Williams, Howard. “Archaeologists on contemporary death.” Mortality: Promoting the interdisciplinary study of death and dying 16 no. 2 (2011): 91-97.
In this short article, Howard Williams looks at the different ways in which archaeologists not only study contemporary death and funerary practices, but also influence the changes that these areas go under over time. He breaks his argument into three different sections that cover how mortuary archaeology engages with, contributes to, and investigates contemporary death. In the first section on engaging with contemporary death, Williams explains that modern burial practices are often used as a research base or comparative element for archaeological research, and some research even specifically studies modern mortuary practices in an ethnographical way. In the second section on contributing to contemporary death, Williams explains several different ways in which archaeological work influence and shapes the ways in which modern populations interact with and remember the deceased. Finally in the third section on investigating contemporary death, Williams goes over the different areas of contemporary death that archaeologists can and have been researching including things such as mass graves and more recent trends in burials practices. Williams concludes the article with a short discussion, issuing a warning to archaeologists as they begin to study contemporary death more and face the challenges and issues that come, as well as stating an argument for the study of contemporary death and the benefits that archaeological work in this area will bring.
While this article does not directly relate to the Emanu-el site, it is a good reminder as work begins, that we are not just studying and archaeological site. We are in the unique position of examining a site that contains graves that could be comfortably classified as historical and therefore candidates for archaeological work, but also recent graves, with family and friends who will be directly affected by our work.
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