August 16, 2023 • 51 mins
A fascinating glimpse into the world of mortuary archaeology with our expert guest, Sarah N Rubin. Sarah, a seasoned archaeologist, takes us on an enlightening journey through the lens of time, sharing her rich experiences from excavations all over the world, from Ohio to Jerusalem. Promising a wealth of intriguing insights, we traverse the boundaries of science, history, culture, and literature in this captivating episode.
Eager to decode the mysteries of the past through the study of burials and bones? You're in for a treat. We discuss how the whisperings of the long-departed, from royalty like Tutankhamun to the common man, can unveil a treasure trove of knowledge about ancient cultures. Sarah sheds light on how bones offer clues about age, sex, pathology, and cultural practices. But it's not all smooth sailing - we also delve into the ethical dilemmas and unique hurdles faced in mortuary archaeology.
Finally, we turn the spotlight onto literature and how mortuary archaeology has been masterfully woven into the narrative by authors such as Aaron Alkins and Elizabeth Peters. Sarah, who is also an accomplished writer, candidly shares how she incorporates her expertise into her work. For all budding writers out there, we offer a list of valuable resources to help you bring authenticity to your novels through this unique perspective. So sit back, tune in, and let the secrets of the past unfold before you.
You can find out more about Sarah and her books at https://linktr.ee/WriterMeRSNR
Find out more about Writers' Narrative my brand new free magazine for writers everywhere. Sign up to get it delivered to your inbox monthly.
Find out more about Mists and Manuscripts, a writing retreat in the heartland of Scotland, surrounded by lochs and mountains.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hi and welcome to the Writing and Marketing Show
brought to you by author Wendy HJones.
This show does exactly what itsays on the tin.
It's jam-packed with interviews, advice, hints, tips and news
to help you with the business ofwriting.
It's all wrapped up in onelively podcast.
So it's time to get on with theshow.
(00:23):
And welcome to episode 186 ofthe Writing and Marketing Show
with author-entrepreneur Wendy HJones.
As always, it's a pleasure tohave you join me this week's
show.
I'm going to be talking to SarahN Rubin about mortuary
archaeology, and what afascinating subject, and I'm so
looking forward to hearing whatshe has to say.
(00:44):
Before then, what's the newsand views from my area of the
world?
Well, I have been busy.
I'm still recording these backto back because I'm trying to
get them out in advance of mytrip to the States.
However, as you listen to this,in August, you will have done
two things.
First of all, I have launchedmy brand new publishing and
(01:07):
retreat business, which iscalled Oz Scott Publishing and
Retreats.
That's A-U-S-C-O-T Publishingand Retreats and it is now the
first retreat is available tobook, and that is in Scotland in
February, and it's calledMissing Manuscripts.
So if you're looking for aluxury writing retreat in the
(01:28):
heart of the Scottish Highlands,then this is the retreat for
you.
I will put the details in theshow notes of where you can find
out more information.
The other thing I've done is Ihave launched a brand new
magazine.
The first issue, the Augustissue, came out in the 25th of
July and it's called WritersNarrative and it's a magazine
(01:52):
for writers and again, it's afree.
This one is a free magazine andI will put the link in the show
notes as to where you can signup to get the magazine straight
to your inbox once a month andit's packed full of everything
you need to help you as a writer, and I'm excited about both
ventures and about being able tosupport writers in their
(02:15):
writing endeavours.
So before I introduce Sarah, Iwould just like to say every
week I bring you the showWillingleigh, but it does take
time out of my writing.
If you would like to supportthat time then I would be very
grateful if you went towwwpartryoncom forward slash
wendy H Jones and supported theshow for just the price of a
(02:37):
tear coffee for a month.
That's $3 per month and itwould let me know you like the
show and you want it to continue.
So that's wwwpartryoncom.
Forward slash wendy H Jones.
So what of Sarah?
As I say, I'm delighted to haveSarah here to talk about
mortuary archaeology.
Sarah Neibor Rubin holds a BAand MA degrees in biological
(03:00):
anthropology, with a minor inmedical sciences.
From 1993 to 2001, sheexcavated archaeological sites
in Ohio, indiana, jerusalem andthe city of Birkek on the
Euphrates River in Turkey.
When not in the field, shespent hours with human remains
in museum and academiclaboratories and was
occasionally called to consulton forensic cases with
(03:23):
identification and analysis ofskeletonised or disfigured
individuals.
Dreams those that torment youat night and those your heart
calls you to led Sarah out ofthe field and into the seminary
where she received rabbinicordination in 2007.
One of Sarah's dreams is to bea writer, and so she is.
Two of her short stories werefinalists for the Tifaret
(03:45):
Journal Fiction Contest and herfiction has appeared in Tifaret
Journal and Dourache, aNorthwest Music.
Sarah is a member of Sistersand Crime, where she served on
the Pujo San Chapter ExecutiveCommittee and the Pacific
Northwest Writers Association.
So, without further ado, let'sget on with the show and hear
from Sarah, and we have Sarahwith us.
(04:08):
Welcome Sarah.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Thank you, Wendy.
It's wonderful to be here withyou.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Oh, it is such a pleasure to have you here it
really is with such an excitingsubject.
I can't wait to dig into it.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
No pun intended right .
Speaker 1 (04:25):
No, none whatsoever.
Totally unintentional With anaccent like that.
You're not here with me inScotland, are you?
Where are you in the world?
Speaker 2 (04:36):
I am in Seattle Washington enjoying a nice cool
morning at the moment when we'retalking.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Oh right, it's freezing in Dundee.
We need some sun and heat here.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
I'll send you some.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Thank you.
Now listen, this has gotnothing to do with the show, but
I believe you were in Jerusalem.
So was I.
When were you in Jerusalem?
From 1994 to 95.
Oh wonderful.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Yeah, I've spent several summers there myself.
97 was the big summer ofexcavations there.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Great place.
Anyway, we'll find out aboutthat in the show, so I just
wanted to touch base onJerusalem, because I love it
there.
It's great.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Oh, it is a gorgeous city, so full of so many
different things.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
It really is, and I'm sure that will come out in our.
You know what we're discussingtoday, so let's find out what we
want to ask about mortuaryarchaeology.
I'm tripping over my tonguetoday.
I don't know what's up with me.
So this is a basic question,but I really feel it's one that
we need to address.
(05:46):
What exactly is mortuaryarchaeology?
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Wonderful question.
So we start with archaeology.
Of course is the really theanthropology of the past.
We're digging up, excavatingremnants of our history or of
history of different cultures,and then mortuary really refers
to burials and therefore we havemortuary archaeology the
excavation of burials or tombsand so forth, anywhere that
(06:17):
people have laid their dead torest.
That's where we might find amortuary archaeologist
excavating those remains.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Wow, and I mean I think it's fascinating.
As I say, you know, it's not atopic I never really thought
about, but it's so, it's sointeresting.
So how exactly does mortuaryarchaeology different from
traditional archaeologicalapproaches, and what unique
insights does it offer aboutpast societies?
Speaker 2 (06:45):
So mortuary archaeology really is exactly
the same as every otherarchaeology.
When you go to a site you'llsee people excavating in exactly
the same manner that they'reexcavating anything else a
little more care perhaps aroundbones or human remains which can
be fragile.
But really what we're lookingat is not just the bones
themselves but the practicesthat are involved, what is laid
(07:08):
to rest with them, how they werelaid to rest.
So the cultural experience ofburying or interring one's
ancestors, one's culturalremains, one's physical remains.
There's a lot that goes aroundthat.
So the mortuary archaeologistis really interested in the
whole gamut of that grave site.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Oh, fascinating answer, and I mean, yeah, it
does offer us such a lot.
There's so much in those gravesthat we don't really think
about, do we?
And, as I say, I find thisabsolutely fascinating.
But I'm curious what can welearn from burials?
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Oh, it's so very much .
I can't really.
I think I could spend theentire hour on this.
You know, what can we learnfrom burials?
We can learn about some of thecultural that, maybe some of the
spiritual and religioustraditions.
Sometimes we look at a gravesite I'm actually fascinated by
thinking about this, because welook at something like the tomb
of Tutankhamun right and we seethe immense amount of stuff that
(08:16):
was buried with him and we seethis elite person and so often
the burials that we hear aboutwhen we're excavating, when the
popular ones, the ones that goout to the popular culture King
Richard III, just a few yearsago, was excavated right, and
those are the elite burials.
But there actually is a lot wecan learn from the average
(08:38):
everyday person's burials, right, so we can tell maybe if
there's a little more status.
When I was in Turkey you spokeabout Jerusalem.
We'll talk about that later butwhen I was in Turkey I was
excavating Roman remains andsome of the burials had pieces
of vessels with them and glassbottles you know that beautiful
(08:59):
Roman, blue, swirly glass thatcomes or an amphora that was
laid in with them, and we don'tknow necessarily what was in
that amphora, but you know a bigvase there, but it was there
with the burial.
Other burials had no, nothingthat actually survived time,
(09:19):
right.
So there might have been thingsthat were buried with them,
like flowers or a coffin awooden coffin but we can learn a
lot about the differences andthe the way people were treated
by how they were buried and whatthey were buried with.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Yeah, I suppose I've never really thought of it like
that.
And I mean, when you look atTutankhamun, I mean really and
truly, you can tell he wasimportant.
I've been to the Tutankhamunexhibition in Cairo and you know
, it's phenomenal, phenomenal.
What was buried with him.
You know and you don't even youknow, but you don't think about
(09:57):
the fact that even people of alesser status, or so-called
lesser status would have beenburied with stuff as well.
You know, and I say so called,absolutely you know they're not.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Well, and they're often the people who built those
bigger tombs or the people whoworked for the elites right, and
so they.
They're just as important interms of the cultural history,
but we often do focus just in onthose elites.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
We do yes.
So I mean I want to take it abit further.
Really, what can we learn fromthe bones that you find when
you're doing this?
We?
