An arresting and poignant cultural history of graveyards, from early burial sites to now. Why, how and where do we inter our dead? How do we set out to remember them? The Pyramids of Giza, the catacombs and columbaria of Rome and the cenotaphs erected to the world-s war dead are but some of the answers. In inimitable style, Roger Luckhurst probes the often moving, sometimes contested ways in which people throughout history have responded to the -problem- of laying the dead to rest. Blending history, art, literature and popular culture, Graveyards explores the various different aspects of the treatment of the dead. Chapters range from early burials and the emergence of necropolises and catacombs, to grave-robbing, garden cemeteries and the perilous overcrowding of the urban dead, to monuments for deceased heroes and rulers and the development of modern memorial culture. The products of our persistent fascination with graveyards are everywhere in literature, art, film and television, and
