the archaeology of loss: life, love and the art of dying

When you find your husband lying dead, you think you will not forget a single detail of that moment. As an archaeologist, I like to get my facts right, and I will try my best to do so, but five years have passed since that day in 2016 and I am excavating my own unreliable memory. I cannot go back and check.

＂In this vivid and moving memoir, archaeologist Tarlow (Harnessing the Power of the Criminal Corpse) dissects historical death rituals while navigating her own grief after her husband’s death... The result is a refreshingly tough-minded--but still tender--alternative to standard grief memoirs.＂ Publishers Weekly

’Extraordinary, unflinching, wonderful, moving’ - Nina Stibbe, author of Love, Nina

Sarah Tarlow’s husband Mark began to suffer from an undiagnosed illness, leaving him incapable of caring for himself. One day, about six years after he first started showing symptoms, Mark waited for Sarah and their children to leave their home before ending his own life.

Although Sarah had devoted her professional life to the study of death and how we grieve, she found that nothing could have prepared her for the reality of illness and the devastation of loss.

Fiercely vulnerable, deeply intimate and yet authoritative, The Archaeology of Loss describes a universal experience with an unflinching and singular gaze. With humour, intelligence and urgency, it is in its very honesty that it offers profound consolation.

’This memoir has been compared to The Salt Path by Raynor Winn, and I can see why . . . In the end, there is so much love in this book. In writing such a meticulously honest book, she memorialises her cant-hating husband in the best way possible. I think he would be proud of her too.’ The Times

’This book is a companion for anyone navigating the hardships of loss and uncertainty’ - Octavia Bright, author of This Ragged Grace

’A tender and big-hearted embrace of a book . . . A poetic excavation of loss, grief and ritual.’ - Graham Caveney, author of The Boy with the Perpetual Nervousness

Sarah Tarlow is a British archaeologist and academic. As professor of historical archaeology at the University of Leicester, Tarlow is best known for her work on the archaeology of death and burial. In 2012, Tarlow was awarded the chair in archaeology at the University of Leicester.