Speaker 2 (10:39):
again.
I could go on for an hour aboutwhat we can learn from the
bones, really focusing in on thewho a person is.
So there's the obvious, theidentification of an individual.
There's the sex, and I say sex,not gender, because there are
physical characteristics basedon the genetic code right, based
(11:00):
on the X, y or X, x versusgender, which we often can't
tell as much from a burialbecause we don't have the, we
don't necessarily haveinformation about what they were
wearing or what their culturewould have been wearing in that
burial.
But we, or how they expressthemselves, sometimes the grave
goods can tell us somethingabout gender in if we know a lot
(11:21):
more about that particularculture.
But we can find out about thesex of an individual, the age of
an individual.
Bones of a child are not onlysmaller but they are the long
bones of the arms, for example.
The ends are separate piecesthat are still allowing for
growth of the bone, so we cantell up to a certain age how old
(11:45):
they are based on that growth.
But even after that age, thingslike arthritis start to set in
right.
We know about that at thispoint in our lives and it's it
actually marks the bones.
But other things, other thingswe don't necessarily think about
.
If you get a sinus infection,if you have a really bad sinus
infection, it can actually causepathology in the bones, cause
(12:06):
bone reaction inside your nasalcavities, and so there are lots
of pieces of pathology that youcan discover.
You can tell if somebody maybehad a fracture of a bone and it
healed.
Maybe it healed correctly,maybe it healed incorrectly.
How long ago maybe thatfracture happened?
And then going back to thatarthritis piece which is so
(12:28):
fascinating and this does takeme into Jerusalem thinking about
use patterns.
Right, if you do a lot ofwriting, you might actually wind
up with arthritis in your handsin a different way than
somebody who is a constructionworker who has use patterns in
their hands, somebody who is aseamstress or a tailor who uses
(12:53):
their teeth with their threadand their needles.
A lot might actually have achange to their teeth.
So we can learn things aboutcultures from that.
And when I said Jerusalem, theexcavations that I was doing
there were at a site of aByzantine monastic site that is
actually a contemporary monasticsite today.
(13:15):
I think that St Stephen's inJerusalem, which is just north
of the Damascus Gate, just abeautiful area right next to the
garden tomb and I wasexcavating tombs there with a
team and the bones there arefrom a fifth century monastic
site and there are signs ofexcessive kneeling.
(13:35):
Now this is before the timethat genuflection became a
regular pattern of behavior.
So why were they kneeling?
What was going on in that?
And there are lots of theoriesand lots of ideas.
That happens to be one of thosesites that's not so ancient
that we actually have somewritten records which help to
back up and help to understand.
(13:56):
And what the bones do then iscorroborate some of what's going
on in the written record aboutkneeling, and what the written
record does is corroborate whatwe're seeing in the bones.
So it's all part and parcel ofthe whole site.
Right, we're learning about thebones of an individual or a set
of individuals, but we're alsolearning about that culture, and
(14:19):
the more we have from that siteas a whole, the more we can
piece together the culture as agroup.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Wow, that is so interesting.
I was a nurse but I didn't knowbones could tell you quite so
much.
I thought I knew a lot aboutanatomy and physiology but I
didn't know that you know, fromlooking at the bones from
archaeological remains you couldlearn so much about society
(14:47):
then Gosh.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Yeah, absolutely Some of my study.
I worked actually when I was ingraduate school in the
radiology department at theUniversity Hospital so that I
could learn more about whatthose pathologies look like
Today and how things look in thebones in contemporary society,
to be able to also read backinto the past.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Wow, that's just.
I'm blown away by how much youcan learn from bones.
It's so exciting this session.
I'm learning so much.
Obviously, when you'reexcavating graves, I know about,
you know, the Human Tissue Actand things like that that we
brought in.
I mean, we've got it in the UKbut everyone, every country,
(15:36):
will have their own version ofthat.
So there must be ethicalconsiderations.
How do you, how do researchers,approach ethical considerations
when they're excavating andstudying human remains?
Speaker 2 (15:51):
So it's a very interesting thing.
Things have changed a lot inthe last 20, 30 years.
You know, I got into thisoriginally in the early 1990s
and the United States had justpassed the Native American
Graves Protection andRepatriation Act and NAGPRA, and
I volunteered at a museum tolearn more about archaeology and
(16:14):
to get involved, and theyneeded an assessment of all of
the human remains that werestashed away in this warehouse
at the museum.
Now just think about that for asecond Hundreds of bodies
stashed away in a warehouse.
Where did those bodies comefrom?
(16:36):
Those bodies came from gravesthat people put into the ground
intentionally.
Right, there was a culturalreason for intering those bones
and there was a culturalapproach to intering those bones
.
And then along come thearchaeologists dig them up, move
them into a warehouse and leavethem there.
(16:57):
There's a big ethical concernright there.
Right, who owns these?
Who do these remains belong to,and how do we respond to them?
Who has the right to stash themin a warehouse?
And so the Native AmericanGraves Protection and
Repatriation Act came along assome way of trying to reconcile
(17:22):
what we had done in this country, which was the early
archaeologists especially.
We're so excited.
Let's find out about all theseancient things?
Let's just dig up all theseIndian remains, right?
The indigenous peoples, ofcourse, have their own feelings
about this, and so therepatriation of those bones to
indigenous peoples was aresponse both a legal response
(17:47):
but also an ethical response towhat our historical
archaeologists had done, andeven up to the contemporary day,
we're still doing that.
There's a big racial component,if you think about it, to a lot
of the early archaeology,including using the bones to try
(18:09):
to identify race and we don'tuse this anymore but to try and
denigrate certain races.
Right?
Less human, less brain capacity.
If you put enough beans in theskull, how many do they fit?
How much fills it?
Things like that really don'ttell us anything about the
(18:34):
intelligence of a person, butwe're laid into some of the
early archaeology and early boneanalysis from archaeological
sites and from contemporarypeople as well.
So there are so many layers tothinking about this.
I think the best approach thatany archaeologist can take is
archaeology, is anthropologyright?
(18:57):
This is the study of people andit is the study of culture in
particular, whether it's pastculture or contemporary culture.
We need to consider who we areworking with, and that extends
beyond the people who were inthat area, who were excavating.
(19:19):
Maybe that culture is long goneor maybe that culture was an
invasive culture.
For example, again when I was inTurkey, there were Roman
burials that I was dealing withprimarily, and the people who
live there are not Romans.
The people who live there todaywere Kurdish and Turkish
(19:40):
cultural descendants of a longhistory in that area, and so
they have nothing to do with thebones themselves, but they have
concerns about the disturbanceof the dead, the disturbance of
the souls there, and so thinkingabout how are we responding?
How are we reaching out to thepeople who are living there?
(20:01):
How are we reaching out to thedescendants of anybody we might
be excavating, if there's a needto excavate or an interest in
excavating from the part ofthose who are culturally
descended, if we're going tolose that information because of
the flooding from dams, maybewe want to excavate, but is
(20:22):
there a reinterment?
How are we approaching thatculture, not just repatriating
Native American graves that wereexcavated 100, 200 years ago
without permissions, but evenhow we're doing the archaeology
today?
The long answer for and again Ican go on.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
No, it's a brilliant answer because it's so true,
because the thing I mean it'sshocking what was done in the
past in the name of historicalcontext.
It's shocking what we did.
I mean, I tipped up against it.
Not, they weren't dug up, but Itipped up against it a bit.
(21:01):
I worked at Royal NavalHospital, hasler.
I was a naval nurse and an armynurse and when I was there
there was a graveyard there, anancient graveyard, and it was.
I think it was Turkish soldiers, but they might have been
French, I can't remember, butanyway, there were soldiers not
soldiers, sailors that wereburied at the back in an ancient
graveyard.
Now, nothing ever got built onthat.
(21:23):
And then the land got soldbecause the hospital closed down
.
We closed down all the militaryhospitals and they opened.
They sold the land to buildhousing and basically they were
not allowed to build any housingon that graveyard.
It had to be left the housing.
That piece of land had to beleft as a graveyard.
(21:45):
Nobody was allowed to touch thebones, quite rightly so, you
know.
And yeah, I mean I doubtthere's anybody alive now
actually cares about these bonesin terms of their relatives,
because they probably don't evenknow they're buried there.
Yeah, but right, you've stillgot to be.
You've got to be what's theword I'm looking for tactful,
(22:08):
and you've got to be respectfulof the dead.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
Absolutely, and that's actually part of why I
don't do this work anymore.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
Yeah, yeah, I can understand that.
Yeah, so what are some of themost common challenges faced by
mortuary archaeologists and howdo they overcome them during the
research process?
Speaker 2 (22:33):
So there's a science to archaeology in general, right
In the excavation of remains,whatever it is, and so the
challenges are.
The biggest challenges arereally about how much care you
can take with a space and ifyou're excavating over several
days, over several years, howmuch can you get?
(22:55):
How do you protect theintegrity of the site itself
from okay, I'm just gonna say itgrave robbers or from those who
are really interested just ingathering the stuff of their own
private to sell on the marketrather than to use for
(23:17):
scientific knowledge, for thehistorical knowledge.
So protecting that information.
Going back to what can we learnfrom this?
I didn't even mention takingsoil samples or DNA from the
bones.
There's a certain amount ofintegrity to the site that you
have to keep you If you want tofind out.
(23:38):
Potentially you can getinformation about stomach
contents if you excavatecorrectly.
So there's a challenge in thatphysical work of protecting the
site.
It's a very fine work andsometimes we think we go in with
a big trowel and we just dig itup and we get it out of there.
But also there's a you loseinformation very quickly If you
(24:01):
leave that open overnight.
You have to work quickly enoughto get material out during the
time that you have during theday.
The other big challenge is alot of major archeological sites
are in very hot places and alot of archeology happens during
the summer, between academicterms.
So, yeah, I've worked undervery hot conditions.
(24:23):
I think those are.
There are all sorts ofchallenges.
