So after some immense technical difficulties I finally figured out how to post! you have to actually log in to your account...yes I know embarrassing but here are some of my backlogged posts coming at you in the next few days starting with one I wrote about 2 and half weeks ago and which went into the blue instead of onto my blog :/

This week I was thinking about death and jobs. My sister is going to school to become a police officer and my Mum is always commenting  on how its a dangerous profession and she better not die soon ect. ect. But really, what does it matter? Is there any need to connect death with a concrete thing like a career, when anyone can die at any time for any reason? I think connecting death to certain types of danger, such as a scary job, is a way for people to feel like death is something they can predict or somehow prevent. In our weird Western culture we seem to think we can control all sorts of stuff that we really can't (or shouldn't), nature being a big one with imported plants being only the first step in a crazy attempt to control the mostly uncontrollable. But I really see this aspect of control everywhere in Western society and I think we definitely extend it to the processes surrounding death. From elaborate structured funerals to appropriate mourning wear (like the Victorian example Erin mentioned in class today of actual time periods set apart for the wearing of certain colours by widows and the like) there is a proper way of conducting the processes of death and for the most part people adhere to this. Even funeral homes and cemeteries fit into this, at certain places they restrict the size and shape of your monument, what you can put on it and where you can put it. I feel that this attempt to portray a certain amount of control over something which is ultimately out of anybody's control (minus murders and stuff, and even this if one believes in fate) is because we're scared. Death in this culture is a scary thing, it is not something many people are comfortable with, at least as far as I've encountered, and what people fear or don't understand they try to control. Its an interesting thing to think about when discussing funerary practices cross culturally and how societies with different ideas to ours might differ in their practices surrounding death, which may not be any less important to them but only with less need for structured input from those survivors. 

I  also wonder what other cultures which are possibly more comfortable with the thought of death, feel about danger and if they directly connect that with the idea of death. Also how might a profession represent itself in archaeology, I know we see tools and such and connect it with possible occupations for the interred and I wonder what that might look like these days; a trowel with a former archaeologist maybe, but what about like a mime or a clown or something like that; every person buried in a suit can't be a business man right?