The global doubling of human life expectancy between 1850 and 1950 is arguably one of the most consequential developments in human history, undergirding massive improvements in human life and lifestyles. In 1850, Americans died at an average age of 30. Today, the average is almost 80. This story is typically told as a series of medical breakthroughs Jenner and vaccination, Lister and antisepsis, Snow and germ theory, Fleming and penicillin, but the lion's share of the credit belongs to the men and women who dedicated their lives to collecting good data. Examining the development of death registration systems in the United States-from the first mortality census in 1850 to the development of the death certificate at the turn of the century-Count the Dead argues that mortality data transformed life on Earth, proving critical to the systemization of public health, casualty reporting, and human rights. Stephen Berry shows how a network of coroners, court officials, and state and federal authorities developed methods to track and reveal patterns of dying. These officials harnessed these records to turn the collective dead into informants and in so doing allowed the dead to shape life and death as we know it today.

Cemetery and landscape studies have been hallmarks of North African archaeology for more than one hundred years. Mortuary Landscapes of North Africa is the first book to combine these two fields by considering North African cemeteries within the context of their wider landscapes. This unique perspective allows for new interpretations of notions of identity, community, imperial influence, and sacred space.

Based on a wealth of material research from current fieldwork, this collection of essays investigates how North African funerary monuments acted as regional boundaries, markers of identity and status, and barometers of cultural change. The essays cover a broad range in terms of space and time - from southern Libya to eastern Algeria, and from the seventh century BCE to the seventh century CE. A comprehensive introduction explains the importance of the 'landscape perspective' that these studies bring to North African funerary monuments, while individual case-studies address such topics as the African way of death among the Garamantes, the ritual reasons for the location of certain Early Christian tombs, Punic burials, Roman cupula tombs, and the effects of rapid state formation and imperial incorporation on tomb builders. Unique in both scope and perspective, this volume will prove invaluable to a cross-section of archaeological scholars.

This illuminating book examines how the public funerals of major figures from the Civil War era shaped public memories of the war and allowed a diverse set of people to contribute to changing American national identities. These funerals featured lengthy processions that sometimes crossed multiple state lines, burial ceremonies open to the public, and other cultural productions of commemoration such as oration and song. As Sarah J. Purcell reveals, Americans' participation in these funeral rites led to contemplation and contestation over the political and social meanings of the war and the roles played by the honored dead. Public mourning for military heroes, reformers, and politicians distilled political and social anxieties as the country coped with the aftermath of mass death and casualties. Purcell shows how large-scale funerals for figures such as Henry Clay and Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson set patterns for mourning culture and Civil War commemoration; after 1865, public funerals for figures such as Robert E. Lee, Charles Sumner, Frederick Douglass, and Winnie Davis elaborated on these patterns and fostered public debate about the meanings of the war, Reconstruction, race, and gender.

Forensic science provides information and data behind the circumstances of a particular death, but it is culture that provides death with meaning. With this in mind, Rite, Flesh, and Stone proposes cultural matters of death as its structuring principle, operating as frames of the expression of mortality within a distinct set of coordinates. The chapters offer original approaches to how human remains are handled in the embodied rituals and social performances of contemporary funeral rites of all kinds; furthermore, they explore how dying flesh and corpses are processed by means of biopolitical technologies and the ethics of (self-)care, and how the vibrant and breathing materiality of the living is transformed into stone and analogous kinds of tangible, empirical presence that engender new cartographies of memory. Each coming from a specific disciplinary perspective, authors in this volume problematize conventional ideas about the place of death in contemporary Western societies and cultures using Spain as a case study. Materials analyzed here-ranging from cinematic and literary fictions, to historical archives and anthropological and ethnographic sources-make explicit a dynamic scenario where actors embody a variety of positions towards death and dying, the political production of mortality, and the commemoration of the dead. Ultimately, the goal of this volume is to chart the complex network in which the disenchantment of death and its reenchantment coexist, and biopolitical control over secularized bodies overlaps with new avatars of the religious and non-theistic desires for memorialization and transcendence.

The two volumes of Death, Dying, and the Ending of Life present the core of recent philosophical work on end-of-life issues. Volume I examines issues in death and consent: the nature of death, brain death and the uses of the dead and decision-making at the end of life, including the use of advance directives and decision-making about the continuation, discontinuation, or futility of treatment for competent and incompetent patients and children. Volume II, on justice and hastening death, examines whether there is a difference between killing and letting die, issues about physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia and questions about distributive justice and decisions about life and death.

Benevolent Orders, The Sons of Ham, Prince Hall Freemasonry-these and other African American lodges created a social safety net for members across Tennessee. During their heyday between 1865 and 1930, these groups provided members numerous perks, such as sick benefits and assurance of a proper burial, opportunities for socialization and leadership, and an opportunity to work with local churches and schools to create better communities. Many of these groups gradually faded from existence, but left an enduring legacy in the form of the cemeteries these lodges left behind. These Black cemeteries dot the Tennessee landscape, but few know their history or the societies of care they represent. To Care for the Sick and Bury the Dead is the first book-length look at these cemeteries and the lodges that fostered them. This book is a must-have for genealogists, historians, and family members of the people buried in these cemeteries.