You can also lose materials,just little, tiny, tiny things,
right?
So, yes, there's the big piecesthat you see immediately, but
taking a sieve, you see the, yousee people, archeologists take
a sieve and it's really just abunch of chicken wire, a fine
(24:45):
chicken wire that is in fordifferent sizes of materials to
get them out.
Some of the hand bones arereally tiny, oh, hands are just
a couple of meters long, butthey can give us information.
Are they there or are they lost?
Other challenges are just whenyou sometimes you're doing this
(25:09):
in the middle of a project, likeyou've mentioned, not being
able to build on that land wherethere was a graveyard.
But a lot of times there isbuilding happening.
The excavation of King Richardthe 30 is discovered, I believe,
under a parking lot.
Yeah, park, yeah, right.
And so how do you get thingsout quickly enough?
(25:32):
The people who want to do theconstruction on a site just want
to get in there and do it,where they're building a dam and
the river's going to come.
So you have limited time.
I don't know if that's what youmeant by challenges, but those
are the challenges I think about.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
These are great challenges.
Well, they're not greatchallenges, but the great thing
about it is what I'm saying.
I wouldn't want to be facedwith any of them, quite frankly,
oh heavens.
You touched very briefly thereon DNA and I'd like to just
unpick that just a little bitmore.
So how is technology such asDNA analysis enhanced our
ability to interpret luxurysites and learn more about the
(26:07):
individuals buried there?
If it does play a part.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Well, it does play a huge part because we now can
actually connect people in thosegravesites to other cultures,
other people around.
I've taken my DNA and I spatinto a tube and sent it off and
I know what my ancestry is.
We can do the same thing withDNA from bones or teeth, that we
can find out what were theactual genetic connections,
(26:36):
where did these people come fromoriginally, and we can make
bigger connections to the storyof how people populated the
globe and what was going on.
But we can also learn a lot,not just from DNA but from
samples of the bone.
What nutrients did peoplereceive from their foods?
What were they eating?
(26:57):
What was their diet like?
And I mentioned, maybe you canget some stomach contents.
If you're excavating right, youtake soil samples and you can
get a lot of information out ofthat as well, if you take a soil
sample from the area where thestomach would have been, as well
as other soil samples around,so that you make sure that you
(27:18):
are not getting lost in what'sjust in the air.
And if you have a seed, ifsomebody's got a bunch of
raspberry seeds maybe they wereburied under a raspberry bush,
we don't know right.
So you wanna actually be ableto make sure that it's what is
just in that area and not whatwas also outside of that stomach
contents area.
But we can find out a hugeamount really about not just the
(27:44):
ancestry but the currentcontemporary lives of those
people, what they were eating,what they were doing, just from
the micro analysis of the bonesand the soil around them.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
Wow, fascinating.
So seriously I did not realizeyou could find out so much from
all of these.
You know, you think you knowand you really don't.
Yeah, but you've said beforeagain, you talked about it
earlier.
But what role does the analysisof grave goods and burial
offerings play in interpretingthe cultural significance of
(28:17):
mortuary sites?
Speaker 2 (28:20):
So I think that's the big key to mortuary archaeology
.
The analysis of the bones isreally a part of physical or
biological anthropology at itscore, which is connected
directly into the archaeology.
But if you think about what awhole archaeological site is
looking at, they're looking atthe cultural goods, they're
(28:41):
looking at the weapons, they'relooking at the vessels that were
used for cooking or eating, ormaybe they're looking at woven
materials that are there.
So what we can find again?
We can find some of that frommicro analysis in the graves, as
well as the macro pieces, aswell as the large pieces.
(29:02):
Sometimes you have actualclothing or leather goods or
pieces that are in that grave.
The other thing is, think abouta grave site.
Most of our grave sites are not, that they're not directly
associated with the living areas.
So sometimes it's off, at adistance from a cultural living
(29:24):
area, from where the houses are,and you can begin to connect
with the mortuary goods, withthose items that are included in
the graves.
You can begin to connect themto the correct sites, the
correct cultures of otherarchaeological sites around
which may be at some distance.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
As I said, I've never thought of that.
But see, in Scotland all ourgraves tend to, sometimes
they're rural and they're nextto a church, in the middle of
nowhere, but like in a city likeDundee, they're surrounded by
houses.
But obviously at one point theyweren't, because they're very
old graveyards, right.
So at one point they weren'tsurrounded by them like that.
(30:03):
So, yeah, it really makes youthink, wow, yeah, we're very big
on old graves in Scotland.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
We're a very old country, ha ha ha, indeed, so is
America, in terms of the land,right, we are very old and I
think that we think we're ayoung country, but we are an old
land and we need to respectthat piece of the cultural
history of the indigenouspeoples.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
Absolutely yes, and that is important, extremely
important, but yeah, but I meanwe've got great.
I mean you spoke earlier aboutgrave robbers.
We're big on grave robbers, orwe were in the 19th century, we
were big on grave robbers inScotland, which just seemed to
be a cultural sport.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
It's terrible.
Absolutely.
It was a cultural sport, notjust in Scotland.
It's been a cultural sport ofcolonizers, for example, what
can we pillage from this land?
And grave goods of the eliteswere sometimes the most the
wealthiest pieces that you couldpull from the land.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
Yeah, I mean, when you go to Edinburgh, you can
actually go on a tour aboutEdinburgh and they tell you
about the graveyards and thefact we had mort cages, where
people had to put cages aroundthe deceased so that nobody
would come in and steal the body, because what we were doing was
stealing them and giving thebody to medical science.
We're selling the bodies tomedical science.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
And that was also going back to the ethical
considerations of what are wedoing with these bones.
So my mother, long ago, when Iwas really involved, early in my
stages of getting involved inthis, she said to me you may not
take my skeleton and put it ina laboratory when I die, as if I
(32:01):
would ever have actuallythought of it.
But if you go to the idea thatI was in a room with hundreds of
skeletons at the moment, shesaid that to me.
Of course she might think thatI'm so fascinated by this.
And a couple of years later Iactually did take I used when my
(32:23):
rabbit I had a pet rabbit andhe died and I took him and I had
him, took him to the lab wherethey had him for a while in my
house and I don't know.
I was interested, I wasfascinated a little bit and then
years later I was like, whydon't I have this?
(32:44):
And I wound up giving that andsome other pieces of things I
had collected over the years toa high school science teacher.
But what was I doing with that?
And of course my mother wouldthink I was just crazy enough to
put her skeleton after she died.
No, no worries, she's buriedunder a tree in my brother's
yard.
Speaker 1 (33:02):
Oh, oh, how lovely, sorry.
Well, hey, this takes usbeautifully, really, onto our
next question, which is quite aserious one, really, because I
know you've had some spiritualexperiences in the field,
including a curse.
Are you happy to tell us aboutthese?
Speaker 2 (33:18):
Yeah, I'm happy to tell you about these.
So I think that there's a lot,a lot of layers to my spiritual
experiences.
I have always I had a sense ofspirit in the world.
When I was little, I visitedthe Alamo and I could not stay
inside the Alamo because I feltthe energies in the Alamo and so
(33:41):
my mom had me well, my brotherand the rest of my family
explored inside.
I just stand so far away fromthe Alamo itself.
When I was older and I went outinto the field as an
archaeologist go back to thatwarehouse I had dreams, and one
of those dreams was about beinggreeted by a mummy.
(34:05):
Now, all of the boxes I wasworking with were supposed to be
entirely skeletonized materials.
There were not supposed to beany mummies.
There were a couple of mummiesin the warehouse.
They were down on a differentfloor in a different section.
I pulled the box off the shelf,doing my analysis.
We were inventorying everything.
We had no idea and it was asemi-mummified all of the
(34:30):
tissues that were holding thebones together.
Still, there was not enough tosort of recreate the face out of
it, but there was enoughmummified tissue to hold the
bones together in large part andit blew me away really.
But you mentioned the curse andso I'll come back to that.
(34:51):
That was really the beginningof the end for me.
Again, I had been having dreamsand I had been connected to the
people in a way, and it reallyhelped me to think about the
skeletons as people.
But when I was in Turkeyexcavating, I was working on a
particular grave site.
Everybody else was working.
(35:13):
I was the only one doing themortuary archaeology there.
Everybody else was working onthe 7,000-year-old houses that
were there.
I was working on the1,500-year-old bones that were
there and one of the villagematriarchs she had vines
(35:33):
tattooed on her face stood atthe edge of the pit and started
screeching at me in Kurdish.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
Oh, my goodness.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
And I really had no idea what she was saying.
But one of my workmen saidshe's cursing you and everybody
moved kind of out of the way.
I still have no idea exactlywhat she said, but I decided it
was something like go bury yourown people or go work with the
(36:06):
living instead of the dead,because that's what I wound up
doing.
And I wound up a year laterentering the seminary and
ultimately became an ordainedrabbi and I have performed
burials not quite as many yet asexcavations of human remains
(36:28):
but maybe some of my flippingback around to that ethical
piece, going back and saying,okay, I'm going to work with my
culture, I'm going to do someinterment instead of
disinterment and I'm going towork with the living and the
grieving around that work aswell.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
Yeah, wow, you've certainly led an interesting
life and, to be honest, ifsomebody was screaming curses at
me, I would rethink what I wasdoing as well.
Oh my goodness.
So how has mortuary archeologycontributed to our understanding
?
Of ancient funerary practicesand how they've evolved over
time, and I think that's a greatquestion.
So how have they evolved overtime?
Speaker 2 (37:16):
What's really interesting is, I don't think
that they've evolved all thatmuch over time.
If you think about it, theEgyptians were embalming yeah,
and we embalm If you think aboutall of the putting of grave
goods in with burials.
Now, what may be mostinteresting is that, if you
think about that elite versusaverage person burial today, the
(37:39):
big differences are in, maybe,the type of coffin that gets
purchased.
