The Routledge Handbook of the Archaeology of Death and Burial in the Viking Age

This handbook examines the many facets of evidence for death and the treatment of the dead in the Viking world. It explores key themes in current archaeological work with mortuary remains, bringing together geographical overviews of material, historiographical approaches, and interpretative debates. Chapters explore a wider geographic area than is usual in Viking studies, going beyond the traditional ground of the Scandinavian homelands, to give the fullest possible examination of the subject. The volume begins with critical discussions of the state of knowledge across the regions of the Viking diaspora, presenting themes, directions and developments in each area. Next comes a historiographical section which examines how mortuary remains from the Viking Age have been approached in scholarship and incorporated into social and political narratives up to the present, including public representations of Viking death in the contexts of museum exhibitions and popular media. A series of case studies shows how mortuary remains are used to reconstruct aspects of life, including osteological and natural science approaches to topics including health, identity, social organization and violence. The penultimate section takes a broad approach to mortuary landscapes, presenting deathways in rural and urban settings, and how artefactual, art historical and language studies combine to illuminate a variety of monument forms. The final section focuses on mortuary remains as representing the ends of lives, through the many different aspects of the social, ritual and emotional processing of death investigated by archaeology. This authoritative and wide-ranging handbook will be an invaluable resource for researchers and students wanting to explore death and burial in the Viking Age archaeological record.