Facing the dead: Investigations of mummification and its social dimensions. A study of Garton Slack
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2017-04-25

In Iron Age Britain mortuary practices span the full range of possible rites (Wait 1985): inhumation, cremation, excarnation (Stead 1991, Harding 2016), even rare forms of supposedly ‘accidental’ mummification (e.g. ‘bog bodies’ Giles 2009, Aldhouse Green and McDermid 2015), with a variety of disarticulated remains that have been further modified for public display or personal curation (Armit et al. 2011,2013). Within this landscape East Yorkshire is both an iconic and fascinating region, containing some of the only formal cemeteries from this time period.

Garton Slack and Wetwang Slack were excavated from the mid-1960s till the 1980s, initially by T.C.M. Brewster (1980) and later under the direction of Dr John Dent (1982, 1984). Despite their rich funerary archaeology and the international significance of these finds, a report on the sites were never fully published. Stimulated by wider research, and burial practices, my research tell the story of five individuals who were buried at Garton Slack cemetery; presenting case studies with unusual mortuary positioning of the corpse in the ground. Through osteological and histological analysis this paper will reveal important results into complex mortuary rites which challenge our current notions of inhumation traditions in the Iron Age. Demonstrating the potential of this new suite of analytical techniques to rewrite understandings of funerary practice, the paper will also touch on its wider importance in understanding past society’s relations with cadavers, and thus prompt us to think critically about how we display human remains or represent the associated mortuary rites, in more public museum contexts.

Emma Tollefsen, University of Manchester