The proceedings of the 14th GAAF Meeting, dedicated to Funerary Landscapes from Prehistory to Antiquity, are now available for purchase !

The simplest and most ordinary landscape is at once social and natural, subjective and objective, spatial and temporal, a material and cultural production, both real and symbolic. Landscape is a system that straddles the natural and the social. It is a social interpretation of nature.” Georges Bertrand.

How should we conceive of the funerary landscape? It may seem commonplace to state that it is both natural and social, yet it remains important to emphasize its environmental dimension, which provides a setting that people can appropriate, including at the particular moment marked by the death of a member of a community. Is not the fate of many deceased individuals permanently linked to the earth through burial? This broad topic is difficult to approach archaeologically because this landscape, unlike most others, results from a multitude of factors. It combines natural elements (vegetation, topography, water, etc.), funerary systems, and social structures and cultural practices. Archaeological evidence is often fragmentary and elusive. Indeed, few traces of simple or complex burial features—such as funerary monuments, pathways, or vegetation—have survived through the centuries. While the various components of funerary spaces were undoubtedly visible and meaningful to their users, they remain difficult to identify through archaeological investigation. Nevertheless, funerary archaeology possesses several advantages. The increasing number of preventive and research excavations, sometimes covering extensive areas, enables the exploration of diverse territories over the long term. Such investigations reveal the complete life cycle of landscapes temporarily dedicated to funerary activities: their creation, continuity, and transformation once the dead have been forgotten.

This meeting of the GAAF follows a previous conference devoted to later periods, namely the medieval and modern eras. By adopting a long-term perspective extending from Prehistory to Antiquity, it encompasses societies known through written or iconographic sources as well as those for which no such evidence exists. To address these issues, three thematic axes are proposed: one explicitly methodological axis and two others focusing on the internal and external dimensions of funerary spaces. The first examines the necropolis from within, where the landscape serves as the setting for the burial of the dead. The second explores the place of funerary space—whether visible or concealed—within the broader landscape of a territory. Contributions may address methodological, thematic, or chronological perspectives. All disciplines relevant to these questions are welcome, including archaeology, anthropology, palaeoenvironmental sciences, genetics, dating methods, geophysics, and LiDAR studies.

Presentations and discussions will be organized around three main themes:

• What methods can be used to reconstruct the natural and anthropogenic components of funerary spaces (written sources, palaeoenvironmental studies, survey methods, etc.)?
• The internal landscape of the necropolis: the grammar of social, symbolic, and technical uses of funerary spaces.
• Funerary spaces/landscapes and territory: visibility, function, and networks.

The proceedings of the first Rendez-vous du Gaaf are now out!

This book is a compilation of 12 papers from a series of meetings organised in Lorient, Aix-en-Provence and La Rochelle between 2016 and 2018 around the topic of ecofacts and artefacts in funerary scenography.

A flower, a pig, a bottle, this inventory seems more poetic than realistic, for what could a plant, an animal and an object possibly have in common? And how can they coexist in the same reality? The answer is provided by the reference to the body. It is the presence of the dead body that gives meaning to the statement; it sets the context and drives the investigation, which is archaeological rather than judicial. Priority must indeed be given to the body, whatever its form and whatever remains of it. The body is the human being, and without the human being, the flower, the pig and the bottle would not exist. A grave is only part of a complex chaîne opératoire that began with the death of an individual and only ends when the memory has faded.

This book brings together twelve contributions that reflect the diversity of scientific approaches to the study of funerary rituals and the value of fostering multidisciplinary collaboration among researchers. The papers are presented according to the sources used (texts, then archaeology) and in chronological order.

The order form and all information about the book, including the table of contents (in French), can be found via the link.

The proceedings of the 13th Meeting of the GAAF on cremation is now available.

For the past twenty years, methods and reflections intrinsic to the excavation and study of structures linked to the practice of cremation have continued to evolve, with a growing and more diverse community of researchers. The GAAF 2022 Meetings were part of the questions already developed in part during the Meetings around the Fire (GAAFIF, 1998) and the Meetings on New Approaches to Funeral Archaeology (GAAF, 2014, session 2). The 13th edition of the GAAF, held in Toulouse from 30 May to 01 June 2022 aimed to take stock of the discipline, show the progress made and bring about a collective reflection on its necessary evolution.

This conference also gave the opportunity to open a discussion on the relationship ancient or current societies have with cremation, in the widest possible chronological and geographical framework. But also to address the relationship between cremation and inhumation, what these practices share or how they differ, in situations of continuity or rupture, depending on the society or the era.

The 33 contributions are organised around four main themes: Cremation from in the past and today; Archaeosciences; Methodological feedback and survey strategies; Current research.

The order form and all information about the book, including the table of contents (in French), can be found via the links.

The proceedings of the 11^th Meeting of the GAAF is now available!

