Oliver Twist Funeral essays

Oliver Twist Funeral essays In the book, Oliver Twist, Oliver, an orphan apprentice to Mr. Sowerberry, an undertaker, attends a funeral with Mr. Sowerberry to gain experience in the funeral trade. There are many things to learn about the customs and procedure of funerals of that time. On the day of burial, the undertaker and bearers of the coffin arrive at the clients house to retrieve the deceased person. They put the corpse in the coffin and transports it to the cemetery where they will meet the clergymen. The participants of the funeral followed the bearers and the undertaker to the grave where the coffin is to be buried. When they reach the grave, the clerk would put on his surplice and do the burial service where he reads off a paper and leave. After the service, the gravedigger buries the coffin in a grave with other coffins in the same plot of land. The people involved were not treated well because right after the burial was finished, they were ushered out of the cemetery quickly. This happened to the husband of the deceased wife. He fainted while they were burying his wife and was splashed with cold watered and carried outside the cemetery to walk back to his house. The old woman who was the deceased womans mother cared more about the cloak she was given by the undertaker and about keeping it than about the burial of her daughter. The cause of this womans death was of starvation and a fever. Her husband was begging for food on the streets and was arrested. When he came back to his abode and saw his wife, she was starved and feverish. The irony of her death is that the woman was given medicine in a blackening bottle to help her, but the husband said that she cant take the medicine and gave it back. Some people back then didnt care much about the loss of life and some did. A funeral comes with many procedures and traditions which some are still used in todays funerals. ...

