Date on Master's Thesis/Doctoral Dissertation

5-2025

Document Type

Master's Thesis

Degree Name

M.A.

Department

Anthropology

Degree Program

Anthropology, MA

Committee Chair

Marklein, Kathryn

Committee Member

Parkhurst, Shawn

Committee Member

Bowman, Brad

Committee Member

Ebeling, Jennie

Author's Keywords

Archaeology; Palestine; necropolitics; infants; burials; crusades

Abstract

The 1990s excavation of the archaeological site of Tel Jezreel in the modern nation state of Israel yielded the remains of fifty infants and children, associated with the contemporary Medieval Crusader Church. The Church, built by Knight’s Templar from the Frankish Kingdom served the occupants of Tel Jezreel from the 11th to the 13th century and introduced Western Christian burial practices to the local Syriac-Palestinian Christian inhabitants. Burial practices from the surrounding region of the Levant and beyond, into Crusader European cultures, show different forms of burial treatment for infants and children that can be used to understand how these past populations conveyed and withheld personhood. Additionally, through these burial rites and rituals, we can form an understanding of how structural powers influenced the beliefs and practices of individuals during the Medieval Period. The treatment of the infants and children at Tel Jezreel during the excavation and in publications offers another insight into how structural powers use human remains as tools of influence and control. The Medieval Crusader cemetery at Tel Jezreel represents a continuum that spans from pre-Christian pagan Europeans to the modern-day handling of archaeological human remains. This thesis analyzes how archaeologists and archaeology are used by systems of power to perpetuate acts of necropolitics and necroviolence against individuals, how personhood is conveyed and withheld from the dead, and analyzes how necropolitics and necroviolence have been used in the past and present by structural powers.

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