This book explores the funerary culture in the Netherlands through a mixture of photographs, figures and case studies. The nine chapters demonstrate the process of funeralising and ideas about death in the Netherlands, providing an overview of contemporary funerary practices and their changes over time.

In the Introduction, a brief general review is given of the present knowledge and ideas about the Hunebed Builders, who lived some 5000 years ago during the Stone Age.

This book explores the funerary culture in the Netherlands through a mixture of photographs, figures and case studies. The nine chapters demonstrate the process of funeralising and ideas about death in the Netherlands, providing an overview of contemporary funerary practices and their changes over time.

This Handbook reviews the state of mortuary archaeology and its practice with forty-four chapters focusing on the history of the discipline and its current scientific techniques and methods. Written by leading scholars in the field, it derives its examples and case studies from a wide range of time periods and geographical areas.

Throughout northern Europe, thousands of burial mounds were erected in the third millennium BCE. Starting in the Corded Ware culture, individual people were being buried underneath these mounds, often equipped with an almost rigid set of grave goods. This practice continued in the second half of the third millennium BCE with the start of the Bell Beaker phenomenon. In large parts of Europe, a 'typical' set of objects was placed in graves, known as the 'Bell Beaker package'.This book focusses on the significance and meaning of these Late Neolithic graves. Why were people buried in a seemingly standardized manner, what did this signify and what does this reveal about these individuals, their role in society, their cultural identity and the people that buried them?By performing in-depth analyses of all the individual grave goods from Dutch graves, which includes use-wear analysis and experiments, the biography of grave goods is explored. How were they made, used and discarded? Subsequently the nature of these graves themselves are explored as contexts of deposition, and how these are part of a much wider 'sacrificial landscape'.A novel and comprehensive interpretation is presented that shows how the objects from graves were connected with travel, drinking ceremonies and maintaining long-distance relationships.

Death affects all aspects of life, it touches our emotions and influences our identity. Presenting a kaleidoscope of informative views of death, dying and human response, this book reveals how different disciplines contribute to understanding the theme of death. Drawing together new and established scholars, this is the first book among the studies of emotion that focuses on issues surrounding death, and the first among death studies which focuses on the issue of emotion. Themes explored include: themes of grief in the ties that bind the living and the dead, funerals, public memorials and the art of consolation, obituaries and issues of war and death-row, use of the internet in dying and grieving, what people do with cremated remains, new rituals of spiritual care in medical contexts, themes bounded and expressed through music, and more.

This study was developed by researchers at the Center of Thanatology at Radboud University, Nijmegen. The Center conducts research into socio-cultural and religious aspects of death, dying, and bereavement. In the book, scholars in the broad interdisciplinary field of thanatology offer valuable insights in the changing views of death as found in Europe. The first part of the book presents studies on a conceptual level for various aspects of death studies. In a second segment, different European societies are compared on a national level, while, in the final part, religious beliefs, attitudes, practices, and other worldview-related issues are covered. Countries, disciplines, and worldviews come face to face, providing a framework and starting a profound comparative dialogue on challenges that have confronted this field of study. (Series: Death Studies. Nijmegen Studies in Thanatology - Vol. 1)