The Centre for the Promotion of Excellence in Palliative Care (CPEP) Annual Lecture 2015: What will survive of us? What archaeology and anthropology can teach us about how people prepare for what happens after their death.

Categories: Community Engagement.

Sarah Tarlow is Professor of Historical Archaeology at the University of Leicester. Her interests are in the archaeology of death and burial.
This lecture is a part of CPEP’s work to encourage people to be more at ease in discussing death and dying so that, when the time comes, the last part of their lives can be to most effect.

By holding a mirror to findings of archaeology, anthropology and history the lecture will look at how different cultures have understood the nature of life after death and reflect on the meanings to each of us in thinking about our mortality. Why might you need to be buried with a cockerel if you die a spinster in the high Andes? And who gets understandably annoyed at having to spend their afterlife in a storage facility in Birmingham? What is important about bones to aboriginal Australians and others? What do grave goods tell us about beliefs in an afterlife?

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