The Contemporary Archaeology of Urban Cremation

Modern cremation is often portrayed by archaeologists as a distracting antithesis of the open-air cremation practices encountered in the archaeological record from the prehistoric and early historic past. In some key ways, the process of burning cadavers within gas-fired ovens, followed by the grinding of bones to uniformly sized granules, offers a stark contrast to the varied multi-staged open-air cremation practices known from recent ethnographic studies, and from the increasingly rich data provided by the archaeological record. The cremation process is hidden, indoors and hence distanced from the survivors in modern cremation. However, there are also numerous connecting themes between modern and ancient cremation and this chapter hopes to shed light on how mortuary archaeologists can explore cremation today to better understand cremation’s memorials, spaces and materials in both the distant and recent past, including both shared themes and distinctive dimensions in relation to other disposal methods, like inhumation. For while the burning of the body itself is hidden from view in modern cremation, the deployment of space, architecture, and memorialization before, during, and after the transformation of the body by fire choreographs comparable, if varied, emotive and mnemonic engagements between the living and the dead. This argument certainly holds for the post-cremation disposal of the ‘ashes’ or ‘cremains’ (the burned, distorted, shrunken, dried, and fragmented vestiges of the body and the materials and fuels involved in the cremation process: although in modern cremation, all artefacts and artificial body parts are removed prior to the grinding of bones). Both ancient and modern cremation practices share in providing a wide range of options regarding the destinations and treatments of ashes. They might be left at the site of cremation (in the modern sense, dispersed by crematorium staff in the garden of remembrance), yet they are readily retrievable, transportable and partible, and can be dispersed and integrated into a range of spaces and materials unavailable to the treatment of the unburned dead (see Williams 2008). Some of the spectrum of opportunities for ash disposal are comparable to those available for the inhumed dead and involve a specific plot and memorial, yet others can take on other material and spatial dimensions far different from the traditional grave plot.