Morbid yes...but SO interesting!!

Erin, I can't understand how this didn't catch on as an internet meme on facebook!! Hearing everyone's responses to the question "What would you bury with me to tell future archaeologists who I was?" has been fascinating. I think it's much more interesting than knowing what song was number one on the day you were born, or what your porn star name is...

I decided to conduct a thoroughly scientific survey to answer this week's blog prompt topic :) 

thanks getchatched.com!

(Due to the scientific nature of my research, I felt a scientific paper layout was appropriate :D)

Abstract:

The purpose of this study was to ascertain the discrepancies between self-selected mortuary artifacts and those selected by the deceased's kin. 

Materials and Methods:

I wrote a list of things I'd include in my own burial (although I am actually more likely to donate my organs if viable, and then leave my skeleton to a school! Woohoo!) to let the archaeologists know who I was. After I wrote all that down, I sent out a Facebook message to a bunch of relatives (see I told you it was super scientific)and explained why and what I was asking for. Then I compared the two lists!

Discussion:

My list is fairly simple, there are only a few things that I think I would want to be buried with to symbolize who I was in life. 

These items are:

- CD of photos of my family and friends (originally I wrote down photographs of my fam. then I realized that would disintegrate and a CD might survive, plus I could include waaaay more pictures this way!) 

- Saint George Medal (on my Dad's side the name St. George is passed down with the girls, and my Mom got me a necklace with the medal on it for Christmas one year)

- Celtic Cross (this necklace was given to me by my Grandma, and symbolizes my Irish heritage)

- a Book. (I just don't know which one. Choosing just one would be The. Hardest. Decision. Ever.)

This is my dream library!!
Thanks storybookloveaffair.blogspot.com

So that's pretty much all I feel would be necessary to tell the future world that I loved my family and friends and was a bit of a bibliophile!! Which really, in the long run, is all that I think matters.

But you guys, if I let my family go ahead with their plans, there would be a Luke and Uncle Louie coffin situation a la Gilmore Girls on our hands!! My coffin just wouldn't close. I would need the coffin of a giant. Maybe even of Andre The Giant. Eventually they would have to start just throwing stuff in the pit. And I'm pretty sure that would not go over well with the cemetery groundskeepers. Not to mention the poor Grad student who had to document the discovery of my grave!

If I were to die today, my family would bury me with the following:

- the complete Harry Potter set
- the complete Robert Jordan set
- the book I've read over and over (probably Pride and Prejudice!)
- Pat the Bunny
- Madeline
- a bed of books (presumably including the above series, but my brother didn't specify. Besides I'm 5'7.5" so I would need a lot more books than that to make a bed...)
- Tears for Fears CD 
- copy of Ever After (my most favourite movie EVER!!!)
- my current passport and expired passport
- a passport renewal application form 
- a list of palindromes (you know, like "racecar" and "A man, a plan, a canal: Panama" and "blalb")
- paper with the conjugation of the latin verb "amo"

- tokens of some sort from all of my friends and family
- bath oils
- candles
- comfy/whimsical sweater and socks (incase I get a chill)

- a batch of chocolate cookies with my Grandma's recipe

- my favourite childhood stuffed animals (Sweater Bear and Platypus!) 

- currency from all the countries I've traveled to  

- coins to pay the ferry man

- a cheque for $100,000 that my Mom says I can spend any way I want!

- some quality winter ale

- large case of Strongbow

- "replica of a gray cat who has survived abandonment and the ravages of a rare disease" (/fur clippings from my family's many cats!)

- oh and I'll be wearing my pajamas plus my favourite boots...

Phew!! Just writing all that down was exhausting! I can't imagine how tiring actually getting all that into my coffin would be :p 

I imagine a situation like this might unfold!

 Thanks bloomsandbaskets.com!

So despite their best intentions to send me off in style and comfort and with lots of love, basically the message my family and friends would be inadvertently sending into the future goes something like this:

Meredith really liked books. Like a lot. Maybe to a crazy degree? Also she may have been running some sort of passport scam and/or trying to flee the country (the cheque, the coins, the many currencies). But that's okay because she might also have been too drunk to pull it off, or too preoccupied with all the fur. The whole relaxation/spa aspect (pajamas, candles, bath oils) will continue to perplex archaeologists.


