University of Oulu

A. Hakonen & V. Hakamäki (2019) Living with death: what moral consideration of mortuary practices reveals about the plurality of worldviews in the multi-millennial past of Central Fennoscandia, Time and Mind, 12:4, 287-304, DOI: 10.1080/1751696X.2019.1681744

Living with death : what moral consideration of mortuary practices reveals about the plurality of worldviews in the multi-millennial past of Central Fennoscandia

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Author: Hakonen, A.1; Hakamäki, V.1
Organizations: 1Archaeology, Faculty of Humanities, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland
Format: article
Version: accepted version
Access: open
Online Access: PDF Full Text (PDF, 0.4 MB)
Persistent link: http://urn.fi/urn:nbn:fi-fe2021060433986
Language: English
Published: Informa, 2019
Publish Date: 2021-04-24
Description:

Abstract

Mortuary practices evident in the materiality of Central Fennoscandia in Northern Europe are interpreted here rather unconventionally as expressions of morality. This is defined as the culturally approved way to manage death, without scruples. The last seven millennia are set on a flat temporal scale in this paper, revealing contradictions between different ideologies and worldviews over that time. The ubiquitous themes that emerge are agency of place and the bond between fire, life, and death, along with the main criticism, which asserts that the overwhelming fear of the dead reported in the region during 2nd millennium may have been aggravated by Christian dogma. Thus, projecting similar notions of fear to local prehistoric burials is problematic and should be made with caution. The study acts as a reminder that archaeological interpretation is drawn from theory — the interpretational key — which affects both the hypotheses and the results. Changing the key may turn even an established interpretation on its head.

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Series: Time & mind
ISSN: 1751-696X
ISSN-E: 1751-6978
ISSN-L: 1751-696X
Volume: 12
Issue: 4
Pages: 287 - 304
DOI: 10.1080/1751696X.2019.1681744
OADOI: https://oadoi.org/10.1080/1751696X.2019.1681744
Type of Publication: A1 Journal article – refereed
Field of Science: 615 History and archaeology
Subjects:
Funding: The study was partly funded by Otto A. Malm Foundation.
Copyright information: This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Time and Mind: The Journal of Archaeology, Consciousness and Culture on 24 Oct 2019, available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/1751696X.2019.1681744