The first thing you should know going into this book is that is largely centered on UK sites, branching out into parts of Europe, and very occasionally to Africa and the Americas.

The first two chapters cover older burial customs and archaeological digs, styles of tombs, such as boat graves and charnel houses. This is followed by a chapter on "deviant" burials, a fascinating look at the burials of criminals, pirates, lepers, prostitutes, and those feared to be witches or vampires or both. After this are chapters on mass graves due to famine, plague, war, and genocide (a particularly hard chapter to read), on burial at sea, non-organic graveyards (the final resting places of planes, trains, and automobiles), on slightly more modern burial grounds (referencing, to my delight, Lafayette Cemetery in New Orleans and Anne Rice's use of the local in The Vampire Chronicles), on pet cemeteries, on war memorials, and finally a chapter on modern alternative funerary and burial practices.

Good stuff, yes? The subject matter is fascinating, but the presentation is problematic. Evans is clearly not a writer. There is little story here, the book is mostly paragraph after paragraph (and some paragraphs last for THREE pages)listing names, dates, and locales. This is fine enough, I suppose, for a textbook, but as a social history it is dry. I wish Ms Evans would have hired a ghost writer to help her out and make her informative book more user friendly. It would have made all the difference in the world.


In the end the style made a five star subject drop down to three stars.
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I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Fascinating look into a somewhat macabre, but deeply interesting subject. Well researched and written in lively, accessible language.

A really well written summary of burial practice across the world and chronologically. I particularly love the section on metal boneyards, train planes and automobiles left to rot in quiet corners of the world.
This will a great introduction for the general public and those studying Anthropology and Archeology for the first time.

Burying the Dead was a fascinating read that explored burial practices through the ages and around the world. There were some aspects I was already aware of, but I also learnt some new and interesting facts along the way. Evans managed to avoid her prose becoming too dry, the information present succinctly yet with excellent references and illustrations. This is a book that will appeal to anyone interested in history and archaeology, as well as those intrigued by cemeteries and burial practices. I particularly enjoyed the wide range of examples cited, taking us from Europe to Asia and South America. 4.5 stars from me.

This book is on a fascinating topic, but it's not well-written to the point where I nearly gave up. The author's writing is disorganized on both the macro (paragraph) and micro (sentence) level. If you're looking for an overview or burial practices around the world, I suppose it might offer some useful information, but for the vast majority of the cultures, practices, and sites included in the book, you'll find better-written information on Wikipedia.

**I received an ARC of this book through NetGalley**

Burying the Dead is a fascinating look at the history of burial grounds throughout the world. While there was more focus on modern-day burial practices than I expected, I still found those aspects enjoyable.

Some interesting aspects of the book were the subjects of "vampire" and "witch" burials, mass burials after genocide (I had no idea they were still finding mass graves in Rwanda!), how the modern English garden cemetery was conceived, and the future of burials, including green ones.

I definitely recommend Burying the Dead for anyone interested in the past, present, and future of burials.

When I saw this book pop up on Netgally, I immediately put in a request as it's the kind of thing I'm interested in - anthropology and archaeology, especially books which try to cover a wide range of practices across the world, rather than just focussing on how we do things in Europe. In particular, Burying the Dead is about what we do once people have died, how we deal with their remains and the places we do that.

Unfortunately, this book promised a lot and only delivered on some of it for me. I can imagine this wasn't the easiest book to research in a lot of ways but the choices being made puzzled me a little. There's a whole section on Victorian graveyards, for example, that suddenly goes into tourist guidebook prose about those London graveyards called 'the Magnificent Seven': where they are, how big they are and what famous people are buried there. Likewise, there's a bit of a self-indulgent wander into the research the author herself has done in Scotland at one point, which left me metaphorically scratching my head a little.

The general themes covered by the book are how burials took place before Christianity, the introduction of organised religion into burial practices, what you did with people who were 'deviant' in some way (criminals, people who had transgressed religious rules, etc), mass graves, burial at sea. Then there's a chapter on what we do with cars and planes, where I can kind of see the links across but wondered about its inclusion. After that, we hit the major cemetery age, there's a chapter about war burials and memorials and then a final chapter on more modern options for burial.

There's some interesting stuff in this book but I felt it was a bit of a missed opportunity to spend more time outside Europe and the Western hemisphere and be more inclusive. The focus was very much on this part of the world, to the detriment of Africa in particular - to be honest, other than a mention in the war graves section, there didn't seem to be much mention of that entire continent.

There was also poor formatting in the copy I received as an eARC, which had a number of places (at least 5 or 6) where there were repeated words. Hopefully, that will get sorted out before the book is actually published in January 2021.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

Burial practices have changed over time, but sometimes those changes are subtle and can go unnoticed by those who are not looking closely.
With the changes in the layout of graveyards and cemeteries, it is not something that is widely noticeable. This is because most of the changes are buried, meaning that unless you dig up the bones, you are not going to see the many changes that have occurred. Thankfully, we have archaeologists, and they are excavating the many changes that have been undertaken over the last several centuries.

Lorraine Evans does a great job of going through the many different burial practices and laying out why each might have been used. From grave goods to suspected vampires, you get a little of everything in this book. I absolutely LOVED this one! It was very engaging and highly enjoyable.

