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Island Archaeology and Island History: Cyprus

Bernard A. Knapp

in Prehistoric and Protohistoric Cyprus: Identity, Insularity, and Connectivity

This chapter considers, first, various archaeological ‘constructions’ that have guided as well as constrained the study of Cypriot archaeology. Until the 1980s, for example, most archaeologists ... More

This chapter considers, first, various archaeological ‘constructions’ that have guided as well as constrained the study of Cypriot archaeology. Until the 1980s, for example, most archaeologists working on the island, including native Cypriotes, were trained as specialists in Aegean, Levantine, or Anatolian archaeology, only secondarily in the archaeology of Cyprus. In contrast, and from a decidedly internal perspective, this chapter focuses on the material record of Prehistoric Bronze Age (PreBA) Cyprus (ca. 2700–1700/1650 BC), a time marked by major shifts in traditional materials and lifeways. Crucial social changes are considered through detailed examination of spatial organization and cultural sequences at several archaeological sites (landscapes), production and trade (copper, imports, the ‘secondary products revolution’), material culture (architecture, pottery) and mortuary practices, representations (‘genre scenes’, figurines), individuals (figurines, burials, jewellery), migration, and hybridization (architecture, pottery, cooking and weaving items, metal goods, jewellery). By about 1700 BC, the intensification of metallurgical and agricultural production precipitated the emergence of new island identities and a new social order, structurally very different from that which had characterized earlier periods, but one still solidly Cypriot in origin, outlook and makeup.Less

Mortuary Practices, Cults, and Social Systems

A. Martin Byers

in Cahokia: A World Renewal Cult Heterarchy

This chapter argues that, from the beginning, the same-gender/same-age cults have been autonomous communal cults. The evolution of the American Bottom, therefore, is largely the evolution of the ... More

This chapter argues that, from the beginning, the same-gender/same-age cults have been autonomous communal cults. The evolution of the American Bottom, therefore, is largely the evolution of the arm's-length relations between the relatively autonomous cults and clans. The chapter also elaborates on the required mortuary and cult models to complete the theoretical framework required to interpret critically Cahokia and the American Bottom in these terms. It considers the theoretical perspective underwriting the Cemetery model as the funerary paradigm. It argues that the American Bottom mortuary data can be best treated as the expression of a complex mortuary sphere constituted by an integrated system of mortuary behaviors incorporating both clan-based funerary and cult-based world renewal rituals. However, a theory that can be used to interpret the mortuary data in these terms must be first elucidated. The chapter then postulates that the American Bottom mortuary record was the ritual outcome and medium by which both human and world renewal were accomplished simultaneously. The Mourning/World Renewal Mortuary model and the Autonomous Cult model are specifically reviewed. Moreover, a critical discussion of cults and social systems is provided.Less

Mississippian Mortuary Practices and the Quest for Interpretation

Lynne P. Sullivan and Lynne P. Mainfqrt Jr.

in Mississippian Mortuary Practices: Beyond Hierarchy and the Representationist Perspective

Mississippian Period (ca. A.D. 900–1500) native peoples in the southeastern and midwestern United States are known for towns that typically include platform mounds and plazas and for elaborate and ... More

Mississippian Period (ca. A.D. 900–1500) native peoples in the southeastern and midwestern United States are known for towns that typically include platform mounds and plazas and for elaborate and well-crafted copper and shell ornaments, pottery vessels, and stonework. Some of these objects were socially valued goods that often were placed in ritual contexts, such as graves, within or near Mississippian towns. The interment of elaborate funerary objects with some Mississippian individuals naturally led scholars to ask questions about social inequities in Mississippian societies. The intellectual bridges that connect archaeologically observed mortuary practices with the social behaviors of past populations are of significant interest to archaeologists, and the study of Mississippian mortuary sites was instrumental in the development of archaeological mortuary theory. New perspectives, such as the notions of cultural pluralism that inform the interpretation of diverse ethnic groups bound together at Cahokia or interpretations of burial rituals as theatrical ideological tableaus, are influencing the interpretations of Mississippian social practices.Less

Understanding Late Classic Maya Mortuary Ritual in Caves: Dental Evidence of Health from Macro- and Microscopic Defects and Caries

Amy R. Michael, Gabriel D. Wrobel, and Jack Biggs

Cathy Willermet and Andrea Cucina (eds)

in Bioarchaeology of Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica: An Interdisciplinary Approach

