TY - BOOK AU - Parker,John TI - In My Time of Dying: A History of Death and the Dead in West Africa SN - 9780691193151 AV - GT3289.A358 U1 - 306.90966 23 PY - 2021///] CY - Princeton, NJ : PB - Princeton University Press, KW - Death KW - Africa, West KW - History KW - Religious aspects KW - Funeral rites and ceremonies KW - HISTORY / Africa / West KW - bisacsh KW - Adinkra KW - African funerals KW - African history KW - Akan KW - Asante KW - Birifu KW - Eric Seeman KW - Ga KW - Gandah KW - Ghanaian history KW - Gold Coast KW - Katherine Verdery KW - Kumasi KW - The Reaper’s Garden KW - Thomas Laqueur KW - Vincent Brown KW - angry ghosts KW - burial KW - burials KW - cemeteries KW - curation of human crania KW - death duties KW - dishonorable dead KW - funerals KW - funerary culture KW - funerary KW - gold KW - grave good KW - graveyard KW - grief KW - house burial KW - human sacrifice KW - immolation KW - inheritance KW - king of Gyaman KW - mortuary exchange KW - mortuary KW - mourning KW - poison KW - poisonings KW - sculptures of the dead KW - servitude and death KW - testaments KW - wills N1 - Frontmatter --; Contents --; Illustrations --; Maps --; Acknowledgements --; Introduction --; 1 Cultural Encounter --; 2 Body, Soul and Person --; 3 Speaking of Death --; 4 Grief and Mourning --; 5 Gold, Wealth and Burial --; 6 Faces of the Dead --; 7 The Severed Head --; 8 Slaves --; 9 Human Sacrifice --; 10 Poison --; 11 Christian Encounters --; 12 From House Burial to Cemeteries --; 13 Ghosts and Vile Bodies --; 14 Writing and Reading about Death --; 15 The Colony of Medicine --; 16 Wills and Dying Wishes --; 17 Northern Frontiers --; 18 Reordering the Royal Dead --; 19 Making Modern Deathways --; Conclusion --; Glossary --; Notes --; Index; restricted access N2 - An in-depth look at how mortuary cultures and issues of death and the dead in Africa have developed over four centuriesIn My Time of Dying is the first detailed history of death and the dead in Africa south of the Sahara. Focusing on a region that is now present-day Ghana, John Parker explores mortuary cultures and the relationship between the living and the dead over a four hundred-year period spanning the seventeenth to twentieth centuries. Parker considers many questions from the African historical perspective, including why people die and where they go after death, how the dead are buried and mourned to ensure they continue to work for the benefit of the living, and how perceptions and experiences of death and the ends of life have changed over time.From exuberant funeral celebrations encountered by seventeenth-century observers to the brilliantly conceived designer coffins of the late twentieth century, Parker shows that the peoples of Ghana have developed one of the world’s most vibrant cultures of death. He explores the unfolding background of that culture through a diverse range of issues, such as the symbolic power of mortal remains and the dominion of hallowed ancestors, as well as the problem of bad deaths, vile bodies, and vengeful ghosts. Parker reconstructs a vast timeline of death and the dead, beginning with the era of the slave trade through to the coming of Christianity and colonial rule and on to the rise of the modern postcolonial nation.With an array of written and oral sources, In My Time of Dying richly adds to an understanding of how the dead continue to weigh on the shoulders of the living UR - https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691214900?locatt=mode:legacy UR - https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9780691214900 UR - https://www.degruyter.com/document/cover/isbn/9780691214900/original ER -