#Burial Society

[thesilicontribesman]

Faces From The Distant Past...

Painted Roman Burial Panels and a Shroud

The bearded men are painted in encaustic on limewood. Damage to the finer, later portrait reveals traces of the artist's sketch below the right eye and in the beard. Unprovenanced, Roman, 150-170 CE

Fragment of a painted shroud of a young woman with gold ball earrings, a gold necklace and a hair-band decorated with pearls. Hawara,. Fayum,. Roman, 55-80 CE.

Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

[lgbtlunaverse]

I'm a little bit insane about how in novel canon the whole xiyao ending where Jin Guangyao wants to die with Xichen, who accepts, which then makes jgy change his mind and pushes him away at the last second isn't actually explicit. A lot of adaptations chose to make it so but in the novel this is all VERY up for interpretation.

Here's what actually happens in the text: Lan xichen stabs jgy, jgy moves away from lan xichen, xichen follows him, wwx realizes jgy is about to open the coffin and calls "watch out!" to lan xichen. Jgy unseals nmj, pushes xichen away, nmj kills jgy and they are both dragged into the coffin which is sealed again.

Here's what wei wuxian, our narrator, thinks is happening: Jin Guangyao wanted to lead lan xichen to his death out of revenge for stabbing him. Lan Xichen, unaware, simply followed Jin Guangyao to try and stop him from getting away. Wei wuxian's warning came too late, but Jin Guangyao- for an unknown reason- changed his mind at the last second and pushed lan xichen out of danger before lan xichen had any idea of what was going on.

Here's what most fans as well as the teams behind several adpatations think is happening: Jin Guangyao leads Xichen to nmj's coffin to die with him, Xichen accepts, because of this acceptance, proof xichen still cares for him, Jin Guangyao pushes him out of harm's way. Wei Wuxian just doesn't get that gay people who aren't him or Lan Wangji exist.

Here's what ALSO MIGHT BE HAPPENING: Jin guangyao wants to die in a different way than he is currently dying. Maybe he's afraid of what'll happen to his body after his death like he was scared for his mother's, maybe he wants to confront nmj one last time now that there's nothing more for him to lose, maybe - if he can't take her body with him- he'd at least like his final resting place to be where he buried his mother. Lan Xichen thinks he's trying to get away and follows but Jin Guangyao, who despite everything doesn't want him to die, pushes him away. Xichen doesn't know what happened until it's already happened. What he would've wanted if he had known remains up in the air.

Or, alternatively: Jin Guangyao's reasons are as above, but unbeknowst to Wei Wuxian, Xichen DOES know what jgy is about to do and either misinterprets this as an invitation to all die together, or inidividually decides he, too, is done, and wants to join his sworn brothers in the grave. To Jin Guangyao this has nothing to do with Lan Xichen, and he still doesn't want him to die, so he pushes him away against Lan Xichen's wishes.

Every single one of these interpretations is unhinged and they are all supported by the original text. It's like a choose your own adventure of tragic gay endings.

[xtruss]

Native Tribe To Get Back Land 160 Years After Largest Mass Hanging In US History

Upper Sioux Agency state park in Minnesota, where bodies of those killed after US-Dakota war are buried, to be transferred

— Associated Press | Sunday 3 September, 2023

The Upper Sioux Agency State Park near Granite Falls, Minnesota. Photograph: Trisha Ahmed/AP

Golden prairies and winding rivers of a Minnesota state park also hold the secret burial sites of Dakota people who died as the United States failed to fulfill treaties with Native Americans more than a century ago. Now their descendants are getting the land back.

The state is taking the rare step of transferring the park with a fraught history back to a Dakota tribe, trying to make amends for events that led to a war and the largest mass hanging in US history.

“It’s a place of holocaust. Our people starved to death there,” said Kevin Jensvold, chairman of the Upper Sioux Community, a small tribe with about 550 members just outside the park.

The Upper Sioux Agency state park in south-western Minnesota spans a little more than 2 sq miles (about 5 sq km) and includes the ruins of a federal complex where officers withheld supplies from Dakota people, leading to starvation and deaths.

