Het is een wijdverbreid idee dat (post-)middeleeuwse steden een sterfteoverschot hadden en zij slechts in leven konden blijven door de toestroom van migranten; een fenomeen dat bekend staat als het 'urban graveyard'-effect. Over details valt te twisten, maar duidelijk is dat de stad en de dood dichter bij elkaar stonden dan tegenwoordig. Met de dood als belangrijk element in de stedelijke samenleving vormen grafvelden een belangrijke bron van kennis over het leven in de post-middeleeuwen. Sinds de jaren 80 van de vorige eeuw is systematisch archeologisch onderzoek van (post)middeleeuwse grafvelden in Nederland op gang gekomen. Veel van het onderzoek is nog niet of slechts beperkt gepubliceerd. Ook ontbreken synthetiserende publicaties waarin vergelijkingen tussen de resultaten van lokaal grafveldonderzoek in steden centraal staan.
De stad en de dood presenteert enkele overzichtsartikelen waarin de resultaten van oud archeologisch onderzoek worden vergeleken met resultaten van jongere opgravingen binnen verschillende Nederlandse steden. Naast bio-archeologische aspecten is er tevens aandacht voor grafrituelen. Deze rijk geïllustreerde bundel vormt een belangrijke bouwsteen voor thematische verdieping en is een inspiratiebron voor (inter)nationaal vergelijkend onderzoek.
In de tweede - Engelstalige - bundel van Urban Graveyard Proceedings komt een reeks andere geselecteerde Nederlandse en Vlaamse grafvelden aan de orde.
English translation:
It is commonly believed that in medieval and post-medieval towns and cities death outnumbered births and that these urban centers could only survive through the influx of migrants; a concept which has come to be known as the urban graveyard effect. Whether this was indeed the case for all cities and towns is still debated, but it is certain that urban citizens were more used to death that we are today. The medieval graveyards in which the deceased were interred, then still located within town limits, are an invaluable source of knowledge for reconstructing past lives. Systematic archaeological and osteoarchaeological research of urban graveyards has become the norm in the Netherlands and Belgium since the 1980s. However, many of the studies remain unpublished and larger, overarching publications in which comparisons are made between different studies are still lacking.
The urban graveyard presents several studies in which the results of older archaeological and osteoarchaeological research are compared to more recent excavation data from several Dutch cities and towns. Both the archaeological data concerning burial position, orientation, and grave goods as well as osteoarchaeological data such as demographic information and pathological observations are discussed. This well-illustrated volume is a starting point and source of inspiration for more (inter)national comparative research.
Arts, Nico: - Nico Arts MA studied cultural and physical anthropology at Leiden University and pre- and proto-history at the University of Amsterdam. Since 1989, he has been employed as the urban archaeologist for the city of Eindhoven. Nico has published many studies concerning the Stone Age in the south of The Netherlands and medieval and early modern archaeology in Eindhoven. He has edited several volumes focusing on the urban archaeology of Eindhoven; most recently he was responsible for a major publication concerning the results of the excavation and analysis of the Catharina graveyard. Currently, Nico is writing up an archaeological synthesis of town and country in the Northern Kempen region between AD 1000 and 1650.
Bouwmeester, Jeroen: - Since 2009, Jeroen Bouwmeester MA has been employed by the Cultural Heritage Agency as a senior researcher of medieval and early-modern cities. He studied the archaeology of Northwest Europe at VU University in Amsterdam. After his graduation in 1997, he worked as a senior archaeologist at BAAC and as director of Synthegra. During this period, Jeroen directed large-scale excavations near Zutphen (Bronze Age-Middle Ages). His research at the Cultural Heritage Agency focuses on the development of expectation models of (sub)urban areas by combining historical, geographical, archaeological, and building historical data. He devotes special attention to the development of houses and other buildings in relation to urban planning, a topic which is being developed further in his PhD research.
Schats, Rachel: - Dr. Rachel Schats studied archaeology with a specialisation in osteoarchaeology at Leiden University and University College London after which she was appointed as a research and teaching assistant for the Laboratory of Human Osteoarchaeology in Leiden. Her PhD (defended November 2016) aimed at gaining a better understanding of the physical consequences of medieval developments, such as urbanisation and commercialisation, by comparing rural and urban skeletal populations. Concurrently, Rachel taught numerous undergraduate and graduate courses on human skeletal material at Leiden University, VU University Amsterdam, University of Groningen, and Saxion School for Applied Sciences. In January 2016 she was appointed lecturer in Human Osteoarchaeology at the Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University.
Van Oosten, Roos: - "Dr. Roos van Oosten began her academic career studying medieval history after which she began her archaeological degree that culminated in a thesis on urban archaeology. Her PhD dissertation at the University of Groningen focused on sanitation management, which she successfully defended in 2014. In 2011 she was appointed as university lecturer in urban archaeology at Leiden University. In addition to undergraduate and graduate teaching responsibilities, Roos is working on her VENI-funded project entitled 'Challenging the paradigm of filthy and unhealthy medieval towns'.
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