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Fingermarks used in forensic investigation are biometric elements widely utilized in identification thanks to their unique and classifiable characteristics. Despite numerous studies investigating fingermark development on different surfaces, few studies have addressed the skin surface of deceased individuals, given the challenging nature of this substrate. This study investigated the transfer and development of fingermarks on human skin that had been systematically deposited over the forehead, neck, and wrist. Additionally, gender, age, and the time elapsed since deposition were issued as additional factors impacting fingermark development. Therefore, we prepared a study setting representing a crime scene by modelling the scene and then utilized 400 fingermarks. The marks transferred to thermal paper were developed by applying ThermaNin and magnetic black fingermark powder as fingermark development methods and then photographed. They were then evaluated for their suitability for identification via scoring and statistical analysis. The results indicated that 36% of all marks obtained from the skin of living persons and 66% of those from skin surfaces of dead bodies received the highest score and were assessed as suitable for identification. Despite the negative effect of increased time since deposition, it was revealed that the ThermaNin method yielded better results than magnetic black fingermark powder. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The paper analyzes the institutions and regulations that govern the transnational movement of dead bodies in contemporary Europe. With the extension of free movement across the European Union and the subsequent expansion of transnational employment, tourism, and retirement, the repatriation of corpses from one member state to another lies in an ambiguous regulatory space. In exploring how dead bodies move between EU member states, and how their movements are regulated within transnational and national systems, the paper pays particular attention to the legacies and continued relevance of mid-century international agreements. Section 1 contextualises the issue of the transportation of mortal remains, discusses our broader theoretical background, and explains our research methods. Section 2 provides an historical overview of the foundational international regulations governing the repatriation of corpses: the 1937 Berlin Agreement and the 1973 Strasbourg Agreement. In Section 3, we present a comprehensive review of the discussion of repatriation of EU citizens between EU countries that occurred in the European Parliament and Commission between 2000 and 2018. In so doing, we focus on the ways in which understanding institutional action and inaction provides a lens on the operation of supranational competency development and its limits, and on the complex ways in which institutional arrangements are interwound within national, international, and transnational practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When Edwin Chadwick released his report into burial reform in 1843 he was highly critical of the working-class practice of keeping the dead body in the home for up to a week in the period between death and burial. Chadwick argued that the English working-classes kept the body for so long for economic reasons and that as a result of living in close quarters with a corpse they picked up negative associations with death and suffered moral decline. This paper overturns this assumption by using evidence from nineteenth-century folklore collections and working-class autobiography to argue that the long-standing tradition of keeping the body in the home and rallying round to prepare it for burial held a deep significance for rural working-class people. The gradual preparation of the body for burial engaged the senses and centred on the visual appearance of the corpse enabling rural folk to confirm social bonds through the formation of collective memories, demonstrate the respectability of both the deceased and their family, accept the reality of death, and begin the mourning process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents stories of living with dead trees in Baltimore, MD, USA to explore where, how, and with whom tree remains become lively through art, farming, and sustainability practices. These stories serve as a lens into the diverse ways practitioners produce knowledge about death, healing, disease, and decay as they encounter and transform dead nonhuman bodies. I find that practitioners who work with dead trees develop a circular understanding of death, and propose that decay is needed to heal bodies and remediate land. However, when these everyday embodied knowledges are translated from the level of body to the city, death does not become lively for all. When circular ways of knowing death are applied to the city, death is displaced into vulnerable human and tree bodies showing that the sustainable city both relies on and (re)produces the binaries of life and death. As a contrast, practitioner knowledges of tree death suggest sustainabilities that trouble established notions of life and death, bodies and environments, health and disease, and decay and beauty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Medieval Archaeology is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

"Why more accounts do not mention flies": Deconstruction, or the Corpse of Man Cut by the Insect This paper stages an encounter between certain moments of textual transgression, articulated in differing disciplinary registers, which intersect at the "exorbitant"[1] terminus marked by the figure of the "insect". I did not know exactly why these parenthetic carnivorous flies were so fascinating, even fabulous, until I chanced upon the "insect-asides" of Derrida.[59] In "Typewriter Ribbon", in the middle of a long engagement with Paul de Man's reading of Rousseau's autobiography, Derrida opens a digression: It might be worthwhile to ask whether the name "insect" is different from the name "animal", but this paper cannot pursue that thread.[96] Derrida notes that the word "insect" can mean both "linking up" and "cutting", tempting deconstruction to deploy it as one of those fulcrums turning on which it accesses a text.[97] In a way the divisibility of the I graphic mark i "insect", beyond semantic limits, makes it stand for a certain interval between "deconstructibility" and "undeconstructibility". [Extracted from the article]

