Cremation and the Archaeology of Death

Jessica Cerezo-Roman, College Fellow and Lecturer, Harvard University,Anna Wessman, Visiting Research Fellow, University of Helsinki,Howard Williams, Professor of Archaeology, University of Chester

Jessica Cerezo-Roman is a College Fellow and Lecturer at the Department of Anthropology, Harvard University. She also wroks as a bioarchaeologist consultant for the Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia, Centro INAH Sonora, Mexico. She completed her PhD at The University of Arizona in 2014.


Anna Wessman is a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Helsinki and archaeologist and educator at the Espoo City Museum. Her PhD, entitled Death, Destruction and Commemoration which traced ritual activities in Finnish Late Iron Age cemeteries (AD 550-1150), was completed at the University of Helsinki in 2010.

Howard Williams is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Chester. His research interests focus on medieval, post-medieval and contemporary mortuary archaeology, archaeologies of memory, and the history of archaeology. Howard has published over 80 book chapters and journal articles as well as edited books, including most recently Archaeologists and the Dead (OUP, 2016). He is author of the monograph Death and Memory in Early Medieval Britain (CUP, 2006).

1. Introduction: Archaeologies of Cremation, Howard Williams, Jessica I. Cerezo-Roman, and Anna Wessman
Part 1: Relational Fiery Technologies
2. Cremation and the Use of Fire in Mesolithic Mortuary Practices in North-West Europe, Amy Gray Jones
3. Rediscovering the Body: Cremation and Inhumation in Early Iron Age Central Europe, Katharina Rebay-Salisbury
4. Two of a Kind: Conceptual Similarities between Cremation and Inhumation in Early Anglo-Saxon England, Ruth Nugent
5. Fiery Technology' and Transformative Placemaking: A Contextual Examination of a 'Crematory' at the Aztalan Site in Wisconsin, Lynne Goldstein
6. Interpretation of Burned Human Remains: Lessons from Modern Forensic Case, Douglas H. Ubelaker
Part 2: Transforming and Commemorating with Cremation
7. Pathways for the Dead in the Middle and Late Bronze Age in Ireland, Gabriel Cooney
8. Building by Stone and Bone: Handling Cremated Remains in Late Bronze Age Sweden, Anna Rost
9. From Life to Death: Dynamics of Personhood in Gallo-Roman Funeral Customs, Luxemburg Province, Belgium, Jessica I. Cerezo-Roman, Koen Deforce, Denis Henrotay and Wim Van Neer
10. Building for the Cremated Dead: Ephemeral and Cumulative Constructions, Anna Wessman and Howard Williams
Part 3: Space and Time in Cremating Societies
11. The Emergence of Cremations in Eastern Fennoscandia: Changing Uses of Fire in Ritual Contexts, Jarkko Saipio
12. Land of the Cremated Dead: On Cremation Practices in Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Scandinavia, Lise Harvig
13. Come Rain or Shine? The Social Implications of Seasonality and Weather on the Cremation Rite in Early Anglo-Saxon England, Kirsty E. Squires
14. The Contemporary Archaeology of Urban Cremation, Howard Williams and Anna Wessman