Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of figures and credits
- List of tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Map
- 1 Ethnoarchaeology: its nature, origins, and history
- 2 Theorizing ethnoarchaeology and analogy
- 3 Fieldwork and ethics
- 4 Human residues: entering the archaeological context
- 5 Fauna and subsistence
- 6 Studying artifacts: functions, operating sequences, taxonomy
- 7 Style and the marking of boundaries: contrasting regional studies
- 8 Settlement: systems and patterns
- 9 Site structures and activities
- 10 Architecture
- 11 Specialist craft production and apprenticeship
- 12 Trade and exchange
- 13 Mortuary practices, status, ideology, and systems of thought
- 14 Conclusions: ethnoarchaeology in context
- Bibliography
- Index
13 - Mortuary practices, status, ideology, and systems of thought
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2015
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of figures and credits
- List of tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Map
- 1 Ethnoarchaeology: its nature, origins, and history
- 2 Theorizing ethnoarchaeology and analogy
- 3 Fieldwork and ethics
- 4 Human residues: entering the archaeological context
- 5 Fauna and subsistence
- 6 Studying artifacts: functions, operating sequences, taxonomy
- 7 Style and the marking of boundaries: contrasting regional studies
- 8 Settlement: systems and patterns
- 9 Site structures and activities
- 10 Architecture
- 11 Specialist craft production and apprenticeship
- 12 Trade and exchange
- 13 Mortuary practices, status, ideology, and systems of thought
- 14 Conclusions: ethnoarchaeology in context
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
That the dead do not bury themselves may seem obvious and banal.
(Michael Parker Pearson 1993: 204)The Tarahumara are not afraid of death or the dead, and soliciting information from informants about burial caves is no more exasperating than inquiry into other aspects of their daily life.
(Allen Pastron and C. William Clewlow 1974a: 310)While rarely devoid of information on people's beliefs and ways of thinking about the world and their place in it, few ethnoarchaeological studies probe this aspect of culture and its expression in material things. Usually such research involves semiotic analysis of material culture and other behaviors, and employs a hermeneutic approach; however some research on the disposal of the dead is not of this kind at all, but rather seeks patterning in mortuary practice that relates to social structure and status. While some authors are concerned to understand systems of thought, others emphasize ideology in the narrower sense of assertions underlying a political program. However, inasmuch as elements of the former are politicized and incorporated into the latter, it is often difficult to maintain a distinction between the two concepts, this depending largely upon the attitude of the researcher to her or his material. Linda Donley(-Reid)'s (e.g., 1982, 1990b) papers on the houses of the Swahili elite and on their uses of porcelain, beads, and utilitarian pottery are explorations of systems of thought.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Ethnoarchaeology in Action , pp. 378 - 408Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001