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Welcome
Taphophilia (dot) Com...
A repository of morbid curiosities:
Thanatology and Taphophile Issues, Cemetery,
Funeral Industry and Death Related News.
A Taphophilia Thank You...
Taphophilia (dot) Com would not be possible without the knowledge, experience and talent of DarkestWeb. From its conception and early development, DarkestWeb was faced with many challenges; from inspiring and motivating, to providing guidance and direction. The continued dedication and support has produced results greater than ever expected, and for this, I owe a huge debt of gratitude.
Announcements
Graveyards of Chicago:
The People, History, Art, and Lore of Cook County Cemeteries
By Matt Hucke And Ursula Bielski. Discover a Chicago That Exists Just Beneath the Surface - About Six Feet Under! Take a tour of Chicago's permanent residents! Please visit the Lake Claremont Press website to purchase your copy of Graveyards of Chicago today!
Green-Wood Cemetery Arcadia Publishing announces the release of Alexandra Mosca's historic account of one of New York's most famous cemeteries. Aracdia Publishing's Images of America series has an extensive catalog of many cemetery publications! Please visit Arcadia Publishing to purchase your copy of Green-Wood Cemetery and to browse other available titles!
Men of Mortuaries Calendar
To purchase your 2008 calendar, learn more about the KAMMCARES Foundation, or to be featured in the 2009 calendar, please visit Men of Mortuaries.
Epitaphs: The Magazine for Cemetery Lovers By Cemetery Lovers
For information regarding subscriptions, single issues, submission guidelines, deadlines, classifieds or advertising for future issues, please visit The Cemetery Club.
Guardians of the Soul: Angels and Innocents, Mourners and Saints, Indiana's remarkable cemetery sculpture
with photography by John Bower and foreword by Claude Cookman is now
available. Please visit
Studio Indiana for more information.
West Springfield Massachusetts: Stories Carved in Stone by Rusty Clark features information on early New England gravestone carvers with more than two hundred photos and illustrations. Please visit the Dog Pond Press website.
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Wonder at the "Red Lady" skeleton from Gower |
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Written by DeadGirl
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Saturday, 03 June 2006 |
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Jun 3 2006
Professor Stephen Aldhouse-Green
Western Mail
IN 1977 the curator of the geological collections at the University Museum, Oxford, placed the true significance of this ochre-stained skeleton in context.
As the search for your seven definitive wonders of Wales enters the home straight, we profile the latest contender from our shortlist of 30. Today Professor Stephen Aldhouse-Green, Professor of Human Origins at the University of Wales, Newport, asks for your votes for the 26,000-year-old remains of the Red Lady of Paviland
IN 1977 the curator of the geological collections at the University Museum, Oxford, placed the true significance of this ochre-stained skeleton in context.
Responding to a request from our National Museum for the "Red Lady of Paviland" to be repatriated to Wales he wrote, "As to depositing the Paviland Collections permanently at Cardiff, I suggest that this possibility be explored when the British Museum returns the Elgin marbles to Greece and the National Gallery its Titians to Italy, for they are surely in the same category."
That comparison with the Elgin marbles and Titians clearly recognises the global importance of the Red Lady. The remains were found in Paviland or Goat's Hole Cave, Gower, in 1823 by William Buckland, Professor of Geology at Oxford. His discovery, decades before Darwin, was the first instance of the scientific recovery of fossil human remains in the world.
During the dig, Buckland correctly recognised the skeleton as male but, by the time of his publication later in the year, the ochre-stained skeleton had become a "painted lady", thought to have serviced Roman soldiers - a good story in its day.
But in addition to knowing that the "Red Lady" was in fact a man, we now know that both the burial and ivory ornaments placed with it were not Roman but rather Paleolithic in age. This realisation arose as a consequence of the visit of a French scholar, Emile Cartailhac, to the University Museum in Oxford in 1911. The artefacts could not be found and Cartailhac wrote angrily of how the collection had been treated sans honneur (without respect). Goaded, the then-Professor of Geology, William Sollas, re-located the finds, recognised their importance, and set about a new programme of excavation at Paviland in 1912.
Buckland's work 89 years earlier had been conducted at a time when many believed in the literal truth of the Bible, and when it was widely thought human remains could not date back tens of thousands of years. As a result Buckland, a devout Christian, failed to associate three key elements of his finds: the bones of Ice Age animals such as the mammoth and woolly rhino; flint artefacts; and the burial of the "ochred man".
Indeed, by rights the name given to the earliest modern humans in Europe should be "Pavilandians". But we were eventually labelled "Cro- Magnons" following a discovery in 1868, in France.
In 1997, I returned to Goat's Hole to see what remained of the deposits and to re-assess the dating and importance of the site. The layers that had produced the human remains no longer existed. Even so, study of the bones of the "Red Lady" showed that he was certainly a man, 5ft10in, aged 25-30. Radiocarbon dating told us that he died 26,000 years ago. His status as a person of great importance is indicated by his funeral robes stained with red ochre, plus 50 rods made of mammoth ivory, ivory bracelets and perforated sea shells. The interment is now known to be one of a series of ritual burials that reach far across Europe.
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Taphophilia?
taphophilia (taf′ō-fil′ē-ă)
ORIGIN:
From the Greek words taphos, meaning "tomb" or "sepulcher" and philia, meaning "attraction or affinity to something, in particular the love or obsession with something"
DEFINITION: 1. An excessive interest in graves and cemeteries. 2. A love or fondness for funerals, graves, and cemeteries. 3. In psychiatry, a morbid attraction to graves and cemeteries
Taphophilia Facts
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Texas is home to one Presidential gravesite, Lyndon B. Johnson.
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Quote Repository
“For death is no more than a turning of us over from time to eternity.” William Penn
Grave Epigrams
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Here lie interred the dreadfully bruised and lacerated bodies of William Bradbury and Thomas, his son, both of Greenfield, who were together savagely murdered in an unusually horrid manner on Monday Night April 2, 1832: Such and interest did their tragic end excite
That, ere they were removed from human sight,
Thousands on thousands daily came to see
The bloody scene of the catastrophe... Saddleworth Church Graveyard
Yorkshire, England 1832 |
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Shirtless and Sculpted
The Men of Mortuaries 2008 Calendar is now available! All sale proceeds benefit KAMMCARES, a breast cancer foundation.
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