Or they might just assume I was a hoarder!!!

thanks survivorsucks.com!

On a serious note:
I was really touched with all of the things my family and friends said they would include. It really did make me realize how burials are far more a reflection of the people who did the burying than of the dead person themselves. It makes me wonder how often in anthropology we learn more about the buriers than the buried without realizing it. This is a very simplified version of what their replies entailed- everything came with an explanation what each item meant to them and what they intended it to say about me. Thinking about not being around anymore made me go all weird and get an awful tight-chest-panicy feeling, but I still found this to be an incredibly rewarding exercise :)


I always find the aspect of food and drinks in ancient burials really fascinating. The idea of sending someone on to the next life with nourishment and sustenance feels like a very special thing to do. It is interesting that the incorporation of food in some form or another is a fairly common feature in burial practices; even more interesting is that anthropologists have the technology to discover what types of food and drink were included! Looks like my family was on the right track with their cookies and cider!!

A Family Affair!

I sent out an email today to find out what sort of things my family would include in my burial (à la this week's blog prompt), and a few of my wonderful relies told me about an interesting website which relates to last week's topic! 

Fantasy Coffins from Ghana!

Thank you ghana-net.com!

This extremely cool website offers custom made coffins in basically every design you could possibly think of. As they put it:


"The coffins are designed to represent an aspect of the dead person’s life — such as a car if they were a driver, a fish if their livelihood was the sea — or a sewing machine for a seamstress. They might also symbolize a vice — such as a bottle of beer or a cigarette."


Talk about going in style!!

Funerary Rituals Among the Snaidanac:


Wow doing some digging around (get it?!) online for information on this week's blog prompt was an...interesting... experience!

(Thanks landthink.com!)

I have learned two main things thanks to my research into non-standard funerary practices this week:


1) Modern Canadian culture is particularly unimaginative in their (oops, I mean our...) dealings with the dead
2) Some authors of funeral advice websites actually have an awesome sense of humour!


I shall address these two revelations separately so as not to confuse my followers (hi Mom!! hi Dad!!)...


Point #1: After perusing a number of funeral home websites, it became clear to me that there are really only three options for disposing (legally) of our dead in Canada. The most common practice is inhumation, or what is commonly called burial. There are all kinds of different containers one can be buried in, but ultimately the body is placed in a box and then put into a plot of land which is certified for use as a grave. I set out on my research hoping to find links to strange and unusual options on funeral home websites, but the only "exciting" option appears to be green burials.


The second main option is cremation! Again, how exciting eh? 

(Thanks jezebel.com) Furnace for incinerating
a corpse in a crematorium. 

Basically this option reduces the body to a small amount of "cremains" which can then be disposed of in pretty much any way the family chooses. Most websites advise families to obtain permission before dispersing cremains onto property which doesn't belong to them, such as provincial parks for example, but really the world is your oyster if you want to scatter a handful of ashes here and there.

The last possibility is donation of the body to science/medicine. I feel like this is the most interesting of the three options, yet it is advertised the least- possibly because it means that funeral homes don't make much $$$ when you go with this route. Interestingly, a lot of people seem to have certain body parts which they would not wish to donate. After asking around a little bit, I found that most people are happier to donate organs for medical purposes, but think of their skeleton as an important part of "them" and thus would like it to be buried. Personally, I would rather my bones be put to use educating future generations than slowly rotting away beneath the ground. 

(Thanks http://fuckyeahanthropologymajorfox.tumblr.com)
At UVic most of the skeletal collection is composed of remains
from India, and we have no medical records or details of their lives.
By donating your body along with a history, you provide a valuable
teaching tool for students. 

Point #2: I found this aspect of the investigating I did to be far more interesting than any of the funerary practices I read about online. Most of the websites I encountered were decorated in soft, calming pastel colours, with the horrific word "death" barely making an appearance. Instead, phrases like "suffered a loss", "passed on", and "the deceased" (when mentioning the person who has died is completely unavoidable) are used throughout to soften or perhaps dull the fact that a person is no longer alive. Despite the fact that death will always be a difficult thing for people to deal with, something about not being straight forward about it always seems to irk me. What do you guys all think? As I said in my last post, my family has a fairly open attitude towards our mortality, but am I being too blasé about death? 

