28–30 September 2026: Piecing Together Body and Death: Construction – Deconstruction – Reconstruction
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18. September 2026
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Veranstaltungen
Piecing Together Body and Death: Construction – Deconstruction – Reconstruction
DAI, Cluster 3 “Body and Death. Concepts – Practices – Media”
Frankfurt am Main/hybrid, 28–30 September 2026
At a theoretical level, the conference asks how the ideas of construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction can be defi ned and applied within the study of body, death, and burial. What does it mean to construct the dead socially, materially, or narratively? How can acts of destruction, disturbance, or denial of remembrance be understood as forms of deconstruction? To what extent is archaeological interpretation itself always a form of reconstruction – necessarily tentative and shaped by modern perspectives?
Burials and commemorative practices create specific images of the deceased through grave goods, grave architecture, inscriptions, narratives, and repeated ritual actions. These constructions may later be altered or undone through grave robbery, destruction, fragmentation, or the erasure of memory. Modern attempts to interpret and reconstruct buried individuals form part of this ongoing process.
The conference also highlights the impact of mortuary practices on the living. As rites of passage, funerary rituals enact processes of transformation in which bodies and identities are reconfigured, authority and succession are symbolically legitimised, and communities are guided through the liminal negotiation of grief and loss. Conversely, the dead may be deliberately deconstructed to neutralize or appropriate their former social or political power, or for ritual, emotional, or pragmatic reasons.
Venue
Römisch-Germanische Kommission, Palmengartenstraße 10–12, Frankfurt am Main
Contact
Prof. Dr. Mayke Wagner, Stellvertretende Direktorin, Leiterin der Außenstelle Peking
Mayke.Wagner@dainst.de
The complete programme and further information can be found soon at the conference website.
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