Abstract
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 philosophical-religious, social organizational, 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.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References cited
Abbott, D. R., and Howard, J. (1991).Paleohydraulics and ceramic exchange: Structure and interaction in Hohokam irrigation communities. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, New Orleans, April.
Ariès, P. (1977).L'Homme devant la Mort, Éditions du Seuil, Paris.
Bartel, B. (1982). A historical review of ethnological and archaeological analyses of mortuary practice.Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 1(1):32–58.
Benedict, R. (1934).Patterns of Culture, Houghton Mifflin, Boston.
Binford, L. R. (1964).Archaeological Investigations on Wassam Ridge, Archaeological Salvage Report 17, Southern Illinois University Museum, Carbondale.
Binford, L. R. (1971). Mortuary practices: Their study and their potential. In Brown, J. A. (ed.), Approaches to the social dimensions of mortuary practices,Society for American Archaeology, Memoris 25:6–29.
Blakely, R. L. (1977) Sociocultural adaptations in prehistoric America.Southern Anthropological Society, Proceedings 11.
Blau, P. (1970). A formal theory of differentiation in organizations.American Sociological Review 35(2): 201–218.
Bloch, M. (1971).Placing the Dead, Seminar Press, London.
Bloch, M. and Parry, J. (eds.). (1982).Death and the Regeneration of Life, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England.
Braun, D. P. (1977).Middle Woodland-Early Late Woodland Social Change in the Prehistoric Central Midwestern U.S., Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Braun, D. P. (1979). Illinois Hopewell burial practices and social organization: A reexamination of the Klunk-Gibson mound group. In Brose, D. S., and Greber, N. (eds.)Hopewell Archaeology: The Chillicothe Conference, Kent State University Press, Kent, OH, pp. 66–79.
Braun, D. P. (1981). A critique of some recent North American mortuary studies.American Antiquity 46(2): 398–416.
Brown, J. A. (ed.) (1971a). Approaches to the social dimensions of mortuary practices,Society for American Archaeology, Memoirs 25.
Brown, J. A. (1971b). The dimensions of status in the burials at Spiro. In Brown, J. A. (ed.), Approaches to the social dimensions of mortuary practices,Society for American Archaeology, Memoirs 25: 92–112.
Brown, J. A. (1981). The search for rank in prehistoric burials. In Chapman, R., Kinnes, I., and Randsborg, K. (eds.),The Archaeology of Death, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England, pp. 25–39.
Brown, J. A. (1987). Quantitative burial analyses as interassemblage comparison. In Aldenderfer, M. S. (ed.),Quantitative Research in Archaeology, Sage Publications, Newbury Park, CA, pp.294–308.
Brunson, J. L. (1989).The Social Organization of the Los Muertos Hohokam: A Reanalysis of Cushing's Hemenway Expedition Data. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Arizona State University, Tempe.
Buikstra, J. E. (1977). Biocultural dimensions of archaeological study: A regional perspective.Southern Anthropological Society, Proceedings 11.
Cannon, A. (1989). The historical dimension in mortuary expressions of status and sentiment.Current Anthropology 30: 437–458.
Carr, C. (1992). Modeling the evolution of alliance strategies as systems regulators in egalitarian societies. InReports for 1990 and 1991: Fiftieth Anniversary Issue, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Inc., Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, New York, p. 147.
Carr, C., and Maslowski, R. (1995). Cordage and fabrics: Relating form, technology, and social processes. In Carr, C., and Neitzel, J. E. (eds.),Style, Society, and Person, Plenum Press, New York, pp. 297–343.
Carr, C., and Neitzel, J. E. (1995). Future directions for material style studies. In Carr, C., and Neitzel, J. E. (eds.),Style, Society, and Person, Plenum Press, New York, pp. 437–459.
Chapman, R. (1981). The emergence of formal disposal areas and the ‘problem’ of megalithic tombs in Europe. In Chapman, R., Kinnes, I., and Randsborg, K. (eds.),The Archaeology of Death, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England, pp.1–25.
