts and underworld; the role of religion in the formulation of burial rites; and social approaches to ways of death such as war, disease and crime.

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