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Grave goods are items buried or cremated with a body, with beliefs about their function varying across time and culture. Ancient burials included textiles, jewelry, and food, with some societies burying items for use in the afterlife. Grave robbing has been a common problem, and there is controversy over what to do with items found at grave sites.
Grave goods are items that are buried or cremated with a body. Many cultures have traditions of leaving grave goods, from the modern United States, where keepsakes are buried with the dead, to ancient Egypt, where people of high status were buried with a rich assortment of items. Beliefs about the function of grave goods vary across time and culture.
The practice of including grave goods with burial is ancient. Some hominid burials include rough objects, indicating that even in the early stages of evolution, death was an important experience. Items in ancient burials include things like textiles, baskets, bowls, and jewelry; organic materials such as food may also have been included at the time of burial.
In many ancient societies, the dead were buried with items they could use in the afterlife. Both the Vikings and Egyptians had lavish burial practices in which the dead were buried with food, servants, tools, toys, pets, work animals, clothing, jewelry, and a wide assortment of other items, and people were believed to have need to be buried with everything they might need in the afterlife. This tradition persists in many cultures; in some parts of Asia, for example, people are cremated with special banknotes or credit cards that can be spent in the afterlife.
Even grave goods are left as offerings to the dead or offerings to the gods. In ancient Greece, for example, people were buried with two coins to pay the death ferryman, and in other cultures, the dead were buried with money to pay for the death itself. In this sense, the objects are considered a sort of votive deposit, in the sense that they are left in a sanctified place for a specific ritual purpose.
Because grave goods often include items of immense value, grave robbing has been a common problem throughout human history. Many graves have been looted for the jewels and other valuables they contain, and some of these looted items have found their way into museums or private collections. Finding a tomb that hasn’t been looted is extremely unusual and a cause for celebration among archaeologists.
There is some controversy over what to do with items found at grave sites. Some people believe that such objects should be restored, studied and displayed, while others believe that graves should be left undisturbed out of respect for the dead. This problem was greatly exacerbated by widespread archaeological practices in the 19th century, when numerous priceless objects were removed from colonial subjects and exported; most of these items have yet to be returned to their home nations.
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