Mediterranean Archaeology Collaborative Specialization (MACS) Workshop 2025
When and Where
Description
Mortuary Traditions in the Ancient Mediterranean World
Mortuary traditions play an important role in the creation of cultural landscapes and the maintenance of social relations. The materialization of burial practices, however, varies in scale and form across space and time. Traditional scholarship on mortuary contexts has primarily focused on issues of social hierarchy and social mobility without adequately addressing the material dimensions - objects, artefacts, structures, and spaces—associated with the dead. Being relational at multiple scales of observations, materials and spaces offer us the opportunity to understand and apprehend the varied choices involved in the representation of the dead and their significance for the living communities. Moreover, critically analyzing the visuality, materiality, and spatiality of mortuary contexts in conjunction with cross-disciplinary approaches to remains of the dead—skeletal (osteology) and Ancient DNA data—can bring new insights into mortuary practices.
To this end, a two-day workshop is organized to explore mortuary matters and associated practices. With a focus on the ancient Mediterranean, our workshop aims to provide a forum for scholars with diverse disciplinary perspectives to come together for collaborative engagement. What inferences can we draw by analyzing the intermediate space between the living and the dead delineated by physical things? What choices are involved in the demarcation of specific spaces by burials? How can we interpret the containment of a person’s memory – often associated with personalized objects – in a pot, surrounded by stone slabs, or in a burial pit? Is it possible to shed light on past life events by combining current scientific skeletal analysis with contextualinformation? Can we elucidate how people understood, created, and moved within and amongst their mortuary landscapes?
Organizers
Anisa Mara, PhD Candidate, Department of Art History
Zeynep Kuşdil Sak, PhD Candidate, Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations
Katerina Apokatanidis, PhD Candidate, Department of Classics
Moizza Elahi, PhD Candidate, Department of Art History
Tucker Deady, PhD Candidate, Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations
In Person Location
Archaeology Center, 19 Ursula Franklin Street, Ap 130, University of Toronto
Online: By Registration
7 March 2025: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/lENSxuOdTnGVa6v3rg-gqg
8 March 2025: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/OixrpKpnQ_qNXO4w9FN8BQ
* See the workshop booklet for the program details: 
MACS 2025 booklet.pdf