The Poetics of Processing: Memory Formation, Identity, and the Handling of the Dead, Osterholtz Anna J.

The contributors interpret postmortem treatment of the physical body through a poetics lens, examining body processing as a mechanism for the re-creation of cosmological events and processings role in the creation of social memory. They analyze methods of processing and the ways in which the living use the physical body to stratify society and gain power, as evidenced in rituals of body preparation and burial around the world, objects buried with the dead and the hierarchies of tomb occupancy, the dissection of cadavers by medical students, the appropriation of living spaces once occupied by the dead, and the varying treatments of the remains of social outsiders, prisoners of war, and executed persons.

The Poetics of Processing combines social theory and bioarchaeology to examine how the living manipulate the bodies of the dead for social purposes. These case studies--ranging from prehistoric to historic and modern and from around the globe--explore this complex material relationship that does not cease with physical death. This volume will be of interest to mortuary archaeologists, bioarchaeologists, and cultural anthropologists.