The practice of cremation of human corpses was a contested topic during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. An alien concept advocated by public health officials as well as individuals concerned about the use of urban spaces, cremation gained little traction among the wider Australian Christian populace. For the increasing number of Sikh and Hindu hawkers and farm workers, however, cremation was a culturally mandated means of disposal of the dead. This paper traces the public discourse on cremation events during the first dozen years (1892-1905). It shows that the cremations of the Punjabi hawkers in effect normalised the concept to the wider public outside academic circles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay argues that "The lamentacion of a Gentilwoman vpon the death of her late deceased frend William Gruffith Gent." in The Gorgeous Gallery of Gallant Inventions (1578), attributed to Isabella Whitney, is a witty reimagining of one of the most popular Renaissance literary genres: the epitaph. The poet's grief revolves around the personal consequences of her secret lover's death, handling stock phrases and situational irony to strangely moving effect. While the poem's first-person speaker invokes the epitaph only to repudiate it, the three quatrains framing the text (written in the third person and therefore generally attributed to the volume's editor Thomas Proctor), pins down the mourning presence with the epitaphic "here." This paper suggests single authorship of the doubled text by showing how the poem posits personal lament as the site of interment located by the spatial demonstrative "here," to fashion a poetics of closure in which the voice of the languishing female poet becomes, through linguistic and textual splitting, a living epitaph for the dead beloved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are people who suffer excruciating, relentless emptiness with no relief yet express it in full, imaginative ways that touch others but not themselves. There appears to be an expressive capacity that communicates agonistic deadness in alive, moving ways. Others feel this living communication unable to realize the subject's loss of feeling. Are there inaccessible bits of spirit or is the subject's negative, destructive emptiness endless – or some other unknown alternative entirely. This paper tries to explore aspects of this aporia moment to moment respecting complex dimensions of human experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses a history of funeral infrastructure development in Russia from the end of nineteenth century to the present day. Following Tony Walter's approach to the diversity of the corpse management systems, the authors state that the Russian case does not fit any of the models suggested by Walter. Authors trace changes in Russian funeral management over the past century to show that the peculiarity of contemporary funeral culture has its roots in Soviet ideology and command economy with a specific frame of infrastructure (dys)functionality. The paper is based both on archival materials on Soviet funeral management and an ethnographic study, conducted in eight regions of Russia from 2016 to 2018. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between death and politics figures prominently for us. However, the dead body has been neglected by this tradition. This paper shows how the figure of the corpse offers speculative resources in our contemporary moment, marked by conditions of existential threat and political decay. The paper discusses the ontological liveliness of the corpse, especially in relation to new materialism. The paper nevertheless draws our attention to the fact that the corpse is also the material site of an absolute loss. Accordingly, two developments for political theory become possible: a political phenomenology of loss and the approach of morbid opportunism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses former burial rites which resulted in memorials known asmirila. It deals with the custom of marking a temporary resting-place while transporting a deceased person, which was prevalent in the north-eastern Adriatic hinterland, manifested in the erection of mortarless stone structures, the remains of which can still be found in the landscape. The paper considers the material and symbolic components of the cultural landscape through the phenomenon ofmirilain the central parts of the Croatian Adriatic hinterland: Ravni Kotari and Bukovica. At the same time, given the complexity of natural and socio-political factors, an attempt is made to establish how the custom arose in the spatial and historical context of the region. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper reports the system integration and cadaveric assessment of a body-mounted robotic system for MRI-guided lumbar spine injections. The system is developed to enable MR-guided interventions in closed bore magnet and avoid problems due to patient movement during cannula guidance. The robot is comprised by a lightweight and compact structure so that it can be mounted directly onto the lower back of a patient using straps. Therefore, it can minimize the influence of patient movement by moving with the patient. The MR-Conditional robot is integrated with an image-guided surgical planning workstation. A dedicated clinical workflow is created for the robot-assisted procedure to improve the conventional freehand MRI-guided procedure. Cadaver studies were performed with both freehand and robot-assisted approaches to validate the feasibility of the clinical workflow and to assess the positioning accuracy of the robotic system. The experiment results demonstrate that the root mean square (RMS) error of the target position to be 2.57 ± 1.09 mm and of the insertion angle to be 2.17 ± 0.89°. The robot-assisted approach is able to provide more accurate and reproducible cannula placements than the freehand procedure, as well as to reduce the number of insertion attempts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we