Bury your Past, Shovel it under: Histories and Caterpillars on Taiwan’s Graveyards (original) (raw)
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Close to Heart, Close to Home: Gravesites in Taiwan
In this contribution we attempt to clarify the relation between graveyards and popular cultures, focusing on the relations that exists between common peoples’ everyday life and graveyards. We show first that burials and tombs are quite popular in quite a number of senses of the word. Second, we show that graveyards can be very close to people, physically and mentally, depending on local customs, local histories and national or island-wide tendencies. Especially the origin of the graveyard and the development of settling and graveyard in mutual dependency can shape very different positions for a graveyard in local cultures and society. 在這篇文章中我們試圖探討墓與流行文化之間的關係，尤其昰一般大眾的日常生活與墓的關係。我們首先呈現喪葬與墓其實相當具有流行性；其次，說明墓其實在實質上與精神上都與人們有著相當緊密的關係，在不同的地方文化、地方歷史、以及全國性的趨勢下，有著不同的緊密程度。墓的起原與成形以及其後的趨勢走向描繪出多方的面相，墓園昰可以被解讀成地方社會的流行文化。
An Archeological View on Bentuhua: Taiwan's Tombstones in a Historical Perspective
In this study, we attempt to approach the process of 'Bentuhua' from the perspective, not of writers or politicians, but from the perspective of common people. Our approach is principally that of an archaeologist, who analyzes properties and distributions of silent remains and aligns them to well-understood historical events, in order to induce or confirm other historical processes from changes observed in the remains. The remains through which we try to look at Bentuhua are Taiwan's tombs and tombstones. These are made researchable through ThakBong, an ongoing digital documentation project covering currently about 15.000 tombs from about 200 graveyards in Taiwan. In order to calibrate this gravemarker corpus for the analysis of historical processes, we first show how historical events reflect on gravemarkers. Analyzing features, that are very receptible to social and political processes, we find significant changes through time and space. When these changes are interpreted in relation to Bentuhua, Bentuhua shows up as a process that in its expressions and probably in its content is neither uniform, nor monotonous nor continuously focused. Once identities and conceptions are socially accepted, their articulation on tombstones is no longer required and might make place for features relating to recent developments in the society.
The Tombs of Taiwan’s Mainlanders: Features of Memories, Power and Assimilation
In this paper we discuss the development of tombs of Taiwan's Mainlanders under the aspect of a hegemony exercised by a minority that through its cultural products, such as tombs, has to maintain a distinction in order to consolidate the established power relations. The tombs of the ruling minority are also expected to provide semantic means by which the dominated culture can be reinterpreted as belonging to the dominant culture. After discussing the different ways how tombs can change when entering into contact with a new society, we analyze some feature of Mainlander tombs in order to understand whether, how and why they have been changed. Features that identified all Mainlanders were firmly established on tombs through the use of placenames. The positioning of the placename on the tombstone, however, was adapted to the Taiwanese tombstone style, in order to identify the Taiwanese and Mainlander placenames as if they would have had the same history and the differences in their content would be a variation of the placename type used by the Mainlanders. We further argue, that the positioning of the coffin above the ground, as exercised by many Mainlanders, was a feature that was incompatible with the Taiwanese Han cultures and was thus abandoned. Not completely abandoned by Mainlanders was the rectangular tombstone. Although island-wide many Mainlanders slowly adopted the rounded tombstone form, Mainlander elites established the rectangular tombstone as a marker of their identity, together with inscriptions that in their use are limited to specific circles.
The Reintroduction and Diffusion of Mummification Practices in Taiwan, 1959-2011
4ème Congrès du Réseau Asie & Pacifique (conference volume), 2011
Most human dead are eventually forgotten but are not supposed to be forgotten too soon. This point is suggested by the ritualization of corpse disposal, which follows special protocols marking it as separate from the disposal of ordinary waste. Even anonymous cadavers are often buried or cremated individually rather than more cost-efficiently cremated en masse or dissolved in pressured vats as deceased pets or livestock often are. This paper describes a small set of “special dead” in Taiwan, namely mummified corpses that have been adorned and enshrined. These are dead that, for some people, are worth remembering and have never died. But the gilded shells that often encase them may lacquer over bodily decay. Currently there are at least eleven formally enshrined, mummified corpses in Taiwan (see Table 1). The first was enshrined in 1879 and the most recent in 2007, although the earliest extant mummy had been held in military and police facilities and museum storage vaults since 1912 and was re-enshrined, on loan from a museum, as recently as 20 September 2011. Below I contextualize and explain mummification in Taiwan by answering the following questions. How do these mummies fit into the broader mortuary culture? How has the practice been disseminated? What are the trends in the practice? Finally, how can we explain its revival?
