Body parts and bodies whole - Katharina Rebay-Salisbury

This volume grew out of an interdisciplinary discussion held in
the context of the Leverhulme-funded project 'Changing Beliefs in
the Human Body', through which the image of the body in pieces
soon emerged as a potent site of attitudes about the body and
associated practices in many periods. Archaeologists routinely encounter parts of human and animal
bodies in their excavations. Such fragmentary evidence has often
been created through accidental damage and the passage of time -
nevertheless, it can also signify a deliberate and meaningful act
of fragmentation. As a fragment, a part may acquire a distinct
meaning through its enchained relationship to the whole or
alternatively it may be used in a more straightforward manner to
represent the whole or even act as stand-in for other variables.This collection of papers puts bodily fragmentation into a
long-term historical perspective. The temporal spread of the
papers collected here indicates both the consistent importance
and the varied perception of body parts in the archaeological
record of Europe and the Near East. By bringing case studies
together from a range of locations and time periods, each chapter
brings a different insight to the role of body parts and body
wholes and explores the status of the body in different cultural
contexts.Many of the papers deal directly with the physical remains of the
dead body, but the range of practices and representations covered
in this volume confirm the sheer variability of treatments of the
body throughout human history. Every one of the contributions
shows how looking at how the human body is divided into pieces or
parts can give us deeper insights into the beliefs of the
particular society which produced these practices and
representations.