Chapman, R. Kinnes, I., and Randsborg, K. (eds.) (1981)The Archaeology of Death, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England.
Chapman, R. and Randsborg, K. (1981) Approaches to the archaeology of death. In Chapman, R., Kinnes, I., and Randsborg, K. (eds.),The Archaeology of Death, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England, pp.1–25.
Cuevas, B. J. (1993).Death and Transition: The Dynamics of Liminal Space in Tibetan Ceremonies of the Dead. Unpublished Masters' thesis, Department of Religious Studies, University of Virginia, Charlottesville.
David, N. (1992). The archaeology of ideology: Mortuary practices in the central Mandara highlands, northern Cameroon. In Sterner, J., and David, N. (eds.),An African Commitment: Papers in Honour of Peter Lewis Shinnie, University of Calgary Press, Calgary, pp. 181–210.
Douglas, M. (1970).Natural Symbols, Pantheon Books, New York.
Durkheim, E. (1915, orig. 1912).The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, J. L. W. Swain, trans., George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., London.
Durkheim, E. (1938, orig. 1893).The Rules of Sociological Method. S. Solovay and J. Mueller, trans., Free Press, New York.
Durkheim, E. (1951, orig. 1897).Suicide, J. Spaulding and G. Simpson, trans., Free Press, New York.
Earle, T. K. (1990). Style and iconography as legitimation in complex chiefdoms. In Conkey, M., and Hastorf, C. (eds.),The Uses of Style in Archaeology, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England, pp. 73–81.
Eliade, M. (1964).Shamanism, Princeton University Press, Princeton.
Emerson, T. E. (1989). Water, serpents, and the underworld: An exploration into Cahokian symbolism. In Galloway, P. (ed.),Southern Ceremonial Complex: Artifacts and Analysis: The Cottonlandia Conference, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, pp. 45–92.
Flannery, K. V. (1972). The cultural evolution of civilizations.Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 3: 399–426.
Frazier, Sir J. (1929).The Golden Bough, Vol. 1, Book League of America, New York.
Gardner, R. Rockerfeller, M. G., Lincoln, J., and Chopra, J. (1963).Dead Birds (the film), McGraw-Hill, New York, in cooperation with the Film Study Center Library, Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.
Goldstein, L. G. (1976).Spatial Structure and Social Organization: Regional Manifestations of Mississippian Society, Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Northwestern University, Evanston.
Goldstein, L. G. (1981). One-dimensional archaeology and multi-dimensional people: Spatial organization and mortuary analysis. In Chapman, R., Kinnes, I., and Randsborg, K. (eds.),The Archaeology of Death, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England, pp. 53–70.
Goodenough, W. (1965). Rethinking ‘status’ and ‘role’: Toward a general model of the cultural organization of social relationships. In Gluckman, M., and Eggan, F. (eds.), The relevance of models for social anthropology,Association of Social Anthropologists of the Commonwealth, Monograph,1: 1–24.
Goodman, F. (1990).Where the Spirits Ride the Wind, Indiana University Press, Bloomington.
Goodman, F. (1991).Ecstacy, Ritual, and Alternate Reality: Religion in a Pluralistic World, Indiana University Press, Bloomington.
Greber, N. (1979). Variations in structure of Ohio Hopewell peoples.Mid-Continental Journal of Archaeology 4: 35–76.
Grof, S., and Grof, C. (1980).Beyond Death: The Gates of Consciousness. Thames and Hudson, London.
Gruber, J. W. (1971). Patterning in death in a late prehistoric village in Pennsylvania.American Antiquity 36: 64–76.
Habenstein, R. W., and Lamers, W. M. (1960).Funeral Customs the World Over, National Funeral Directors Association and Bulfin Printers, Milwaukee.
Hall, R. L. (1976). Ghosts, water barriers, corn and sacred enclosures in the Eastern Woodlands.American Antiquity 41: 360–364.