Tackling the Question of Tanghao on Taiwan's Tombstones in the Framework of Digital Anthropology
International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing, 7 (2013) Supplement 120-143., 2013
This paper tackles the question of the rise and the use of the tánghào, a mythological placename, on Taiwan’s tombstones. This type of placename started to be used during the Japanese colonisation of Taiwan (1895–1945) and replaced placenames, that referred to regions where migration to Taiwan had started generations ago. The questions raised by the tánghào concern its function and meaning in a constantly renegotiated and redefined society. Why was a mythological placename adopted and how could this placename survive changes in regimes and burial practices? The framework we adopt for our analysis is that of Digital Anthropology (DA), using an archive of approximately 35.000 digitised tombstones plus digitised segments of statal discourse. The first puzzle parts of this investigation hint to an extremely diversified, non-orchestrated onset of the new practice. Later, the tánghào was instrumented for nationalist ROC ideologies and fully implemented into burial practices by new professionals, who sell the tánghào as the “right way to do”. The involvement of the ROC state in this propagation of the tánghào can be traced back through character
Oriental Archive 81, pp 459 --494, 2013
As stated by de CERTEAU in his “Practice of Everyday Life”, ideological questions between the state and socials agents are fought over on the ground of common cultural practices. Recent research in Anthropology and Culture Studies has shown how, in this battle, the state recuperates popular practices and arranges them in new systems of values to serve its political agenda. This contribution will shed light on the recuperation of the cultural practice of the use of a tanghao (堂號), a set of placenames that refer to places that were located about 2000 years ago in the Central Plain of what now is China. This practice moved back and forth between state policy and popular practices. Since the Song dynasty, the state had promoted the tanghao in association with surnames through the textbook "Hundred Family Names" (Baijiaxing 百家姓). The use of a tanghao became a popular practice in Taiwan and Penghu during the Japanese colonization (1895-1945), when it was carved on common people's tombstones to replace placenames that referred to regions in China from where migration to Taiwan had started generations ago. This innovative practice was finally recuperated for ROC policies after 1979, when the ROC promoted a re-arranged list of tanghao and integrated this new standard into funerary rites through new types of funerary professionals, established with governmental reforms of mortuary practices. Using an archive of 35.000 digitized tombstones, plus digitized segments of official documents, we follow the recuperation of the tanghao by the highest institutional levels of the ROC, using as trace, uncommon character variants that spilled over from official documents to tombstone inscriptions.
This essay looks at the recent renovation of the Twenty-five Ladies’ Tomb, and examines the politics of the feminist movements and the politics of memory as they are expressed through different meanings of female ghosts, in southern Taiwan. People who were involved in the renovation process included the families of the deceased “twenty-five maidens,” the Kaohsiung city government, and feminist groups in Kaohsiung and elsewhere in Taiwan – most notably the Kaohsiung Association for the Promotion of Women’s Rights – all of whom had different considerations and therefore diverse expectations regarding the future and purpose of the tomb. In Specters of Marx (2006), Derrida uses the idea of “specters” and “haunting” as consequences of historical injustice and tragedy metaphorically but powerfully. These two elements come together in our essay as well. However, the “ghosts” in our accounts are more literally ghosts with whom some (if not all) of our ethnographic subjects interact. They appear, express their sorrow, and demonstrate their grievances. The reestablishment of peace and order essential to residents of both the living world and the afterlife thus hinges upon mutual understanding and close collaboration between them. Yet, as meanings are constantly contested, so is the nature of the deceased’s requests. The different interpretations that the (living) socio-political forces give to the deceased’s needs open up new terrains of contestation for the memory of the past and the rights and obligations at the present. Ghosts are agencies that inform changes in the social life of the living.
This essay looks at the recent renovation of the Twenty-five Ladies' Tomb, and examines the politics of the feminist movements and the politics of memory as they are expressed through different meanings of female ghosts, in southern Taiwan. People who were involved in the renovation process included the families of the deceased "twenty-five maidens," the Kaohsiung city government, and feminist groups in Kaohsiung and elsewhere in -most notably the Kaohsiung Association for the Promotion of Women's Rights -all of whom had different considerations and therefore diverse expectations regarding the future and purpose of the tomb. In Specters of Marx (2006), Derrida uses the idea of "specters" and "haunting" as consequences of historical injustice and tragedy metaphorically but powerfully. These two elements come together in our essay as well. However, the "ghosts" in our accounts are more literally ghosts with whom some (if not all) of our ethnographic subjects interact. They appear, express their sorrow, and demonstrate their grievances. The reestablishment of peace and order essential to residents of both the living world and the afterlife thus hinges upon mutual understanding and close collaboration between them. Yet, as meanings are constantly contested, so is the nature of the deceased's requests. The different interpretations that the (living) socio-political forces give to the deceased's needs open up new terrains of contestation for the memory of the past and the rights and obligations at the present. Ghosts are agencies that inform changes in the social life of the living.
ThakBong, Digitalizing Taiwan's Tombstones for Teaching, Research and Documentation
Tombstones represent individually, and as ensemble, a collective memory of identities, languages, rites, religions and artisanry. In Taiwan, however, gravemarkers are disappearing on a dramatic scale through a number of social, climatic and geological factors. To preserve this rich part of Taiwan's cultural heritage, we set up in 2007 a project, called ThakBong, which aims at the documentation of the variation of Taiwan's tombstones across ethnicities, regions, religions, time periods and social classes. The documentation produced will consist of geo-tagged photos and the TEI-inspired XML-annotation in TSML (Tombstone Markup Language), to be distributed for research, teaching and archiving.
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The study of hezangmu, 'collective burials', is an integral part of long-standing debates within Chinese archaeology. Traditional interpretations, shaped by social evolutionary models from the 1950s onwards, link collective burials to descent and inherited identity and status. Our study revisits Yanghai cemetery in Xinjiang, one of the largest Bronze Age cemeteries excavated in China's northwest, using GIS and statistical analyses. Our findings indicate that collective burial was a central aspect of Bronze Age funerary custom at Yanghai, with declining investment by the Iron Age. As a special form of collective burial, multi-layer collective burials emerged as a practical adaptation, not as a marker of special status. Their prevalence increased as ritual spending decreased. Based on our results, we suggest Bronze Age social stratification at Yanghai was shaped by local shamanistic practices.