Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-03T13:51:04.404Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

8 - The after-life*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2014

By
Clive Gamble
Edited by
William Brown  and
Andrew Fabian
Clive Gamble
Affiliation:
University of Southampton
William Brown
Affiliation:
Darwin College, Cambridge
Andrew Fabian
Affiliation:
Darwin College, Cambridge
Get access

Summary

Be prepared

When asked about what happens next, Woody Allen replied, ‘I don’t believe in an after-life, although I am bringing a change of underwear.’ Such preparedness goes to the heart of understanding attitudes to the after-life. ‘Leave nothing to chance’ was the advice taken by the ancient Egyptians who could afford a Book of the Dead to be buried with them, even if the book factory where they bought it often misspelt their names (Taylor 2010). The words, it seems, did not matter as much as the possession of the object. As a satnav to the future such devices could never be properly tested, or returned as faulty, and many purchasers probably got stuck on the equivalent of a bridge that was too narrow in the netherworld of the dead. Nonetheless, the book which contained some 200 spells had a long shelf life, enjoying a period of popularity between 1550 and 1069 bc. It acted to overcome the dangers of the netherworld, which were many, and through which the dead person walked, floated on air or travelled by boat. Clearly the inspiration for today’s gaming industry, the many levels and dangers that the dead person encountered were overcome by the special powers of the spells that transformed them into a variety of animals and plants; and by transforming they triumphed until they reached their goal and the game was over.

After-life and after-person

As an archaeologist I could provide an historical account of the many and varied beliefs in the after-life. I could range across the cultures of the world, digging into the temporal archives to recover nuggets of information that would delight and intrigue, and which gathered together would form a facet of its creator’s after-life; read, transformed and remembered.

Type
Chapter
Information
Life , pp. 147 - 165
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2014