I don't know what it's like inother parts of the world really,
but here in the US you can buythese yacht-sized things and
they are gilded and they are.
There's no way that the wormsare going to get into them.
(38:00):
Or you can bury in a simplewooden coffin with no nails or
anything that would be leftbehind other than some of the
fibers from that wood, and sothe average burial, I think, has
become more elite, though, andI think about the things that we
(38:22):
put into caskets with peoplewho die.
I think about, in particular, afriend of mine died when I was
a teenager and she was buriedwith pictures and with her
leather jacket and various otherthings.
People just kept pouring thingsinto that casket before the
(38:44):
internment.
I think if I was anarchaeologist 100 or 200 years
from now excavating that site.
Her burial likely would havehad more in it than most of the
burials around it, even in acemetery in the middle of the
city of Seattle, in the middleof the United States.
(39:08):
There was something about thatthat struck me.
When I think about an eliteburial, what do we actually know
?
So we know that we haveeverybody's a little more elite
now, but what do we think aboutgoing backwards?
I don't think this is yourquestion at all.
I think I've gone way off topichere from your question.
(39:30):
I don't think we've changedthat much.
There are still places wherecremation is the standard.
There are still places whereembalming is the standard, but
there are still places and stillcultures in every place the
Jewish culture, muslim culturethat do not embalm, that do not
(39:56):
use cremation, that do not uselarge elite vessels of interment
, that in fact try to equalizein death, and so we're still
doing things very much the sameway that we have in the past.
I think one of the new things isreally also an old thing and
(40:17):
that is echo interment.
I'm hearing a lot about people,you know, are they buried in a
vessel with seeds or with a?
Are they buried with a tree sothat they're finding ways to try
and give back to the earth orgo back to ashes to ashes and
dust to dust right, but therehave always been cultures that
stuck with that.
You know, 20, 30 years agowould my friend have wanted that
(40:42):
instead of the fancy coffin andall of the things tossed in
there with her?
Maybe you know, but it's again.
The interment is actually aboutwhat the people who are living
do with those who are dead andnot what the people who were
dead necessarily would havethought to do with themselves.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
I agree, you know, we all people go oh, what do you
want to happen when you die?
And I'm like I don't actuallycare, because do whatever makes
the people that are left behindhappy.
You know, it's like I'm dead.
What does it matter to me?
But it's true, if people dowant a specific burial and they
want eco burials, then that'sgreat, and we're swinging
(41:26):
towards the eco interment hereas well, and so it is swinging
towards that.
People are trying to, you know,and of course, then you've got
the places like and this is notwhat we're here to talk about,
so I'm going off piste as wellbut you've got the places like
New Orleans, where everybody'sburied above ground.
Speaker 2 (41:44):
Well, absolutely, sometimes you have to Right,
there are different and the cityof San Francisco didn't allow
for burial inside the city.
All the cemeteries are outsideof the city and there's one
particular city outside of SanFrancisco that has more dead
people than living people easilyby far, because it became one
(42:04):
of the places where people couldenter the city, partly because
of the hills, partly because ofthe runoff of the water, partly
because of sewage.
You know some, some of ourinternment of the dead and some
of the reason that it's at adistance is because death and
the desiccation of the deadafterwards is actually a pretty
gross thing, right, and can beunhealthy.
(42:26):
It can contribute to problemsin the, in the sewage and the
water flow, in the, you know, inthe water supply for those who
are continuing to live in thatarea.
So we have to move the dead offand you know things with the
plague moving the dead off intomass burials to get them out of
(42:46):
the city and out of the way ofthe people who are living and
hopefully still healthy.
Speaker 1 (42:54):
The cities have a way of growing, and suddenly
they're inside the city again.
Speaker 2 (42:59):
Well, that's.
You mentioned that in Edinburghthat the cemeteries weren't
always in the middle of thosehouses, but now they're in the
middle of those neighborhoods.
Speaker 1 (43:10):
Absolutely.
You know I could talk aboutthis topic all day, but I know
we've only got limited time, socan we bring it round to writing
?
How can we use this knowledgeto ensure authenticity in our
novels?
Speaker 2 (43:23):
Well, there are so many layers to this.
I think this is the.
This is great.
So there are a couple ofnovelists who have really worked
with this material Aaron Alkins, a number of years ago, his,
his mysteries, the Amelia Peebastudy series by Elizabeth Peters
(43:43):
, right, of course, in herEgyptology.
So this information can bereally helpful in understanding
how graves are put together.
And I think about also PatriciaCornwell, for example, who is a
thriller writer, and then youknow, maybe there is some
ritualization of burial or ofyou know what one does, what a
(44:07):
serial killer might do withtheir body.
So we can learn things fromthat.
But the integrity of how to dothe archaeology, what kinds of
information can come from DNA?
What kinds of information canbe learned from the bones?
But also, what kinds ofinformation can be learned from
how that burial was done?
Were they just shoved under abunch of leaves or were they
ritually laid out in some way?
(44:27):
I think that we can reallylearn a lot for writing
mysteries, but also forunderstanding the culture of the
people as well.
So what's going on learning whoa person, who the living are,
who did the interment?
Right, as we said before, it'sreally about the living.
They're the ones doing theburial, not the person who died.
(44:48):
So I think that's a greatthought.
There is a great book I think,that your readers, your
listeners, would enjoy.
It's still one of the best, Ithink.
It's called Death to Dust byKenneth Iserson, and it is Death
(45:11):
to Dust.
He's a physician, but heincludes in here everything
basically that happens after youdie, that desiccation process,
what you can learn from thebones, but also mortuary
practices, and he has a wholesection on epitaphs and poetry
about the dead and what I mean.
(45:34):
I have.
Mine is bookmarked with so manydifferent little sticky tabs
here.
I have recommended this book towriters over and over again.
There are some other morecontemporary books that focus in
on the topic of burying thedead, so it's actually called
Burying the Dead.
Lorraine Evans wrote this bookcalled Burying the Dead, which
is really about mortuarypractices in general.
(45:57):
I think that we can learn a lotto put this into our writing,
to bring this to the reader withintegrity.
Speaker 1 (46:07):
That's excellent.
Now I was going to ask youwhere would be the best place to
start, but you've answered thatalready, which is marvelous.
You've given us some resources,which I'm really pleased about,
because I'm going to be lookingthem up.
So I know you're an author, Iwrite it as well, because we met
through sisters in crime.
So we're sisters Absolutely Incrime, of course in crime rather
(46:29):
than genetically.
But so can you tell us aboutyour own books?
Speaker 2 (46:36):
So my own books are in process.
I'm currently querying a novelwith my book called Inherit the
Dead.
I hope it'll hold on to that,but it might not hold on to that
title, you know, in which Henry, who's a librarian, suspected
of murdering her neighbor,gloria, must trust her not so
imaginary friend she has ignoredfor years.
(46:58):
She's got this voice in herhead and she's afraid of being
crazy.
Her mother told her she wascrazy, but she has to find out
what Gloria was hiding, and oneof the things that Gloria was
hiding was that she was Henry'sbirth mother.
Speaker 1 (47:17):
Excellent, I'm good.
I wish you all.
Speaker 2 (47:20):
So I'm querying that.
Let's hope, let's hope I younever know, right, I get a
rejection every day, but it'salso out full manuscript with
with agents, so we'll see.
I also have I do have a coupleof short stories published.
They all have some, and Ididn't realize this until I
started pulling the listtogether.
They all have some sort of thislittle spirit nugget in it.
(47:42):
Right, and the friend who iswho speaks to her?
For example, there's a rabbi, ashort story about a rabbi who
sees the past spirit of her, ofher congregants, and learns
about her synagogue when she'snew to the synagogue.
(48:02):
She learns about it by actuallyseeing the ghosts of the past
walk through the building, forexample.
And then I have another shortstory in which a father is
grieving for his child using thetraditional mourners Kaddish
it's called living Kaddish, andhis child is trans, and so he's
grappling with his child's life.
(48:24):
Life changes, and I'm currentlyworking on stuff too, so who
knows where to go?
Speaker 1 (48:31):
Hey, what is it you say from your mouth to God's
ears?
Is that the saying, or have Igot?
Speaker 2 (48:36):
lost in the stuff.
Yes, please.
Speaker 1 (48:40):
I'll probably get into trouble for cultural
appropriation, now you know.
Speaker 2 (48:44):
Oh no, you can take that one.
Your mouth to God's deers isI'm happy with that one
Excellent.
Speaker 1 (48:51):
So my final question where can my listeners find out
more about you and your books?
Speaker 2 (48:56):
Well, I do have a website, sarah Neber Rubincom,
but that can be really reallyhard to spell out.
So I have a link tree and thatis under the name writer me RSNR
, so writer me, me, and thenRSNR for Rabbi Sarah Neber Rubin
, and that has all myinformation, or at least most of
(49:18):
it at this point, on it andmost of my social media is under
that as well.
So RSNS so writer me R forRabbi.
Snr for Sarah Neber Rubin.
Speaker 1 (49:34):
SNR.
It's just, I'll put that in theshow notes.
I'll put the link in the shownotes.
Speaker 2 (49:38):
Perfect.
Speaker 1 (49:40):
Excellent.
Well, thank you very much,Sarah.
It's been an absolute pleasurechatting to you today.
It's been amazing.
Speaker 2 (49:46):
It's been fun.
Thank you so much, Wendy.
I appreciate the opportunity.
Speaker 1 (49:50):
You are welcome and enjoy the rest of your day.
Speaker 2 (49:55):
You as well have a wonderful one.
You must have a little lesstime left to your day than I do.
Yes, it's 4pm here.
No, just about 8pm.
8pm, see, I'm already ready tobe done with my day.
8am here 8am.
Speaker 1 (50:11):
Well, I'll be a bit, a little bit closer to you soon,
because I'm flying to the EastCoast on the 1st of August.
Speaker 2 (50:17):
Well, I wish I could fly to the East Coast and come
meet you in person, but I'llhave to hold that for another
day.
