The Odd, the Unusual, and the Strange: Bioarchaeological Explorations of Atypical Burials 1683401034, 9781683401032

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The Odd, the Unusual, and the Strange Bioarchaeological Interpretations of the Human Past: Local, Regional, and Global Perspectives

The Odd, the Unusual, and the Strange Bioarchaeological Explorations of Atypical Burials

Edited by Tracy K. Betsinger, Amy B. Scott, and Anastasia Tsaliki Foreword by Eileen M. Murphy Series Foreword by Clark Spencer Larsen

University of Florida Press Gainesville

Copyright 2020 by Tracy K. Betsinger, Amy B. Scott, and Anastasia Tsaliki All rights reserved Published in the United States of America This book may be available in an electronic edition. 25 24 23 22 21 20

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Betsinger, Tracy K., editor. | Scott, Amy B., editor. | Tsaliki, Anastasia, editor. | Murphy, Eileen M., author of foreword. Title: The odd, the unusual, and the strange : bioarchaeological explorations of atypical burials / edited by Tracy K. Betsinger, Amy B. Scott, and Anastasia Tsaliki ; foreword by Eileen M. Murphy. Other titles: Bioarchaeological interpretations of the human past. Description: Gainesville : University of Florida Press, 2020. | Series: Bioarchaeological interpretations of the human past: local, regional, and global perspectives | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019004396 | ISBN 9781683401032 (cloth : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Burial—History. | Excavations (Archaeology) | Burial—Social aspects—History. | Death—Social aspects—History. Classification: LCC GN486 .O33 2019 | DDC 306.9—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019004396 University of Florida Press 2046 NE Waldo Road Suite 2100 Gainesville, FL 32609 http://upress.ufl.edu

Contents

List of Figures ix List of Tables xiii Foreword xv Series Foreword xxi Acknowledgments xxiii 1. Deconstructing “Deviant”: An Introduction to the History of Atypical Burials and the Importance of Context in the Bioarchaeological Record 1 Amy B. Scott, Tracy K. Betsinger, and Anastasia Tsaliki 2. Bodies among Fragments: Non-Normative Inhumations among the Preclassic and Classic Period Hohokam of the Tucson Basin 18 Jessica I. Cerezo-Román 3. Interpreting a Multiple Burial in an Early Ancestral Pueblo Village 44 Ann L. W. Stodder 4. A Young Man Twice Burned: A Deviant Burial from West-Central Illinois 66 Della Collins Cook, Laura Gano, Kristin M. Hedman, Susan Spencer Helfrich, and Andrew R. Thompson 5. The Odd Man Out in a Pioneer Cemetery at Seccombe Lake Park, San Bernardino, California 90 Patricia M. Lambert

6. Defining Non-Normative Practices in a Diverse Funerary Record: Insights from the Caribbean 114 Hayley L. Mickleburgh, Menno L. P. Hoogland, Jason E. Laffoon, Darlene A. Weston, Roberto Valcárcel Rojas, Anne van Duijvenbode, and Angus A. A. Mol 7. Good, Bad, or Indifferent? A Unique “Deviant” Burial from the Formative Site of Aranjuez-Santa Lucía, South Central Andes 133 Olga U. Gabelmann and Lawrence S. Owens 8. The Hunchback, the Contortionist, the Man with the Stolen Identity, and the One Who Will Be Born in the Afterlife: Pre-Hispanic Deviant Burials from Huarmey Valley, Peru 152 Wiesław Więckowski, Miłosz Giersz, and Roberto Pimentel Nita 9. What Is the Norm? “Irregular” and “Regular” Burial Practices of the Early Iron Age in Central Europe 170 Nils Müller-Scheessel, Carola Berszin, Gisela Grupe, Annette Schwentke, Anja Staskiewicz, Thomas Tütken, and Joachim Wahl 10. Burial in a Kiln: Transgression and Punishment in Late Antiquity 190 Anastasia Tsaliki 11. Variation beyond the Grave: Contextualizing Unusual Burials in Early Medieval Bohemia 205 Lauren Hosek 12. Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to Non-Normative Burials in Finland in the Eleventh–Thirteenth Centuries AD 225 Ulla Moilanen 13. Atypical Burials in Early Medieval Poland: A Critical Overview 246 Leszek Gardeła 14. Does Health Define Deviancy? Non-Normative Burials in Post-Medieval Poland 276 Tracy K. Betsinger and Amy B. Scott 15. The “Vampires” of Lesbos: Detecting and Interpreting Anti-Revenant Ritual in Greece 292 Sandra Garvie-Lok and Anastasia Tsaliki

