Archaeology of Death - Mummy, Bog Body, Cist, Kistvaen, Chambered Cairn, Ship Burial, Charon's Obol, Tumulus, Megalith, Early Anglo-Saxon Burial (Paperback)

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Pages: 69. Chapters: Mummy, Bog body, Cist, Kistvaen, Chambered cairn, Ship burial, Charon's obol, Tumulus, Megalith, Early Anglo-Saxon burial, Maronite mummies, Mungo Lake remains, Stone box grave, Dartmoor kistvaens, Kofun, Anglo-Saxon burial mounds, Haniwa, Exhumation of Yagan's head, Hagia Triada sarcophagus, Grave field, Jade burial suit, Chariot burial, Excarnation, Cheddar Man, Clava cairn, Egtved Girl, Shinju-kyo, Vorstengraf, Giants' grave, Hanging coffins, Domus de Janas, Court cairn, Fire Mummies, Funeral bundle, Wedge-shaped gallery grave, Saitama Prefectural Museum of the Sakitama Ancient Burial Mounds, Mycenaean chamber tomb, Cruciform passage grave, List of types of funerary monument, Chambered long barrow, Mortuary enclosure, Entrance grave, Secondary cremation, Norwich Anglo-Saxon, Transepted gallery grave, Corbelled tomb. Excerpt: Charon's obol is an allusive term for the coin placed in or on the mouth of a dead person before burial. According to Greek and Latin literary sources, the coin was a payment or bribe for the ferryman who conveyed souls across the river that divided the world of the living from the world of the dead. Archaeological examples of these coins have been called "the most famous grave goods from antiquity." The custom is primarily associated with the ancient Greeks and Romans, but is found also in the Near East, and later in Western Europe, particularly in the regions inhabited by Celts of the Gallo-Roman, Hispano-Roman and Romano-British cultures, and among Germanic peoples of late antiquity and the early Christian era, with sporadic examples into the early 20th century. Although archaeology shows that the myth reflects an actual custom, the placement of coins with the dead was neither pervasive nor confined to a single coin in the deceased's mouth. In many burials, inscribed metal-leaf tablets or ...