Speaker 1 (50:22):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (50:24):
Bye, take care.
Speaker 1 (50:26):
Bye-bye.
That brings us to the end ofanother show.
It was really good to have youon the show with me today.
I'm Wendy H Jones and you canfind me at wendahjjonescom.
You can also find me on Patreon, where you can support me for
as little as $3 a month, whichis less than the price of a tea
(50:47):
or coffee.
You go to wwwpatrioncom.
Forward, slash wendahjjones.
I'm also Wendy H Jones onFacebook, twitter, instagram and
Pinterest.
Thank you for joining me todayand I hope you found it both
useful and interesting.
Join me next week when I willhave another cracking guest for
you.
Until then, have a good weekand keep writing, keep reading
(51:13):
and keep learning.
Hi and welcome to the Writing and Marketing Show
brought to you by author Wendy HJones.
This show does exactly what itsays on the tin.
It's jam-packed with interviews, advice, hints, tips and news
to help you with the business ofwriting.
It's all wrapped up in onelively podcast.
So it's time to get on with theshow.
(00:23):
And welcome to episode 186 ofthe Writing and Marketing Show
with author-entrepreneur Wendy HJones.
As always, it's a pleasure tohave you join me this week's
show.
I'm going to be talking to SarahN Rubin about mortuary
archaeology, and what afascinating subject, and I'm so
looking forward to hearing whatshe has to say.
(00:44):
Before then, what's the newsand views from my area of the
world?
Well, I have been busy.
I'm still recording these backto back because I'm trying to
get them out in advance of mytrip to the States.
However, as you listen to this,in August, you will have done
two things.
First of all, I have launchedmy brand new publishing and
(01:07):
retreat business, which iscalled Oz Scott Publishing and
Retreats.
That's A-U-S-C-O-T Publishingand Retreats and it is now the
first retreat is available tobook, and that is in Scotland in
February, and it's calledMissing Manuscripts.
So if you're looking for aluxury writing retreat in the
(01:28):
heart of the Scottish Highlands,then this is the retreat for
you.
I will put the details in theshow notes of where you can find
out more information.
The other thing I've done is Ihave launched a brand new
magazine.
The first issue, the Augustissue, came out in the 25th of
July and it's called WritersNarrative and it's a magazine
(01:52):
for writers and again, it's afree.
This one is a free magazine andI will put the link in the show
notes as to where you can signup to get the magazine straight
to your inbox once a month andit's packed full of everything
you need to help you as a writer, and I'm excited about both
ventures and about being able tosupport writers in their
(02:15):
writing endeavours.
So before I introduce Sarah, Iwould just like to say every
week I bring you the showWillingleigh, but it does take
time out of my writing.
If you would like to supportthat time then I would be very
grateful if you went towwwpartryoncom forward slash
wendy H Jones and supported theshow for just the price of a
(02:37):
tear coffee for a month.
That's $3 per month and itwould let me know you like the
show and you want it to continue.
So that's wwwpartryoncom.
Forward slash wendy H Jones.
So what of Sarah?
As I say, I'm delighted to haveSarah here to talk about
mortuary archaeology.
Sarah Neibor Rubin holds a BAand MA degrees in biological
(03:00):
anthropology, with a minor inmedical sciences.
From 1993 to 2001, sheexcavated archaeological sites
in Ohio, indiana, jerusalem andthe city of Birkek on the
Euphrates River in Turkey.
When not in the field, shespent hours with human remains
in museum and academiclaboratories and was
occasionally called to consulton forensic cases with
(03:23):
identification and analysis ofskeletonised or disfigured
individuals.
Dreams those that torment youat night and those your heart
calls you to led Sarah out ofthe field and into the seminary
where she received rabbinicordination in 2007.
One of Sarah's dreams is to bea writer, and so she is.
Two of her short stories werefinalists for the Tifaret
(03:45):
Journal Fiction Contest and herfiction has appeared in Tifaret
Journal and Dourache, aNorthwest Music.
Sarah is a member of Sistersand Crime, where she served on
the Pujo San Chapter ExecutiveCommittee and the Pacific
Northwest Writers Association.
So, without further ado, let'sget on with the show and hear
from Sarah, and we have Sarahwith us.
(04:08):
Welcome Sarah.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Thank you, Wendy.
It's wonderful to be here withyou.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Oh, it is such a pleasure to have you here it
really is with such an excitingsubject.
I can't wait to dig into it.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
No pun intended right .
Speaker 1 (04:25):
No, none whatsoever.
Totally unintentional With anaccent like that.
You're not here with me inScotland, are you?
Where are you in the world?
Speaker 2 (04:36):
I am in Seattle Washington enjoying a nice cool
morning at the moment when we'retalking.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Oh right, it's freezing in Dundee.
We need some sun and heat here.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
I'll send you some.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Thank you.
Now listen, this has gotnothing to do with the show, but
I believe you were in Jerusalem.
So was I.
When were you in Jerusalem?
From 1994 to 95.
Oh wonderful.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Yeah, I've spent several summers there myself.
97 was the big summer ofexcavations there.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Great place.
Anyway, we'll find out aboutthat in the show, so I just
wanted to touch base onJerusalem, because I love it
there.
It's great.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Oh, it is a gorgeous city, so full of so many
different things.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
It really is, and I'm sure that will come out in our.
You know what we're discussingtoday, so let's find out what we
want to ask about mortuaryarchaeology.
I'm tripping over my tonguetoday.
I don't know what's up with me.
So this is a basic question,but I really feel it's one that
we need to address.
(05:46):
What exactly is mortuaryarchaeology?
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Wonderful question.
So we start with archaeology.
Of course is the really theanthropology of the past.
We're digging up, excavatingremnants of our history or of
history of different cultures,and then mortuary really refers
to burials and therefore we havemortuary archaeology the
excavation of burials or tombsand so forth, anywhere that
(06:17):
people have laid their dead torest.
That's where we might find amortuary archaeologist
excavating those remains.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Wow, and I mean I think it's fascinating.
As I say, you know, it's not atopic I never really thought
about, but it's so, it's sointeresting.
So how exactly does mortuaryarchaeology different from
traditional archaeologicalapproaches, and what unique
insights does it offer aboutpast societies?
Speaker 2 (06:45):
So mortuary archaeology really is exactly
the same as every otherarchaeology.
When you go to a site you'llsee people excavating in exactly
the same manner that they'reexcavating anything else a
little more care perhaps aroundbones or human remains which can
be fragile.
But really what we're lookingat is not just the bones
themselves but the practicesthat are involved, what is laid
(07:08):
to rest with them, how they werelaid to rest.
So the cultural experience ofburying or interring one's
ancestors, one's culturalremains, one's physical remains.
There's a lot that goes aroundthat.
So the mortuary archaeologistis really interested in the
whole gamut of that grave site.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Oh, fascinating answer, and I mean, yeah, it
does offer us such a lot.
There's so much in those gravesthat we don't really think
about, do we?
And, as I say, I find thisabsolutely fascinating.
But I'm curious what can welearn from burials?
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Oh, it's so very much .
I can't really.
I think I could spend theentire hour on this.
You know, what can we learnfrom burials?
We can learn about some of thecultural that, maybe some of the
spiritual and religioustraditions.
Sometimes we look at a gravesite I'm actually fascinated by
thinking about this, because welook at something like the tomb
of Tutankhamun right and we seethe immense amount of stuff that
(08:16):
was buried with him and we seethis elite person and so often
the burials that we hear aboutwhen we're excavating, when the
popular ones, the ones that goout to the popular culture King
Richard III, just a few yearsago, was excavated right, and
those are the elite burials.
But there actually is a lot wecan learn from the average
(08:38):
everyday person's burials, right, so we can tell maybe if
there's a little more status.
When I was in Turkey you spokeabout Jerusalem.
We'll talk about that later butwhen I was in Turkey I was
excavating Roman remains andsome of the burials had pieces
of vessels with them and glassbottles you know that beautiful
(08:59):
Roman, blue, swirly glass thatcomes or an amphora that was
laid in with them, and we don'tknow necessarily what was in
that amphora, but you know a bigvase there, but it was there
with the burial.
Other burials had no, nothingthat actually survived time,
(09:19):
right.
So there might have been thingsthat were buried with them,
like flowers or a coffin awooden coffin but we can learn a
lot about the differences andthe the way people were treated
by how they were buried and whatthey were buried with.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Yeah, I suppose I've never really thought of it like
that.
And I mean, when you look atTutankhamun, I mean really and
truly, you can tell he wasimportant.
I've been to the Tutankhamunexhibition in Cairo and you know
, it's phenomenal, phenomenal.
What was buried with him.
You know and you don't even youknow, but you don't think about
(09:57):
the fact that even people of alesser status, or so-called
lesser status would have beenburied with stuff as well.
You know, and I say so called,absolutely you know they're not.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Well, and they're often the people who built those
bigger tombs or the people whoworked for the elites right, and
so they.
They're just as important interms of the cultural history,
but we often do focus just in onthose elites.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
We do yes.
So I mean I want to take it abit further.
Really, what can we learn fromthe bones that you find when
you're doing this?
We?
Speaker 2 (10:39):
again.
I could go on for an hour aboutwhat we can learn from the
bones, really focusing in on thewho a person is.
So there's the obvious, theidentification of an individual.
There's the sex, and I say sex,not gender, because there are
physical characteristics basedon the genetic code right, based
(11:00):
on the X, y or X, x versusgender, which we often can't
tell as much from a burialbecause we don't have the, we
don't necessarily haveinformation about what they were
wearing or what their culturewould have been wearing in that
burial.
But we, or how they expressthemselves, sometimes the grave
goods can tell us somethingabout gender in if we know a lot
(11:21):
more about that particularculture.
But we can find out about thesex of an individual, the age of
an individual.
Bones of a child are not onlysmaller but they are the long
bones of the arms, for example.