Decades of tension exploded into the US-Dakota war of 1862 between settler-colonists and a faction of Dakota people, according to the Minnesota Historical Society. After the US won the war, the government hanged more people than in any other execution in the nation. A memorial honors the 38 Dakota men killed in Mankato, 110 miles (177km) from the park.

Jensvold said he has spent 18 years asking the state to return the park to his tribe. He began when a tribal elder told him it was unjust Dakota people at the time needed to pay a state fee for each visit to the graves of their ancestors there.

Native American tribe in Maine buys back Island taken 160 years ago! The Passamaquoddy’s purchase of Pine Island for $355,000 is the latest in a series of successful ‘land back’ campaigns for indigenous people in the US. Pine Island. Photograph: Courtesy the writer, Alice Hutton. Friday 4 June, 2021

Lawmakers finally authorized the transfer this year when Democrats took control of the house, senate and governor’s office for the first time in nearly a decade, said State Senator Mary Kunesh, a Democrat and descendant of the Standing Rock Nation.

Tribes speaking out about injustices have helped more people understand how lands were taken and treaties were often not upheld, Kunesh said, adding that people seem more interested now in “doing the right thing and getting lands back to tribes”.

But the transfer also would mean fewer tourists and less money for the nearby town of Granite Falls, said Mayor Dave Smiglewski. He and other opponents say recreational land and historic sites should be publicly owned, not given to a few people, though lawmakers set aside funding for the state to buy land to replace losses in the transfer.

The park is dotted with hiking trails, campsites, picnic tables, fishing access, snowmobiling and horseback riding routes and tall grasses with wildflowers that dance in hot summer winds.

“People that want to make things right with history’s injustices are compelled often to support action like this without thinking about other ramifications,” Smiglewski said. “A number, if not a majority, of state parks have similar sacred meaning to Indigenous tribes. So where would it stop?”

In recent years, some tribes in the US, Canada and Australia have gotten their rights to ancestral lands restored with the growth of the Land Back movement, which seeks to return lands to Indigenous people.

‘It’s a powerful feeling’: the Indigenous American tribe helping to bring back buffalo 🦬! Matt Krupnick in Wolakota Buffalo Range, South Dakota. Sunday 20 February, 2022. The Wolakota Buffalo Range in South Dakota has swelled to 750 bison with a goal of reaching 1,200. Photograph: Matt Krupnick

A National Park has never been transferred from the US government to a tribal nation, but a handful are Co-managed with Tribes, including Grand Portage National Nonument in northern Minnesota, Canyon de Chelly National Monument in Arizona and Glacier Bay National Park in Alaska, Jenny Anzelmo-Sarles of the National Park Service said.

This will be the first time Minnesota transfers a state park to a Native American community, said Ann Pierce, director of Minnesota State Parks and trails at the natural resources department.

Minnesota’s transfer, expected to take years to finish, is tucked into several large bills covering several issues. The bills allocate more than $6m to facilitate the transfer by 2033. The money can be used to buy land with recreational opportunities and pay for appraisals, road and bridge demolition and other engineering.

Chris Swedzinski and Gary Dahms, the Republican lawmakers representing the portion of the state encompassing the park, declined through their aides to comment about their stances on the transfer.

— The Guardian USA

[tavina-writes]

Hey, about the gui dao stuff. Is WWX, like, ruining all those corpses chances at reincarnating when he raises them from the dead?? Because that would in fact uh. be very bad.

Like, the autonomy re: dead people is already skeevy but if he’s also ruining their chances at a next life…

Well! Traditionally, the philosophy is that you can't reincarnate and will be doomed to wander the world as a hungry ghost never to enter the afterlife if you don't die and are buried with a "whole corpse."

This is why traditionally it's hard to get people to go for organ donation btw, it means you uhhhh you're giving up your ability to enter the afterlife. Since your organs are wandering around in someone else's body after you die, you will never be able to journey to the afterlife and onto the next and will end up a hungry resentful ghost etc etc.

