Elizabeth Baughan is an archaeologist whose research focuses on burial furniture, banqueting ideologies, and cultural identities in the ancient Mediterranean. She is the author of “Couched in Death: Klinai and Identity in Antolia and Beyond” where she investigates the origins and cultural significance of certain burial rituals during the sixth and fifth century BCE.
"Burials are some of the most informative windows into the past because unlike most other archaeological contexts, they are deliberate. The treatment and positioning of the body, the types of objects included in a grave, and their placement in relation to each other and to the remains of the buried person, and the form of a grave and its marking all reflect human thoughts, beliefs, and cultural traditions. Variability in graves can reveal social inequalities and cultural identities. But as with any language of expression, we must learn to read burials within their cultural contexts and be careful not to apply our own biases of interpretation."
Contact Sunni Brown, director of media and public relations, at sbrown5@richmond.edu to connect with Elizabeth.
