Abstract
Typically during excavation and analysis, a human burial context is approached as a static entity. Interpretation proceeds as if the grave and its occupant were frozen in time at the moment of interment (Tielser 2007). On the contrary, a grave context is a dynamic location, both biologically and culturally. From the moment of death onward, biological and cultural taphonomic processes, including ritual sequences, act upon the body and its subsequent resting place or places. It is well documented in many cultures that mortuary rituals begin well before the actual moment of burial and extend well after it (Hertz 1960 [1907]; Metcalf and Huntington 1991; Parker-Pearson 1999; Rakita et al. 2005). Elaborate ritual dramas are sometimes played out at the death of a person, whether an elite or a commoner, as this book and other literature document (e.g., Brown 2003; 2006; 2010; Hall 2000; Shimada et al. 2004). Thus, in order to accurately portray a mortuary program, including ritual dramas of the kind of interest here, it is necessary to document the entire mortuary sequence and to distinguish between the taphonomic processes that result from human behavior, intentional or unintentional, and those that are chemical, biological, and pedological. Recent advances in taphonomic research (Duday 2006; Stodder 2008) provide a means by which to reconstruct the sequential actions of mortuary ritual.
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Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the then Ohio Archaeological Society, Columbus, for having provided Chris Carr access to and copies of unpublished and published field excavation photographs of many of the Ohio Hopewell burials and artifact deposits analyzed in this chapter, as well as unpublished field excavation notes for the sites in which the burials occurred. I thank Dr. Cheryl Johnston for providing us copies of her dissertation osteological notes on the human remains studied here. I also thank Dr. Johnston and the then Ohio Archaeological Society, Columbus, for access to their NAGPRA primary osteological data collection forms on the skeletal elements of human remains studied here. Much appreciation goes to Rebekah Zinser, M.A., for her long task of drafting the line drawings of the burials and artifact deposits presented in Appendix 5.2.
Notes
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1.
The approach used here was developed by French archaeologists and called “l’anthropologie de terrain” to emphasize the importance of attention to detail when collecting skeletal data in the field (Duday et al. 1990). As the approach gained popularity among English speaking archaeologists and bioarchaeologists the term was anglicized as “field anthropology” (e.g. Willis and Tayles 2009) and “archaeothanatology”. Archaeothanatology means the archaeology of ideas about death so it emphasizes that inferences can be made about culture-specific perceptions of death through the treatment of the dead body (e.g. Appleby 2016; Crevecoeur et al. 2015; Duday 2006; Duday et al. 2014; Harris and Tayles 2012; Nilsson Stutz and Larsson 2016). Other researchers have alternately used the terms “osteotaphonomy” or “human taphonomy” which emphasize the taphonomic focus of the approach (e.g. Geller 2014; Piehl et al. 2014; Serafin and Lope 2007; Scherer 2017; Tiesler 2004; Tiesler et al. 2010). As the work presented here is built on a foundation laid by Henri Duday and his colleagues, we use “l’anthropologie de terrain”. I have chosen to anglicize the French term slightly by omitting the article “le” in the text.
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2.
Some post-processual archaeologists have objected to the New Archaeology’s role-focused approaches to mortuary practices and study in society, holding that role descriptions envision human beings as social actors who must follow rigidly prescribed cultural scripts, and that roles are, thus, too static to model social dynamics and change. In actuality, New Archaeologists never embraced the concept of social role, instead focusing on social identities (sensu Goodenough 1965; e.g., Binford 1971:17; Braun 1979:67; J.A. Brown 1981:28), which are rigid. Further, the post-processual critique of social-role analysis misconstrued it, not understanding that roles can be modeled anywhere along a continuum from tightly scripted behaviors to negotiated, interactive, iterative, and rule-creating behaviors, with roles varying in flexibility across cultures and cultural contexts. This variation in the nature of social roles was well documented in sociological and anthropological literatures on social interactionist theories (Goffman 1959; 1969; Mead 1934; J. Turner 1991:410–471; R. Turner 1962) that preceded both the New Archaeology and post-processual archaeology. (For this history, see Carr and Case 2005:45–46.)
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3.
The 79 individuals equate to the 84 individuals in this study minus 5 individuals for which only line drawings, not photographs, were made in the field.
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4.
A photograph of Burial 1 under the Pricer Mound in the Seip earthwork (Shetrone and Greenman 1931:381, figure 14) shows 4 prismatic blades outside each of the left and right femora of a partially-cremated skeleton whereas field notes, a field drawing, the museum accession catalog, and a published report describe 4 prismatic blades outside only the left femora and 6 prismatic blades 1.5 ft above and outside the right femora. Four of the six blades above the right femora were placed instead next to the right femora in the photograph (see Chapter 22: Note 36). This discrepancy was not obvious from the photograph, itself.
A photograph of Burials 35 and 37 under Mound 25 in the Hopewell earthwork (unpublished Print 851, P396/3/1/E3, Ohio Historical Connection, Columbus Ohio), as well as a published description of Burial 35 (Shetrone 1926a:90), indicate that Burial 35 was as a very poorly preserved skeleton. Apparent from the photograph, its bone dust from the torso was removed and stacked in a pile in the chest region. The highly fragmented skull was exhumed and piled just above where the skull would naturally be for the photograph. The earspools found on either side of the skull, according to the publication, were placed instead between the left side of where the skull would have been and an accompanying isolated human skull for the photograph. A breastplate with two pearl beads attached, which was found on the chest of the individual according to the field notes and publication, was instead situated where the skull would have been for the photograph. It is obvious from the photograph that at least bones and bone dust of Burial 35 are not in situ.
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5.
The 43 inhumation equate to the 47 inhumations in this study minus 4 inhumations for which only line drawings, not photographs, were made in the field (Appendix 5.9).
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6.
The 33 cremations equate to the 36 cremations in this study minus 2 cremations for which only a line drawing was made in the field and 1 more cremation, the photographs of which were not clear enough to say whether bones were embedded partially in their soil matrices.
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7.
The 12 cremation burials are as follows. Hopewell site: Mound 20, Burial 1 (S, I); Mound 23, Burial 1 (N, R); Mound 25, Burials 17 (L, I), 29 (L, I), 43 (L, I). Liberty site: Edwin Harness Mound, M (L, I). Mound City site: Mound 7, Burial 13 (L, I); Mound 9, Burial 13+ (N, R). Seip site, Pricer Mound: Burials 1 (L, I), 10 (S, I), 19 (L, I), 88 (N, D).
“L” indicates a log tomb, “S” indicates a stone tomb, “N” indicates neither a log or stone tomb, “D” indicates a line drawing rather than a photograph, “I” indicates that bone fragments appear to have been in situ or approximately in situ when they were photographed. “R” indicates that bone fragments appear to have been excavated and then replaced for photographing.
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8.
The specific function and meaning of the Milky Way as a means for a deceased human’s soul to travel from the earth plane to an above realm was also known to many historic Woodland and Plains Indians (Chapter 6: Milky Way Specified as Path of Souls; Chapter 7: Table 7.8).
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Novotny, A.C. (2021). The Method of L’Anthropologie de Terrain and Its Potential for Investigating Ohio Hopewell Mortuary Records. In: Being Scioto Hopewell: Ritual Drama and Personhood in Cross-Cultural Perspective. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44917-9_5
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