(fun fact: imperial eunuchs kept their bits in a jar so they could be buried with those so they could reincarnate. This was so important to them because it concerned their next lives. That's how important this whole corpse thing was, and in some parts, still is!)

I assume that uh, if you know your corpse gets raised in necromancy and then you lose a hand in the war as a corpse etc you also uhhh do not get to go to the afterlife unless WWX came back to bury all those corpses and sort out whose limbs are whose. Which. Well I kinda doubt he was doing that and unless we get scenes or lines about him respectfully re-burying the bodies he raised uh, yeah those people are shit out of luck re: afterlife and the next life lmao.

(This is also why chopping up NMJ's fierce corpse was kinda bad btw.)

This is especially bad in a world where ghosts physically manifest and exist! Which! They do in MDZS!

[ancestorsalive]

The grave of a völva, a female shaman and seer in Norse mythology, was discovered in Köpingsvik, on the Swedish island of Öland. This grave contained several intriguing artifacts that provide insight into the völva’s role and status in Viking society.

One of the most notable items found in the grave is an iron staff that measures 82 centimeters long. This staff is adorned with bronze details and features a unique model of a house on top. The term “völva” translates to “wand carrier” or “carrier of a magic staff” in Old Norse, indicating the significance of this artifact. The staff or wand was an important accessory in the practice of seid, a type of sorcery practiced in Norse society during the Late Scandinavian Iron Age.

In addition to the staff, the grave contained a jug from Central Asia and a bronze cauldron from Western Europe. These items suggest that the völva had connections to far-reaching places and was likely a part of the upper strata of society.

The völva was dressed in bear fur and was buried within a ship setting, or stone ship, which also contained sacrificed animals and humans. This type of burial is indicative of the völva’s high status and the reverence with which she was regarded.

These findings are on display in the Swedish History Museum in Stockholm. - Source: Pagan Trader ThePaganTrader.com

[lux-noxaurea11]

- Roe Gardner

[bijoumikhawal]

Sir Jay

I found you this morning beneath my work window

On your back, white shirt showing

During the first hour, full of traffic

My eyes turned to the frailty of your breast often

The crater in your down

My religion confers uncleanness to the dead

Yet more- it is contagious

But I am here to take care of you

So I will make peace with it

Once quiet, I move you away from the roadside

Laying you where the tall pondside grass begins

Away from the landscaper's scorn

Worms and beetles will rise from the firmament to greet you

You will become firmament

Blue transmutes to brown

Cars continue to roll on

[une-sanz-pluis]

Refusing to adhere to the rules of the royal funeral had consequences, often immediately. The embalming stipulations in De Exequiis Regalibus were clearly disregarded by Edward IV when arranging for the exequies of Henry VI, oft referred to as Henry of Windsor. The 1910 tomb opening offers the physical evidence for this, but there is also narrative and financial evidence that corroborates the accusation of poor handling. The interval between Henry’s death and burial in May 1471 was only three days, as he died at the Tower of London. Henry was paraded with an open visage, so that he could be identified. According to Warkworth’s Chronicle, Henry’s body, while coffined, left blood on the ground, once at St Paul’s and once at Blackfriars. “Cruentation” was the medieval urban legend in which a victim always bled in the presence of his murderer. Henry theoretically bled in the presence of the pro-Yorkist courtiers and the royal house. Bleeding after death was also considered a sign of a martyr, and Henry quickly acquired a saintly following.65 The report of blood might be dismissed as pro-Lancastrian propaganda, but given the condition of Henry’s remains in 1910 and the stipulations of medieval preservation, the “bleeding” may have been the result of a poor embalming. The costs of Henry’s embalming were also low, as most of the money designated for his funeral was for the guarding of the corpse. Only £15 3s 6½d, given to Hugh Brice, was set aside for clergy, cloth, spices (the item that implied embalming), torches for the escort to St Paul’s and to Chertsey, and other items, such as the unmentioned embalmer himself. There was an additional payment of £9 10s 11d to Richard Martyn for twenty-eight yards of Holland linen and other items related to Henry’s exit from the Tower, including the soldiers’ salary for escort. Henry IV had spent far more than this amount caring for Richard’s body in 1400 compared to what Edward IV spent in 1471 for Henry’s body. In 1377, £21 had been spent solely upon the embalming of Edward III. The poor condition of Henry’s bones partially reflect the initial lack of a lead coffin—a measure recommended by the prescriptive texts the Liber Regie Capelle and the Household Articles. His exposure to the populace of London, the financial accounts, and the presence of tissue and hair clinging to the skull indicate that Henry was embalmed, though poorly. The body did not withstand the centuries, or even the days before burial.