I feel like this might be the face of someone who
has a blasé attitude! (My face, not my little brother's)

Anyway, I thought I'd share one website I stumbled across with you! It is http://www.funeral-help.com/options.html and their motto is: "Going in style...without going in debt"
This website is from the USA and is much more lively (pun intended!) than most of the Canadian ones I found; leading me to believe that American's have some much more exciting funerary options available to them than we do!

"ladder truck flag display" which can
be hired to attend funerals!
(Thanks Florida Memory Project!)

For example, you can have your remains mummified by a company in Utah, or freeze-dried in another state. Or if you always wanted to be an astronaut, you can have a lunar burial after your body has been cremated. Amy Polkey pointed out a few other amazing options our neighbours to the South have available to them! Hopefully Canadians will become more adventurous with their funeral procedures and ways of dispersing their body, because as it stands now I think we are limiting ourselves!

Hello fellow Anth 392ers!

It feels a little strange introducing myself this way, but I'll see what I can do. 
So this is me....

So now you have a visual, let me give you the very abbreviated...

Story of My Life:

(otherwise known as "How I Ended-Up in Anth 392". I still haven't settled on an official title)

Well to begin with, I grew up right here in good ol' Victoria! Most of my rather large family also lives here, which means that it is unusual for me to not be related to someone in/on any given room/store/street, etc. Which is kind of nice, until someone comes into your work, knows your name, and tells you they are a relative, and you have no idea who the person is...true story, it happened to me last Saturday. 

My big family is actually a large part of how I ended up in Anthropology 392. You may think I'm joking, but I'm not! When you have a large family, it stands to reason that a decent number of them will be older individuals. When you have old people, they unfortunately tend to die. Some of my earliest memories are of attending funerals. (I know that sounds morbid, but bear with me for a second) I very quickly came to understand that it is okay to be sad when someone I love dies, but to celebrate their life and to take comfort in our collective mourning rituals (to phrase it anthropologically). 

We always gather in the kitchen and start making tiny
sandwiches and other food for the reception!
(photo courtesy of recipebridge.com)

Due to growing up with what I feel was a healthy exposure to death, I was surprised to learn that not everyone feels the same way. I mean, I knew that my family did some things differently than others (I bet not every family fights over the honour of hanging a golfball wrapped in electrician's tape on their christmas tree)but it was still a wake-up call to realize some people are quite disturbed by death. Well to make a long story short, I became somewhat fascinated with death and how people deal with it. Luckily there are books out there written by authors who share my curiosity, because otherwise I feel like I might have talked about it more and probably not had many/any friends! 

Now for some more personal disclosure: I work in an awesome used bookstore :D (I feel like it might be inappropriate to advertise their awesomeness here by blatantly saying the name, so lets just say it sounds like "Hussel Rooks") The reason I bring this up is because last Christmas (not the one we just had, but the next last christmas) I only got given one book as people assumed I would just buy my own! Shocking, I know. Anyhow, this would have been devastating (and actually kind of was) except that the one book I did get was like being given a bike that has a basket and streamers and a bell!

Wheeeeee!!!! This is how I felt
when I got the book. No joke.
(thanks jacksbikes.com)

You may be wondering what this book was, and rather than tell you I am going to post a picture (a picture is worth a thousand words as they say!)

THIS BOOK IS AMAZING!!! I spent the remainder of that Christmas wandering about the house with the book held in front of my face, often bumping into relatives/objects, and learning about all kinds of horrific yet amazing things! Anyone who is interested in osteology should really check this out, it is a seriously good read :) 


So you see, when I was registering for classes and I saw one that said "Anthropology 392: Dead (Wo)Men Do Tell Tales", I couldn't not sign-up for it!


I am really looking forward to everything about this class though and for getting to know all of you! I'm fairly friendly (if a little weird) so definitely say "hi" in class or online :) (Is anyone else as stoked as I am to have their own blog? I was a little trepidatious out first, but writing this intro has been a lot of fun!)