16. Natural Mummification as a Non-Normative Mortuary Custom of Modern Period Sicily (1600–1800) 312 Dario Piombino-Mascali and Kenneth C. Nystrom 17. Out of Range? Non-Normative Funerary Practices from the Neolithic to the Early Twentieth Century at Çatalhöyük, Turkey 323 Scott D. Haddow, Joshua W. Sadvari, Christopher J. Knüsel, Sophie V. Moore, Selin E. Nugent, and Clark Spencer Larsen 18. Deviant Treatment of the Body as a Mortuary Ritual: A Case from the Middle Jomon Period in Eastern Japan 347 Takeshi Ishikawa 19. Ancestors, Conflict, and Criminality in Ancient China and Mongolia 361 Christine Lee 20. Dependent Deviance: Castration and Deviant Burial 376 Kathryn Reusch Afterword 397 Andrew Reynolds List of Contributors 401 Index 409

Figures

1.1. World map showing geographic range of research included in this volume 7 2.1. Site locations and time period 19 2.2. Individual age at death, time period, and burial type 26 2.3. Preclassic Period inhumations, burial objects, and age groups 27 2.4. Preclassic Period cremations, burial objects, and age groups 27 2.5. Classic Period inhumations, burial objects, and age at death groups 28 2.6. Classic Period cremations, burial objects, and age at death groups 28 2.7. Inhumations, sex, burial objects, and time periods 29 2.8. Cremations, sex, burial objects, and time periods 29 3.1. Multiple burial in Pit Structure 3, site 5MT5106 45 3.2. McPhee Village sites and site 5MT5106 46 3.3. Contexts of Dolores Pueblo I burials 48 4.1. Perino’s Group 4 redrawn to reflect age/size information 69 4.2. SA117 forearms 71 4.3. SA117 cranium 73 4.4. SA117 radiograph 76 4.5. Principal components analysis of Late Woodland and Mississippian dentitions 79 4.6. Principal components analysis of Late Woodland and Mississippian crania 80 4.7. Linear enamel hypoplasia in SA117 81 5.1. Map of Seccombe Lake Cemetery 91 5.2. Diagram of Burial 5 in situ 93 5.3. Dental features of Burial 5 97

6.1. Map of the Caribbean 115 6.2. Prevalence of different forms of funerary treatment in the Caribbean 119 6.3. Two-mode network visualization of co-occurrence of burial types 121 6.4. Burial F58-23, Lavoutte, St. Lucia, showing primary individual with secondary skull deposit 126 7.1. Location of Formative Period burial sites in Bolivia 134 7.2. Aranjuez-Santa Lucía: Burial mound MO1 136 7.3. Position of burial E2 during excavation 138 7.4. Position of burial E2 138 7.5. Detail of burial E2 139 7.6. Aranjuez-Santa Lucía: Excavation plan of burial mound MO1 140 8.1. Location and plan of cemetery 154 8.2. Deviant burials from Huarmey 158 8.3. Burial 2012-CF8, tentative reconstruction 160 9.1. Central Europe with sites mentioned in the text 171 9.2. Reconstruction of central chamber of burial mound 172 9.3. Mundelsheim “Ottmarsheimer Höhe”/Baden-Württemberg 176 9.4. Orientation of heads of newborns and adults in settlement pits of the Early Iron Age 177 9.5. Age distribution of individuals from “regular” burials and settlement context 179 10.1. Skeletal remains at Merenda in situ 191 10.2. Plan of kiln and position of skeletal remains 192 10.3. Drawing of dismembered body parts 193 11.1. Libice nad Cidlinou archaeological site survey 207 11.2. Kanín II cemetery excavation at Libice nad Cidlinou 208 11.3. Kanín II atypical burial examples 212 12.1. Locations of inhumation cemeteries and regions 226 12.2. Profile documentations of graves 231 12.3. Positioning of sword and spearheads in graves 234 12.4. Grave 62 in Luistari cemetery in Eura 236 13.1. Map of Poland showing sites with atypical burials mentioned in the text 253 13.2. Reconstruction of grave 107 from Złota Pińczowska, Poland 255 13.3. Reconstruction of grave 15(29) from Wolin Młynówka, Poland 257 13.4. Reconstruction of grave 146 from Cedynia, Poland 259 x