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aiello, L., and Dunbar, R.. 1993. ‘Neocortex Size, Group Size and the Evolution of Language’, Current Anthropology 34: 184–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barham, L. S. 2010. ‘A Technological Fix for “Dunbar’s Dilemma”?’, in Dunbar, R., Gamble, C. and Gowlett, J. A. J., eds, Social Brains and Distributed Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 367–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bering, J. M. 2006. ‘The Cognitive Psychology of Belief in the Supernatural’, American Scientist 94: 142–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bering, J. M., and Parker, B. D.. 2006. ‘Children’s Attributions of Intentions to an Invisible Agent’, Developmental Psychology 42: 253–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bramble, D. M., and Lieberman, D. E.. 2004. ‘Endurance Running and the Evolution ofHomo’, Nature 432: 345–52.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Carbonell, E., Mosquera, M., Ollé, A., Rodríguez, X. P., Sala, R., Vergès, J. M., Arsuaga, J. L. and Bermúdez de Castro, J. M.. 2003. ‘Les premiers comportments funéraires auraient-ils pris place à Atapuerca, il y a 350,000 ans?’, L’Anthropologie 107: 1–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chapman, J., and Gaydarska, B.. 2010. ‘Fragmenting Hominins and the Presencing of Early Palaeolithic Social Worlds’, in Dunbar, R., Gamble, C. and Gowlett, J. A. J., eds, Social Brain and Distributed Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 413–47.Google Scholar
de la Torre, I. 2011. ‘The Origins of Stone Tool Technology in Africa: A Historical Perspective’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B 366: 1028–37.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dunbar, R., Gamble, C. and Gowlett, J. A. J.. 2010. ‘The Social Brain and the Distributed Mind’, in Dunbar, R., Gamble, C., and Gowlett, J. A. J., eds, Social Brain and Distributed Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 3–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dunbar, R., and Shultz, S.. 2007. ‘Evolution in the Social Brain’, Science 317: 1344–7.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gallese, V., and Lakoff, G.. 2005. ‘The Brain’s Concepts: The Role of the Sensory-Motor System in Conceptual Knowledge’, Cognitive Neuropsychology 22: 455–79.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gamble, C. S. 1998. ‘Palaeolithic Society and the Release from Proximity: A Network Approach to Intimate Relations’, World Archaeology 29: 426–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gamble, C. S. 2007. Origins and Revolutions: Human Identity in Earliest Prehistory. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gamble, C. S. 2008. ‘Kinship and Material Culture: Archaeological Implications of the Human Global Diaspora’, in Allen, N. J., Callan, H., Dunbar, R. and James, W., eds, Kinship and Evolution. Oxford: Blackwell. 27–40.Google Scholar
Gamble, C. S., and Gaudzinski, S.. 2005. ‘Bones and Powerful Individuals: Faunal Case Studies from the Arctic and European Middle Palaeolithic’, in Gamble, C. and Porr, M., eds, The Individual Hominid in Context: Archaeological Investigations of Lower and Middle Palaeolithic Landscapes, Locales and Artefacts. London: Routledge. 154–75.Google Scholar
Gamble, C. S., Gowlett, J. A. J. and Dunbar, R.. 2011. ‘The Social Brain and the Shape of the Palaeolithic’, Cambridge Archaeological Journal 21: 115–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gell, A. 1998. Art and Agency: Towards a New Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Giddens, A. 1984. The Constitution of Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Gowlett, J. A. J. 2010. ‘Firing Up the Social Brain’, in Dunbar, R., Gamble, C. and Gowlett, J. A. J., eds, Social Brain and Distributed Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 341–66.Google Scholar
Kerouac, J. 1957. On the Road. New York: Viking Press.Google Scholar
Knight, C. 1983. ‘Lévi-Strauss and the Dragon: Mythologiques Reconsidered in the Light of an Australian Aboriginal Myth’, Man 18: 21–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kohn, M., and Mithen, S.. 1999. ‘Handaxes: Products of Sexual Selection?’, Antiquity 73: 518–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lakoff, G., and Johnson, M.. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Lakoff, G., and Johnson, M. 1999. Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought. New York: Basic.Google Scholar
MacLarnon, A. M., and Hewitt, G. P.. 2004. ‘Increased Breathing Control: Another Factor in the Evolution of Human Language’, Evolutionary Anthropology 13: 181–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McPherron, S. P., Alemseged, Z., Marean, C. W., Wynn, J. G., Reed, D., Geraads, D., Bobe, R. and Béarat, H. A.. 2010. ‘Evidence for Stone-Tool-Assisted Consumption of Animal Tissues before 3.39 Million Years Ago at Dikika, Ethiopia’, Nature 466: 857–60.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Morris, E. L. 1994. ‘The Pottery: In, Excavations at a Late Bronze Age Settlement in the Upper Thames Valley at Shorncote Quarry near Cirencester, 1992’, Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society 120: 17–57.Google Scholar
Pettitt, P. B. 2011. The Palaeolithic Origins of Human Burial. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Quiatt, D., and Reynolds, V.. 1993. Primate Behaviour: Information, Social Knowledge, and the Evolution of Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Renfrew, C. 2007. Prehistory: Making of the Human Mind. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.Google Scholar
Roberts, S. G. B. 2010. ‘Constraints on Social Networks’, in Dunbar, R., Gamble, C. and Gowlett, J. A. J., eds, Social Brain and Distributed Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 115–34.Google Scholar
Rodseth, L., Wrangham, R. W., Harrigan, A. and Smuts, B. B.. 1991. ‘The Human Community as a Primate Society’, Current Anthropology 32: 221–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Said, E. W. 1978. Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Semaw, S., Renne, P., Harris, J. W. K., Feibel, C. S., Bernor, R. L., Fesseha, N. and Mowbray, K.. 1997. ‘2.5 Million-Year-Old Stone Tools from Gona, Ethiopia’, Nature 385: 333–6.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shea, J. J. 2011. ‘Homo Sapiens Is as Homo Sapiens Was: Behavioural Variability versus “Behavioural Modernity” in Palaeolithic Archaeology’, Current Anthropology 52: 1–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sterner, J. 1989. ‘Who Is Signalling Whom? Ceramic Style, Ethnicity and Taphonomy among the Sirak Bulahay’, Antiquity 63: 451–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, J., ed. 2010. Journey through the Afterlife: Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead. London: British Museum Press.
White, M. J. 1998. ‘On the Significance of Acheulean Biface Variability in Southern Britain’, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 64: 15–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×