Hall, R. L. (1979). In search of the ideology of the Adena-Hopewell Climax. In Brose, D. S., and Greber, N. (eds.),Hopewell Archaeology: The Chillicothe Conference, Kent State University Press, Kent, OH, pp. 258–265.
Hall, R. L. (1983). A pan-continental perspective on Red Ochre and Glacial Kame ceremonialism. In Dunnell, R. C., and Grayson, D. K. (eds.),Lulu Linear Punctated: Essays in Honor of George Irving Quimby, University of Michigan, Museum of Anthropology, Anthropological Papers72: 74–107.
Henry, M. M. (1994)An Inventory of Hopewell Imagery, Their Spatial Relationships, and Possible Explanations from Native American Mythologies. Unpublished Masters thesis, Department of Anthropology, Arizona State University, Tempe.
Hertz, R. (1907). Contribution a une étude sur la representation collective de la mort. Année Sociologique10: 48–137.
Hodder, I. (1982a).Symbols in Action, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England.
Hodder, I. (1982b). Theoretical archaeology: A reactionary view. In Hodder, I. (ed.),Symbolic and Structural Archaeology, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England, pp. 1–16.
Hodder, I. (1982c).The Present Past, B. T. Batsford, London.
Hodder, I. (1984). Burials, houses, women and men in the European Neolithic. In Miller, D., and Tilley, C. (eds.),Ideology, Power, and Prehistory, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England, pp. 51–68.
Huntington, R., and Metcalf, P. (1979).Celebrations of Death, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England.
Huss-Ashmore, R. Goodman, A., H., and Armelagos, G. (1982). Nutritional inference from paleopathology.Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory 5: 395–473.
Jung, Carl G. (ed.) (1964).Man and His Symbols, Doubleday, Garden City.
Kearney, M. (1975). World view theory and study.Annual Review of Anthropology 4: 247–270.
Kearney, M. (1984).World View, Chandler and Sharp, Novato, CA.
Kroeber, A. L. (1927). Disposal of the dead.American Anthropologist 29: 308–315.
Kroeber, A. L. (1963).Anthropology: Cultural Patterns and Processes, Harcourt Brace, & World, New York.
Kubler-Ross, E. (1969).On Death and Dying, MacMillan, New York.
Kuhn, T. S. (1962).The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Little, B. J., Lanphear, K. M., and Owsley, D. W. (1992). Mortuary display and status in a Nineteenth Century Anglo-American cemetery in Manassas, Virginia.American Antiquity 57: 397–418.
Malinowski, B. (1954).Magic, Science, and Religion and Other Essays, Doubleday, Garden City.
Matlock, J. G. (1990).An animistic interpretation of the mortuary remains at Carter Ranch pueblo. Unpublished manuscript on file with the author, Department of Anthropology, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.
McGregor, J. C. (1941). Burial of an early American magician.American Philosophical Society, Proceedings 86(2): 270–301.
McGuire, R. H. (1992).Death, Society, and Ideology in a Hohokam Community, Westview Press, Boulder, CO.
Merbs, C. F. (1989).Orientation of Canadian Thule and early historic burials: seasonality and choice of heaven. Paper presented at the annual meetings of the Society for Historical Archaeology, Baltimore, January.
Miller, D. and Tilley, C. (1984).Ideology, Power, and Prehistory, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England.
Murdock, G. P. (1967). Ethnographic atlas: A summary.Ethnology 6(2): 109–236.
Murdock, G. P. (1969). World sampling provinces.Ethnology 7(3): 305–329.
Murdock, G. P. (1983).Outline of World Cultures, 6th ed. Human Relations Area Files, Inc., New Haven.
Murdock, G. P., and White, D. R. (1980) Standard cross-cultural sample. In Barry III, H., and Schlegel, A. (eds.),Cross-Cultural Samples and Codes, University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, pp. 3–27.
