Death and burial in the Latin East : a study of the Crusader Cemetery at 'Atlit, Israel.

This thesis is an interdisciplinary study of death and burial in the Latin East. The Crusader cemetery at 'Atlit is used as a test site and the result of the 1934 excavation and 2004 survey of the site are here published. Burial customs from Western Europe, the Byzantine and Muslim worlds are all studied, in order to understand all of the influences that came together to impact on the death and burial customs of the Latin East. Data from all known Crusader burials is brought together, forming a compendium of known Crusader burial sites. This work is based on the following questions: 1) what were the cultural influences involved in Crusader burials and 2) are there any distinctively Crusader burial customs that can be seen in the archaeological record. The end result of this thesis is an interdisciplinary discussion of death and burial in the Latin East, something that has been lacking up to this point. The main points of this thesis may be summarised as follows: 1) the burial traditions followed at the Crusader cemetery at 'Atlit appear to have French roots; 2) burial rites varied throughout the Latin East, probably as a result of different groups of ethnicities burying people at the different sites; 3) a systematic method of excavating burials must be developed for Crusader burials in the Latin East and 4) more work is needed in this area to fully understand the different traditions at work in the burials of the Latin East