address issues relative to the clothes used to dress the dead in Greek culture in modern times through to the present. This is done firstly by using descriptions from popular artistic prose, many of which provide significant detail. More specifically, we draw upon testimony from songs about death and the moirologia (laments or dirges), sung over the corpse, based on references in primary folkloric material in both printed and handwritten collections. We also draw from 100 ethnographic interviews conducted between 2005–12. We include all the types of clothes, differentiations in urban and rural areas, in social and economic class, and in gender and age. We also shed light upon the possible ritual uses of these clothes, as encountered in the death customs of the Greek people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of plant-fibre remains in the Mediterranean is limited due to the scarce archaeological sites where this organic material has been preserved. However, the Late Bronze Age burial site of Cova des Pas in Minorca (1100–800 cal BC) has provided an extraordinary assemblage of well-preserved organic materials, including an important number of cordage remains. The aim of this paper is to present the results of the study of more than 600 cordage remains and to provide new insights into the production and use of cords in this period in Balearic Islands prehistory. Firstly, we have characterised the production process by analyzing the morphological and technical characteristics of the whole assemblage. According to the results, plant resource management, past environments, and cordage production in Balearic Bronze Age societies are discussed. Finally, the function of these cords is considered, according to the technology of production and the archaeological context. Despite the homogeneity of the sample, some variations regarding size, direction of twist and type of cords have been documented. Cords were used to tie the leather shrouds wrapping the dead bodies and to fix these mortuary packages to the wooden biers used to transport them to the burial cave. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contrast with other countries--particularly France and the USA--cemetery research in the UK has tended to be limited and sporadic. This paper constitutes a review of existing literature on British cemeteries, and examines a number of new theories and approaches that may be applied to cemetery research. Although much of the paper concentrates on historical, sociological and social policy material, relevant debates in other disciplines are also introduced. The paper has five sections and discusses: gaps in the history of cemetery establishment; cemeteries and the corpse; cemeteries and grief; the cemetery as a specific type of landscape; and cemeteries as cultural institutions. The paper principally concerns UK cemeteries, but references are made to international studies for the purpose of comparison, to demonstrate broader trends and to illustrate fruitful avenues of research yet to be pursued in the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: The microgrinding technique is used to study cochlear implant electrode positioning and cochlear trauma. It may be argued that this technique might cause damage to inner cochlear structures even without a cochlear implant insertion and thus it should not be recommended. Most papers do not explain how microgrinding is performed, referring to older papers for its description. Properly describing the technique and re-evaluating its safety may reassure researchers of their findings when studying trauma after cochlear implant insertion.Objective: To accurately describe the microgrinding technique and re-evaluate its safety to assess intracochlear trauma by studying non-implanted temporal bones.Methods: Four fresh temporal bones were removed before 24 hours postmortem and frozen at -20°C. Two were prepared for microgrinding before 24 hours of freezing and the others after 6 months. A descriptive analysis of the microscopic anatomy was performed, as well as a comparison between the bones processed within 24 hours of freezing and the bones frozen for 6 months.Results: A total of 80 surfaces was evaluated. Preservation of even the most delicate intracochlear and vestibular structures was observed, such as the crista ampullaris, Reissner's and basilar membranes, permitting an adequate micro-anatomical study. Artifacts were rare and did not interfere with the analysis. Bones studied before 24 hours postmortem exhibited better quality than those frozen for 6 months.Conclusions: The microgrinding technique accurately preserves the inner ear's membranous microscopic anatomy and thus it is useful to study cochlear implant electrode positioning and trauma inside the cochlea. Studies that aim to evaluate inner ear microanatomy should be performed with fresh bones or bones frozen for less than 24 hours since they exhibit a better micro-anatomical quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the aesthetics of the fine art, photographic representation of the dead body in Pieter Hugo’s photographic series,The Bereaved, produced in 2005. The series consists of four close-up colour photographs of the faces of men who died of AIDS-related illnesses and were photographed in their caskets, in an informal morgue in Khayelitsha, Cape Town, South Africa. Katarzyna Majak’s theory of socialisation as an attempt to lessen the scandal of the corpse through representation is central as an analytical tool throughout this paper. Majak argues that for the viewer the corpse is a scandal, because it discomfortingly presents the transformation of a body from subject to object. For Majak, socialisation is essentially the taming of the dead body, achieved by re-presenting the corpse as an individual. This paper expands on Majak’s valuable theory by arguing that socialisation is a continuum between emphasising the subject-ness of the deceased individual, rather than the object-ness of the corpse as matter. Importantly, this continuum reveals varying degrees of socialisation within Hugo’s series, and other fine art examples discussed. Socialisation offers an alternative reading of the series concerned with the absence of the subject created by death and representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a unified theory is proposed for the fractional control of the non-minimum phase plus dead time systems via the introduction of the fractional filter-PID control and stability inequality. More precisely, three Theorems from a fractional system-theoretic viewpoint are developed. The first Theorem deals with the controller design through the notion of generalised internal model control. That embeds the fractional filter-PID controller coupled with the unified form of the Smith predictor and the inverse compensator. The second Theorem designs a bound on the fractional filter parameter that leads to a stable feedback system. The third Theorem deals with the stability of a fractional quasi-characteristic polynomial of the commensurate order arising from the control of non-minimum phase systems with dead time. Two illustrative second-order plus dead time non-minimum phase systems are presented to test the efficacy of the resulting fractional filter-PID controller that obeys the stability bound. Controller and sensitivity performance indices for the nominal as well as mismatch cases reveal the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed method for enhanced closed-loop performance. Thus, the generalised inverse compensator, the fractional filter-PID controller and the stability inequality in corroboration with numerical simulations demonstrate the better control of non-minimum phase systems with dead time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In theorising penal politics, this article investigates the marking of the colonised through an analysis of state violence over dead bodies. Delving into and describing the political scene in which the state – through its courts, law, military, and police – leaves dead bodies bleeding after death, withholds them in carceral refrigerators, and tortures their communities, uncovers what I define as necropenology. Developed from the voices of Jerusalemite families whose children were imprisoned after death, this paper argues that expanding spaces of carcerality, criminalising those who are already dead, and penetrating Palestinian spaces of mourning, illustrates new modes of penology, a necropenology. Necropenology conquers new bodies, psychics, and territories in life and in death through the performance of power that marks both dead and living bodies as disposable. Jerusalemite families articulate first-hand how this form of power strips control of one's own emotions, inscribes indignities, and keeps the colonised as dangerous entities, always on trial in death and when dead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores practices of processing, displaying, and depositing human and animal crania in built environments and wetlands in the long Iron Age of Scandinavia. The paper first reports on a dataset of a range of practices targeting heads over the first millennium CE, with a particular focus on deposition of crania in built environments. I subsequently present a two-fold analysis of these data: an exploration of how reworking bodies into cranial objects transformed personhood in complex ways, and a discussion of how the particular practices afforded to the head connects with practices of placemaking and atmospheric intervention. I consider reworked, displayed and deposited heads as 'body-objects' – a different kind of being than 'person', 'animal' or 'thing' that breaks open some existing assumptions of the constitution of bodies and persons in Iron and Viking Age Scandinavia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the management of the dead body in residential and nursing homes. It asks why the sight but not the sound of death is systematically concealed. It is based on data from an earlier study into the management of death and dying in these settings, which involved a multi-method approach and included quantitative and qualitative data collection (Sidell et al., 1997). However the data examined in this paper are mainly drawn from participant observations in eight case study homes. In particular the paper focuses on the concealment of the sight of death and the lack of concealment of the sounds associated with the removal of the corpse from these homes. The paper explores the nature of this concealment through a consideration of performance, the privileging of sight above sound, and the professional strategies which staff use to manage death. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Not only did the criminal corpse have actual medicinal and magical power for Europeans, it also had social and cultural meaning as an object, a curio or secular relic. This paper considers the appeal of notorious bodies. From books bound in the skin of a criminal, to preserved and exhibited heads, from fragments of the hangman’s rope to the exhibition of the skeleton, the story of the afterlife of criminal bodies and the material culture most immediately associated with them begins with the collection and exchange of bodies and moves into contemporary preoccupations with authenticity. This paper considers the bodies of three notorious criminals of the eighteenth century: Eugene Aram, William Burke and William Corder. It ends with some reflections on the glamour of the authentic body of a notorious or celebrated individual – using the response to the discovery of the body of Richard III as an example. