The Buried Soul: How Humans Invented Death

by Timothy Taylor

Overview

Do cannibals exist? Is there evidence for contemporary human sacrifice? What are vampires? The Buried Soul charts the story of the human response to death from prehistory to the present day. This book is a radical adventure into the sepulchral world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807046678
Publisher:	Beacon Press
Publication date:	08/15/2005
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	364
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Timothy Taylor, author of The Prehistory of Sex, has appeared on National Geographic channel and HBO as an expert in ancient cultures; he teaches in the Department of Archaeological Sciences at the University of Bradford in the United Kingdom.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgements	ix
	Introduction: Sentiments and Chronologies	1
Chapter 1	Ascending Underground	17
Chapter 2	A Skeleton Illuminated by Lightning	39
Chapter 3	The Edible Dead	56
Chapter 4	The Foreign Witness	86
Chapter 5	Welcome to Weirdworld	113
Chapter 6	Vexed Ghosts	144
Chapter 7	Annihilation	170
Chapter 8	Beyond the Pavlov Hills	193
Chapter 9	An Unexpected Vampire	223
Chapter 10	The Singing Bone	249
	Conclusion: Visceral Insulation	273
	Notes	289
	Bibliography	317
	Index	345

Editorial Reviews

Blazingly smart and deeply human.--Mary Roach, author of Stiff: The Curious Lives of Cadavers

"Taylor makes sense of the ghastly and the seemingly insensible-African muti killings, human sacrifice, vampires, and triple-killed bog bodies. Archaeology was never so entertaining, and entertainment never so edifying. There is not a trite thought or lazy idea in this book."--Mary Roach, author of Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

"The Buried Soul is an extraordinary immersion experience . . . I had always supposed that archeology was as dry as the dust and bones it traffics in, as pedestrian as the catalogs it compiles. On the contrary, when expounded by a masterly storyteller like Taylor, it resembles psychoanalysis at its best . . . I haven't space to illustrate how ingeniously Taylor assembles his interpretations, patiently working out the barely intelligible motives and beliefs of the creatures who became us . . . Wherever else you travel, you should consider a trip into 'deep time' with The Buried Soul."--George Scialabba, Boston Globe

"Learned and impassioned . . . the lesson of Mr. Taylor's unsparing book is that . . . for most of human history, our attempts to deal with death-to appease it, master it, or simply make sense of it-have been deeply irrational and often cruel. More than any other human experience, death makes us savage."--Adam Kirsch, New York Sun

"Absorbing and challenging . . . The Buried Soul is vast, ambitious, and contentious. It ranges over two million years, from a cut-marked skull of Homo habilis to the death of a young man in 2000."--Katherine Ashenburg, American Scholar

From the Publisher