Description:
Land of Water, City of the Dead by Sarah E. Baires offers a compelling exploration of how water, landscape, and mortality intersect to shape urban life. Through an innovative environmental and cultural lens, Baires examines how communities have adapted burial practices, memory, and space in response to challenging water-dominated environments. By tracing the material and symbolic significance of land, water, and the dead, the book reveals how environmental conditions influence cultural meaning, social organization, and urban identity. Land of Water, City of the Dead reconsiders how cities live with nature--and with death.
Review Quotes:
"The detailed discussion of Cahokia's ridge-top mounds, the presentation of largely unpublished descriptions of burial features and cultural materials associated with these mounds, and new observations of skeletal materials from Wilson Mound make this a valuable resource for other researchers."--Kristin Hedman, coeditor of Transforming the Dead: Culturally Modified Bone in the Prehistoric Midwest