Archaeological Perspectives on Burial Practices and Societal Change

Frida Espolin Norstein is a researcher in Archaeology at Stockholm University, specialising in Viking Age funerary practices in northern Europe with a particular interest in artefact studies, ritual practices, regional variation, and the process of Christianisation. She is currently researching the use of grave goods in the construction of personhood in Viking Age graves.Irene Selsvold is a postdoctoral researcher in Classical Archaeology at the University of Gothenburg, University of Leicester, and University of Oslo. She specialises in the funerary practices of late Roman Asia Minor and Italy and the Christianisation of urban spaces in Late Antiquity. An active field archaeologist, she has participated in excavations in Greece, Norway, Turkey, and Italy. She is currently involved in fieldwork in Vulci, Italy, with the Understanding Urban Identities (UUI) project.

• 1. Death and Transformation: Burial Practices and Societal Change Theme 1 Practices, Communities, and Agents of Change 2. Mortuary Practices and Societal Change in Early Mycenaean Greece 3. Grave Participants: Rethinking Funerary Participation as Strategies for Social Change 4. Change and Continuity: Cremation and Inhumation During the Christianisation Period in Scandinavia (c. 800–1200 CE) 5. Dying Well in a Damaged Planet: Emergent Burial Practices and the Ecologies of the Dead Theme 2 Migration, Identities, and Narratives of Change 6. The Urning Question: Cultural Change in Roman-Period Slovenia Seen through the Choice of Funerary Urns 7. The Viking-Period Burials of the Hebrides: The Maritime Landscape, Grave Goods, and Change 8. Narrating Ethnic Identity and Competition in Lombard Southern Italy through Burial Practices (6th–7th Centuries) 9. Golden Funerary Masks and Societal Change Narratives in Ancient Macedonia Theme 3 Transitions, Tempos, and Complexities 10. Building the Christian Cemetery: Religious Evolution in Burial Practices in the North-West of the Iberian Peninsula 11. Cypriot Burial Practices at the Close of the Bronze Age: Continuities and Changes in the Light of the 12th-Century BCE Transformations 12. Changing Burial Practices in Late Antiquity: Embracing Complexities 13. Rethinking Burial Practices and Period Transitions Through a Posthumanist and New Materialist Lens Concluding Remarks 14. Death Changes Everything: Archaeology and the Human Scale of Change