Figures

13.5. Reconstruction of grave 104 from Niemcza, Poland 263 14.1. Burial of female with a sickle around her neck 280 14.2. Burial of female with a sickle across her abdomen and pelvis 281 14.3. Burial of female with a stone beneath her chin 282 14.4. Burial of female with sickle around her neck and fabric headband on top of skull 282 14.5. Burial of female with sickle around her neck 283 15.1. Excavation photograph from Nikomedia Street, Mytilene, Lesbos 302 15.2. Nail from Mytilene, similar to those found with the described burials 302 15.3. Unusual facial features of individual from Taxiarchis Myrintzou 304 16.1. Map of Sicily and of mummy collections 314 16.2. Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo 315 16.3. Mummies of Palermo depicted on an old postcard 316 17.1. Map of site showing major excavation areas 324 17.2. Typical Neolithic intramural primary burials at Çatalhöyük 326 17.3. Roman Period and Byzantine Period Christian burials at Çatalhöyük 328 17.4. Islamic burials at Çatalhöyük 330 17.5. Neolithic burial of adult male with sheep 332 17.6. Neolithic burial of young adult male in external midden space 334 17.7. Roman Period double burial 335 17.8. Grave marker of Güllü Ayşa on East Mound at Çatalhöyük 337 18.1. Spatial organization of eastern part of Kusakari site 349 18.2. Mortuary attributes of burials in eastern part of Kusakari site 350 18.3. No. 516 pit dwelling and 516-A skeletal remains 352 19.1. Map of archaeological sites mentioned with unusual burials 362 19.2. Longhu Xingtian, Han Dynasty soldier 366 19.3. Jinlianshan, burial with rocks on top 368 19.4. Shitaizi, decapitation 370 20.1. Greatest distribution of castration through time 378 20.2. Tomb marker, altar, and tomb mound of Tian Yi 380 20.3. Head and upper torso of mummified castrate 385

Figures

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Tables

2.1. Sites from the Preclassic and Classic Period in the Tucson Basin 20 3.1. Pueblo I burials on pit structure floors, Mesa Verde Region 52 4.1. Schild burial positions 68 4.2. Arm measurements, asymmetry, and interval since injury 81 5.1. Burials recovered from the historic cemetery at Seccombe Lake State Park 94 5.2. Reported deaths in the early San Bernardino Mormon Community 1851–1855 104 7.1. Short description of burials in mound MO1, Aranjuez-Santa Lucía 137 8.1. Characteristics of the burials from Huarmey 155 11.1. Normative and atypical burials at Kanín II 210 13.1. Basic features of early medieval inhumation graves in Poland 249 18.1. Deviant treatment of the body in the eastern part of the Kusakari site 352

Foreword

It is just over ten years since the publication of my edited volume Deviant Burial in the Archaeological Record. This was a popular book and one that had its origins in my research on children’s burial grounds (cillíní) in Ireland, places where unbaptized infants and other individuals considered unsuitable for burial in consecrated ground by the Catholic Church were interred during the Early Modern era. Some degree of spatial segregation of the dead seems to have been at play in medieval Ireland, but cillíní proliferated in the aftermath of the Counter-Reformation and were directly associated with the Augustinianist viewpoint that the unbaptized were under the power of the Devil and, as a result, could not be buried in consecrated ground. I was keen to further explore the concept of differential treatment in death, and I therefore organized a session at the annual conference of the European Association of Archaeologists in 2005 in Cork, where a range of scholars with experience of atypical burial practice from across Europe came together to share their information; these would be the papers that would subsequently find their way into the published Deviant Burial book in 2008. Much work has been undertaken in this subject area in the intervening decade and there have been considerable developments in theoretical approaches and methodologies that now render the need for a new book a necessity. The editors of this new collection of essays—Tracy K. Betsinger, Amy B. Scott, and Anastasia Tsaliki—each have expertise in researching atypical burial practices, particularly the fascinating “vampire” burials of Poland (Scott and Betsinger) and Greece (Tsaliki), that has enabled them to explore concepts relating to the fear of the recent dead in these countries. They have compiled a treasury of new case studies that reveal the richness, diversity, and in some

