ADSS Work-in-Progress Seminar #1

To celebrate the first of the Australian Death Studies Society Work-in-Progress Seminars, our Committee Chair/ President, Dr Hannah Gould (University of Melbourne) will present research conducted for “Competing Ontologies of Soil in Alternative Body Disposal Practices” (co-authored by the DeathTech Research Team). Dr Eline Schotsmans (University of Wollongong/University of Bordeaux) will provide a response before opening to more general discussion from our members.

Competing Ontologies of Soil in Alternative Body Disposal Practices 

Multiple technologies have emerged to challenge the hegemony of conventional methods of human body disposal. Their advocates tout the environmental credentials of new necro-technologies, which promise to transform the decaying human body into a substance that is, if not enriching and productive, then at least neutralised of harms. In these narratives, soil plays a central and contested role, and necro-ecologists must engage with scientific, legislative, and spiritual discourses to locate the spatial and temporal boundaries between the corpse and soil. This paper draws on research conducted by the DeathTech Research Team with death innovators around the world. Specifically, it examines fault-lines emanating from soil that have arisen between advocates for Natural Burial, Recomposition, and Promession. At stake in the soil debates are environmental credentials, legislative authorisation, and popular acceptance of these (still fringe) practices. Beyond this, contemplating soil allows us to consider the metaphysics of the erasure or transformation of the corpse performed by disposition methods and the porous boundaries of the non/human.

Speakers

Hannah Gould is a cultural anthropologist and ARC Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne. Her research focuses on the material and sensory dimension of death and disposal, with a regional focus on Australasia and Japan. Hannah is the inaugural President of the Australian Death Studies Society.

Eline Schotsmans is a burial taphonomist and Post-Doctoral Research Fellow (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Global - Horizon 2020) at both UOW and the University of Bordeaux in France. Her research is focused on funerary practices and burial taphonomy and lies at the interface between archaeo-anthropology and forensic sciences. She will commence a DECRA in 2021, investigating complex multi-stage mortuary practices in the Neolithic Near East.