Rounded With a Sleep: The Transitional Role of Grave Goods in the Archaeology of Ritual and Emotion

Abstract

Although grave goods have been a major concern in archaeology since its inception, the question of what objects buried with the dead actually do—in both ritual and emotional terms—has remained relatively opaque and understudied. This paper addresses the issue directly, illuminating the ways graves goods served to unstitch the dead from the ‘objective’ quotidian life of the ‘self’ and enter into ‘subjective’ communities of the dead; how objects buried in graves can simultaneously belong to the dead and the living, playing an importantly paradoxical role in navigating journeys between the needs and identities of the living, dying and the dead and the role of grave goods in addressing and transforming the anxieties caused by death and the creation of positive psychological emotional benefits, community cohesion and solidarity. To develop these ideas, I draw attention to the similarities between the concept of ‘transitional objects’, which serve to bridge subjectivity and objectivity (inner and outer worlds), and grave goods, both of which can be understood in terms of ritual processes and ritualized acts.