ANTHROPOLOGY SERIES
Death, Aging, and Mortality:

Cultural and Biosocial Perspectives
Professor Janet Monge

This course is co-sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, located at 33rd and Spruce Streets, Philadelphia.  The entrance for the course is at the east end of the building, next to the garage.

LECTURES BEGIN AT 7:00 PM

1. Monday, October 19, 2009 - General Introduction
   Death and ritual in the United States today. Death across cultures and death across time. Mummies and ancient death rituals.
2. Monday, October 26, 2009 - Is There Such Thing as an "Unnatural Death"?
   Special cases: genocide, murder, infanticide.
3. Monday, November 2, 2009 - Definition of Death
   How biomedicine changed our views of death. Organ transplants. The cadaver. What do humans do to dispose of bodies?
4. Monday, November 9, 2009 - Evolution of Aging
   Degeneration of the body and eventual death: an evolutionary perspective.
5. Monday, November 16, 2009 - Our Ancestors
   How long did they live? Did they bury their dead with rituals?
6. Monday, November 23, 2009 - Mortality
   Causes of death. Comparisons of mortality in the developed and developing world. Mortality in hunter gatherers and our closest living relative: the chimpanzee. Mortality in agricultural populations, how agriculture influenced the life and death pattern.

Nothing in the lifespan of humans is as revealing on the interface of culture and biology as is death and the experience of death. This course will explore death from a bio/cultural perspective including the evolution of life history (aging, demography, mortality), as well as an archaeological perspective (prehistory), and early history and mortuary practices. This course is not concerned specifically with how an individual experiences death, but in the ways in which culture and biology have come to define and deal with physical death and the death experience.

Recommended reading:

Death and Bereavement Around the World: Death and Bereavement in the Americas.  Edited by J.D. Morgan. Amityville, NY: Baywood Publishing Company, 2003.

The Archaeology of Death and Burial.   By Michael Parker Pearson. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2001.

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Cadavers.   By Mary Roach. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2003.

Look at the Sky: Death in Cultures Around the World.  By Shawn Haley. Calgary, Canada: Eagle Creek Publishers, 1999.

Funeral Festivals in America: Rituals for the Living.   By Jacqueline S. Thursby. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2006.

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