Bioarchaeology frequently investigates dental health in burial populations to make inferences about mortuary variability within and between ancient groups. In this chapter, micro- and macroscopic ... More

Bioarchaeology frequently investigates dental health in burial populations to make inferences about mortuary variability within and between ancient groups. In this chapter, micro- and macroscopic dental defects were examined in a series of ancient Maya mortuary cave and rockshelter burials in Central Belize. The nature of mortuary cave ritual use and funerary performance in the Late Classic is widely debated in the literature. This study utilizes two analytical approaches, mortuary practice and paleopathology, to better understand mortuary variability between two site types that may be distinguished by social status in life. Ethnohistoric accounts focused on mortuary activities in the Late Classic period have described sacrificial victims as individuals originating outside of the elite population. To test these accounts, this study compares the dental health data of individuals from non-elite (rockshelter) populations to elite (cave) burial contexts.Less

The Missing Persons in Mississippian Mortuaries

Timothy R. Paüketat

in Mississippian Mortuary Practices: Beyond Hierarchy and the Representationist Perspective

Mortuary studies in archaeology frequently focus on inferring the function or meaning of some burial program in society. This essay poses a simple question concerning how we understand those mortuary ... More

Mortuary studies in archaeology frequently focus on inferring the function or meaning of some burial program in society. This essay poses a simple question concerning how we understand those mortuary practices: Who is missing? It argues that around Cahokia, the precocious granddaddy of Mississippian political capitals and religious centers, the lasting effects of key mortuary practices involved a transformation of personal and corporate identities. A series of unusual mortuaries are associated with this early Cahokian era (ca. A.D. 1050–1200). To explain the Cahokia and Cahokia-related mortuary phenomena relative to the dramatic founding events of the early eleventh century, this essay draws on notions of performance and theatricality as well as two other theoretical concepts: a contemporary sense of personhood and the notion of citation. It contends that the specificities of audience participation in any mortuary spectacle transformed local senses of personhood as well as the consciousness of audiences. Agency and self were redefined by and for everybody involved in the gatherings, not just once-influential and now-dead persons. Such an argument helps explain the Mississippianization of ancient eastern North America.Less

Historical Perspectives

Satsuki Kawano

in Nature's Embrace: Japan's Aging Urbanites and New Death Rites

The Grave-Free Promotion Society (GFPS) has been scattering the ashes of its members since 1991, as opposed to the traditional practice of interring them in a family grave. GFPS members feel that ... More

The Grave-Free Promotion Society (GFPS) has been scattering the ashes of its members since 1991, as opposed to the traditional practice of interring them in a family grave. GFPS members feel that they would like to choose their own mortuary practices rather than follow the social convention. They are also critical of for-profit cemetery providers and Buddhist temples that demand high ceremonial costs. By briefly reviewing the history of Japanese mortuary practices, this chapter contextualizes the binaries that often characterize ash scattering and the family grave: the individual versus the collective, fluidity versus fixity, and a new practice versus a persisting custom. After situating the scattering of ashes in historical contexts, it explores to what extent and in what ways the scattering of ashes through the GFPS is similar to, or different from, earlier mortuary practices in Japan. By reincorporating fluidity and flexibility, the scattering of ashes belongs to a series of new mortuary practices expanded since the 1990s to cope with the effects of postindustrial shifts on Japanese society.Less

The Materialization of Status and Social Structure at Koger’s Island Cemetery, Alabama

Jon Bernard Marcqux

in Mississippian Mortuary Practices: Beyond Hierarchy and the Representationist Perspective

This essay addresses the current shift in explanatory frameworks used to interpret the mortuary practices of Mississippian societies by offering an alternative interpretation of the mortuary ... More

This essay addresses the current shift in explanatory frameworks used to interpret the mortuary practices of Mississippian societies by offering an alternative interpretation of the mortuary practices materialized at the Koger's Island site, a Mississippian cemetery located in the middle Tennessee River Valley of northern Alabama. It considers the interpretation of Christopher Peebles, who analyzed the Koger's Island cemetery using the Binford-Saxe mortuary program and the socio-evolutionary concept of the ranked society. It tests the relationship between social structure and mortuary practices by using a Binford-Saxe-type analysis that focuses on burial types, variability in the distribution of artifacts, and the spatial arrangement of graves within the Koger's Island cemetery. It concludes that the hierarchical status of individuals appears to have been based on achievement rather than inheritance. Based on the spatial distribution of interments and funerary objects, the mortuary practices of the local community were more likely structured by a form of dual social structure in that these practices marked either the membership of the deceased in one of two corporate kin groups or their status as an “outsider.”Less