instances rather extreme nature of atypical burial practices across Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Using social bioarchaeological approaches the authors position the individual at the center of each of their studies; while the living may have been responsible for the burial of the dead, it is clear that the dead also had agency that influenced how their remains were treated posthumously. The temporal breadth of the volume demonstrates that people have deliberately imbued burials of particular individuals with difference across thousands of years; atypical burial is a powerful cross-cultural phenomenon and one that warrants close scrutiny and careful disentanglement so that we can learn more about social order and belief systems in communities of the past. Birth and death are two inescapable elements of life that we all hold in common with one another and indeed with all living creatures; they are universal. Birth has been relatively ignored by archaeologists, quite probably because of the challenges involved with finding traces of evidence associated with this momentous process: the creation of a unique individual beyond the realm of the womb. Conversely, at the opposite end of the spectrum, death has long been of fascination to archaeologists across all periods and cultural contexts. Archaeologists collectively hold an incredibly rich understanding of both physical and sociocultural processes in respect to the remains of the dead. Indeed, archaeology is one of a minority of modern disciplines that involve regularly encountering and engaging with the dead. As has been the case since time immemorial, a dead body is a biological entity that undergoes natural processes that break it down to its simplest constituents. This can be a messy, smelly, and generally unpalatable process that necessitates certain practicalities on the part of those left behind; these generally involve removal of the body from popular view so that it can decompose without negative impact on the living, or treating the body in such a way that it does not follow the natural order of decomposition and is preserved. Dealing with death does not just involve concerns about hygiene and sensitivities, however, and it is a process that is also inextricably linked to belief systems and concern for the fate of the deceased in the afterlife, not to mention a desire to ensure that nothing untoward befalls the living as a consequence of a death. In the world today most cultures have well-tested formulas in place for the treatment of the dead, largely influenced by the religious or secular background of the deceased. For many Western Christian religions, for example, the process involves a medical examination, following which the body is whisked away to a funeral home, where it remains in a respectful but rather isolated state of xvi

Foreword

repose. The body is stabilized and the natural processes of decomposition are halted (at least on a temporary basis), it is dressed in suitable attire and then carefully laid out in a standardized manner—extended and supine, with the arms by the side or crossed over the chest—surrounded by plush cushioning within the confines of a typically wooden coffin. Several days, or even weeks later, it is interred in a local burial ground or perhaps cremated. There seems little room for individualization in this dominant narrative of modern Christian death that serves to detach the living from the dead very soon after a person has died, no matter how close that person may have been to others during life. Even within the same branches of modern Western Christianity, however, there are variations in practice. The end result may be the same in that the body may be buried in a practically identical manner within the ground, but the processes that lead up to interment may be very different. Many rural Catholic and Protestant communities in Ireland, for example, still hold a “wake” for the dead, a practice that undoubtedly has considerable longevity on the island. The body is prepared for display by the local undertaker, but it is then brought home to spend its final three days physically positioned within the bosom of the family prior to burial in the local graveyard. In this scheme, rather than being detached from the dead, the bereaved family spends time with the deceased before their final separation. Indeed, members of the local community flock to the wake-house to pay their respects, and cups of tea and sandwiches are in constant supply throughout the day, their preparation another show of support for the bereaved family. Decades of the Rosary punctuate the proceedings in Catholic households, again providing a sense of group support. Alongside the prayers, however, prescribed folk rituals are adhered to, important for the good of both the living and the dead—the body is never left unattended and people take turns sitting with it throughout the night; the clock is stopped at the time of death and a window is opened to release the soul; mirrors are covered to allow the departing soul to go free. When it comes time for the funeral, the coffin is carried out feet first and walked to the townland boundary. While all these rituals may be invisible in the archaeological record they can serve to remind us that death would not have been the rather detached and somewhat centralized and sanitized process many experience today. It seems highly probable that, for the vast majority of people in a society, family and community members in the past would have had a greater physical involvement in how a body was finally removed from the world of the living. Excavation of a Christian medieval graveyard, for example, may yield burials Foreword

