Abstract

The project will undertake a comparative analysis of burial sites and mortuary practices in Porto focussing on the 19th century, a time of pandemics and war, to investigate human frailty and resilience in the face of mortality crises. The 19th century saw pronounced changes in burial practices across Europe (and its colonies), driven by mortality crises, as well as reflecting new ways of thinking and feeling about death.
An interdisciplinary and multimethodological approach will be employed, combining bioarchaeology, anthropology, archaeological and historical data to analyse and interpret human remains and their mortuary contexts. Toward this end a database of documented burial sites in the city of Porto will be constructed from which suitable sites, linked to mortality crises, are drawn for analysis and aggregated with data from the BeFRAIL project.
This holistic approach will generate insight into mortuary treatment as social practices changing in response to mortality crisis, as well as people’s resilience in maintaining their practices of caring for their dead.

Team