Mortuary Practices and Cultural Identity at the Turn of the Sixteenth Century in Eastern Tennessee

Lynne P. Sullivan and Michaelyn S. Harle

in Mississippian Mortuary Practices: Beyond Hierarchy and the Representationist Perspective

Mortuary practices can provide insights into ritual and into differentiation across social dimensions such as gender and status. But just as differences in pottery styles may not correlate directly ... More

Mortuary practices can provide insights into ritual and into differentiation across social dimensions such as gender and status. But just as differences in pottery styles may not correlate directly with social boundaries, differences in mortuary practices alone may not reflect difference in cultural identity. This essay examines multiple dimensions of mortuary practices observed at two contemporaneous late Mississippian sites in order to revisit a long-standing discussion in the archaeology of Eastern Tennessee about the relationship and cultural identities of the Mouse Creek and Dallas phases. In the 1940s, Lewis and Kneberg (1946) correlated these archaeological complexes with differing cultural groups, the Yuchi and Creek, respectively. For this exploratory study, several cultural practices (especially those that can be discerned from mortuary practices) of two contemporary groups — the mid- to late-fifteenth-century inhabitants of the Fains Island and Ledford Island sites — are compared.Less

Herto Brains and Minds: Behaviour of Early Homo sapiens from the Middle Awash

Yonas Beyene

in Social Brain, Distributed Mind

The discovery of three late Middle Pleistocene hominid crania, Homo sapiens idaltu, at Herto in the Middle Awash research area in Ethiopia in 1997 shed considerable light on this little-known period ... More

The discovery of three late Middle Pleistocene hominid crania, Homo sapiens idaltu, at Herto in the Middle Awash research area in Ethiopia in 1997 shed considerable light on this little-known period in Africa. These fossils consist of two adults' and a child's crania. All are morphologically intermediate between geologically earlier African fossils and anatomically modern later Pleistocene humans. The three Herto Homo sapiens idaltu crania show cutmarks indicating defleshing using sharp-edged stone tools. The post-mortem modifications and manipulation of the crania, demonstrated best on the child and broken adult crania, suggest that Homo sapiens idaltu performed ritual mortuary practices of which the dimension, context and meaning might only be revealed by further discoveries.Less

Social and Spatial Dimensions of Moundville Mortuary Practices

Gregory D. Wilson, Vincas P. Steponaitis, and Keith P. Jacobi

in Mississippian Mortuary Practices: Beyond Hierarchy and the Representationist Perspective

Scholars have only recently begun to investigate Mississippian mortuaries as important sites for the living as well as the dead. The archaeological signatures of mortuary practices not only reflect ... More

Scholars have only recently begun to investigate Mississippian mortuaries as important sites for the living as well as the dead. The archaeological signatures of mortuary practices not only reflect the status of the deceased but were also shaped by the social aspirations of the living. Archaeological investigations have revealed that Mississippian mortuary practices were not uniform across the southeastern and midwestern United States. The Moundville site, located in the Black Warrior River valley of west-central Alabama, was the political and ceremonial capital of one of the largest and most complex Mississippian polities in the southeastern United States. This essay examines the social and spatial dimensions of Moundville mortuary practice by documenting and interpreting the size, arrangement, and composition of selected Mississippian cemeteries at the site. These cemeteries, uncovered during the 1939 and 1940 excavations of the Moundville Roadway, exhibit considerable internal variation in terms of age, sex, and mortuary treatment. Based on their composition, small size, strategic location, and duration, small corporate kin groups probably used these cemeteries to assert social and spatial claims within the Moundville polity.Less

Aztalan Mortuary Practices Revisited

Lynne G. Goldstein

in Mississippian Mortuary Practices: Beyond Hierarchy and the Representationist Perspective

The Aztalan site sits on the banks of the Crawfish River in Jefferson County, Wisconsin, and has been protected as a state park for more than fifty years. Prominent architectural features such as a ... More