A fascinating look at funerary customs throughout history and spanning multiple cultures.

I have always been interested in death/dying/funerary & burial customs so as soon as I saw this book I knew I had to give it a read. The book gives great detail and information on all kinds of burials, from Pagan, the evolution of the christian burial, to burials at sea. There's even a section giving details and history of famous/infamous/large/old graveyards and even includes some information on pet cemeteries. I especially loved the "Boneyards of Steel" chapter as I've always enjoyed visiting (when possible) or reading about vehicle graveyards. Trains, planes, tanks, warships, and automobiles also need a final resting place and I was thrilled to see a chapter dedicated to these unusual graveyards included. The appendix on graveyard symbolism was also very interesting.

Well written incredibly informative book, the photos are both morbid and beautiful, I just loved everything about this book, write one 5 times as long and I'll gladly throw my money at you for it.

I've always had a fascination with archaeology, especially burial archaeology and this book was a delight. Very well researched and written, it was a gripping read from start to finish, although I will say that the writing was more on the academic side and therefore not be as accessible to everyone. However, I would say that the detail and photographs, and absolute attention to research in Burying the Dead would make it a worthwhile and rewarding read for anyone with an interest in history and archaeology, especially that of death and burial and I would wholeheartedly recommend this one and I will be grabbing a physical copy for myself.

So when it comes down to burying the dead no one really thinks about the process or the ritual that the whole aspect of burying the dead had to go through. I loved all the information that this book contained! This book is really researched to a "T". The author researched many different perspectives and knew her history! I loved that she went through so many different types of burials to some that I knew of like the ship burials and then the sky burials that I literally had no inkling about it.
I also loved how she pointed out cultural aspects and religious aspects to the type of burials that occured. I loved that the author went for it, that she covered a lot of information and the book was not too lengthy. I gained a lot of insight and really enjoyed the book. I definitely recommend this book to anyone wanting insight into the history and practices of burying the dead.

I'm glad I had the opportunity to read Burying the Dead: An Archaeological History of Burial Grounds, Graveyards and Cemeteries by Lorraine Evans. It's very well researched and put together. It reminded me very much of a fascinating college course I took. However, I have to admit I was expecting more history and less about modern day issues and practices. I was also hoping for more of a broad discussion on the topic when it comes to geography.

This book was amazing! I have a rather weird obsession with burial rites, death, true crime and anything related to those topics. I have leant so much about burial rites, it's amazing and I am certain I can use more authentic burial methods to my own writing now as well!
A perfect book, yet some might consider its topic rather macabre but especially for Halloween, I'd consider it a Must Read.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a free ARC!

I found this a very informative and intriguing read. There were a couple of points that were too shallow and needed to be expanded further as they were underdeveloped. The focus on the more modern time period was okay but i was more interested in the further back history. I did find the section about the future of burials interesting and it made me reflect on the future and how we will cope.

Burying the Dead was a book that immediately caught my attention, and I was so glad when it was gifted to me by the publisher. Unfortunately, it didn’t have the teeth that I was expecting. Instead of a thorough examination of some of the burial practices of ancient cultures, I was greeted by a very brief overview of several burials throughout history.

The book provides a decent intro. However, that’s as far as it goes. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing an ARC. This review contains my honest, unbiased opinion.

This is a fascinating investigation into how humans deal with death, from prehistory till current times, we bury, cremate or preserve the bodies of those we love and revere after they pass. An exploration into the social, religious and class structures that determine where our physical bodies go after death

This is a very interesting account of burial practices across ages and cultures. It’s definitely not for readers who are looking for history presented in a non-academic way. The test is dense and the social analysis is fairly limited. That said, it is a fascinating book which covers an often taboo topic comprehensively. I learned a lot and found this book provides an insight into an often overlooked aspect of shared history.

Where to begin with this utterly gripping and thoroughly researched book? Truly. I learned so much about different cultures and rituals through burials, ancient through medieval to current times...the quality and quantity of information is mind blowing. From barrow mounds to ship burials to prostitute cemeteries to ossuaries to executions to sky burials, it's all here. And then some.

Religion plays a huge role in burial, of course. Status and class used to be as well, as evinced by what was/was not buried with the person. To this day many cannot afford to bury their dead and do otherwise. Soldiers, prisoners, lepers and people at sea need(ed) to be buried, too. Some cultures use coffins, some do not. Some religions bury, some cremate. Unfortunately, mass graves have resulted from genocide, sacrifices, plagues and war.

It may sound morbid but the Sedlec Ossuary in the Czech Republic is fascinating to see, as are the Jewish cemetery in Prague and Capuchin crypt in Rome. Many European churchyards are evocative and set in beautiful surroundings. When exploring them I always wonder what the people who were buried there were like, what they did, how they lived. The author discusses this, too, as well as evidence about how people died.

Green burials and other modern options are discussed at the end. Pore over the fascinating photographs.

Those intrigued by history, especially the history of death and burial, will be undoubtedly find this book rewarding. Though the topic may have the appearance of ghoul, the broad takeaway is learning more about people.

My sincere gratitude to Pen & Sword and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this mesmerizing book in exchange for an honest review. Much appreciated.