Murdock, G. P., Ford, C. S., Hudson, A. E., Kennedy, R., Simmons, L. W., and Whiting, J. W. M. (1982).Outline of Cultural Materials, 5th ed., Human Relations Area Files, Inc., New Haven.
Ortner, D. J., and Putschar, W. G. J. (1981). Identification of pathological conditions in human skeletal remains.Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology 28: 1–54.
O'Shea, J. (1981). Social configurations and the archaeological study of mortuary practices: A case study. In Chapman, R., Kinnes, I., and Randsborg, K. (eds.),The Archaeology of Death, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England, pp. 39–52.
O'Shea, J. (1984).Mortuary Variability: An Archaeological Investigation. Academic Press, New York.
Owsley, D. W., Berryman, H. E., and Bass, W. M. (1977). Demographic and osteological evidence for warfare at the Larson site, South Dakota.Plains Anthropologist, Memoir 13, 22–78, (part 1), 119–132 (part 2).
Pearson, M. P. (1982). Mortuary practices, society, and ideology: An ethnoarchaeological study. In Hodder, I. (ed.),Symbolic and Structural Archaeology, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England, pp. 99–113.
Pearson, M. P. (1984). Economic and ideological change: Cyclical growth in the pre-state societies of Jutland. In Miller, D., and Tilley, C. (eds.),Ideology, Power, and Prehistory, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England, pp. 69–92.
Pebbles, C. S. (1971). Moundville and surrounding sites: Some structural considerations of mortuary practices II. In Brown, J. (ed.), Approaches To the social dimensions of mortuary practices,Society for American Archaeology, Memoris 25: 68–91.
Peebles, C. S. (1972). Monothetic-divisive analysis of the Moundville burials: An initial report.Newsletter of Computer Archaeology 8(2): 1–13.
Peebles, C. S. (1974).Moundville: The Organization of a Prehistoric Community and Culture, Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Barbara.
Penney, D. (1983).Imagery of the Middle Woodland Period: The Birth of a North American Iconographic Tradition. Paper presented at the Douglas Fraser Memorial Symposium on Primitive and Precolumbian Art, Department of Anthropology, Columbia University, New York, April 15.
Penney, D. (1985). Continuities of imagery and symbolism in the art of the Woodlands. In Brose, D., Brown, J. A., and D. W. Penney (eds.),Ancient Art of the American Woodland Indians, Harry Abrams, New York, pp. 147–198.
Price, T. D. Schoeninger, M. J., and Armelagos, G. J. (1985). Bone chemistry and past behavior: An overview.Journal of Human Evolution 14: 419–447.
Rappaport, R. A. (1968).Pigs for the Ancestors, Yale University Press, New Haven.
Rappaport, R. A. (1979).Ecology, Meaning, and Religion, North Atlantic Books, Richmond, CA.
Ravesloot, J. C. (1988).Mortuary Practices and Social Differentiation at Casas Grandes, Chihuahua, Mexico, University of Arizona, Anthropological Papers No. 49, University of Arizona, Tempe.
Renfrew, C. (1976). Megaliths, territories, and populations. In De Laet, S. J. (ed.),Acculturation and Continuity in Atlantic Europe, Tempel, Brugge, Belgium, pp. 198–220.
Roe, P. (1995). Style, society, myth, and structure. In Carr, C. and Neitzel, J. E. (eds.),Style, Society, and Person, Plenum Press, New York, pp. 27–76.
Rose, H. J. (1922). Celestial and terrestrial orientation of the dead.Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Northern Ireland 52: 127–140.
Rosenthal, B. (1995). Iroquois false face masks: The multiple causes of style. In Carr, C., and Neitzel, J. E. (eds.),Style, Society, and Person, Plenum Press, New York, pp. 345–367.
Rothschild, N. (1979). Mortuary behavior and social organization at Indian Knoll and Dickson Mounds.American Antiquity 44: 658–675.
