Pirates and Skulls

Word on the street is a Pirate's earring was to pay for his funeral. How thoughtful is that? These days we pay into life insurance through work and on our own; scrimp and save, and hope to have enough to pay for a decent casket or urn and a plot. I guess plundering is similar to scrimping and saving, but the earring is much more simpler form of accessing the income.
What I am getting at is that even swashbucklers like Pirates who seem to not have a care in the world were concerned about their funeral. Yes, the whole "earring as a payment for a funeral" factoid may be fictional, but it made me think how centered we are around death.
As it was mentioned in class today, Western populations are moving away from traditional remembrance of the dead, yet we still plan and save for the big event. We feel socially obligated to leave our family a sum to pay for our internment, yet we are fully aware how little we will be visited. Will Canadians stop having formal plots and opt for more intimate and unique modes of memorial? Will we do both? We already have the option to be cremated and pressed into a diamond which is kind of awesome. There are online memorials, donations to charity and even a simple picture on a mantle. I have a stuffed bunny taken from my friend's collection at his memorial. I will never forget who and what the bunny is to represent.

These modern forms of memorial  remind me of the buried heads under the floors of Jericho. There is an intimate relationship between the dead and those who are to remember. After skeletonization, the skulls would be removed from the remaining body. Clay would be applied onto the Viscerocranium and it is thought the clay is molded to look like the face of the deceased. In addition, alabaster or lapis lazuli was inlaid on the eyes for "that certain glow" (Collon 1995).
Modernly, we may be shifting towards other forms of remembrance because we're "too busy" or quite frankly, too lazy, but we still hold the desire to connect with our kin. A photo or urn on the mantle of a loved one is a daily reminder. Some may talk to the image or turn down the frame when they are doing something the deceased would disapprove. These interactions are hard to quantify and also hard to fathom when looking at past cultures. However, through observations of the present, we can apply our knowledge to the past to make educated interpretations.

Wow, what a random transition from pirates to skulls in Jericho--it must be the end of term. In sum, due to finances and laziness, I think we all are going to become much more unique and intimate in our remembrance of the dead-- good luck solving that one, archaeologists 1000 years from now!


Collon, Dominique. (1995). Ancient Near Eastern Art.  Berkeley: University of California Press