The Archaeology of the Afterlife: Deciphering the past from tombs, graves and mummies

Ancient beliefs about life, death and the afterlife is a complex and vast topic of study and books such as this, written for the general reader, have to be highly selective of the material and examples they include. This said, in his global survey of attitudes towards death and the afterlife Tony Allan has chosen carefully with a broad temporal and geographical coverage of cultures from Egypt and the Near East to prehistoric Europe, and from the Americas to East Asia and the Pacific. Highlighting patterns of similarity and difference in the ways in which people thought about, dealt with in practical terms, commemorated and spiritually conceived of death, he highlights how death was frequently seen as a journey made from one world to another and was accompanied by goods from the previous world. The sophisticated belief system of the Egyptians, the mummies, sacrifices and tombs of South America, the megalithic tombs of prehistoric Europe, north European ship burials, the Death pits of Ur and China's imperial tombs are just some of the case studies included.