The Aztalan site sits on the banks of the Crawfish River in Jefferson County, Wisconsin, and has been protected as a state park for more than fifty years. Prominent architectural features such as a substantial stockade and platform mounds are believed to date to the Mississippian Period. The first excavations at Aztalan took place in 1838 and were carried out by W. T. Sterling in an attempt to ascertain the nature of the “ruins” of the stockade. Although no cemetery has been documented at Aztalan, human remains have been found in one of three sets of contexts on the site proper indicative of Aztalan mortuary practices: eleven adult individuals were recovered from what was originally described as a “crematorium” on the second stage of the northwest pyramidal mound; primary inhumations are limited in number and usually consist of a flexed or partially flexed individual placed in a burial pit with few or no grave goods; scattered pieces of human bone recovered from refuse pits, storage pits, so-called firepits, or general habitation debris.Less

Biological Affinities and Mortuary Archaeology in Coastal Northern Populations of Yucatán at the End of the Postclassic Period: Demic Considerations

Andrea Cucina, Allan Ortega Muñoz, Sandra Verónica, and Elizalde Rodarte

Cathy Willermet, Andrea Cucina, Cathy Willermet, and Andrea Cucina (eds)

in Bioarchaeology of Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica: An Interdisciplinary Approach

The authors of this chapter focus their attention on the distribution of mortuary practices and their relationship to population affinities among several Postclassic (AD 1000–1520) Maya sites located ... More

The authors of this chapter focus their attention on the distribution of mortuary practices and their relationship to population affinities among several Postclassic (AD 1000–1520) Maya sites located long the eastern coast of the Yucatán Peninsula. The archaeological evidence suggests a lack of clear and culturally well-established patterns of mortuary practices in the region. Coastal sites represented important commercial and ceremonial centers along maritime trade routes around the peninsula, and were therefore potentially subject to population movement. The joint analysis of mortuary patterns and site biological distances, based on the evidence of dental morphology, indicates that biological relationships between sites does not correspond to similarities in mortuary practices, suggesting a series of diverse relationships between sites long the peninsula’s east coast.Less

Sectarian Researchers and the Funeral Problem

Mark Michael Rowe

in Bonds of the Dead: Temples, Burial, and the Transformation of Contemporary Japanese Buddhism

This chapter situates temple priests in institutional networks and investigates a more conceptual, but equally critical, aspect of the funeral problem: the changing interpretation and unclear role of ... More

This chapter situates temple priests in institutional networks and investigates a more conceptual, but equally critical, aspect of the funeral problem: the changing interpretation and unclear role of doctrine in mortuary practice. Specifically, it is examined here how “concrete” aspects of funerary Buddhism are transformed from institutional dilemmas into existential crises by influential sectarian scholars whose discourse guides the way Buddhist priests think about their vocation. The chapter then analyzes differing conceptions of funerary Buddhism within the activities of certain sectarian intellectuals and researchers in the Jodo, Soto, Shingon Buzanha, and Nichiren sects. This dilemma assumes a number of forms: from debates over the relationship between “true” Buddhism and folk beliefs, to concerns over the dissonance between the training of priests and the day-to-day work of local temples, and to irritation over institutional gaps between sectarian elites and local priests.Less

Theories as actants: Translating mortuary practice

Chris Fowler

in The Emergent Past: A Relational Realist Archaeology of Early Bronze Age Mortuary Practices

This chapter examines various interpretations of Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age mortuary practices in North-East England. More specifically, it considers the key conceptual frameworks in ... More

This chapter examines various interpretations of Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age mortuary practices in North-East England. More specifically, it considers the key conceptual frameworks in circulation and their relational emergence in archaeology. It also explores how specific anthropological or sociological concepts affect the interpretations of antiquarians and archaeologists, as well as the kinds of references produced based on those foundations, including ethnic and cultural groups, elites and chiefs, prestige, and social differentiation based on age and sex. Furthermore, it analyses the patterns in deposition and monumentalisation of burial grounds founded in religious belief, along with the co-emergence of different relations, different materials and persons, things, and places. Finally, the chapter describes mortuary practices as transformations effected through rites of passage.Less

Temporal Changes in Mortuary Behavior: Evidence from the Middle and Upper Nodena Sites, Arkansas

Robert C. Mainfqrt Jr. and Rita Fisher-Carroll

in Mississippian Mortuary Practices: Beyond Hierarchy and the Representationist Perspective

This essay focuses on the central Mississippi valley, more specifically late-period mortuary populations therein, that are roughly contemporary and probably date between about A.D. 1350 and 1550. ... More