Anna M. Duch, "'King By Fact, Not by Law': Legitimacy and exequies in medieval England", Dynastic Change: Legitimacy and Gender in Medieval and Early Modern Monarchy (Routledge 2020)

[kittykatninja321]

This may seem like a crazy coincidence but all of my favorite songs are actually also about my favorite little guy

[phoenix-joy]

Excerpts:

Archaeologists in Narbonne, France, have unearthed a Roman necropolis containing nearly 1,500 burials—as well as glassware, pottery and other artifacts—that provide an intimate look into an ancient society’s funerary practices.

Narbonne was the Roman Empire’s first colony in Gaul, the region that includes present-day France. Located on the country’s southeastern coast, the city grew into a significant port on the Mediterranean Sea.

Near the end of the first century C.E.—nearly 2,000 years ago—Narbonne’s residents began a graveyard just outside town, according to a translated statement from France’s National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP), which ran the excavation. The ancient people of Narbonne used this cemetery for over 100 years, expanding it to nearly 54,000 square feet. [...] Along with practical items such as strigils—tools used to scrape dirt, sweat and oil from the skin—and lamps, the graves contained pendants, jewelry, animal teeth and coins. Researchers also found a number of phallic amulets, which were common ornaments in ancient Rome.

“Phallic emblems are found on a wide range of Roman objects, from amulets to frescoes to mosaics to lamps,” per New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. “They were symbols intended to bring good luck and ward off evil spirits. As the ancient author Pliny attests, even babies and soldiers wore such charms to invite divine protection.”

Ancient Romans didn’t just leave gifts with their deceased loved ones during visits to the cemetery. They also participated in an annual celebration of their ancestors known as Parentalia, which included a graveside feast. The Narbonne cemetery contains several platforms, known as “banquet beds,” built to host such events. Some of the graves even contained remains of food expressly left for the dead during Parentalia meals.

After the excavations ended in 2020, researchers spent four years analyzing the newly discovered artifacts. While many of these items are now set to be exhibited at Narbonne’s Narbo Via Museum, the human remains await further study.

/endquote Selected pictures with credit from article:

A ceramic goblet decorated with skeletons was among the grave goods. Denis Gliksman / INRAP

Numerous phallic amulets were found in the graves. Denis Gliksman / INRAP

[rodrickheffley]

its funny being an anarchist sometimes bc ppl will tell me their reason why they arent one and its the same reason i am one

[thesilicontribesman]

Roman Child's Lead Coffin, Newport Museum and Galleries, Newport, Wales

[lottieurl]

something about travis digging up his father's grave to take the ring because he has to bring something back and something about shauna consuming jackie's body

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

Immolation - Burial Ground

[unavernales]

a little more information regarding the maui wildfires:

medical workers on the ground are describing finding hundreds of bodies. the current death toll in the media is, unfortunately, only a fraction of the reality

hospital workers are describing injuries and trauma as if survivors had come out of a warzone

thousands are still missing

an apartment complex for the elderly was lost. not everyone could get out. people were saying goodbye to loved ones over the phone

people who did get out of lahaina were leaving with ashes covering their faces and nothing but the clothes on their backs. people are losing everything.

hotels are still operating. hotels are still operating. they are not the ones offering shelters or housing or food. even bowling alleys are offering shelter, but hotels have the audacity to build on burial sites but not open their doors to local families who have lost everything.

donate to maui united way, the maui food bank, mutual aid, and maui humane society