The ends are separate piecesthat are still allowing for
growth of the bone, so we cantell up to a certain age how old
(11:45):
they are based on that growth.
But even after that age, thingslike arthritis start to set in
right.
We know about that at thispoint in our lives and it's it
actually marks the bones.
But other things, other thingswe don't necessarily think about
.
If you get a sinus infection,if you have a really bad sinus
infection, it can actually causepathology in the bones, cause
(12:06):
bone reaction inside your nasalcavities, and so there are lots
of pieces of pathology that youcan discover.
You can tell if somebody maybehad a fracture of a bone and it
healed.
Maybe it healed correctly,maybe it healed incorrectly.
How long ago maybe thatfracture happened?
And then going back to thatarthritis piece which is so
(12:28):
fascinating and this does takeme into Jerusalem thinking about
use patterns.
Right, if you do a lot ofwriting, you might actually wind
up with arthritis in your handsin a different way than
somebody who is a constructionworker who has use patterns in
their hands, somebody who is aseamstress or a tailor who uses
(12:53):
their teeth with their threadand their needles.
A lot might actually have achange to their teeth.
So we can learn things aboutcultures from that.
And when I said Jerusalem, theexcavations that I was doing
there were at a site of aByzantine monastic site that is
actually a contemporary monasticsite today.
(13:15):
I think that St Stephen's inJerusalem, which is just north
of the Damascus Gate, just abeautiful area right next to the
garden tomb and I wasexcavating tombs there with a
team and the bones there arefrom a fifth century monastic
site and there are signs ofexcessive kneeling.
(13:35):
Now this is before the timethat genuflection became a
regular pattern of behavior.
So why were they kneeling?
What was going on in that?
And there are lots of theoriesand lots of ideas.
That happens to be one of thosesites that's not so ancient
that we actually have somewritten records which help to
back up and help to understand.
(13:56):
And what the bones do then iscorroborate some of what's going
on in the written record aboutkneeling, and what the written
record does is corroborate whatwe're seeing in the bones.
So it's all part and parcel ofthe whole site.
Right, we're learning about thebones of an individual or a set
of individuals, but we're alsolearning about that culture, and
(14:19):
the more we have from that siteas a whole, the more we can
piece together the culture as agroup.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Wow, that is so interesting.
I was a nurse but I didn't knowbones could tell you quite so
much.
I thought I knew a lot aboutanatomy and physiology but I
didn't know that you know, fromlooking at the bones from
archaeological remains you couldlearn so much about society
(14:47):
then Gosh.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Yeah, absolutely Some of my study.
I worked actually when I was ingraduate school in the
radiology department at theUniversity Hospital so that I
could learn more about whatthose pathologies look like
Today and how things look in thebones in contemporary society,
to be able to also read backinto the past.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Wow, that's just.
I'm blown away by how much youcan learn from bones.
It's so exciting this session.
I'm learning so much.
Obviously, when you'reexcavating graves, I know about,
you know, the Human Tissue Actand things like that that we
brought in.
I mean, we've got it in the UKbut everyone, every country,
(15:36):
will have their own version ofthat.
So there must be ethicalconsiderations.
How do you, how do researchers,approach ethical considerations
when they're excavating andstudying human remains?
Speaker 2 (15:51):
So it's a very interesting thing.
Things have changed a lot inthe last 20, 30 years.
You know, I got into thisoriginally in the early 1990s
and the United States had justpassed the Native American
Graves Protection andRepatriation Act and NAGPRA, and
I volunteered at a museum tolearn more about archaeology and
(16:14):
to get involved, and theyneeded an assessment of all of
the human remains that werestashed away in this warehouse
at the museum.
Now just think about that for asecond Hundreds of bodies
stashed away in a warehouse.
Where did those bodies comefrom?
(16:36):
Those bodies came from gravesthat people put into the ground
intentionally.
Right, there was a culturalreason for intering those bones
and there was a culturalapproach to intering those bones
.
And then along come thearchaeologists dig them up, move
them into a warehouse and leavethem there.
(16:57):
There's a big ethical concernright there.
Right, who owns these?
Who do these remains belong to,and how do we respond to them?
Who has the right to stash themin a warehouse?
And so the Native AmericanGraves Protection and
Repatriation Act came along assome way of trying to reconcile
(17:22):
what we had done in this country, which was the early
archaeologists especially.
We're so excited.
Let's find out about all theseancient things?
Let's just dig up all theseIndian remains, right?
The indigenous peoples, ofcourse, have their own feelings
about this, and so therepatriation of those bones to
indigenous peoples was aresponse both a legal response
(17:47):
but also an ethical response towhat our historical
archaeologists had done, andeven up to the contemporary day,
we're still doing that.
There's a big racial component,if you think about it, to a lot
of the early archaeology,including using the bones to try
(18:09):
to identify race and we don'tuse this anymore but to try and
denigrate certain races.
Right?
Less human, less brain capacity.
If you put enough beans in theskull, how many do they fit?
How much fills it?
Things like that really don'ttell us anything about the
(18:34):
intelligence of a person, butwe're laid into some of the
early archaeology and early boneanalysis from archaeological
sites and from contemporarypeople as well.
So there are so many layers tothinking about this.
I think the best approach thatany archaeologist can take is
archaeology, is anthropologyright?
(18:57):
This is the study of people andit is the study of culture in
particular, whether it's pastculture or contemporary culture.
We need to consider who we areworking with, and that extends
beyond the people who were inthat area, who were excavating.
(19:19):
Maybe that culture is long goneor maybe that culture was an
invasive culture.
For example, again when I was inTurkey, there were Roman
burials that I was dealing withprimarily, and the people who
live there are not Romans.
The people who live there todaywere Kurdish and Turkish
(19:40):
cultural descendants of a longhistory in that area, and so
they have nothing to do with thebones themselves, but they have
concerns about the disturbanceof the dead, the disturbance of
the souls there, and so thinkingabout how are we responding?
How are we reaching out to thepeople who are living there?
(20:01):
How are we reaching out to thedescendants of anybody we might
be excavating, if there's a needto excavate or an interest in
excavating from the part ofthose who are culturally
descended, if we're going tolose that information because of
the flooding from dams, maybewe want to excavate, but is
(20:22):
there a reinterment?
How are we approaching thatculture, not just repatriating
Native American graves that wereexcavated 100, 200 years ago
without permissions, but evenhow we're doing the archaeology
today?
The long answer for and again Ican go on.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
No, it's a brilliant answer because it's so true,
because the thing I mean it'sshocking what was done in the
past in the name of historicalcontext.
It's shocking what we did.
I mean, I tipped up against it.
Not, they weren't dug up, but Itipped up against it a bit.
(21:01):
I worked at Royal NavalHospital, hasler.
I was a naval nurse and an armynurse and when I was there
there was a graveyard there, anancient graveyard, and it was.
I think it was Turkish soldiers, but they might have been
French, I can't remember, butanyway, there were soldiers not
soldiers, sailors that wereburied at the back in an ancient
graveyard.
Now, nothing ever got built onthat.
(21:23):
And then the land got soldbecause the hospital closed down
.
We closed down all the militaryhospitals and they opened.
They sold the land to buildhousing and basically they were
not allowed to build any housingon that graveyard.
It had to be left the housing.
That piece of land had to beleft as a graveyard.
(21:45):
Nobody was allowed to touch thebones, quite rightly so, you
know.
And yeah, I mean I doubtthere's anybody alive now
actually cares about these bonesin terms of their relatives,
because they probably don't evenknow they're buried there.
Yeah, but right, you've stillgot to be.
You've got to be what's theword I'm looking for tactful,
(22:08):
and you've got to be respectfulof the dead.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
Absolutely, and that's actually part of why I
don't do this work anymore.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
Yeah, yeah, I can understand that.
Yeah, so what are some of themost common challenges faced by
mortuary archaeologists and howdo they overcome them during the
research process?
Speaker 2 (22:33):
So there's a science to archaeology in general, right
In the excavation of remains,whatever it is, and so the
challenges are.
The biggest challenges arereally about how much care you
can take with a space and ifyou're excavating over several
days, over several years, howmuch can you get?
(22:55):
How do you protect theintegrity of the site itself
from okay, I'm just gonna say itgrave robbers or from those who
are really interested just ingathering the stuff of their own
private to sell on the marketrather than to use for
(23:17):
scientific knowledge, for thehistorical knowledge.
So protecting that information.
Going back to what can we learnfrom this?
I didn't even mention takingsoil samples or DNA from the
bones.
There's a certain amount ofintegrity to the site that you
have to keep you If you want tofind out.
(23:38):
Potentially you can getinformation about stomach
contents if you excavatecorrectly.
So there's a challenge in thatphysical work of protecting the
site.
It's a very fine work andsometimes we think we go in with
a big trowel and we just dig itup and we get it out of there.
But also there's a you loseinformation very quickly If you
(24:01):
leave that open overnight.
You have to work quickly enoughto get material out during the
time that you have during theday.
The other big challenge is alot of major archeological sites
are in very hot places and alot of archeology happens during
the summer, between academicterms.
So, yeah, I've worked undervery hot conditions.
(24:23):
I think those are.
There are all sorts ofchallenges.
You can also lose materials,just little, tiny, tiny things,
right?
So, yes, there's the big piecesthat you see immediately, but
taking a sieve, you see the, yousee people, archeologists take
a sieve and it's really just abunch of chicken wire, a fine
(24:45):
chicken wire that is in fordifferent sizes of materials to
get them out.
Some of the hand bones arereally tiny, oh, hands are just
a couple of meters long, butthey can give us information.
Are they there or are they lost?
Other challenges are just whenyou sometimes you're doing this
(25:09):
in the middle of a project, likeyou've mentioned, not being
able to build on that land wherethere was a graveyard.
But a lot of times there isbuilding happening.
The excavation of King Richardthe 30 is discovered, I believe,
under a parking lot.
Yeah, park, yeah, right.