This essay focuses on the central Mississippi valley, more specifically late-period mortuary populations therein, that are roughly contemporary and probably date between about A.D. 1350 and 1550. There are few radiocarbon dates, and none directly date human burials. There is at present little basis for inferring temporal relationships between late-period sites in the region, much less for seriating graves within individual sites. This essay examines changes in mortuary practices that probably occurred within a few generations at two late-period sites in northeast Arkansas: Middle Nodena and Upper Nodena. It analyzes the issue of relative ages of the sites based upon mortuary data (including funerary objects). The sites differ in the location of ceramic vessels within individual graves.Less

Wari Community Organization: Demography, Migration, and Mortuary Treatment

Tiffiny A. Tung

in Violence, Ritual, and the Wari Empire: A Social Bioarchaeology of Imperialism in the Ancient Andes

This chapter presents the age-at-death and sex distributions at all three sites, and the strontium isotope and ancient mtDNA data from Conchopata. Those demographic data are used to reconstruct the ... More

This chapter presents the age-at-death and sex distributions at all three sites, and the strontium isotope and ancient mtDNA data from Conchopata. Those demographic data are used to reconstruct the forms of community organization at each site and how they differ. At Conchopata, there are significantly more females than males, and the author suggests that this may be because men died while away on military campaigns, never to return to their home community to receive proper burial. The Beringa demographic profile appears to represent the once-living community and indicates that it was a village community with extended family groups. The La Real demographic profile is not representative of a once-living community; there are few infants and children, and significantly more men than women, which likely reflects a burial program whereby adult men were preferentially selected for burial there.Less

Changing places, changing communities

Chris Fowler

in The Emergent Past: A Relational Realist Archaeology of Early Bronze Age Mortuary Practices

This chapter examines Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age mortuary practices in North-East England and their relationship with places and landscapes. In particular, it considers the sites chosen for ... More

This chapter examines Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age mortuary practices in North-East England and their relationship with places and landscapes. In particular, it considers the sites chosen for mortuary activity, including the funerary transformation of the recently deceased, burial, intercession with the dead, and production of cemeteries and mounds. It first looks at the key features of landscapes of North-East England that became intertwined with mortuary activity before turning to an analysis of patterns where the dead were buried. It then discusses the changing character of places where the dead were assembled, including cemeteries, cairns, barrows, henges, sites with isolated burials, and rock shelters. Finally, the chapter explores the composition of and evidence for other activities at some of these locales to place the treatment of the dead within the context of other practices.Less

Personhood, Identity, and the Dead

Karina Croucher

in Death and Dying in the Neolithic Near East

This chapter examines concepts of fragmentation in relation to the mortuary practices of the Neolithic Near East, with special reference to the intentional disarticulation, defleshing, and possible ... More

This chapter examines concepts of fragmentation in relation to the mortuary practices of the Neolithic Near East, with special reference to the intentional disarticulation, defleshing, and possible consumption of the human body and animals. It considers human-animal relationships and the notion of animals as ancestors, along with the relational and contextual aspects of personhood. After general discussion on bodies and personhood, the chapter turns to archaeological case studies from the Neolithic Near East to illustrate themes and ideas related to overall concepts of personhood and identity. In particular, it explores identity-forming relationships between people, animals, and things, and between the living and the dead. Finally, it looks at the practice of consumption of the dead, or cannibalism, and cremation.Less

Mortuary Practices in a Colonial Environment

Roberto Valcárcel Rojas

in Archaeology of Early Colonial Interaction at El Chorro de Maíta, Cuba

Chapter 7 treats the study of the objects located in the cemetery and their relation with mortuary practices. It establishes the European origin of many of the pieces or their connection with the ... More

Chapter 7 treats the study of the objects located in the cemetery and their relation with mortuary practices. It establishes the European origin of many of the pieces or their connection with the action of importation by the Europeans. What is clear is that their presence was determined by the territorial origin of the individuals and their social status. The study established the presence of lace-ends (agujetas) made of brass, that together with certain taphonomic details indicate the burial of clothed individuals. The cemetery is distinguished by the variety of mortuary practices, some of which combine practices of indigenous origin with those of Christian origin, on occasion in the same burial. These show clear variations that depend on the territorial origin of the individuals, which together with the demographic structure of both groups indicates that the non-locals arrived at the site as part of the colonization process. More than a third of the burials were realized after European arrival and there is no evidence consistent with pre-Columbian burial. These characteristics and the absence of cemeteries in Antillean communities with Meillacan ceramics suggest that it was established in colonial times.Less