The conclusions I have reached in this section relate to both the experience of Byzantine mortuary practices, and to the applicability of a relational method to archaeological enquiry. Primarily, I have determined that a relational approach to archaeology does not preclude the study of emotion. The progression from abstract assemblages to a consideration of the human experience of actions is a
means of legitimately approaching mortuary practice while still acknowledging the emotionally volatile nature of the end of a life.
In terms of shrouding, and the moments immediately preceding and succeeding that process, I have postulated that the sequence of events act to reconfigure the relationships surrounding the dead person. In structuralist terms, laying out was pre-liminal, a facsimile of the living person just before death was displayed to be acknowledged, in context with the place they spent their life, in clothes used while living and surrounded by the people who knew them alive. The private act of stripping and shrouding the body then removed the person from the living sphere in an act of separation. The shrouding of the body was a liminal phase of the rite of passage. In being shrouded the person was in the process of being reconfigured into something else while the act of shrouding might also allow the shrouders to reconfigure their experienced emotions into socially laudable forms of emotion. This does not presuppose that the experienced emotions were always intensely felt grief, sorrow, relief, guilt, or any other combination of emotions commonly experienced in modern mortuary contexts. Rather it acknowledges that there is likely to have been tension between what was felt by individuals close to the dead person, and what was ‘appropriate’ for Byzantine individuals to feel. The liminal phase for the body was brought to a close with the procession of the body
reincorporated into society. The display of both the dead person in their newly shrouded form, and the changed state of the mourners close to the dead individual was viewed and understood by a wider community of their peers before the funeral rite could begin.
Figure 22 is a visual representation of a relational approach to mortuary practice. It is the third blackbox in the sequence that began with figure 10 of this thesis, showing how moments of mortuary practice come nested within one another and are visible at different scales. The blackbox of mortuary practices shown in figure 3 shows two different processes; the soul, which is already in a liminal state, is largely unaffected by the practices surrounding death, while the body goes through a series of transformations (blackboxes 7-10) whereby it is moved from the living sphere to eventually be reincorporated with both the soul and the body of Christ in blackbox 12. The application of a relational approach to the archaeological and textual evidence has not manifestly changed what we know about Byzantine mortuary rites, but it has significantly altered what it is possible to say about them. Discussing emotion not in cross cultural terms where ‘grief’ or mourning is a universal human experience, but rather thinking about emotion more generally in terms of affective fields, or
technologies of emotion, and also more specifically, using the emotion terms unpicked in the theological and historical literature, allows a more composite, perhaps more complete understanding of the moments of emotional practice discussed in this section of my thesis. Led by the work of Byzantine historians but taking the archaeological evidence as its own discrete data set, I have tried to problematize our understanding of Byzantine meaning. I hope that in doing so I am not the historian with a Latourian ‘belief in the naïve belief of others’ but rather that I have
begun to develop an understanding of how objects we might previously have discussed as ‘symbolic’ can be used in non-literal ways in eschatological contexts, such as the use of shoes in mortuary assemblages to acknowledge and cite other elements of the assemblage, and the understanding that the souls of the dead are a) still linked in some way to the living (see section 3.2 for my argument concerning the possible dominance of ambiguously psychologicaly linked ways of thinking) and b) still in transition until the Day of Judgement. To return to van Gennep, the presence of shoes and coins in these assemblages reinforces my trust in the hypothesis that Byzantine souls are in the liminal state of ritual from the moment of baptism until the moment of resurrection, death was just another marker along the way).
In section 4.2 I discussed different forms of deposition in terms of types of cemetery (church cemeteries, either primary phase or secondary phase, and inside or outside of the church building, or field cemetery) and in terms of single or multiple burial. Beyond seeking trends in different styles of burial at different types of site, the central conclusion of this section was that the different deposition practices affected the experience of burial. The small, private chapel burials of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries enabled a quite different range of affective fields to open field cemeteries. Digging a new grave for a deceased individual was a considerably different experience to opening a previously cut, and already occupied grave, pushing aside partially disarticulated remains and using the space for further primary depositions. The frequency of the second situation, where individuals are interred in contexts which contained other bodies, allowed some conclusions to be drawn on the nature of the Byzantine body. First, that the bodies of the dead were not viewed as particularly polluting in situations where they needed to be moved, and second that the contexts which favoured single burial (such as the field cemeteries of Çatalhöyük, Ilipinar and Barcιn), may have been created by communities who held a more literal view of the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, as more effort was put in to ensuring the body remained intact.
