Presented by Dr Sven Ouzman, from the University of Western Australia.
Death is a key moment and process in human life. People often invest a great deal of thought and emotion in how they adjust their relationship with once-living people, things and places. Indeed, how we define and dispose of the dead is one of the attributes that makes us ‘human’. But how does an study of death work during a global pandemic, when death is anything but academic? This semester, over 120 students enrolled in UWA Archaeology’s ‘ARCY2006- The Archaeology of Death’, little knowing how real the topic would become. Some students voiced apprehension, while others requested additional content and questions be added to the unit. To key questions such as ’what is death? [and did you know Western Australian legislation does NOT have a definition of ‘death’?], we looked at pandemics in global and archaeological perspective back to the first recorded pandemic the Justinian Plague of 521 CE, and at the ‘downtrodden dead’ – children, women, Neanderthals and ‘deviant’ burials. Ethics – especially as regards colonial invasion/contact and war has come up frequently – as have questions about how will we dispose of the dead into the future (all 7 billion plus people now living will be dead within a century). This National Archaeology Week talk will use some of these student-driven insights and questions and apply them to Covid-19 deaths and death rituals, arguing that the lasting social, religious and economic impacts on how we understand and treat death is entering a new chapter.
Warning:This lecture contains images and sometimes names of dead people and examines issues that can be distressing to sensitive viewers. Counselling for UWA staff and students is available here - https://www.uwa.edu.au/students/need-help/counselling-and-psychological-services and here - https://www.safety.uwa.edu.au/health-wellbeing/health/eap or for everyone here: https://headtohealth.gov.au/covid-19-support/covid-19
When: 6-7.30pm (Perth time / AWST), Wednesday 20 May 2020
Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/why-teaching-the-archaeology-of-death-during-covid-19-is-a-good-idea-tickets-104920804952
Where: via Zoom, details provided on registration