There is growing interest in sustainable death care options like human composting as an alternative to energy-intensive cremation and chemical-dependent and land-intensive burial.
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Articles on Burial
Displaying 1 - 20 of 36 articles
Next-of-kin often feel pressured to make hasty funeral arrangements. Most contact a funeral director and tee up a conventional service plus burial or cremation. But what are the other options?
Also known as alkaline hydrolysis or aquamation, the process is much better for the environment than burial or cremation.
In ancient Rome, male followers of the goddess Cybele, known as Galli, some of whom surgically removed their testicles, were often considered feminine.
Recent reports of burials of elephant calves are intriguing but it’s impossible to confirm that this was intentional.
Novelist Mary Shelley kept the heart of her deceased husband, the poet Percy Shelley, in her desk drawer.
Mineralogical analysis of 5,000-year-old stone beads from Turkana, Kenya suggest a novel mortuary tradition by early pastoralists.
For some people, the decision over how to dispose of their body represents one last adventure – and one last consumer choice, a scholar explains.
There is often a distinct fragrance of pine or cedar, with some spiciness from cloves, cumin, myrrh, and warm notes from plants, flowers and trees.
Burial land is running low in certain parts of the world. It’s about time we started to consider the environmental cost of our final resting place.
Ukrainian families’ anguish at not being able to bury their loved ones underscores a deep human need, an anthropologist writes.
The objects buried with people provide important clues about their lives.
Death is a part of life: but environmentally harmful burial practices, overcrowded cemeteries and unaffordable funerals are denying many the right to a good death.
This is a transcript of episode 16 of The Conversation Weekly podcast The racial hunger gap in American cities and what do about it. In this episode, we look at some of the reasons behind racial disparities…
Burials seem to have been uncommon in Africa some 80,000 years ago, although they were widespread in Eurasia.
City cemeteries are fast running out of space, so researchers surveyed Australians and found many were quite open to the alternatives to traditional burials.
The former justice received a Jewish funeral at the Supreme Court. But in other ways, Ginsburg’s burial is breaking with traditional Jewish death rituals.
A funeral director explains how the bodies of the deceased are prepared for burial or cremation in the United States.
PODCAST: An audio version of an in depth article on what newly discovered documents reveal about the burial of Charles Dickens, 150 years after his death.
How two ambitious men put their own interests ahead of the great writer and his family in an act of institutionally-sanctioned bodysnatching.
Top contributors
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Associate Professor, Queen's University Belfast
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Researcher, UNSW Sydney
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Lecturer in Social Welfare Law, Policy and Advice Practice, Staffordshire University
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Professor of Archaeology, Flinders University
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Professor in English, University of Exeter
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Research Fellow in Ancient History, Macquarie University
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Professor of Wildlife Conservation, University of Salford
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Honorary Research Associate, Evolutionary Studies Institute, University of the Witwatersrand
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Professor, Griffith University
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Associate Professor in Archaeology and Space Studies, Flinders University
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Associate Professor, School of Built Environment, UNSW Sydney
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Professor Emeritus of Death Studies, University of Bath
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Associate Professor, University of Reading
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Senior Lecturer in Archaeology, University of Hull
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Lecturer in Languages, Culture and Society, UCL