LAnse aux Meadows - Evidence for Vikings in Canada

L'Anse aux Meadows - Evidence for Vikings in Canada LAnse aux Meadows is the name of an archaeological site that represents a failed Viking colony of Norse adventurers from Iceland, in Newfoundland, Canada and occupied for somewhere between three and ten years. It is the first identified European colony in the new world, predating Christopher Columbus by nearly 500 years. Key Takeaways: L'Anse aux Meadows   LAnse aux Meadows is an archaeological site in Newfoundland, Canada, where the first evidence was discovered of Vikings (Norse) in North America.The colony only lasted three to 10 years before it failed.  There are at least a half-dozen other brief occupations in the Baffin Island region that appear to also be Norse sites of the same age, 1000 CE.  The ancestors of the First People of Canada had been living in the region since at least 6,000 years ago and were using Newfoundland island for summer homes at the time the Vikings landed.   Climate and Pre-Norse Occupations The site is located in Newfoundland on the edge of the Strait of Belle Isle, across which lies the southern Labrador coast and the lower North Shore of Quebec. The climate is largely arctic, a forest-tundra, and it is regularly locked in by ice over the long winters. Summers are foggy, short, and cool. The region was first occupied about 6,000 years ago, by Maritime Archaic people who practiced a broad subsistence strategy, hunting both land and sea animals. and plants. Between 3,500 and 2,000 years ago, people primarily dependent on hunting marine mammals lived in the Belle Isle straits region, and about 2,000 years ago, the region was shared by both terrestrial hunting Recent Indian and Paleoeskimo populations. When the Norse arrived, the Paleoeskimos had left: but the Recent Indian people were still using the land. These Straits residents probably visited the region for brief periods of time during the summers, hunting birds (cormorant, guillemot, eider and black ducks), and living in tents heated with stone hearths. The Historic Tale of lAnse aux Meadows Around the turn of the 19th century, Canadian historian W.A. Munn pored over medieval Icelandic manuscripts, reports by the 10th century CE Vikings. Two of them, the Greenlander Saga and Eriks Saga reported on the explorations of Thorvald Arvaldson, Erik the Red (more properly Eirik), and Leif Erikson, three generations of a rather cranky family of Norse mariners. According to the manuscripts, Thorvald fled a murder charge in Norway and eventually settled in Iceland; his son Erik fled Iceland under a similar charge and settled Greenland; and Eiriks son Leif (the Lucky) took the family westward still, and circa AD 998 he colonized a land he called Vinland, Old Norse for land of grapes. Leifs colony remained at Vinland for between three and ten years, before they were chased away by constant attacks from the residents, ancestors of the First People of Canada called Skraelings by the Norse; and Recent Indians by archaeologists. Munn believed that the most likely site for the colony was on the island of Newfoundland, arguing that Vinland did not refer to grapes, but rather to grass or grazing land, since grapes dont grow in Newfoundland. Rediscovering the Site In the early 1960s, archaeologists Helge Ingstad and his wife Anne Stine Ingstad undertook a close survey of the coastlines of Newfoundland and Labrador. Helge Ingstad, a Norse investigator, had spent the majority of his career studying Northern and Arctic civilizations  and was following up on research into the Viking explorations of the 10th and 11th centuries. In 1961, the survey paid off, and the Ingstads discovered an indisputably Viking settlement near Epave Bay and named the site LAnse aux Meadows, or Jellyfish Cove, a reference to the stinging jellyfish found in the bay. Eleventh-century Norse artifacts recovered from lAnse aux Meadows numbered in the hundreds  and included a soapstone spindle whorl and a bronze-ringed pin process, as well as other iron, bronze, stone, and bone items. Radiocarbon dates placed the occupation at the site between ~990-1030 AD. Living at LAnse aux Meadows LAnse aux Meadows was not a typical Viking village. The site consisted of three building complexes and a bloomery, but no barns or stables that would be associated with farming. Two of the three complexes consisted solely of a large hall or longhouse and a small hut; the third added a small house. It appears that elites resided in one end of the large hall, ordinary sailors slept in sleeping areas within the halls and servants, or, more likely, slaves resided in the huts. The buildings were constructed in the Icelandic style, with heavy sod roofs supported by interior posts. The bloomery was a simple iron smelting furnace within a small subterranean hut  and a pit charcoal kiln. In the large buildings were sleeping areas, a carpentry workshop, a sitting room, a kitchen, and storage. LAnse aux Meadows housed between 80 to 100 individuals, probably up to three ship crews; all of the buildings were occupied at the same time. Based on the reconstructions accomplished by Parks Canada at the site, a total of 86 trees were felled for posts, roofs, and furnishings; and 1,500 cubic feet of sod was required for the roofs. LAnse aux Meadows Today Since the discovery of lAnse aux Meadows, archaeological research has found additional evidence of Norse settlement in the area, a handful of sites on Baffin Island and in Labrador. Artifacts pointing to Norse occupations includes yarn, bar-shaped whetstones, wooden tally sticks, and a broken stone crucible which contained traces of copper and tin for bronze working. Only one building has been found, a rectangular foundation of boulders and turf, and a stone-lined drainage basin. LAnse aux Meadows is now owned by Parks Canada, who carried on excavations at the site during the mid-1970s. The site was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1978; and  Parks Canada has reconstructed some of the sod buildings and maintains the site as a living history museum, complete with costumed interpreters. Sources and Further Reading A great source of information about LAnse aux Meadows is the  official Parks Canada site, in French and English.Foster, Aidan. Hierophanies in the Vinland Sagas: Images of a New World. Culture and Cosmos 16.1 and 2 (2012): 131–38. Print.Ingstad, Anne Stine. The Viking Discovery of America: The Excavation of a Norse Settlement in LAnse Aux Meadows, Newfoundland, 1961–1968. Oslo: Norwegian University Press, 1977.Kristensen, Todd J., and Jenneth E. Curtis. Late Holocene Hunter-Gatherers at L’anse Aux Meadows and the Dynamics of Bird and Mammal Hunting in Newfoundland. Arctic Anthropology 49.1 (2012): 68–87. Print.Renouf, M.A.P., Michael A. Teal, and Trevor Bell. In the Woods: The Cow Head Complex Occupation of the Gould Site, Port Au Choix. The Cultural Landscapes of Port Au Choix: Precontact Hunter-Gatherers of Northwestern Newfoundland. Ed. Renouf, M.A.P. Boston, MA: Springer US, 2011. 251–69. Print.Sutherland, Patricia D., Peter H. Thompson, and P atricia A. Hunt. Evidence of Early Metalworking in Arctic Canada. Geoarchaeology 30.1 (2015): 74–78. Print. Wallace, Birgitta. Lanse Aux Meadows, Leif Erikssons Home in Vinland. Journal of the North Atlantic 2.sp2 (2009): 114–25. Print.