Perspective on burial analysis.....continued

Goodenough 1965- Connection between personal identity and last rites performed:

Goodenough points out that the intervening variable of personal identity affects the manner in which the last rites or duty is exercised/ performed. The operation of personal identities will produce variability that a model of strictly social personae will not take into account. Saxe based his own premise from the methodology provided by Goodenough.

Arthur Saxe 1970- Patterning and variability in mortuary remains reflects the “social position”:

 In his 1970 PhD dissertation, Saxe proposed the differentiation accorded to the positions that he or she occupied in his/her community during life. In order to explain why this should be, he argued that at the time of death a series of choices are made among the various aspects of a person’s social personae: choices made by the living based on their relationship to the deceased. These decisions then determine the nature and details of the mortuary treatment. Thus, the patterning and variability observed in mortuary remains reflect the social positions held by the deceased. Saxe was among the first to attempt to construct a coherent theoretical basis for mortuary analysis by essentially extending the normal behaviour of a society to the cemetery. But Saxe’s work is entirely based on ethnography of three different cultures, (the Ashanti, the Kapauku and the Bontoc Igorot) and does not take into account mortuary differentiation in an archaeological context with its attendant complications. However, his work was a clear break with the particularizing culture history that preceded it and a breakthrough for the New Archaeologists and their interest in broader questions of social change. The search had thus begun for categorical regulations rather than specific artifacts.

Binford 1971- Linking mortuary behaviour with social complexity:

In 1971, Lewis Binford, offered the hypothesis that there should be a high degree of isomorphism between (a) the complexity of the status structure in a sociocultural system and (b) the complexity of mortuary ceremonialism as regards differential treatments of persons occupying different status positions. Binford implies that status corresponds to mortuary complexity. He surveyed forty cases from the Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) to test this hypothesis by noting a striking difference between agriculturalists and hunter-gatherers, where agriculturists symbolized a greater number of social dimensions in their mortuary ceremonialism, such that the variability of a culture’s burial could be used to show inter social differentiation. Binford takes an even more direct route from graves to social complexity. The more complex the society, measured solely by its primary method of food production, the more complex the mortuary rituals are. Again conspicuous by their absence are archaeological data. And where Saxe has used ritual obligation toward the deceased to link mortuary behaviour with social dimensions, Binford does not specify how social complexity and mortuary behaviour are linked or by what mechanism complexity is extended from the society to the cemetery.

Later theories- Utilizing Saxe-Binford’s premises:

In the intervening years since Saxe and Binford developed their theories regarding the relatedness of mortuary complexity and social complexity, there have been many fine examples of mortuary analysis, most of which utilize the Saxe-Binford premises in order to explain observed mortuary variability.

Brown, 1971- Ethnographies inadequate with respect to funerary practices:

James Brown’s studyin 1971, came close on the heels of the Saxe-Binford publications. Brown was the first to struggle with the problem or how to relate the regulations of ethnographic funerary practices to archaeological remains. In fact, he made one of the few early critiques of ethnographic documentation, noting that it is frequently inadequate with respect to funerary practices.

Meillasoux 1972- “Mortuary practices vary with economic base of the society”:

Some anthropologists have emphasized that the beliefs and practices associated with the disposal of the dead vary with the economic base of the society. Meillasoux in his 1972 work, for example, shows the interrelationship between subsistence, social groupings, territoriality and ancestor cult by studying two idealized subsistence types: hunter-gatherers and agriculturists. In the former type, there is an absence of elaborate mortuary rituals, territoriality based descent groups and celebrations relating the living to dead ancestors. On the other hand, among agriculturists, descent that provides for group membership and renews the relations of production is a major concern. In these societies one finds conceptual continuity with the past that is reflected in ancestor cults, developed genealogies and symbolic representation such as elaborate mortuary rituals.

Tainter 1978- “Mortuary population reflects the structure of extinct society”:

Joseph Tainter’s 1978 study, built upon his previous mortuary analysis in Hawaii. He used six mortuary data sets from West-Central Illinois, dating from the middle and late woodland periods, from A.D. 200 to 800. He echoed Saxe and Binford in his premise that the time of death, occasions the expression of a greater range of the deceased’s social identities than in any time in life. Also, the higher the relative rank of an individual, the greater will be the amount of disruption in normal community activities the mortuary ritual will cause. He built the idea of energy expenditure from this which included various mortuary rituals. However his model rested on several assumptions that cannot be justified.