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is based on data from fieldwork conducted in the EURAC – Institute for Mummies and the Iceman (Bozen, Italy). I observed the way in which the researchers related themselves to the object of their study: ancient human remains and through the analysis of the researchers’ relationship to such remains, I argue that, contrary to what is generally stated in archaeological literature, human remains were not considered emotionally charged materials to which respect was owed in virtue of their former humanity. In particular, I will show how, in the context of the research facility in which I conducted my observations, human remains were removed from any association with the concept of death as such, for ancient skeletons and mummies were not understood to be conventional ‘dead’. My work ultimately constitutes an attempt to challenge the human/non-human dichotomy by arguing that the entity, which is brought into being through bioanthropological analysis, eludes canonical categorisations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article presents an assessment of age identities through the funerary practices of the Lower Egyptian Culture (ca. 3500 BCE), with particular attention to childhood. The case study provides an opportunity to discuss how archaeologists form interpretations on age identities through reviews of mortuary data. I claim that we should evaluate the relevance of each and every burial dimension in order to create an informed opinion, rather than provide broad conclusions based on the overall similarities or differences between age groups. Specifically, the location of the tombs has been found particularly relevant for exploring age identities. I propose that these communities recognised at least three different age identities, differentiating foetuses and infants under four months, older subadults, and adults. The role of the arrangement of the grave, corpse, and material culture in negotiating age identities, personhood and grief by mourners is also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

No longer just bodies at rest, the dead are increasingly on the move. Noting that much of the literature on mobility is focused on the living, this paper considers what the mobilities of the corpse, the dead body and more specifically bodily remains add to our understanding of subjects and objects (living or dead) on the move. In this paper, I argue that mobility is a spatial tactic for negotiating dominant British necroregimes and attaining a culturally appropriate funeral and body/remain ‘disposal’. The article begins by exploring the transfer of the state’s responsibilities to the Death Care Industry. I then look at the agency of the governed (non-Abrahamic Indian and Chinese minorities), through a montage of experiences, to show that while mobility is a strategy to challenge the contours of state ‘necropower’, a circuit of guilt and culture of corruption exists and has real effects. The paper seeks to understand the sociocultural changes enacted by the state and in conjunction with the Death Care Industry that have major implications for the transportation of dead bodies and remains in an increasingly mobile world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The discipline of forensic anthropology has its roots in physical anthropology with early practitioners focusing on areas of study such as human growth and development, physiological adaptation, anthropometry and biomechanics. While it is axiomatic that forensic anthropologists have a detailed understanding of the human skeleton, it is the practitioners’ expertise in the analysis of differentially preserved human remains that today is at the heart of the discipline. In addition to the context of the case (whether a missing person, disaster victim identification, war grave recovery, cases of political, ethnic or religious violence, or questions pertaining to the living), the preservation and condition of the remains inevitably influences the extent to which the forensic anthropologist plays a role. This paper outlines different contexts where forensic anthropologists have contributed to forensic cases, and reflects on the influence of geography (and therefore political context) on the volume of cases requiring the expertise of forensic anthropologists in different countries. Consideration is then given to the developing state of professional practice and research in forensic anthropology, as well as the expanding repertoire of the forensic anthropologist’s work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Touted as the world's most popular touring exhibition, Body Worlds, the display of "plastinated" human corpses, has been viewed by over 40 million people worldwide. This article builds on existing scholarship of the phenomenon, with an analysis of the exhibition "Body Worlds & The Cycle of Life", displayed in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 2014. It situates Body Worlds as a global consumer product, considering its unchanged appearance within southern contexts, as well as issues of access and health communication in South Africa specifically. The article revisits many of the critiques that were levelled against the original exhibition in order to show the strategies that have been developed to forestall these, arguing that such strategies discursively mask its primary investment in spectacle. The paper considers the ways—aesthetic, identificatory, and ethical—in which Body Worlds operates and argues that these invite particular forms of pleasure that bypass the possible discomfort attendant upon looking at dead bodies. I use a range of sources, from the writings of the exhibition's creator to critical responses, popular reviews, viewer feedback, and autoethnography, to think through Body Worlds' strategies for making the viewing of a corpse a pleasurable experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An important duty for any society is to manage the deaths of its members. In most cases there are highly evolved social and cultural traditions, alongside civic procedures which render this management routine. It is only when something out of the ordinary occurs, an air accident, a tsunami, an earthquake or some other cause of multiple fatalities that the underlying moral and evaluative framework is starkly exposed. This paper begins by examining critically some of the current bioethical arguments concerning the nature of responsibility toward the dead and the implications this has for managing the dead: the “Epicurean Model.” The paper moves from a critique of this model to a consideration of an alternative ethical approach to caring for the dead in the context of disaster management. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Theories of Continuing Bonds, and more recently, the Dual Process of Grieving, have provided new ways of understanding the bereavement process, and have influenced current practice for counsellors, end-oflife care practitioners and other professionals. This paper uses these theories in a new way, exploring their relevance to archaeological interpretation, with particular reference to the phenomenon of the plastering of skulls of the deceased in the Neolithic of Southwest Asia (the Middle East/Near East), suggesting that traditional archaeological interpretations, which focus on concepts of status and social organisation, may be missing a more basic reaction to grief and a desire to keep the dead close for longer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to understand how people manage the mass of objects accumulated by a deceased relative. We argue that the practices in respect of the deceased’s possessions depend on the evolution of the relationship of the bereaved to the deceased. To understand this relationship, we draw on the concept of grief. Sixteen interviews with bereaved individuals show that management of the deceased’s accumulated belongings follows a process punctuated by four periods depending on the relationship between the bereaved and the deceased: numbness (confronting the absence of the deceased and paralysis with regard to his objects); yearning (looking for the lost person through his possessions by trying to maintain a link to them); personal disorganization (experiencing negative emotions toward the deceased, which may lead the bereaved to transgress personal values and throw things out); and finally reorganization/reconstruction (making the deceased “live” by forging another relationship to his possessions and revisiting the meaning of the consumption of products). These results allow us to enrich the understanding of the process of dispossession of non-transmitted items. They also show that clearing the house of a deceased relative leads the bereaved to consume less and/or in a different way (collaborative consumption). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on the moral issues associated to being human which is reflected in the paper "Eating Meat and Eating People," (EMEP) by Cora Diamond. It states that the paper of Diamond opposes to the claim of the anti-humanist thesis which views that human being has no inherent moral potency. It mentions that a part of the concept of human being plays a crucial role in moral life. It says that Diamond argues that not eating our dead reflects a form of respect for human beings. It adds that the concept of human being plays an essential role in the appeal to pain which explains that pain moves human being to respond to the person-in-pain.

The way of dealing with the dead patient in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) seems to be intimately tied to social identity and personal integrity. The safeguarding of the integrity of the human body is the baseline for the nurses' post-mortem care at any time. Throughout post-mortem care, nurses oscillate between poles of proximity and distance to the dead patient, experienced alternately as a sentient person or an inanimate body. By washing and caring for the dead patient, and preparing the body for the viewing by relatives, nurses often maintain the personhood of the patient. However, technical apparatus and unpleasant changes in the physical appearance of the dead body may result in feelings of distance and aversion. This paper disentangles the care of the dead person from the reverence for the human remains. It will show how positions of proximity and distance are key resources with which nurses manage their exposure to death in their dealings with the dead. Finally, it will be argued that the personal integrity safeguarded during post-mortem care is tied to the integrity of the dead patient as well as to the integrity of the nurses themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the history and theory of nineteenth century preservation technologies that mechanically altered the human corpse. By theorizing the socio-historical affects of those technologies, the production of entirely new postmortem conditions for all dead bodies are suggested. These technologies of preservation effectively invented the modern corpse; transforming the dead body into something new: a photographic image, a train passenger, a dead body that looked alive. All of these technological innovations are matched by the emergence of an early twentieth century funeral industry that turned the preserved human corpse into a dead body that was atemporal. Once the human corpse could exist outside of the normal biological time that controlled the body's decomposition, it became a well-suited subject for unfettered public display. Dead bodies emerge in this paper as the products of nineteenth century human technologies that created a kind of embalmed vision that we living humans still use today, albeit without noticing, when looking at death. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of the continuing bond to the deceased in adjustment to bereavement has been given considerable attention in the bereavement literature. It is increasingly recognized that it is a normative part of adjustment to the loss of a loved one and that it can be adaptive. It may be the case however that a continuing bond to the deceased may also be maladaptive under certain conditions. In this special topic series of articles, the implications of a continuing bond for ajustment to bereavement is addressed. Conceptually and empirically focused papers as well as clinically oriented papers on the continuing bond to the deceased have been included in order to provide the reader with a broad sampling of contemporary work in this area. The aim is to inspire further thinking and research on this topic as well as to promote greater awareness among grief counselors and practitioners on the importance of the continuing bond to the deceased in working with the bereaved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of contemporary epistemology proceeds on the assumption that tracking theories of knowledge, such as those of Dretske and Nozick, are dead. The word on the street is that Kripke and others killed these theories with their counterexamples, and that epistemology must move in a new direction as a result. In this paper we defend the tracking theories against purportedly deadly objections. We detect life in the tracking theories, despite what we perceive to be a premature burial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper uses a debate in Swedish newspapers about the fate of the corpses from the