Study Guide, Anth 2263

Week 11

Reading 1: Gardeła and Kajkowski (2013)

Keywords:
 Deviant burials / atypical burials - human burials in which aspects of the burial are different in
comparison to other contemporary burials in the same or nearby cemeteries. Examples:
o Prone burials - when the corpse was buried face down
o Decapitation burials - when the head of a corpse was removed before burial
o Stoned burials - when stones are paced over/around the corpse
o Pierced/staked burials - when the corpse was stabbed or pinned down
 Apotropaic practices - actions that have the power to avert evil influences or bad luck.
 Strzyga - a witch
 Revenant - a person who has returned from the dead.

Questions:
1. What is judicial archaeology? What dominant view are the authors’ trying to shift away from
through writing this paper?
2. Identify the reasons why interpreting atypical burials as “anti-vampire” practices is problematic
for atypical burials in medieval Poland. According to Slavic custom, how did communities
typically deal with hauntings by malevolent revenants?
3. What cultural values might be embodied by burials where the individual is interred face down
(prone)?
4. In addition to preventing suspicious dead from rising from the grave, why else might we find
decapitated skeletons or skull-only burials in medieval Polish cemeteries?
5. What social and functional reasons might there be for placing stones in a medieval Polish burial?
6. Critical thinking question: How do we interact with dead bodies in modern Western society?
What kinds of judicial practices must be visible in this context? What kinds of circumstances
exist where bodies would be treated differently than the rest?

Reading 2: Adams (2018)

Keywords:
 Sa’dan Toraja of Sulawesi, Indonesia – an ethnic group indigenous to the South Sulawesi
province of Indonesia. “To” means people and “raja” means uplands = People of the uplands.
 Dark / mortuary tourism – tourism involving travel to places associated with death.
 Mayat berjalan – Indonesian term for walking corpse.

Questions:
1. What is “dark tourism” and what are some reasons why it is a thriving industry? (p. 98-99)
 Study Guide, Anth 2263

2. Why do you think the author emphasizes the importance of critically analyzing the development
of Toraja zombie tourism? (See the beginning of the article but also the Epilogue on p. 114-115).
3. What research methods (lines of evidence) does the author bring together in this paper?
4. How does mortuary tourism mediate between the past and the future?
5. Describe the ma’nene’ ritual and how the internet/social media led to the rise of the Toraja
zombie.
6. Identify the problematic (and at worst, racist) views held by Western tourists about Toraja
culture. What aspects of Toraja culture are regularly absent from descriptions by Westerners?
7. Critical thinking question: What would you say are the commonalities between the medieval
Polish vampire and the Torajan zombie? How are these being incorrectly depicted in
Westernized worldviews?
8. Reflection question: How might burial customs in your own culture appear strange/different to
others? Thinking from an anthropologist’s point of view, how would you explain these customs?