 

Kirch and Hodder 1980 and 1982- Inadequacies in Mortuary Studies:

In contrast, many authors have questioned the assumption that burial organization equals social organization (Kirch1980, Hodder 1982). These stated reservations concerning the relationship between burial structure and social structure and meaning, result from ethno­-graphic research which indicated that the most we can hope for is relative social political status, not the societal rank of the participants in the now extinct social system (Kirch 1980: 306). According to this view, the burial pattern is codified, and the code of expression can be manipulated in different social strategies. The excavated object can only inform on so­ciety through an adequate understanding of cultural context (Hodder 1982: l0).

        

On the one hand, the earlier approach leads to the quantitative com­parison of counts and levels of energy expenditure, while the other tends­ towards a consideration of the symbolic meaning of particular objects, treatments, and arrangements. Both approaches are informative: the sta­tus of different groups-may be expressed in different ways in the same society.

Goldstein 1981- The Saxe-Goldstein Formulation:          

Goldstein (1981) sees the determination of status from burials as crucial, “since burials afford archaeologists one of the best means for examining social interaction. The particular social relationships involving the deceased account for the specific disposal treatment. However, because different types of social organization allow for different sets of social relationships, different organizations will also exhibit different disposal treatments. Mortuary analysis must link social relationships, social structure, and disposal treatment”, (Goldstein 1981:54). Goldstein suggests that spatial organization of the cemetery can indicate the organizing principles of the society, as well as differentiation.

          

The study of spatial arrangements of burials has also been useful in attempting to reconstruct prehistoric social organization. Goldstein car­ried out two levels of analysis, the formality and spatial separation of the disposal area as a unit and the relation of individuals to each other (Gold­stein 1980: 7). Goldstein concluded from an analysis of ethnographic cases from different parts of the world, that the existence of a formal, exclusive disposal area for the dead, set apart for this purpose alone, usually means that the society is likely to have corporate groups organized by lineal descent (Goldstein 1980: 8). Not all corporate groups will choose to express there identity in this fashion, but in the cases in which the pattern occurs, the existence of such corporate groups is usually the case. It is also most likely that such corporate groups will control access to critical resources.

          

Saxe’s (1970) hypothesis says, to the degree that corporate group rights to use and/or control crucial but restricted resources are attained and/or legitimized by means of lineal descent from the dead (i.e., lineal ties to ancestors), such groups will maintain formal disposal areas for the exclusive disposal of their dead and conversely. Goldstein (1981) modified Saxe’s hypothesis by postulating that if a permanent, specialized bound area for the exclusive disposal of the group’s dead exists, then it is likely that this represents a corporate group that has rights over the use and/or control of crucial but restricted resources. This corporate control is most likely to be attained and/or legitimized by means of lineal descent from the dead, either in terms of actual lineage or in the form of a strong, established tradition of the critical resource passing from parent to offspring.

Pearson 1982- Mortuary ritual to manipulate social relations

The relationship between burial pattern and cultural pattern was found to have several properties. M. Pearson (1982: 112) states that groups may use the occasion of mortuary ritual to manipulate social relations to im­prove their own status. He notes that the burial preparation and ceremony involve living cultural groups who surround the deceased and that objects in the burials must be seen in terms of their mutual interaction. Thus, not all the objects in the tombs "belonged" to the deceased in the same way. Some may have been personal ornaments and possessions, while others may have been collective tributes or ritual paraphernalia used in the fu­neral.

Renfrew and Bahn 1992- Megalithic monuments were public monuments and territorial markers:

Renfrew along with Bahn in their 1992 work, believe that the Megalithic monuments of North-West Europe, besides being related to the burial practice, were viewed as public monuments designed to be seen and were territorial markers of small-scale segmentary societies where competition for resources were legitimized by reference to the dead ancestors.

Ian Morris, 1992- Burial evidence and social structure

Ian Morris, in his 1992 study, makes extensive use of archaeological materials from various regions off the Greco-Roman world. It is an ambitious work that aims to study regional social change. The main theoretical thrust of his work is that the potential for using burial evidence to reconstruct social structure increases directly in proportion to the amount of other types of information available.