Sabloff, J. A., and Willey, G. R. (1980).A History of American Archaeology, W. H. Freeman, San Francisco.
Saxe, A. A. (1970).Social Dimensions of Mortuary Practices in a Mesolithic Population from Wadi Halfa, Sudan, Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Seeman, M. F. (1979). The Hopewell interaction sphere: The evidence for interregional trade and structural complexity.Indiana Historical Society, Prehistoric Research Series 5(2): 235–438.
Seeman, M. F. (1988). Ohio Hopewell trophy-skull artifacts as evidence for competition in Middle Woodland societies, Circa 50 B.C.-A.D. 350.American Antiquity 53: 565–577.
Service, E. R. (1962).Primitive Social Organization, Random House, New York.
Steward, J. H. (1955).Theory of Culture Change, University of Illinois Press, Urbana.
Stickel, E. G. (1968). Status differentiations at the Rincon site.University of California at Los Angeles, Archaeological Survey, Annual Report 10: 209–261.
Sugiyama, S. (1992). World view materialized at Teotihuacan, Mexico.Latin American Antiquity 4: 103–129.
Swanson, Guy E. (1960).Birth of the Gods, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor.
Tainter, J. A. (1975).The Archaeological Study of Social Change: Woodland Systems in West-Central Illinois, Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Northwestern University, Evanston.
Tainter, J. A. (1978). Mortuary practices and the study of prehistoric social systems.Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory 1: 105–141.
Taylor, W. W. (1948).A Study of Archaeology, Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale.
Toelken, B. (1979).The Dynamics of Folklore, Houghton Mifflin, Boston.
Trigger, B. (1969).The Huron Farmers of the North, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, New York.
Turner, V. (1967).The Forest of Symbols, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY.
Turner, V. (1969).The Ritual Process, Aldine, Chicago.
Tyler, J. B. (1921).The New Stone Age of Northern Europe, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.
Ubelaker, D. (1989).Human Skeletal Remains: Excavation, Analysis, Interpretation, Taraxacum, Washington, DC.
Ucko, P. J. (1969). Ethnography and archaeological interpretation of funerary remains.World Archaeology 1(2): 262–280.
Van Gennep, A. (1909).Les Rites de Passage, Emile Nourry, Paris.
Vayda, A. P., and Rappaport, R. A. (1967). Ecology, cultural and noncultural. In Clifton, J. (ed.),Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Houghton-Mifflin, Boston, pp. 477–497.
Vehik, S. C. (1975).Sociocultural Implications of Central European Early Bronze Age Mortuary Practices. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Missouri, Columbia.
Viollier, D. (1911).Essai sur les Rites Funéraires en Suisse des Origines a la Conquête Romaine, Leroux, Paris.
Walsh, R. N. (1990).The Spirit of Shamanism, Jeremy P. Tarcher, Los Angeles.
Webb, W. S., and Snow, C. E. (1945).The Adena People, University of Kentucky Reports in Anthropology and Archaeology No. 6, University of Kentucky, Lexington.
Webb, W. S., and Snow, C. E. (1974).The Adena People, University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville.
Webster, D. (1963).Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, Merriam, Springfield, MA.
White, L. (1949).The Science of Culture, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, New York.
Whittlesey, S. M. (1978).Status and Death at Grasshopper Pueblo: Experiments toward an Archaeological Theory of Correlates, Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Arizona, Tucson.
Willey, G. R., and Sabloff, J. A. (1980).A History of American Archaeology, W. H. Freeman, San Francisco.
Winters, H. D. (1968). Value systems and trade cycles of the Late Archaic in the midwest. In Binford, S. R., and Binford, L. R., (eds.),New Perspectives in Archeology, Aldine, Chicago, pp. 175–22.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Carr, C. Mortuary practices: Their social, philosophical-religious, circumstantial, and physical determinants. J Archaeol Method Theory 2, 105–200 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02228990
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02228990