Skeletons Under Our Feet
Distracting myself by rewatching Netflix comedies I came across Monty Python and the Holy Grail, a staple favorite (no surprise there) and my attention was sparked by the first long scene.
'King' Arthur "rides" to a village that was being ravaged by a plague. We do not know when or even if King Arthur was ever a real person so writers can input his character into any period they like (which is fine, makes for varied storytelling). He is typically thought of as an early medieval king with some scholars going sooner, as the king who fought back against the invading Anglo-Saxons in the 5th or 6th century AD. But, for this movie’s context, they seem to be invoking the imagery from the Bubonic Plague which spread for years centuries later (between 1346 and 1353). This isn't the only plague during the vast medieval period, just probably the one that did the most notable damage.
Assuming that this was intended to reflect the Bubonic Plague aka the Black Death one of the most stand-out historical anecdote was the collector with the cart, "Bring out your dead!"
Why does that seem so odd... at least to me? Why wouldn't anyone want to dispose of a dead body, if even putting them outside the door? Well, it was the exact opposite, for centuries people kept their family inside. Sort of anyway. For thousands of years various cultures around the world, such as the peoples in Çatalhöyük [image below], one of the first examples of a "city", Anatolia, in the Americas [both precolonial North and South], in and around Melanesia and Polynesia, and Scandinavia buried their dead underneath their homes floor (cites are numerous and shared at the end). For one example, which is not singularly representative of every cultural practice or people, families in Tonga would bury the dead under the floor for some time and then they might excavate and reinter the bones in another 'cemetery' location (Kirch, 2017). While the kings and the high-ranking individuals received burial mounds (Kirch, 1980). Even without the subterranean house burials, rituals would often involve the dead's passing through to the afterlife with meticulous ceremonies like in Orthodox Greece, when if done incorrectly could result in a vampire (Avdikos, 2013).
This makes the cart worker's role much more significant in an increasingly tight-knit world. Today we are social distancing, back in the day, as people had to alter their ancestral practices, to stop the transfer of the disease since the Europeans and English had heard the stories telling all to ditch the dead because they will make you sick. The idea was that the transference of the sickness was from 'bad air' or the Miasma Theory (Last, 2007). This theory was made popular from the 1st century BCE and it lasted through the medieval period, but it was never quite accurate, although it could be argued as being helpful. At the very least it made people think about what could be in the air that they were breathing. And the concept did move around with the explorers of the world (kind of the same as illness does).
Everything they knew had been challenged and changed, but to save themselves and the people around them they had to, 'bring out their dead', burn the bodies and leave possibly behind centuries of tradition while creating complex new ones.
EXTRA Commentary:
There is more from the medieval period and before about people fighting against the interment or taking of the ancestors from the household, but I couldn't find them.
While researching this topic I have, unfortunately, come up short. There are a bunch of questions that I couldn't find the answers to. Whether that's due to unavailable material for someone who's not part of a 'credible institution' or to my laziness, I don't know (probably a mix of both). It makes me think that there is a definite PhD if not a full book-length project on this topic. (Obviously not to say PhD papers aren't book-length, cause they certainly are.)
Sorry, this wasn't about a particular piece of art or the ideas around that, but my brain was bugging me to write this... and even as it stands, it took way too long to finish. Procrastination!
Citations/Learn More:
Avdikos, E. (2013) ‘Vampire stories in Greece and the reinforcement of socio-cultural norms’, Folklore, 124, pp. 307–326.
Boz, Başak & Hager, Lori. (2013). Living above the Dead: Intramural Burial practices at Çatalhöyük.
Fitzpatrick, Scott M. "Early human burials in the western Pacific: evidence for c. 3000 year old occupation on Palau."Antiquity77.298 (2003): 719-731.
Kirch, P. V. “BURIAL STRUCTURES AND SOCIETAL RANKING IN VAVA'U, TONGA.” The Journal of the Polynesian Society, vol. 89, no. 3, 1980, pp. 291–308. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20705488. Accessed 1 Apr. 2020.
Kirch, Patrick Vinton. On the Road of the Winds: An Archaeological History of the Pacific Islands before European Contact, Revised and Expanded Edition. 2nd ed., University of California Press, 2017. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/j.ctv1xxsng. Accessed 1 Apr. 2020.
Last, John M., ed. (2007)."miasma theory".A Dictionary of Public Health. Westminster College, Pennsylvania: Oxford University Press.
Malouin, Paul-Jacques (1765). "Miasma". Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library.hdl:2027/spo.did2222.0000.369
Tolles, Frederick B. "Bring Out Your Dead: The Great Plague of Yellow Fever in Philadelphia in 1793." Bulletin of Friends' Historical Association 39.1 (1950): 49-50.
Vitruvius, De architectura I.4.1, Latin text at Lacus Curtius
Cover Photos:
“A view of the excavated graves (Image credit: Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities).”
-And-
An individual with a number of grave goods. “It appears that the red pigment ochre covered part of the grave when the deceased was laid to rest". (Image credit: Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities)
Geggel, Laura. “Dozens of Ancient Egyptian Graves Found with Rare Clay Coffins.”LiveScience, Purch, 21 Feb. 2020, www.livescience.com/ancient-egypt-clay-graves.html.
