Interacting With the Dead: Perspectives on Mortuary Archaeology for the New Millennium (original) (raw)
Related papers
A historical review of ethnological and archaeological analyses of mortuary practice
Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 1982
For over a century, anthropologists have analyzed death-related phenomena to acquire knowledge concerning religion, social organization, and economic cooperation. There have been notable epistemological shifts in this inquiry by sociocultural anthropologists, with a "time lag" prior to concomitant archaeological shifts in explanation of similar phenomena. This article reviews many sociocultural and archaeological contributions to the development of a theory of mortuary practice. It is felt that although many advances in method have been made by modem archaeologists in terms of mortuary practice, they have been restricted by an exclusive British functionalist approach. Finally, it is suggested that incorporation of structuralist theory and examinations of the entire trajectory of death-related behavior may be an aid to archaeologists.
Anthropological and Archaeological Approaches to Mortuary Rituals. A Synthesis
Anthropology and archaeology have a long tradition in shaping a discourse on the phenomenon of death. From the very beginning of the archeological discipline there is to be noticed a special interest regarding the funerary contexts – the funerary inventory, the body of the deceased and the treatment applied to it. This paper is an attempt to review a vast literature concerned with the significance of funerary rituals, from both disciplines – cultural anthropology and archaeology – while seeking to capture the emergence of some research paradigms that marked the history of archaeological thought from the beginning of the 20th century till today. In an attempt to determine what funerary archaeology means for the researcher of the 20th and 21th century, I bring into discussion the two major current of archaeological thought known as processual and post-processual paradigms. What information may be obtained from the analysis of mortuary rituals and what methodologies have been formulated within such research? Which were the purposes of funerary rituals? What is the relevance of funerary archaeology in shaping of a discourse about past societies? These are just some of the questions whose answers I am seeking for.
Recent, mainstream, American mortuary archaeology, in its paradigmatic outlook, middle-range theory, analytic methodology, and case studies, has emphasized social organization as the primary factor that determines mortuary practices. Broader anthropological and social science traditions have recognized philosophical-religious beliefs as additional, important determinants. The historical roots of mortuary archaeology's focus on the social, and the consequence of this on theory development, is reviewed. Then, through a Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) cross-cultural survey, the kinds of philosophicalreligious, social organizationa~ circumstantial, and physical factors that affect specific kinds of mortuary practices, and the relative importance of these factors, are documented. The data are also used to test basic premises that mortuary archaeologists routinely use today to reconstruct social organization. A balanced, more holistic, and multidisciplinary approach, which considers many kinds of causes beyond social ones, is found necessary to interpret mortuary remains and to reconstruct the past from them.
Celebrating the Dead: Placing Prehistoric Mortuary Practices in Broader Social Context
Mortuary events were contexts in which ritual practices celebrated the dead and facilitated an array of social objectives. In the study of mortuary practices among prehistoric hunter-gatherers, much attention has been focused on political complexity and the identification of leaders and elites. Until recently, considerably less attention has been placed on aspects of social identity and discerning changes in social interaction as defined by attributes such as age, sex, and group membership. Diachronic developments in funerary rituals, as depicted in the archaeological record of mortuary events, provide a rare opportunity to gain insight into shifts in social interaction, intragroup dynamics, and ideology. We highlight this research orientation with two prehistoric examples where, based on other lines of evidence and general expectations, political complexity was increasing over time, yet mortuary practices suggest the opposite. These prehistoric case studies include the emergence of complex hunter-gatherers and then early agricultural village life in the southern Levant of the Near East, and the rise and persistence of complex hunter-gatherers in the San Francisco Bay area of western North America. Although widely separated in time and space, both took place in Mediterranean-type environmental settings, and both were correlated with larger populations, increased settlement permanence, resource intensification and storage, and rich ideological traditions. These examples were chosen because they share a number of contextual variables in common (both environmental and economic.), thereby facilitating comparative analysis. In both examples, unprecedented changes in socioeconomic strategies were correlated with a sudden, initial elaboration in mortuary practices. In each situation, a much larger segment of the society from a wider range of ages was buried with grave goods. Mortuary items were primarily personal adornment, and these practices were concentrated among younger members of society. Thereafter, despite continued intensification of economic and social activities, each case study revealed a striking decline in the number of burials with such goods and in the quantities per individual. These case studies reveal that the tempo of shifts in mortuary behavior can be rapid and multidirectional. Moreover, these changes can best be understood through consideration of the broader social context, rather than attempting to discern elites and status ascription. We argue that these mortuary events were settings in which ritual practices facilitated social integration and group solidarity, as well as active construction of social identities with respect to kin and non-kin, and peers and non-peers. These funerary practices provided an opportunity to reify new forms of community interaction and enhanced economic cooperation among peers that facilitated emerging cooperative activities.
Burial is perceived as one of the human cultural reactions to the phenomenon of death. As is the case with other practices related to the social realm, mortuary practices (including interment) conform to established conventions of the particular society en acting those practices. Among recent humans, mortuary practices are related to religious beliefs, cosmologies, and the social and economic status of the dead and of those burying them. Such insights are gained from observations on, and the documentation of, cross-cultural patterns ofbehaviour. Indeed, inferences can be drawn from behavioural patterns shared by extant hum ans and other nonhum an primates (see Pettitt 2011). As archaeologists, however, we retrieve evidence of only those past behaviours-including mortuary practices-that resulted in material remains. It is from these that we need to identify, interpret, and evaluate the social norms and beliefs of prehistorie human groups. Our interpretative framework-Le. the middle range the ory with whieh the issue of prehistoric mortuary practices is approached-hinges on cross-cultural ethnographic studies, which reveal the rules of observable behaviours. It is from this starting point that we may draw analogies between the present and the past.
Symposium: Mortuary Archaeology Today, Approaches, methods and ethics - April 19 & 20, 2018
Archaeology has focused on the mortuary context since its inception. The earliest antiquarians took advantage of prominent burial monuments and other grave contexts in their search for curios and information about past societies. While burials tell us much about the ways in which people buried their dead, they have also been a valuable resource for reconstructing the ways in which people lived. Today, the technical advances made in the study of human remains themselves allow for more detailed study of past peoples than ever before. With that change has come an added responsibility concerning the proper handling of human remains. During this symposium, co-organised between the Universities of Groningen and Leiden, we aim to start a discussion between researchers interested in studying cultural and emotional aspects of burial practices, and those using human remains as a data source for lifestyle and population studies, to which the issue of ethical practices is crucial. April 19 Session 1: Bioarchaeology and the use of funerary remains for population studies Session 2: Funerary archaeology and exploring approaches to death and mourning Session 3: Human remains and ethical practice in archaeology April 20 The workshop will focus discussion on the results of the three sessions. The aim of the interactive workshop sessions is to engage ReMA and PhD students in critical review of mortuary archaeology today and to explore opportunities for collaborative research.