Typo-chronology is frequently used in funerary archaeology for dating graves. The method concerns the components which characterize burials : body positions, coffins, rituals, grave markers, grave construction and so on. Other approaches and methods are also associated, such as radiocarbon dating, content assemblages, stratigraphy, etc.
The typo-chronological references used today are sometimes outdated, while at the same time recent advances in research have considerably renewed the documentation in mortuary archaeology.
It was then time for the Groupe d’Anthropologie et d’Archéologie Funéraire (Gaaf) to explore and suggest new references that could be used by archaeologists and biological anthropologists. They apply to inhumation burials, and for periods ranging from prehistory to the contemporary period.
This volume brings together 46 contributions, grouped by broad geographical areas, and from papers given at the 11th Gaaf meeting held in Tours from the 3rd to the 5th of June 2019.

You will find in the link, the order form and all information about the book as well as the summary.

It’s also available from OpenEdition

This book explores the question of the relationship between past societies and those who suffered from illness and impairment. The 38 contributions that make it up cover a wide chronological breadth, ranging from later prehistory to the present day. They consider, in turn, the places in which the sick were cared for (hospitals, religious establishments, and leprosaria), the funerary treatment that their corpses received in different periods of the past, the accompanying objects associated with them, as well as the medico-surgical practices that can sometimes be reconstructed from the study of skeletal remains. Focusing on social and funerary considerations, this volume illustrates the diverse behaviors elicited by the ailing and unwell according to time and place, thus contributing to current interests in the social history of care, and support of the ill and infirm in past societies.

After burial, the integrity of a grave can be disturbed in many ways, particularly by the intervention of the living. Despite the fact that the management of the burial space can often be responsible for these disruptions, it is not the only reason for people to disturb graves. Depending on the place, time and space of burial, the motivations are wide-ranging and not necessarily associated with destruction or offence. Archaeology professionals are therefore regularly confronted with these changes, and their interpretation often highly depend on the conditions of the excavation, the methods used to study the graves as well as the knowledge provided by other types of sources (e. g. written and ethnographic sources).

A multidisciplinary approach was privileged during the conference. Gathered around three themes (grave robbery, management of burial space, and cult practices), archaeologists, physical anthropologists, historians and ethnologists shared their questions, methods and approaches to the issue of grave reopening from the prehistoric period to the present day.

This volume aims to bring together some thirty contributions from these days. It opens the discussion around various practices whose archaeological manifestation is identical: the manipulation of the deceased. What field methodology is applied to these structures? What can we learn from these changes in the societies of the past? What motivations drive the living to reintervene in the graves of their loved ones? These are all questions that French and foreign specialists are now asking themselves.

Increasingly, teams are called upon to work on very recent funerary occupations. However, archaeological studies of this chronological field are still marginal and, for some, useless, sometimes disturbing, even though history or sociology have largely nourished it for decades. The thirty contributions offer a multidisciplinary approach around 3 unifying themes bringing together historians, archaeologists, anthropologists, jurists, sociologists and psychoanalysts. It makes it possible to ask ethical and deontological questions and to question the guidelines to be given for taking into account these recent finded now integrated into the heritage field.

Special edition 1 of the Gaafif newsletter

Meeting report of the study day organized on April 5, 1996 in Paris, by the Gaafif and the regional archaeological service of Haute-Normandie. Texts reunited by Lola Bonnabel and Florence Carré.

Bulletin de liaison, numéro spécial 2 du Gaafif

Report of the study day organized on January 28, 1997, at the Musée des Arts et Traditions populaires in Paris, by Anne Dietrich and Sofie Vertongen.

This Rencontre, held at Carry-le-Rouet (Bouches-du-Rhône) the 13 and 14 November 2008, inaugurated a new cycle of meetings proposed by the Groupe d’anthropologie et d’archéologie funéraire (Gaaf). The association, which was created in October 2007 for researchers interested in funerary and anthropological themes – archaeologists, historians, anthropologists, sociologists, doctors, etc. – is an extension of the initiative, in 1991, of a group of archaeologists from the Paris region: the Gaafif (Groupe d’anthropologie et d’archéologie funéraire en Île-de-France).

This first regional association offered a space of discussions and reflexions around a pragmatic goal: allowing everyone to expose his work and freely express his methodological and scientific problems. The rapid success of the Gaafif proved the importance attached to these organized exchanges in a common respect. From meetings to information dissemination in the form of a Bulletin, the members of the association quickly understood the limits of a regional reflection and came up with the idea of round tables. Thus, were born the Rencontres: Rencontre autour du linceul, held and published in 1996, Rencontre autour du cercueil, in 1997 (published in 1998), Rencontre autour du feu organized in 1999 (unpublished).

After the dispersion of its members out of the region of Paris, the Gaafif disappeared for a while until some of them in the South of France wished to reactivate the association. Bringing their project of a meeting around dressed burials, Bruno Bizot and Michel Signoli launched the creation of the Gaaf. The researchers’ response to their call was immediate. After two years, the new association works now with a dynamic program including one or two workshops of expertise in paleopathology around Paris, and one Rencontre per year. The strength of the Gaaf comes from the wish to keep an active and multidisciplinary network. Its success comes from the diversity of the origin of its members (Inrap, universities, ministry of culture, CNRS, museum…) mostly French but also Swiss and Italian. We hope that this first publication of the Gaaf will perpetuate and prolong the constructive exchanges of our association.