The ways in which the living interact with the dead vary greatly over

time, space and tradition. That being said much can be learnt about

how a civilization views the dead by studying how they interact with

their own.

 

Here we will study how people interact with the dead from the

Catacombs of Palermo and Paris. Because of the different purposes of

these two subterranean burial sites, people interacted with the dead

in different ways and this interaction has also changed over time.

The way in which people relate to the dead when the individual is

newly deceased will be different than how people will in later years.

Some of the interaction comes from familial involvement; when a

family visits a deceased member, it effects how they go about

engaging with that body. Other times, involvementis less personal, for

example visiting people who died potentiallycenturies earlier or if the

body is unidentified. Either way associatingor disassociating with the

dead changes how they are viewed. There are also other factors that

alter how the dead are perceived, such as how the body is displayed, as an individual or as a collection of bodies. The reason the bodies are within the catacombs will also affect how people engage with them.

 

There are many contributing factors to how people engage with the dead and many of these factors are examined in regards to how people interact, past and present, with the dead in the Catacombs of Palermo and Paris.