MortalityPub Date : 2022-04-03DOI: 10.1080/13576275.2022.2063531
Martin Christ
{"title":"Regulating urban death in early modern German towns","authors":"Martin Christ","doi":"10.1080/13576275.2022.2063531","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13576275.2022.2063531","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The article argues that in the course of the early modern period, urban death was ordered in new ways. Since the mid-sixteenth century, clerics and church officials already kept lists of the deceased in their congregation. Gradually, these functions were taken over by urban magistrates, who also promoted a new kind of order during burials. Through the rise of additional instructions, rules and orders, they gave urban death a new shape. The reasons for these instructions were manifold and included fear of divine punishment because of inappropriate behaviour, damage to the town through the spread of diseases and the fortification of privileges reserved for mayors, councilors, or high-ranking clerics. As the early modern period progressed, the number and details of the funeral ordinances increased. Additionally, burial spaces became increasingly regulated and by the nineteenth century, decrees by both rulers and individual towns stipulated how cemeteries should be regulated and administered.","PeriodicalId":40045,"journal":{"name":"Mortality","volume":"27 1","pages":"206 - 221"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42285605","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
MortalityPub Date : 2022-04-03DOI: 10.1080/13576275.2022.2066290
D. Miano
{"title":"Love, death, and funerals in ancient Rome: on the goddess Libitina","authors":"D. Miano","doi":"10.1080/13576275.2022.2066290","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13576275.2022.2066290","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT One of the most striking characteristics of Roman funerals, is that they and the related personnel were associated with a suburban grove consecrated to Libitina, whose name can also metonymically mean ‘death’. Several ancient writers talk about this goddess, and occasionally associate her with Venus. In this paper, I shall use metonymy to explore the semantics of the deity, and I shall argue that Libitina was a liminal deity, whose position at the margins of the city was mirrored by her position at the margins of Roman polytheism. This shows the strong interconnection between language, urbanity and religion.","PeriodicalId":40045,"journal":{"name":"Mortality","volume":"27 1","pages":"159 - 170"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46407810","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
MortalityPub Date : 2022-04-03DOI: 10.1080/13576275.2022.2063529
Martin Christ, Carmen González Gutiérrez
{"title":"Introduction: death and the city in premodern Europe","authors":"Martin Christ, Carmen González Gutiérrez","doi":"10.1080/13576275.2022.2063529","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13576275.2022.2063529","url":null,"abstract":"Death is omnipresent in the city. Most urban settlements are characterised by high mortality rates, which increase further during times of crisis, such as natural disasters and sieges. In premodern times, the urban density resulted in the rapid spread of epidemics, during which the mortality rate soared even further. Through graveyards, funeral processions, memento mori , ghost stories, epitaphs and sermons on the afterlife, men and women were constantly reminded of their own mortality. Burial sites dominated many areas within important urban centres and inhabitants of cities were confronted with mortal remains and memorial places on a daily basis. Even when cemeteries were relocated during the course of the early modern period, the dead and their commemoration retained an important position among the living. The higher urban density tended to make more visible all these aspects in cities than in rural areas, increased further by frequent discussions on urban hygiene. The appropriate treatment of the dead and the greater differentiation of urban and religious actors led to conflict and compromise among the urban dwellers who dealt with the dead.","PeriodicalId":40045,"journal":{"name":"Mortality","volume":"27 1","pages":"129 - 143"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60284562","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
MortalityPub Date : 2022-04-03DOI: 10.1080/13576275.2022.2066292
Carmen Gutierrez
{"title":"Islamic funerary archaeology in Córdoba (Spain): state of the art and future paths","authors":"Carmen Gutierrez","doi":"10.1080/13576275.2022.2066292","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13576275.2022.2066292","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article shows how the multidisciplinary and rigorous study of former cemeteries can reveal important aspects of the societies that produced such evidence not only by focusing on the medieval funerary architecture , but also by considering bones as an historical source of information. These aspects often relate to the social stratification and conditions of the population and the origins and identities of the deceased, burial typologies, religious practices and beliefs, urban organisation and its spatial evolution, and etcetera. Approaching these topics through disciplines such as archaeology, epigraphy or topography can result in methodological problems when analysing medieval Islamic cemeteries in the Iberian Peninsula, which were regulated by the Maliki doctrine, especially when under Umayyad rule (756-1031 CE). According to this doctrine, monumental graves were forbidden and certain types of gravestones were banned as well. Taking Córdoba as a study case and comparing it with other cases in al-Andalus, it will be shown how a better knowledge of Andalusi society should be reached through the study of bones.","PeriodicalId":40045,"journal":{"name":"Mortality","volume":"27 1","pages":"188 - 205"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42827893","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