And so how do you get thingsout quickly enough?
(25:32):
The people who want to do theconstruction on a site just want
to get in there and do it,where they're building a dam and
the river's going to come.
So you have limited time.
I don't know if that's what youmeant by challenges, but those
are the challenges I think about.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
These are great challenges.
Well, they're not greatchallenges, but the great thing
about it is what I'm saying.
I wouldn't want to be facedwith any of them, quite frankly,
oh heavens.
You touched very briefly thereon DNA and I'd like to just
unpick that just a little bitmore.
So how is technology such asDNA analysis enhanced our
ability to interpret luxurysites and learn more about the
(26:07):
individuals buried there?
If it does play a part.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Well, it does play a huge part because we now can
actually connect people in thosegravesites to other cultures,
other people around.
I've taken my DNA and I spatinto a tube and sent it off and
I know what my ancestry is.
We can do the same thing withDNA from bones or teeth, that we
can find out what were theactual genetic connections,
(26:36):
where did these people come fromoriginally, and we can make
bigger connections to the storyof how people populated the
globe and what was going on.
But we can also learn a lot,not just from DNA but from
samples of the bone.
What nutrients did peoplereceive from their foods?
What were they eating?
(26:57):
What was their diet like?
And I mentioned, maybe you canget some stomach contents.
If you're excavating right, youtake soil samples and you can
get a lot of information out ofthat as well, if you take a soil
sample from the area where thestomach would have been, as well
as other soil samples around,so that you make sure that you
(27:18):
are not getting lost in what'sjust in the air.
And if you have a seed, ifsomebody's got a bunch of
raspberry seeds maybe they wereburied under a raspberry bush,
we don't know right.
So you wanna actually be ableto make sure that it's what is
just in that area and not whatwas also outside of that stomach
contents area.
But we can find out a hugeamount really about not just the
(27:44):
ancestry but the currentcontemporary lives of those
people, what they were eating,what they were doing, just from
the micro analysis of the bonesand the soil around them.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
Wow, fascinating.
So seriously I did not realizeyou could find out so much from
all of these.
You know, you think you knowand you really don't.
Yeah, but you've said beforeagain, you talked about it
earlier.
But what role does the analysisof grave goods and burial
offerings play in interpretingthe cultural significance of
(28:17):
mortuary sites?
Speaker 2 (28:20):
So I think that's the big key to mortuary archaeology
.
The analysis of the bones isreally a part of physical or
biological anthropology at itscore, which is connected
directly into the archaeology.
But if you think about what awhole archaeological site is
looking at, they're looking atthe cultural goods, they're
(28:41):
looking at the weapons, they'relooking at the vessels that were
used for cooking or eating, ormaybe they're looking at woven
materials that are there.
So what we can find again?
We can find some of that frommicro analysis in the graves, as
well as the macro pieces, aswell as the large pieces.
(29:02):
Sometimes you have actualclothing or leather goods or
pieces that are in that grave.
The other thing is, think abouta grave site.
Most of our grave sites are not, that they're not directly
associated with the living areas.
So sometimes it's off, at adistance from a cultural living
(29:24):
area, from where the houses are,and you can begin to connect
with the mortuary goods, withthose items that are included in
the graves.
You can begin to connect themto the correct sites, the
correct cultures of otherarchaeological sites around
which may be at some distance.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
As I said, I've never thought of that.
But see, in Scotland all ourgraves tend to, sometimes
they're rural and they're nextto a church, in the middle of
nowhere, but like in a city likeDundee, they're surrounded by
houses.
But obviously at one point theyweren't, because they're very
old graveyards, right.
So at one point they weren'tsurrounded by them like that.
(30:03):
So, yeah, it really makes youthink, wow, yeah, we're very big
on old graves in Scotland.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
We're a very old country, ha ha ha, indeed, so is
America, in terms of the land,right, we are very old and I
think that we think we're ayoung country, but we are an old
land and we need to respectthat piece of the cultural
history of the indigenouspeoples.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
Absolutely yes, and that is important, extremely
important, but yeah, but I meanwe've got great.
I mean you spoke earlier aboutgrave robbers.
We're big on grave robbers, orwe were in the 19th century, we
were big on grave robbers inScotland, which just seemed to
be a cultural sport.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
It's terrible.
Absolutely.
It was a cultural sport, notjust in Scotland.
It's been a cultural sport ofcolonizers, for example, what
can we pillage from this land?
And grave goods of the eliteswere sometimes the most the
wealthiest pieces that you couldpull from the land.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
Yeah, I mean, when you go to Edinburgh, you can
actually go on a tour aboutEdinburgh and they tell you
about the graveyards and thefact we had mort cages, where
people had to put cages aroundthe deceased so that nobody
would come in and steal the body, because what we were doing was
stealing them and giving thebody to medical science.
We're selling the bodies tomedical science.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
And that was also going back to the ethical
considerations of what are wedoing with these bones.
So my mother, long ago, when Iwas really involved, early in my
stages of getting involved inthis, she said to me you may not
take my skeleton and put it ina laboratory when I die, as if I
(32:01):
would ever have actuallythought of it.
But if you go to the idea thatI was in a room with hundreds of
skeletons at the moment, shesaid that to me.
Of course she might think thatI'm so fascinated by this.
And a couple of years later Iactually did take I used when my
(32:23):
rabbit I had a pet rabbit andhe died and I took him and I had
him, took him to the lab wherethey had him for a while in my
house and I don't know.
I was interested, I wasfascinated a little bit and then
years later I was like, whydon't I have this?
(32:44):
And I wound up giving that andsome other pieces of things I
had collected over the years toa high school science teacher.
But what was I doing with that?
And of course my mother wouldthink I was just crazy enough to
put her skeleton after she died.
No, no worries, she's buriedunder a tree in my brother's
yard.
Speaker 1 (33:02):
Oh, oh, how lovely, sorry.
Well, hey, this takes usbeautifully, really, onto our
next question, which is quite aserious one, really, because I
know you've had some spiritualexperiences in the field,
including a curse.
Are you happy to tell us aboutthese?
Speaker 2 (33:18):
Yeah, I'm happy to tell you about these.
So I think that there's a lot,a lot of layers to my spiritual
experiences.
I have always I had a sense ofspirit in the world.
When I was little, I visitedthe Alamo and I could not stay
inside the Alamo because I feltthe energies in the Alamo and so
(33:41):
my mom had me well, my brotherand the rest of my family
explored inside.
I just stand so far away fromthe Alamo itself.
When I was older and I went outinto the field as an
archaeologist go back to thatwarehouse I had dreams, and one
of those dreams was about beinggreeted by a mummy.
(34:05):
Now, all of the boxes I wasworking with were supposed to be
entirely skeletonized materials.
There were not supposed to beany mummies.
There were a couple of mummiesin the warehouse.
They were down on a differentfloor in a different section.
I pulled the box off the shelf,doing my analysis.
We were inventorying everything.
We had no idea and it was asemi-mummified all of the
(34:30):
tissues that were holding thebones together.
Still, there was not enough tosort of recreate the face out of
it, but there was enoughmummified tissue to hold the
bones together in large part andit blew me away really.
But you mentioned the curse andso I'll come back to that.
(34:51):
That was really the beginningof the end for me.
Again, I had been having dreamsand I had been connected to the
people in a way, and it reallyhelped me to think about the
skeletons as people.
But when I was in Turkeyexcavating, I was working on a
particular grave site.
Everybody else was working.
(35:13):
I was the only one doing themortuary archaeology there.
Everybody else was working onthe 7,000-year-old houses that
were there.
I was working on the1,500-year-old bones that were
there and one of the villagematriarchs she had vines
(35:33):
tattooed on her face stood atthe edge of the pit and started
screeching at me in Kurdish.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
Oh, my goodness.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
And I really had no idea what she was saying.
But one of my workmen saidshe's cursing you and everybody
moved kind of out of the way.
I still have no idea exactlywhat she said, but I decided it
was something like go bury yourown people or go work with the
(36:06):
living instead of the dead,because that's what I wound up
doing.
And I wound up a year laterentering the seminary and
ultimately became an ordainedrabbi and I have performed
burials not quite as many yet asexcavations of human remains
(36:28):
but maybe some of my flippingback around to that ethical
piece, going back and saying,okay, I'm going to work with my
culture, I'm going to do someinterment instead of
disinterment and I'm going towork with the living and the
grieving around that work aswell.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
Yeah, wow, you've certainly led an interesting
life and, to be honest, ifsomebody was screaming curses at
me, I would rethink what I wasdoing as well.
Oh my goodness.
So how has mortuary archeologycontributed to our understanding
?
Of ancient funerary practicesand how they've evolved over
time, and I think that's a greatquestion.
So how have they evolved overtime?
Speaker 2 (37:16):
What's really interesting is, I don't think
that they've evolved all thatmuch over time.
If you think about it, theEgyptians were embalming yeah,
and we embalm If you think aboutall of the putting of grave
goods in with burials.
Now, what may be mostinteresting is that, if you
think about that elite versusaverage person burial today, the
(37:39):
big differences are in, maybe,the type of coffin that gets
purchased.
I don't know what it's like inother parts of the world really,
but here in the US you can buythese yacht-sized things and
they are gilded and they are.
There's no way that the wormsare going to get into them.
(38:00):
Or you can bury in a simplewooden coffin with no nails or
anything that would be leftbehind other than some of the
fibers from that wood, and sothe average burial, I think, has
become more elite, though, andI think about the things that we
(38:22):
put into caskets with peoplewho die.
I think about, in particular, afriend of mine died when I was
a teenager and she was buriedwith pictures and with her
leather jacket and various otherthings.
People just kept pouring thingsinto that casket before the
(38:44):
internment.
I think if I was anarchaeologist 100 or 200 years
from now excavating that site.
Her burial likely would havehad more in it than most of the
burials around it, even in acemetery in the middle of the
city of Seattle, in the middleof the United States.
