ABSTRACT
I recently overheard a colleague comment that no one teaches archaeology of death anymore. Courses in the archaeology of death were obsolete. In the US, they were vestiges of a pre-NAGPRA (Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990) curriculum informed by assumptions that graves and other mortuary sites were merely scientific data, and that archaeologists had exclusive authority over their study and interpretation. Such courses bore the stigma of failing to represent diverse interests, of ignoring questions of relevance in the contemporary world, and, in some cases, of distorting and sensationalizing the past by emphasizing the opulence of royal tombs, the intricacies of burial rituals, and the vagaries of preservation. Furthermore, from many students’ perspectives, an entire course on the archaeology of death seemed excessively morbid, if not downright depressing.