MortalityPub Date : 2022-04-03DOI: 10.1080/13576275.2022.2066288
Asuman Lätzer-Lasar
{"title":"Placemaking of the dead in urban Rome","authors":"Asuman Lätzer-Lasar","doi":"10.1080/13576275.2022.2066288","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13576275.2022.2066288","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to shed new light on the religious placemaking of the dead in the very dense and diverse metropolis of Rome in order to understand the role of the urban in the burial of the deceased in antiquity. In the Republican and Imperial periods in Rome, there is ample evidence of the impressive variety of sites and practices by which the dead were buried. However, the location of burial sites and the practices changed dynamically as they had to adapt not only to the growth of the city but also to new civic regulations, which were particularly focused on controlling public hygiene. The tension between the location of burial sites and their place biographies is made even more complex by the pomerium (sacred boundary) in Rome, an intangible and flexible boundary within which burials were forbidden. However, illegal and legal exceptions do exist. Therefore, the aim of this paper is not to provide an overview or classification of burial types, but to shed light on the role of the urban in influencing burial sites and rituals in order to identify where and how urban actors had to negotiate spaces and practices.","PeriodicalId":40045,"journal":{"name":"Mortality","volume":"27 1","pages":"144 - 158"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46873907","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
MortalityPub Date : 2022-04-03DOI: 10.1080/13576275.2022.2063532
A. Sun
{"title":"Afterword: urbanity and the afterlife of death","authors":"A. Sun","doi":"10.1080/13576275.2022.2063532","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13576275.2022.2063532","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article addresses the theoretical issues regarding rituals of death and the “afterlife of death” in urban life. Through an analysis of the five articles in this special issue on “Death and the City” that examine how death is controlled as a necessary component of urban social order, I suggest these case studies shed light not only on the essential technologies of social rules and polices regarding death, but they also reveal important truths about how humans join the material reality of death to death’s metaphysical meaning, or the “afterlife of death.”","PeriodicalId":40045,"journal":{"name":"Mortality","volume":"27 1","pages":"222 - 227"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60284781","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
MortalityPub Date : 2022-04-03DOI: 10.1080/13576275.2022.2063530
H. Maier, E. Urciuoli
{"title":"Death in Smyrna: the Martyrdom of Polycarp as urban event","authors":"H. Maier, E. Urciuoli","doi":"10.1080/13576275.2022.2063530","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13576275.2022.2063530","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The essay concentrates on the Martyrdom of Polycarp, a script largely believed to contain the earliest extant occurrences of a Christian technical martyrdom vocabulary. On the one hand, we will lay bare the distinctively urban character of this death performance by showing how and to what extent all the components of the martyrdom apparatus relate to the city as socio-spatial condition of production and consumption, textualisation and memorialisation of an ‘urban religious event’. On the other, we will look at how the text manages to turn a Roman death spectacle into a Christian propaganda event by hijacking practices and re-routing sequences of a public urban show. For both purposes, the critical conceptual toolkit will be provided by the most quintessentially urban among the 20th-century artistic-cum-political avant-gardes: the Situationists.","PeriodicalId":40045,"journal":{"name":"Mortality","volume":"27 1","pages":"171 - 187"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47076396","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
MortalityPub Date : 2022-03-24DOI: 10.1080/13576275.2022.2053951
J. Wojtkowiak
{"title":"Verlorene Seelen? Über die Gegenwart der Toten (Lost Souls? On the presence of the dead)","authors":"J. Wojtkowiak","doi":"10.1080/13576275.2022.2053951","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13576275.2022.2053951","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":40045,"journal":{"name":"Mortality","volume":"27 1","pages":"518 - 519"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-03-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46692252","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
MortalityPub Date : 2022-03-17DOI: 10.1080/13576275.2022.2052433
Jacque Lynn Foltyn
{"title":"Apocalypse Man: The Death Drive and the Rhetoric of White Masculine Victimhood","authors":"Jacque Lynn Foltyn","doi":"10.1080/13576275.2022.2052433","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13576275.2022.2052433","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":40045,"journal":{"name":"Mortality","volume":"27 1","pages":"515 - 516"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-03-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43358751","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
MortalityPub Date : 2022-03-15DOI: 10.1080/13576275.2022.2052435
M. Tabares
{"title":"Archives of Conjure: stories of the dead in Afrolatinx cultures","authors":"M. Tabares","doi":"10.1080/13576275.2022.2052435","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13576275.2022.2052435","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":40045,"journal":{"name":"Mortality","volume":"27 1","pages":"517 - 518"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48141616","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}