(39:08):
There was something about thatthat struck me.
When I think about an eliteburial, what do we actually know
?
So we know that we haveeverybody's a little more elite
now, but what do we think aboutgoing backwards?
I don't think this is yourquestion at all.
I think I've gone way off topichere from your question.
(39:30):
I don't think we've changedthat much.
There are still places wherecremation is the standard.
There are still places whereembalming is the standard, but
there are still places and stillcultures in every place the
Jewish culture, muslim culturethat do not embalm, that do not
(39:56):
use cremation, that do not uselarge elite vessels of interment
, that in fact try to equalizein death, and so we're still
doing things very much the sameway that we have in the past.
I think one of the new things isreally also an old thing and
(40:17):
that is echo interment.
I'm hearing a lot about people,you know, are they buried in a
vessel with seeds or with a?
Are they buried with a tree sothat they're finding ways to try
and give back to the earth orgo back to ashes to ashes and
dust to dust right, but therehave always been cultures that
stuck with that.
You know, 20, 30 years agowould my friend have wanted that
(40:42):
instead of the fancy coffin andall of the things tossed in
there with her?
Maybe you know, but it's again.
The interment is actually aboutwhat the people who are living
do with those who are dead andnot what the people who were
dead necessarily would havethought to do with themselves.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
I agree, you know, we all people go oh, what do you
want to happen when you die?
And I'm like I don't actuallycare, because do whatever makes
the people that are left behindhappy.
You know, it's like I'm dead.
What does it matter to me?
But it's true, if people dowant a specific burial and they
want eco burials, then that'sgreat, and we're swinging
(41:26):
towards the eco interment hereas well, and so it is swinging
towards that.
People are trying to, you know,and of course, then you've got
the places like and this is notwhat we're here to talk about,
so I'm going off piste as wellbut you've got the places like
New Orleans, where everybody'sburied above ground.
Speaker 2 (41:44):
Well, absolutely, sometimes you have to Right,
there are different and the cityof San Francisco didn't allow
for burial inside the city.
All the cemeteries are outsideof the city and there's one
particular city outside of SanFrancisco that has more dead
people than living people easilyby far, because it became one
(42:04):
of the places where people couldenter the city, partly because
of the hills, partly because ofthe runoff of the water, partly
because of sewage.
You know some, some of ourinternment of the dead and some
of the reason that it's at adistance is because death and
the desiccation of the deadafterwards is actually a pretty
gross thing, right, and can beunhealthy.
(42:26):
It can contribute to problemsin the, in the sewage and the
water flow, in the, you know, inthe water supply for those who
are continuing to live in thatarea.
So we have to move the dead offand you know things with the
plague moving the dead off intomass burials to get them out of
(42:46):
the city and out of the way ofthe people who are living and
hopefully still healthy.
Speaker 1 (42:54):
The cities have a way of growing, and suddenly
they're inside the city again.
Speaker 2 (42:59):
Well, that's.
You mentioned that in Edinburghthat the cemeteries weren't
always in the middle of thosehouses, but now they're in the
middle of those neighborhoods.
Speaker 1 (43:10):
Absolutely.
You know I could talk aboutthis topic all day, but I know
we've only got limited time, socan we bring it round to writing
?
How can we use this knowledgeto ensure authenticity in our
novels?
Speaker 2 (43:23):
Well, there are so many layers to this.
I think this is the.
This is great.
So there are a couple ofnovelists who have really worked
with this material Aaron Alkins, a number of years ago, his,
his mysteries, the Amelia Peebastudy series by Elizabeth Peters
(43:43):
, right, of course, in herEgyptology.
So this information can bereally helpful in understanding
how graves are put together.
And I think about also PatriciaCornwell, for example, who is a
thriller writer, and then youknow, maybe there is some
ritualization of burial or ofyou know what one does, what a
(44:07):
serial killer might do withtheir body.
So we can learn things fromthat.
But the integrity of how to dothe archaeology, what kinds of
information can come from DNA?
What kinds of information canbe learned from the bones?
But also, what kinds ofinformation can be learned from
how that burial was done?
Were they just shoved under abunch of leaves or were they
ritually laid out in some way?
(44:27):
I think that we can reallylearn a lot for writing
mysteries, but also forunderstanding the culture of the
people as well.
So what's going on learning whoa person, who the living are,
who did the interment?
Right, as we said before, it'sreally about the living.
They're the ones doing theburial, not the person who died.
(44:48):
So I think that's a greatthought.
There is a great book I think,that your readers, your
listeners, would enjoy.
It's still one of the best, Ithink.
It's called Death to Dust byKenneth Iserson, and it is Death
(45:11):
to Dust.
He's a physician, but heincludes in here everything
basically that happens after youdie, that desiccation process,
what you can learn from thebones, but also mortuary
practices, and he has a wholesection on epitaphs and poetry
about the dead and what I mean.
(45:34):
I have.
Mine is bookmarked with so manydifferent little sticky tabs
here.
I have recommended this book towriters over and over again.
There are some other morecontemporary books that focus in
on the topic of burying thedead, so it's actually called
Burying the Dead.
Lorraine Evans wrote this bookcalled Burying the Dead, which
is really about mortuarypractices in general.
(45:57):
I think that we can learn a lotto put this into our writing,
to bring this to the reader withintegrity.
Speaker 1 (46:07):
That's excellent.
Now I was going to ask youwhere would be the best place to
start, but you've answered thatalready, which is marvelous.
You've given us some resources,which I'm really pleased about,
because I'm going to be lookingthem up.
So I know you're an author, Iwrite it as well, because we met
through sisters in crime.
So we're sisters Absolutely Incrime, of course in crime rather
(46:29):
than genetically.
But so can you tell us aboutyour own books?
Speaker 2 (46:36):
So my own books are in process.
I'm currently querying a novelwith my book called Inherit the
Dead.
I hope it'll hold on to that,but it might not hold on to that
title, you know, in which Henry, who's a librarian, suspected
of murdering her neighbor,gloria, must trust her not so
imaginary friend she has ignoredfor years.
(46:58):
She's got this voice in herhead and she's afraid of being
crazy.
Her mother told her she wascrazy, but she has to find out
what Gloria was hiding, and oneof the things that Gloria was
hiding was that she was Henry'sbirth mother.
Speaker 1 (47:17):
Excellent, I'm good.
I wish you all.
Speaker 2 (47:20):
So I'm querying that.
Let's hope, let's hope I younever know, right, I get a
rejection every day, but it'salso out full manuscript with
with agents, so we'll see.
I also have I do have a coupleof short stories published.
They all have some, and Ididn't realize this until I
started pulling the listtogether.
They all have some sort of thislittle spirit nugget in it.
(47:42):
Right, and the friend who iswho speaks to her?
For example, there's a rabbi, ashort story about a rabbi who
sees the past spirit of her, ofher congregants, and learns
about her synagogue when she'snew to the synagogue.
(48:02):
She learns about it by actuallyseeing the ghosts of the past
walk through the building, forexample.
And then I have another shortstory in which a father is
grieving for his child using thetraditional mourners Kaddish
it's called living Kaddish, andhis child is trans, and so he's
grappling with his child's life.
(48:24):
Life changes, and I'm currentlyworking on stuff too, so who
knows where to go?
Speaker 1 (48:31):
Hey, what is it you say from your mouth to God's
ears?
Is that the saying, or have Igot?
Speaker 2 (48:36):
lost in the stuff.
Yes, please.
Speaker 1 (48:40):
I'll probably get into trouble for cultural
appropriation, now you know.
Speaker 2 (48:44):
Oh no, you can take that one.
Your mouth to God's deers isI'm happy with that one
Excellent.
Speaker 1 (48:51):
So my final question where can my listeners find out
more about you and your books?
Speaker 2 (48:56):
Well, I do have a website, sarah Neber Rubincom,
but that can be really reallyhard to spell out.
So I have a link tree and thatis under the name writer me RSNR
, so writer me, me, and thenRSNR for Rabbi Sarah Neber Rubin
, and that has all myinformation, or at least most of
(49:18):
it at this point, on it andmost of my social media is under
that as well.
So RSNS so writer me R forRabbi.
Snr for Sarah Neber Rubin.
Speaker 1 (49:34):
SNR.
It's just, I'll put that in theshow notes.
I'll put the link in the shownotes.
Speaker 2 (49:38):
Perfect.
Speaker 1 (49:40):
Excellent.
Well, thank you very much,Sarah.
It's been an absolute pleasurechatting to you today.
It's been amazing.
Speaker 2 (49:46):
It's been fun.
Thank you so much, Wendy.
I appreciate the opportunity.
Speaker 1 (49:50):
You are welcome and enjoy the rest of your day.
Speaker 2 (49:55):
You as well have a wonderful one.
You must have a little lesstime left to your day than I do.
Yes, it's 4pm here.
No, just about 8pm.
8pm, see, I'm already ready tobe done with my day.
8am here 8am.
Speaker 1 (50:11):
Well, I'll be a bit, a little bit closer to you soon,
because I'm flying to the EastCoast on the 1st of August.
Speaker 2 (50:17):
Well, I wish I could fly to the East Coast and come
meet you in person, but I'llhave to hold that for another
day.
Speaker 1 (50:22):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (50:24):
Bye, take care.
Speaker 1 (50:26):
Bye-bye.
That brings us to the end ofanother show.
It was really good to have youon the show with me today.
I'm Wendy H Jones and you canfind me at wendahjjonescom.
You can also find me on Patreon, where you can support me for
as little as $3 a month, whichis less than the price of a tea
(50:47):
or coffee.
You go to wwwpatrioncom.
Forward, slash wendahjjones.
I'm also Wendy H Jones onFacebook, twitter, instagram and
Pinterest.
Thank you for joining me todayand I hope you found it both
useful and interesting.
Join me next week when I willhave another cracking guest for
you.
Until then, have a good weekand keep writing, keep reading
(51:13):
and keep learning.
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