Simon and Ravesloot, 1995- Interpreting the ceramic vessel placement in burials

Arleyn W. Simon and John C. Ravesloot in an article in the Journal of Anthropological Research (Vol. 51, 1995) attempt to suggest that though archaeologists have often interpreted ceramic vessel accompaniment in burial as indicators of personal wealth or the social status of the deceased, however alternative interpretations that are related to gender and age of the individual may better explain the patterns of vessel placement. In this piece of work the authors depend upon ceramic vessel accompaniments recovered during the Roosevelt Platform Mound study and are used to examine gender rules among the prehistoric Salado and Central Arizona. Their main implication is that the patterns of vessel placement within Salado burials as identified by compositional groups, give ideas for the roles of individual within the larger context of social relationships that comprised the prehistoric community.

 

O'shea, 1996- Reconstructing social organization from mortuary remains using numerical methods:

In his 1996 Mortuary study of seven early Bronze Age cemeteries of the Maros people (present day Hungary), John O'shea demonstrates an overt concern with social dimensions, but he also focuses on the archaeological processes of site formation that complicate the task of the analyst. While he acknowledges that the reconstruction of social organization from mortuary remains may indeed be distorted, it is distorted in a regular and predictable manner. He offers an informed and sophisticated use of numerical methods and explores horizontal social differentiation in addition to hierarchical differentiation in both diachronic and synchronic syntheses.

          

From historical Arikara burials, in which status could be checked by independent records, O'Shea found differences in the artifactual expression of chiefly rank and that of ritual offices (O'Shea 1984: 271). Chiefly rank was indicated by a central position in the ceme­tery, an arrow-maker's kit, and other artifacts characteristic of an upper wealth level, whereas, in another case, it was indicated by burial with a stone pipe and upper wealth level objects (ibid). Similarly, bird beaks, which marked the ritual office at one site, were designators at another site of a special prestige position. Arikara society, admittedly, was undergoing rapid change, but despite the changes in symbolic ex­pression, in our opinion the relative social position of the individual is still recognizable.

Discussion

Many theories discussed above advocate universality in the behaviors that cause differentiation in mortuary treatment. Some archaeologists advocate that “burial rites are known to change frequently in many situations”, (Ucko 1969:203) and that human society is not static. The ethnographic information upon which Binford and other archaeologists based their theories is not without limitations. Ethnographic information was compiled from cultures in the present to derive universal theories of human behavior and impose them onto the distant past. The ethnographic cultures used to generate these theories are not necessarily comparable to prehistoric cultures. We have no reliable way to gauge the fit of the analogy between all of these cultural groups. Instead, hypotheses should be generated on a case per case basis, so that the analogical fit may be more accurately determined. Ucko (1969) demonstrates that there is a wide variety of ethnographic reasons for the inclusion or lack of grave goods with the deceased, creation of monuments, and location of burial. As a result of the extreme variation in reasons for mortuary treatment observed ethnographically, archaeologists must be cautious when attributing universal causes to mortuary treatment. Instead, where possible, archaeologists may achieve a better understanding of social implications of mortuary treatment by generating hypotheses using ethnographic analogies that are a close fit with the prehistoric culture under analysis.

         

Several methods have been used to examine the reflection of the symbolic order in graves. Hodder (1982) examined the symbolism of European Neolithic burials by comparing them, along several dimensions, with Neolithic houses. McGuire (1992) conducted a statistical analysis of multidimensional cemetery information at La Ciudad to make statements about the social order as seen in contradictions between different classes of remains. Shanks and Tilley (1982) sought to determine the nature of social structuring principles by analyzing the physical positions of skeletal remains in Neolithic barrows. Pearson (1982) conducted an analysis of Victorian Period mortuary practices to determine how the deceased are manipulated so that the upper class can maintain their influence. Morris (1987) demonstrated that the spatial arrangement of Greek burials is based upon corporate group membership by examining literary sources, burial type, and spatial patterning. Morris used these multiple dimensions of burial practices and literary evidence to trace the development of the Polls, or Greek City State concept. These studies are all based on the concept that burial ritual manifests social ideology and as such, play a role in the negotiation of power between social groups (McGuire 1992). This ideological approach to the study of mortuary behavior demonstrates that there are multiple causes for the complexity of mortuary activities.

