I think this week I’m going to talk about something Erin mentioned in class on Friday. As I’m not too interested in writing about Western Europe/North American funerary practices which are coming into style. I would like instead talk about her recommendation of us not thinking about death for a day this weekend. I think it is important for us as anthropologists to take a break every now and then from some of the topics we discuss for they can become distressing and may cause us to become depressed to be constantly surrounded by the dead.
Another important point I wish to discuss is similar to another point Erin made, we sometimes distance ourselves from the dead we see, especially in museums, we tend to forget that theses mummies were once people who had family and friends. I know that as researchers we need to maintain a certain level of distance to maintain to seen as objective.
However, I would argue that at the same time researchers need to realize that the mummy or skeleton is/was a person and should be treated as such. At the same the time it may become hard for an archaeologist to maintain distance if the body is similar in age, sex or reason of death to an individual known to the anthropologist.
In my opinion because death can be a touchy subject to people that when we are talking about it, not just in class but outside of it to people in general it is important to be serious, but to maybe contrast that with humour soon afterwards; depending on the people involved.
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