Welcome to the website of mortuary archaeologist, death historian and best-selling author Lorraine Evans. Focusing on new research and finds in the world of archaeology and history, this website will act as a hub for all of Lorraine's archaeological passions, namely non-conformist burial sites, funerary art and architecture, aviation archaeology and history, plus anything out of the ordinary. It will also act as a repository for all of her published works to date. The accompanying sister site, entitled Morte Photography and Research, focuses on surveying and recording of burial grounds and cemeteries throughout Scotland.

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Coming This 30 October 2025 - New Paperback Release

Deep in the heart of North Yorkshire, at a place called Walkington Wold, there lies a rather unusual burial ground, an Anglo- Saxon execution cemetery. Twelve skeletons were unearthed by archaeologists, ten without skulls, later examination of the skeletons revealed that their owners were all subjected to judicial execution by decapitation, one of which required several blows.

Similar fates have befallen other wretched souls, the undignified burial of suicides - in the Middle Ages, the most profound of sins - and the desecration of their bodies, go largely unrecorded. Whilst plague pits, vast cemeteries where victims of the Black Death were tossed into the ground, their bodies festering one on top of another, are only today betraying their secrets.

Although unpalatable to some, these burial grounds are an important part of our social heritage. They have been fashioned as much by the people who founded and used them, as by the buildings, gravestones and other features which they contain. They are records of social change; the symbols engraved upon individual memorials convey a sense of inherent belief systems, as they were constructed, adapted or abandoned depending on people’s needs.

Burying the Dead explores how these attitudes, practices and beliefs about death have undergone continual change. By studying the development of society’s funerary spaces, the author will reveal how we continue to reinforce our relationships with the dead, in a constant and on-going effort to maintain a bond with them.

https://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Burying-the-Dead-Paperback/p/52504

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Boneyards of Steel - Exploring The World's Aircraft Graveyards

Release Date Via Pen and Sword Books July 2026

In keeping with new book releases, I am also delighted to announce that coming in July 2026 is my third book with Pen and Sword, namely Boneyards of Steel - Exploring The World's Aircraft Graveyards.

 

The study of aviation graveyards is a much maligned area of death research. The final resting place of sizeable non-organic beasts is routinely overlooked, yet it is still, in every respect, a graveyard and deserves to be recognised as such. From an extensive desert necropoli to a war-torn underwater mausoleum, very little of the world remains untouched by the boneyard phenomenon, and less has been written about these remarkable cemeteries. With a significant percentage still languishing in ‘Top Secret’ facilities, hidden behind barbed wire-fences and gated perimeters, it is hardly surprising. Nonetheless, advancements in technology has enabled those with an adventurous spirit, armchair or otherwise, to peel back these layers of secrecy and take a sneaky peak at the skeletal remains of once aeronautic marvels, the findings of which are truly astonishing.

 

Boneyards of Steel - Exploring the World’s Aircraft Graveyards aims to take the reader on a flight of discovery, a mechanical odyssey of detection, unearthing the remains of aircraft in some of the planets most inhospitable regions, breathing new life into a wide-ranging collection of machine-driven detritus, metaphorically speaking, and, more significantly, to bring awareness to an often forgotten yet invaluable heritage