         

Many archaeologists focus on the exclusive use of grave inclusions to determine the role of an individual in society in the past. Once the role of a person has been identified, archaeologists can determine the social level of the society they are studying (Rothschild 1979). This method of conducting burial analysis has been criticized because not all grave inclusions deposited with skeletal remains will be preserved (Ravesloot 1988:71). Consequently, the presence or absence of grave goods alone can not be used to infer the possible existence of ascribed status (Ravesloot 1988:71). Additional dimensions of mortuary treatment must be examined to generate a more adequate picture of the social organization of groups in the past.

         

Some archaeologists have also looked at the quantity and quality of grave goods interred with an individual to further assess the status of the individuals in a cemetery. Others have used historical records to assign value to grave goods in order to quantify the wealth interred with an individual and thereby determine his or her rank (Rothschild 1979).

         

Many archaeologists, recognizing the limitations of mortuary studies focused strictly on grave goods, have advocated a multidimensional approach to determine status differences reflected in mortuary treatment (Goldstein 1981; Ravesloot 1988; Rothschild 1990; Chapman and Randsborg 1981; Ucko 1969; Howell and Kintigh 1996; and Binford 1971). Simply stated, the multidimensional method of analysis examines a number of dimensions of mortuary treatment. In addition to grave goods, this group of archaeologists advocates the examination of demographics, burial orientation, paleopathologies, and spatial distribution. They argue that by examining multiple dimensions of mortuary treatment we may obtain a more detailed understanding of status differentiation in the past. Comparisons and correlations can be made between the various dimensions of the mortuary domain to understand more fully the social and cultural issues that are reflected in cemeteries. Archaeologists must study all dimensions of mortuary treatment in order to form a model of the burial treatments practiced by a group and to understand the level of organization reflected (Ravesloot 1988:19). Ravesloot advocates that “regardless of the approach used in a mortuary study, it is important not to limit analysis to one dimension over another, but to examine the total mortuary program of the society being investigated” (Ravesloot 1988:18).

         

Multidimensional analysis has been undertaken by classifying and coding the cemetery data recovered from an excavation according to a list of burial traits that can be statistically analyzed to test hypotheses (Rothschild 1990, Ravesloot 1988). Brown (1981) examined multiple dimensions of mortuary treatment such as treatment of the corpse, position and construction of the interment facility, duration and extent of the funeral, differences in the materials contributed to the ritual, and selective sacrifice of humans with the deceased to evaluate the energy expended on an individual's mortuary treatment. As discussed previously, energy expended in mortuary treatment reflects the status of the individual in life.

          

By conducting multidimensional analysis in this manner it becomes possible to distinguish the status of an individual, despite few grave goods and poor preservation (Brown 1981:29). Because of its usefulness as a method for mortuary analysis, the multidimensional approach may be used to test the hypotheses of the New Archaeologists and Post Processualists, despite their theoretical differences. The various examples and theories discussed above, thus is an attempt to exhibit the divergent and myriad processes which can be validated to the study of mortuary practices and how they may help in the reconstruction or study of the socio-cultural life of prehistoric people. 

                                               BIBLIOGRAPHY

Binford, L.S. 1971. “Mortuary Practices: Their Study and their Potential” in Memoir of the Society for American Archaeology. Ed. J.A. Brown. Vol: 25, pp. 6-29.

Childe, V.G. 1945. “Directional Changes in Funerary Practices during 50,000 Years in Man. Vol: 41(3-4), pp. 13-19.

Goldstein, L.G. 1980. “Mississippian Mortuary Practices: A Case Study of Two Cemeteries in the Lower Illinois Valley” in Northwestern University Archaeological Program. Evanston. Illinois.

Kirch, P.V. 1980. “Burial Structures and Social Ranking in Vava’u” in Journal of the Polynesian Society. Vol: 89(3), pp. 291-308.

Pearson, M. 1982. “Mortuary Practices, Society and Ideology: An Ethno archaeological Study” in Symbolic and Structural Archaeology. Ed. I. Hodder, pp. 99-114. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge.

Saxe, A.A .1970.Social Dimensions of  Mortuary Practices. Unpublished PhD dissertation .University of Michigan.

Tainter, T.A. 1975. “Social Inference and Mortuary Practices: An Experiment in Numerical classification” in World Archaeology. Vol: 7, pp.1-15.

Tainter, T.A. 1978. “Mortuary Practices and the Study of Prehistoric Social Systems” in Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory. Ed. M. Schiffer. Vol: 1, pp.105-141. Academic Press. New York.