Renata MacDougal

     “This thesis uses Continuing Bonds Theory to reinterpret kispum, an ancient Mesopotamian family funerary practice, in a new way. Traditional scholarship has portrayed the purpose of the ritual as apotropaic, and that the family dead are feared as hostile ghosts. This study suggests that profound beliefs about life and death in Mesopotamia, and interactions between the family and deceased loved ones can be found in the material and textual evidence. A new perspective focusing on evidence from the second millennium BC in ancient Mesopotamia is used to investigate the kispum ritual using ideas from the archaeology of emotion and Death and Dying studies. Current understandings based on textual based studies and the varied traditions of archaeological investigation are introduced in Chapter 2. Then, using notions of continued bonds, new insights are explored to better understand the ongoing relationship between the living and the dead. In Chapters 3 through 6 textual sources and archaeological evidence are assessed against this background, and against each other, with attempts to correlate textual with archaeological details. In the context of ancient Mesopotamia, this thesis employs new approaches to mortuary archaeology to provide new insights suggesting ways that conventional methods may be enhanced. Finally, this study also brings us back to an archaeology of death which is interested in attitudes toward the dead” [Author's abstract, available on Academia.org, on author's personal profile].
Table of contents:
List of Tables
List of Figures
List of Abbraviations
1. Introduction
2. The Archaeology of Burial Practices: Theory and Development
3. The Concept of the World of the Dead in Ancient Mesopotamia
4. The Family and the Dead in Mesopotamia
5. The Archaeological Evidence for Kispum – Material Remains from Texts
6. Material Remains: Kispum in Excavations
7. Summary and Conclusions
Literature Cited
The thesis is noteworthy as regards Urkesh, about the connection of the Kispum ritual with the necromantic pit (thr ābi). Urkesh/Tell Mozan is specifically quoted on pp. 86, 99, referring to the etimology of the word ābi and the identification of the structure as a Hittite ^dKASKAL.KUR, respectively.

[M. De Pietri – March 2020]