The second set of conclusions reached within 4.2 focused on considering what exceptional circumstances, such as the creation and circulation of relics, could tell us about the bodies of the dead and the experience of opening graves. My primary conclusion here was that in grave contexts which were frequently opened, the knowledge of relics, saints and the other world brought to the assemblage by the people digging the grave would have contributed to the affective field. In other words, knowledge of saints was fundamental to the assemblage of depositing individuals in graves, and may have resulted in people monitoring for saintly activity among the bodies of the dead. In section 4.3 I discussed the process of distributing the material culture of the dead as an act of incorporation, and suggested that if the process concluded after the funeral, this act, along with the
placement of the cerecloth and concealing of the face, closed the liminal phase of the ritual associated with the dead body.
In section 4.4 I discussed how laying out the body acted as a pre-liminal phase of ritual, and how the affective field surrounding the body of the dead person encompassed the community who gathered to witness the death of the person who was still embedded in a close approximation of their living context.
In section 4.5 I argued that shrouding was a common practice, and discussed the nature of Byzantine grief and how shrouding was used as a technology of mourning to produce an acceptable public display of emotion. The archaeological evidence for shrouding was set out, with the suggestion that the bodies of the dead at the field cemeteries of Barcιn and Ilipinar, where dress accessories were quite frequently present and there is no archaeological evidence for shrouding, may not have been shrouded, while at sites where there is significant textile evidence for shrouding, as at Amorium and Elaiussa Sebaste, it is likely that even where there is no positive archaeological evidence for
shrouding, the bodies may well have been wrapped. Textual and visual evidence was used to argue that shrouding was in general a common practice, even for sites where there is no definitive evidence either way, such as at Çatalhöyük, and in the chapel burial assemblages.
The second part of the analysis conducted in section 4.5 explored how shrouds and the process of shrouding, where present, may have been used to create a private space in which to mourn. This process would have served two immediate functions, to separate the mourners closest to the dead from the general population while they conducted the act, and to provide a space in which emotions could be made ‘appropriate’ for the more public situation of the funeral.
Section 4.6 discussed procession to the grave side as a reincorporation of sorts, allowing the dead and shrouded person to be acknowledged as such by a wider community, and encouraging the mourners to display appropriate emotion experiences, such as penthos.
In section 4.7 I argued that the general absence of grave goods in Medieval Byzantine graves was a contributing factor to the under-studied nature of the dataset, and that with better publication of full assemblages, the data could contribute to a detailed discussion of regionalisation and identity in the provinces. I suggested a differentiation between interior church burials at Amorium and Elaiussa Sebaste, the field cemeteries at Barcιn and Ilipinar and the secondary phase burials at Kalenderhane and Saraçhane, with the increasing trend of the Medieval period of burying the dead with dress accessories as an indication of burial practices increasingly citing western medieval customs as part of the increased engagement with foreigners discussed in 2.2.
In addition to discussing identity I argued that the general absence of grave goods is tied
ideologically to an understanding of death where the physical body is not important for resurrection. Although the dominant understanding of the body-soul relation in the period relied on a
psychological connection, the consciousness of individuals was not tied to the physical remains of the individual, but was understood to be largely elsewhere after death. Finally I argued that objects in Byzantine graves cannot be understood as material metaphors, but should be taken seriously in roles which cite other traditions, specifically allegorical understandings of the other world such as those explored by Jane Baun in her readings of the apocalypses of Anastasia and the Theotokos. Section 4.8 argued that shrouding the face of the dead person by putting the cerecloth in place concluded the ritual, continuing the concealment of the person which had begun with the removal of the body from its living sphere, shrouding the body and dispersing the material culture.
This chapter as a whole has aimed to develop the relational method set out my introduction, drawing on the historical context of the sites, my understanding of both the archaeology and eschatology of the time period and theoretical approaches to experience to ask the question ‘what was Byzantine mortuary practice and how was it experienced?’. It is clear that I have only begun to answer that question, tracing specific elements of the assemblage through objects, practices and Byzantine ways of knowing. There are many areas of study related to the topic of this thesis that would bear greater investigation using the methods and theoretical position applied above. A comparison with contemporary Seljuk burials, such as those likely present at Pınarbaşı would be a means of distinguishing separate, contemporary communities on the border during the eleventh century, and, with greater work on the osteological sample, a close comparison of the
Constantinopolitan church burials with contemporary chapel burials might lead to a fruitful
conversation on class differentiation and political stratification. In this thesis however, I have chosen to discuss experience. Before presenting my final conclusions I will speculate on how a particular grave assemblage might have been experienced.