shipwrecked M/S Estonia as a case study, in order to demonstrate how different discourses on grief construct a normative way of mourning. The theoretical vantage point is a discursive perspective on grief where different discourses are regarded as resources and limitations for how to express and make sense of bereavement. It maintains that what are to be considered as normal or deviant are social and cultural constructions, not ontological facts. The analysis demonstrates a notion of normal grief as grief work that moves through a process from emotional reaction to rational reflection, and in which ritual practices play an important part. The study illustrates how negotiations regarding grief and mourning draw on different discourses. It also elucidates how a specific notion of grief is constructed as normal and legitimate at the same time as other manifestations of grief are made abnormal and deviant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many countries, the introduction of cemeteries constituted a radical change to existing burial traditions. A sporadic secondary literature indicates difficulties in some provincial areas, as reform--often dictated from above, through Royal Edict--became subject to delay and resistence. This paper charts the progress of cemetery establishment in Portugal during a turbulent phase in its history. Through its discussion of some of the obstacles to burial reform, the paper indicates that there may be particular prerequisites required to facilitate smoother and speedier transitions from traditional to newer types of burial provision in the nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The purpose of this study was to obtain non-censored rib fracture data due to three-point belt loading during dynamic frontal post-mortem human surrogate (PMHS) sled tests. The PMHS responses were then compared to matched tests performed using the Hybrid-III 50(th) percentile male ATD.Methods: Matched dynamic frontal sled tests were performed on two male PMHSs, which were approximately 50(th) percentile height and weight, and the Hybrid-III 50(th) percentile male ATD. The sled pulse was designed to match the vehicle acceleration of a standard sedan during a FMVSS-208 40 kph test. Each subject was restrained with a 4 kN load limiting, driver-side, three-point seatbelt. A 59-channel chestband, aligned at the nipple line, was used to quantify the chest contour, anterior-posterior sternum deflection, and maximum anterior-posterior chest deflection for all test subjects. The internal sternum deflection of the ATD was quantified with the sternum potentiometer. For the PMHS tests, a total of 23 single-axis strain gages were attached to the bony structures of the thorax, including the ribs, sternum, and clavicle. In order to create a non-censored data set, the time history of each strain gage was analyzed to determine the timing of each rib fracture and corresponding timing of each AIS level (AIS = 1, 2, 3, etc.) with respect to chest deflection.Results: Peak sternum deflection for PMHS 1 and PMHS 2 were 48.7 mm (19.0%) and 36.7 mm (12.2%), respectively. The peak sternum deflection for the ATD was 20.8 mm when measured by the chest potentiometer and 34.4 mm (12.0%) when measured by the chestband. Although the measured ATD sternum deflections were found to be well below the current thoracic injury criterion (63 mm) specified for the ATD in FMVSS-208, both PMHSs sustained AIS 3+ thoracic injuries. For all subjects, the maximum chest deflection measured by the chestband occurred to the right of the sternum and was found to be 83.0 mm (36.0%) for PMHS 1, 60.6 mm (23.9%) for PMHS 2, and 56.3 mm (20.0%) for the ATD. The non-censored rib fracture data in the current study (n = 2 PMHS) in conjunction with the non-censored rib fracture data from two previous table-top studies (n = 4 PMHS) show that AIS 3+ injury timing occurs prior to peak sternum compression, prior to peak maximum chest compression, and at lower compressions than might be suggested by current PMHS thoracic injury criteria developed using censored rib fracture data. In addition, the maximum chest deflection results showed a more reasonable correlation between deflection, rib fracture timing, and injury severity than sternum deflection.Conclusions: Overall, these data provide compelling empirical evidence that suggests a more conservative thoracic injury criterion could potentially be developed based on non-censored rib fracture data with additional testing performed over a wider range of subjects and loading conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the last 20 years, you have been able to buy body parts of criminals on the Internet. Through repeated exposure to the corpse in popular culture, the boundaries between real and facsimile are blurring when it comes to the cadaver, but ‘murderabilia’, a consumeristic arm of ‘dark tourism’, is often sold as the most authentic way to consume crime in the culture industry. Foltyn argues that in the process of consuming death, we are ‘creating corpse facts and fictions’. With regards to murderabilia, my contribution offers the concept of ‘selective memory’ as a way to understand how positive histories are enhanced in posthumous representations of criminal. A ‘selective memory’ augments these corpse fictions, more than the facts, making for lopsided representations of the criminal corpse. This paper of three parts analyses historical commodification of the criminal corpse, arguing that being dead has often been a prerequisite of achieving notoriety for criminals. Second, a case study of Charles Manson is used to showcase the brand-like qualities attached to successful criminal celebrities. Third, this case study is continued through news media representations, to show that the criminal corpse is recalled with a ‘selective memory’, missing violent aspects and focussing instead on brand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some criminal bodies are so saturated with social and political meaning; they achieve an afterlife of symbolic desecration that is both public and celebratory. While the West has a legacy of public execution and bodily display as spectacle, these events were typically meant to be sombre platforms for redemption and moral instruction. Indeed, the abolishment of public execution occurred within the rhetoric of a civilising, modern Western society that purports to treat any death as a sacred event. The announcement of Osama Bin Laden’s death was followed by spontaneous public celebration, official narratives about his death and the management of his body and vivid reproductions of his body in popular culture. This paper explores the public afterlife of Osama Bin Laden in relation to nationalism and political effigy and cultural ambivalence and taboos surrounding the dead body in the West. