Breaking And Making The Ancestors

Towards the capstone of the European Bronze Age, in an area stretching from the Carpathians in the East to the North Sea in the West, vast cremation grave cemeteries occur that are perhaps better known as 'urnfields.' Today some 700 of these burial sites have come to light in the Netherlands alone. In this corner of Europe, also known as the 'Lower-Rhine-Basin, ' these cemeteries are often characterised by vast collections of small burial mounds under which the cremated remains of decedents were buried in small shaft-like pits. In many a case the cremated remains had been put in urns first, providing these cemeteries with their very name. Though rich in numbers, urnfield graves are often described as 'poor' and 'simple' as only in rare occasions decedents were provided with grave gifts. However, when close attention is paid to the actions involved in the creation of these seemingly simple graves, they in fact reveal a richness in funerary practices that on their turn hint a complex and intricate mortuary process. This book delves into the wealth of funerary practices reflected in more than 3,000 urnfield graves excavated throughout the Netherlands in order to reconstruct the mortuary process associated with the urnfields in this particular part of Europe. Together these graves tell interesting stories about how the dead related to each other, how plain and simple objects could be used as metaphors in the creation of relational and ancestral identities and how the dead were inextricably linked to the land.

This book delves into the richness of funerary practices reflected in some 3000 urnfield graves excavated throughout the Netherlands in order to reconstruct the mortuary process associated with this fascinating funerary legacy from the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age.

A Spectator Book of the Year It's fashionable to think of the writers of the past as irredeemably tarnished by prejudice. Aristotle despised women. John Milton, the great champion of free speech, wouldn't have granted it to Catholics. Edith Wharton's imaginative sympathies stopped short of her Jewish characters. But what if it is only through the works of such individuals that we can achieve a necessary perspective on the troubles of the present? Join literary scholar Alan Jacobs for a truly nourishing feast of learning. Discover what Homer can teach us about force, what Machiavelli has to say about reading and what Charlotte Brontë reveals about race. Not all the guests are people you might want to invite into your home, but they all bring something precious to the table. In Breaking Bread with the Dead, an omnivorous reader draws us into close and sympathetic engagement with minds across the ages, from Horace to Donna Haraway.

Broken Bodies, Places and Objects demonstrates the breadth of fragmentation and fragment use in prehistory and history and provides an up-to-date insight into current archaeological thinking around the topic. A seal broken and shared by two trade parties, dog jaws accompanying the dead in Mesolithic burials, fragments of ancient warships commodified as souvenirs, parts of an ancient dynastic throne split up between different colonial collections... Pieces of the past are everywhere around us. Fragments have a special potential precisely because of their incomplete format – as a new matter that can reference its original whole but can also live on with new, unrelated meanings. Deliberate breakage of bodies, places and objects for the use of fragments has been attested from all time periods in the past. It has now been over 20 years since John Chapman’s major publication introducing fragmentation studies, and the topic is more present than ever in archaeology. This volume offers the first European-wide review of the concept of fragmentation, collecting case studies from the Neolithic to Modernity and extending the ideas of fragmentation theory in new directions. The book is written for scholars and students in archaeology, but it is also relevant for neighbouring fields with an interest in material culture, such as anthropology, history, cultural heritage studies, museology, art and architecture.

There are different kind of curses and covenant which a lot of people are suffering ignorantly because of it; Ancestral covenants are the covenants that were made by our ancestors, either fourth, third, second, or first generation; whichever generation it is, the covenant flows through the family lineage. There are various covenants made by our ancestors, some are good while others are bad. Some of our ancestors made covenant to worship and serve only the living and true God, which is good one; others made covenant with the spirit of the devil to worship a particular deity or idol with an oath of daily, weekly, monthly or yearly sacrifice of blood either human or animal. Which is the wrong and bad covenant because it has negative impact that flows through the family linage to seek vengeance for the life of those human used for their sacrifice.These are mistakes made by the ancestors which they are ignorant of its future consequences to their children.Some of these covenants were also made by our direct parents; while some covenants you made by yourself and some covenants, somebody made on your behalf. These covenants have their consequences and a lot of people are suffering because of it ignorantly. Many curses and hindrances exist as a result of the direct evil done by our ancestors, direct parents or ourselves.Many families contributed in the killing of innocent people, inflicted illnesses and incurable diseases to people, including giving poison to people because of envy; they collected peoples

This book "challenges our relationship to the environment and to each other, not only now but across generations. It is an important question for our time, when communities have become fragmented by a global consumer society, when our selves have become isolated in a competitive and technology-driven economy, and when our spiritual, social, and ecological impacts on human and other-than-human beings extend farther than ever imagined due to globalization and climate change. Through interviews and poetic snapshots into the experience of Indigenous people and others, this book demands that the reader think about how contemporary concerns oblige us to see ourselves as someone's future ancestor and, in turn, creates for the reader a different way of looking at his or her traditions and self"--

Fourteen artists and picture book illustrators present paintings with descriptions of ancestors or other sources of inspiration that have inspired them.

Now in paperback: A call to save ourselves and our planet that gets to the root of the current crisis—society’s extreme short-sightedness

In 2003, a backhoe operator hired by the state of Washington to work on the Port Angeles waterfront discovered what a larger world would soon learn. The place chosen to dig a massive dry dock was atop one of the largest and oldest Indian village sites ever found in the region. Yet the state continued its project, disturbing hundreds of burials and unearthing more than 10,000 artifacts at Tse-whit-zen village, the heart of the long-buried homeland of the Klallam people. Excitement at the archaeological find of a generation gave way to anguish as tribal members working alongside state construction workers encountered more and more human remains, including many intact burials. Finally, tribal members said the words that stopped the project: "Enough is enough." Soon after, Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe chairwoman Frances Charles asked the state to walk away from more than $70 million in public money already spent on the project and find a new site. The state, in an unprecedented and controversial decision that reverberated around the nation, agreed. In search of the story behind the story, Seattle Times reporter Lynda V. Mapes spent more than a year interviewing tribal members, archaeologists, historians, city and state officials, and local residents and business leaders. Her account begins with the history of Tse-whit-zen village, and the nineteenth- and twentieth-century impacts of contact, forced assimilation, and industrialization. She then engages all the voices involved in the dry dock controversy to explore how the site was chosen, and how the decisions were made first to proceed and then to abandon the project, as well as the aftermath and implications of those controversial choices. This beautifully crafted and compassionate account, illustrated with nearly 100 photographs, illuminates the collective amnesia that led to the choice of the Port Angeles construction site. "You have to know your past in order to build your future," Charles says, recounting the words of tribal elders. Breaking Ground takes that teaching to heart, demonstrating that the lessons of Tse-whit-zen are teachings from which we all may benefit. A Capell Family Book

This collection of essays by regional specialists draws on a wide range of ethnographic and historical data to reassess the significance of the ancestors for changing relations of power and emerging identities in Madagascar.