The urban graveyard

It is commonly believed that in medieval and post-medieval towns and cities death outnumbered births and that these urban centres could only survive through the influx of migrants; a concept which has come to be known as the urban graveyard effect. Whether this was indeed the case for all cities and towns is still debated, but it is certain that urban citizens were more used to death that we are today. The medieval graveyards in which the deceased were interred, then still located within town limits, are an invaluable source of knowledge for reconstructing past lives. Systematic archaeological and osteoarchaeological research of urban graveyards has become the norm in the Netherlands and Belgium since the 1980s. However, many of the studies remain unpublished and larger, overarching publications in which comparisons are made between different studies are still lacking.

The urban graveyard presents several studies in which the results of older archaeological and osteoarchaeological research are compared to more recent excavation data from several Dutch, Belgian and Danish cities and towns. Both the archaeological data concerning burial position, orientation, and grave goods as well as osteoarchaeological data such as demographic information and pathological observations are discussed. This well-illustrated volume is a starting point and source of inspiration for more (inter)national comparative research.

Contents:

1. Roos van Oosten & Rachel Schats
Preface

2. Andrea L. Waters-Rist, Rachel Schats & Menno L.P. Hoogland
Ethical issues in human osteoarchaeology: Recommendations for best practice in the Netherlands

3. Frans Theuws
Rural cemeteries, cult places and community identities in the Central Middle Ages in the Kempen region (southern Netherlands)

4. Catelijne Nater
Social differences in burial practices in the medieval cemetery of Reusel: An osteoarchaeological and mortuary archaeological study of burial practices in the southern Netherlands during the Central Middle Ages

5. Peter Bitter
Buried in Alkmaar: Historical and archaeological research on urban cemeteries

6. Epko J. Bult
Medieval and postmedieval cemeteries in and around the city of Delft: Thirty years of rescue archaeology

7. Ronald van Genabeek
A thousand graves: differences and similarities between archaeologically investigated burial grounds in 's-Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands (c. 1275-1858)

8. Gavin Williams
In the shadow of St. Plechelmus: A thousand years of burials

9. Katrien Van de Vijver, Frank Kinnaer & Silvia Depuydt
St. Rombout's cemetery in Mechelen, Belgium (10th-18th century AD): A typical urban churchyard?

10. Koen De Groote, Jan Moens & Kim Quintelier
The Carmelite monastery in Aalst, Belgium, province of East Flanders (1497-1797): An urban burial ground in a monastic environment

11. Lene Høst-Madsen
Taking stock of burial archaeology: An emerging discipline in Denmark

12. Frank J. van Spelde & Menno L.P. Hoogland
A rural view of early modern mortuary practices: Context and material culture of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century cemetery of Middenbeemster, the Netherlands

Abstracts
About the contributors

Dr. Roos van Oosten began her academic career studying medieval history after which she began her archaeological degree that culminated in a thesis on urban archaeology. Her PhD dissertation at the University of Groningen focused on sanitation management, which she successfully defended in 2014. In 2011 she was appointed as university lecturer in urban archaeology at Leiden University. In addition to undergraduate and graduate teaching responsibilities, Roos is working on her VENI-funded project entitled 'Challenging the paradigm of filthy and unhealthy medieval towns'.


Dr. Rachel Schats studied archaeology with a specialisation in osteoarchaeology at Leiden University and University College London after which she was appointed as a research and teaching assistant for the Laboratory of Human Osteoarchaeology in Leiden. Her PhD (defended November 2016) aimed at gaining a better understanding of the physical consequences of medieval developments, such as urbanisation and commercialisation, by comparing rural and urban skeletal populations. Concurrently, Rachel taught numerous undergraduate and graduate courses on human skeletal material at Leiden University, VU University Amsterdam, University of Groningen, and Saxion School for Applied Sciences. In January 2016 she was appointed lecturer in Human Osteoarchaeology at the Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University.

Dr. Kerry Fast holds a PhD from the Centre for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto. Her doctoral research was a historical-anthropological study of Canadian women's religious lives. In more recent years, she has focused her research attention on traditional, distinct Mennonite groups, which has taken her to Bolivia, Mexico, and across Canada where she has conducted ethnographic research in Mennonite communities.

She has published several articles on aspects of Mennonite religious life and is co-editor of Mothering Mennonite. Kerry is also a full-time language and copy editor, specialising in academic editing in the humanities and social sciences. She lives in Toronto, Canada.

Nico Arts MA studied cultural and physical anthropology at Leiden University and pre- and proto-history at the University of Amsterdam. Since 1989, he has been employed as the urban archaeologist for the city of Eindhoven. Nico has published many studies concerning the Stone Age in the south of The Netherlands and medieval and early modern archaeology in Eindhoven. He has edited several volumes focusing on the urban archaeology of Eindhoven; most recently he was responsible for a major publication concerning the results of the excavation and analysis of the Catharina graveyard. Currently, Nico is writing up an archaeological synthesis of town and country in the Northern Kempen region between AD 1000 and 1650.

Since 2009, Jeroen Bouwmeester MA has been employed by the Cultural Heritage Agency as a senior researcher of medieval and early-modern cities. He studied the archaeology of Northwest Europe at VU University in Amsterdam. After his graduation in 1997, he worked as a senior archaeologist at BAAC and as director of Synthegra. During this period, Jeroen directed large-scale excavations near Zutphen (Bronze Age-Middle Ages). His research at the Cultural Heritage Agency focuses on the development of expectation models of (sub)urban areas by combining historical, geographical, archaeological, and building historical data. He devotes special attention to the development of houses and other buildings in relation to urban planning, a topic which is being developed further in his PhD research.