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For criminals the moment of death marked the beginning of a new social existence, in which their former identities disappeared in the magico-medical employments of their bodies. Blood, fat and bones were sought for by people as effective medicines or as protective charms. This paper aims to look at the survival of such traditions in nineteenth-century western Europe, discussing how a blend of learned notions and folk-beliefs nurtured the view of an untimely dead body as full of physical and spiritual usable powers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The recovery of foetal remains is very sporadic in archaeology, especially due the scarce degree of bone mineralisation. This paper presents the singular archaeological discovery of a foetal tile preserving the bone remains, object of our anthropological examination.Materials and Methods: The foetal tile was discovered during an archaeological excavation in a medieval site (Northern Italy). The tile was analysed by CT scan and later, human remains were anthropologically examined.Results: The archaeological investigation revealed a special ritual destined to foetuses while forensic anthropological analysis allowed estimating the gestational age near to 21-24 weeks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers what light historical controversies cast on the way we view the human body and its relationship to medicine and science. I suggest that the past has lessons for the regulation of modern innovation and technology. Science has moved on; attachment to the dead bodies of those we love persists and debates in medieval times about burial intact and dissection remain relevant. I examine why and how the bodies of the long dead still command our attention. Moving to the living body, re-visiting the ancient crime of maim, I explore how the human body was perceived as belonging as much to the community as to the individual who inhabited that body. Finally, I consider touch on how gender affected the legal as well as the physical body examining how contested theories of reproduction influenced English law and may pose warnings about we should approach reproductive technologies today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I argue that the Catholic Church and Western medicine assumed historically significant roles in the use and circulation of human remains and, in so doing, established distinct traditions of dissection, preservation, and display. Furthermore, both institutions still maintain an essential role in making human remains ever more popular and culturally acceptable. The Church and Western medicine uphold various means of interaction that effectively keep the dead undisposed for specific purposes: as forms of cultural capital, objects of veneration, and fetishized, or aestheticized diversion. As such, the institutionalized dead have come to inhabit very particular spaces where they are made to perform a variety of duties for the living. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This diachronic study intends to trace the origin and development of the intensifying adverbdead. By means of a selective collocational analysis, the paper shows howdeadhas followed a parallel path of development to other intensifiers, namely descriptive meanings > subjective or affective meanings > intensifying meanings (Adamson 2000). In particular,deadoriginally expressed more literal or concrete senses, but came to denote increasingly more abstract meanings until its final reanalysis as a general intensifier, thus instantiating a path of gradual subjectification and grammaticalization. TheMiddle English Dictionaryand theOxford English Dictionarywere consulted as preliminary sources of data. Materials from various diachronic corpora and online collections of electronic texts have been selected to expand the information initially provided by these historical dictionaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Archaeologists have often taken it for granted that death is a taboo topic in modern society. However, the fear of death hypothesis is contested within the social sciences, so does it still follow that the display of the ancient dead is in some way shameful or unacceptable? In this paper it is argued that death is not taboo and that modern death scholars use archaeological source material as a way to understand the subtlety of the human experience. Funerary archaeology is not a dangerous topic; rather it makes a very real and valuable contribution to modern society, providing one of the few ways that people can experience a corpse and so explore their own mortality and with it their place within the larger human story. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Managing warrant databases effectively is an ongoing challenge for many local and state-level jurisdictions. Besides the complications of aliases and intentional and unintentional misinformation, warrant databases are often especially challenging to search efficiently. This brief summarizes a research project that was undertaken by a large southwestern county in the United States concerning deceased individuals with outstanding warrants. Initiated by a local judge, this research project identified a total of 1,089 active warrants assigned to 823 individuals who were reasonably believed to be deceased. While this accounted for less than 2 percent of the overall number of outstanding warrants, the project allowed authorities to close out several active court cases and promoted system efficiency. Details on how to replicate this study are included in this brief paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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