Things to Do With Your Dead Body...Besides Cram it in a Box and Stick it in the Ground...

Blog Prompt: What are some alternative funerary methods in BC?

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2010/09/crashtest_corpses.html

The first thing that I thought about when we were given this prompt was "Hey, I could donate my body to science!" which, indeed, is an option...if you meet the requirements. In order to donate your body to the UBC  Faculty of Medicine you must be over the age of 30 at the time of death and, usually, you have to fill out some paper work before you are dead...your family cannot just donate your body after you are gone, you actually have to sign consent forms in order to have your body accepted. Also, your body may be turned down due to...

 Infectious diseases (e.g. HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis B or C)
• Severe antibiotic resistant infections (e.g. MRSA, VRE)
• Obesity 
• Extensive trauma to the body (including recent major surgery) 
• Suicide or traumatic death 
• Autopsy or Coroner’s case 
• Delay in notification of death 
• Most organ donations with the exception of corneal transplant (eye donation) 

( http://www.cellphys.ubc.ca/bodyprogram.html ) <---that's the website for more info.

UBC has the ONLY body donation program in all of BC so you (or more likely your family) are responsible of getting...your corpse to UBC. Public Transit is not encouraged I imagine.

Another alternate you can look at in BC is burial at sea. This method, seemingly simple, actually takes a lot of planning. In order to be buried at sea you must acquire a permit at least 8 weeks before "need" of the permit and you must also announce it in the paper and (depending where you are) you have to be X nautical miles from shore and, you have to get a boat, and organize all the other funerary type things as well. This method can be quite expensive and all the paper work make for a lot of hoops to jump through... easiest way to be buried at sea is to join the Navy. 

THIS IS NOT AVAILABLE IN BC. But it seems sort of cool so I'll mention it any ways! The process of "aquamation" has been used in Australia and some places in the states (Florida) and is viewed as more eco-friendly than cremation. Basically, your body is placed in a steel container and potassium is added and so is 93 °C water. After 4 hrs the flesh and organs have decomposed off of your bones. After that, I've read, your bones are broken down or crushed or something to that effect and returned to your family, leaving them with something equivalent to ashes  after a cremation. The cool part about aquamation is that it only uses 10% of the energy that a cremation needs AND there is no toxic emissions... the sites don't tell you what happens to the potassium water that you are dissolved in though... oh well, life needs a little bit of mystery!

(looks like a VERY large washing machine to me...)

http://www.orble.com/new-way-to-kill-the-dead/

So those are some alternates to being stuck in a hole or being burned to a crisp! 

In a state of separation...

So this last week I only went to ANTH 392 once because I have been horribly sick... but on the day that I was  there (being Tuesday) we were continuing our discussions about the Funeral of a Rus' and on the three stages of a rite of passage; being the preliminal, liminal, and postliminal stages. As part of the preliminal stage some one mentioned that when the person originally became ill and was separated from the band that was the beginning of their rite of passage of death. I thought this was a very interesting way of looking at it, but it does make sense because sick people were placed away from the general community with food and water to get better or to die. 

http://www.freewebs.com/dkpassion/page9.htm

The above picture (compleetly unrelated to Rus') is a little piece of folklore/mythology that I found interesting while looking up illnesses on line. It features two sick men in bed with Caladrius birds perched on the sheets. Supposedly a Caladrius had the power to take all sickness away from an individual by looking at their face (like the lucky guy in the front bed) but, if the patient was not expected to make a full recovery it wouldn't look at him at all (like the poor guy in the back). The Caladrius, specifically, is from Roman mythology but the same idea of the white healing bird is in Greek mythology as well but known as Dhalion. It was also adopted as a representation of Christ in the Medieval ages because Christ is viewed as taking our "sickness" (sin) away with him when he died on the cross.

So there's a little bit of fun, useless, knowledge to think about and I hope to be back in class again soon!

So... This is What a Blog Looks like...

Hello Every One!

I have to admit that this is my first time ever signing up for a blog site and, honestly, I do not believe I have ever read (let alone followed) anyone else's blog before. So here we go and I am wishing for the best!
I am settling up this blog to discuss/post about my ANTH 392 course: "The Archaeology of Death". Hopefully, I will also branch out and post stuff that I have found in my internet wanderings on the subject; but who knows...the future will tell all things.

I had my first day of the Archaeology of Death yesterday with Erin McGuire and, being the first day, we went through the introductions and syllabus and such and were shown a few examples of the types of case studies we would be looking at throughout the semester...

http://www.coolantarctica.com/gallery/arctic/arctic0145.php

That little guy is one of the mummies from Qilakitsoq, Greenland. He and 7 other mummies were found at this site, preserved by the cold, and they are some of the best preserved human bodies ever found. Of the six women found in the grave 5 of them still have visible facial tattoos, a tradition still practiced by the indigenous people of Greenland today I found out. I thought the little section on these mummies extremely fascinating and hope we return to them later on in the course as well. We also talked about the Amesbury Archer, who came from the Alps but died in Wessex and was burred with all sorts of grave goods. 

From this short preview of the course I am extremely excited to learn more from Erin McGuire and from my class mates!

Until next time,
Emily