xvii

that at first glance appear homogenous, but after closer scrutiny they often reveal evidence of a degree of personalization of the burial; the inclusion of a protective stone or objects related to the domestic sphere, or the positioning of a body in a more restful pose. While such burials are generally in the minority, they are still buried within consecrated church ground, so the differences would seem rather subtle and perhaps suggestive of direct family involvement and an effort to personalize the grave. Many of the case studies included within this volume are of a rather dramatic nature and it is necessary to ask the question, What was it about a particular person that singled them out for such major differential treatment in death? An examination of the biological characteristics of the deceased individual in relation to the treatment they have been afforded by the living—position of the corpse, inclusion or absence of items within the grave, or the location of the burial—provides a method of reconstructing possible motives behind an atypical burial. I used the term “deviant” in the title of my book, but in the introduction I discussed its problematic nature. It is an unfortunate conundrum because it is probably the most instantly recognizable term in relation to variation in burial practice. While it may have had innocent origins in the world of statistics, it is clear that its use in relation to burial practice immediately conveys a sense of negativity. This would seem to derive from the use of the term within sociology, where is it used to define someone whose behavior violates social norms. As the studies in the current volume demonstrate, it is only in a minority of cases that clear evidence of a negative attitude toward the corpse is apparent in the burial record. It may be the case that we need to either clearly define what we mean when we use the term “deviant,” or stop using it altogether and replace it with perhaps more neutral terms, such as atypical, irregular, or non-normative. Indeed, the title of the current volume—The Odd, the Unusual, and the Strange: Bioarchaeological Explorations of Atypical Burials—makes a positive move in this direction and captures the essence of these burials in an effective and engaging manner. Death remains the great unknown for all of us. Humans are complex, imaginative and creative beings, and atypical burial practices afford us an opportunity to bore down into more complex thought processes associated with death, including notions of hope but also fear in relation to what comes next. A real strength of the volume lies in the diversity of case studies it contains since it is clear that people in the past have been afforded notably atypical burial rites for a wide range of reasons. They may have suffered from a major physical impairxviii

Foreword

ment during life, the manner of their death may have necessitated this response, or indeed it may have been connected to their perceived persona during life. In some cases it is impossible to determine why an individual was afforded such differential treatment, and we can only surmise that their identity during life was somehow viewed as special. Clear investment of physical and mental energy was made in the burials of each of the individuals included in this volume. Furthermore, the deaths may well have elicited a powerful emotional response in some members of the living community left behind. Indeed, we might also imagine that differential treatment in death may have served to further heighten the emotions associated with the loss in some way. Even an individual viewed as somehow “deviant” by broader society would potentially have had family members, unless they were new to an area. How would it have felt to see someone close treated unusually in death—their body physically manipulated, sometimes in a rather violent manner—or would such practices have been carried out by a select few in a private ceremony? Would the belief that the acts were necessary for the greater good of society really have proved a cushion against these emotions? Atypical burial practice remains a fascinating and fruitful area of archaeological research; this book makes a major contribution to the field through its breadth and diversity of contributions. It is a text that provides us with a window into the lives and deaths of an eclectic group of particularly special individuals from the past. Eileen M. Murphy Queen’s University Belfast

Foreword

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Series Foreword

When it comes to all things human, it isn’t just the anthropologists, psychologists, and other disciplines, especially in the social, behavioral, and medical sciences that are interested in “the odd, the unusual, and the strange.” In fact, I’m convinced that the attributes are of general interest to many publics around the world. As a bioarchaeologist, I find myself routinely reading accounts that I run across in various media regarding unusual burials and the treatment of the remains contained within. I also find myself asking questions relating to a simple question: “Why?” The scientist in me asks for explanations of the odd, the unusual, and the strange. As the authors contributing to this book are careful to point out, the answers to this simple question, however, are complex, containing behavioral circumstances associated with those involved in the post-death treatment of the remains of the deceased and construction of the burial setting. As this treatment pertains to unusual, sometime called “deviant” circumstances, the reasons for non-normative practices are complex but often relate to fear of the deceased or the circumstances that led to the death of specific individuals who were once living members of the community. I have long been interested in “deviant” burials, beginning with our discovery in the mid-1970s of two highly stand-out graves located at the base of a prehistoric burial mound on St. Catherines Island, Georgia, one of a series of barrier islands dotting the southeastern U.S. Atlantic coast (Thomas et al. 1977). That was my introduction to the odd, the unusual, and the strange in funerary practices and body treatment found in an unexpected context. While a graduate student, I was invited to participate in a long-term archaeological project on St. Catherines Island, a project in the planning stage to be headed by David Hurst Thomas of the American Museum of Natural History. During

initial testing of an early prehistoric mortuary context, two graves containing the skeletal remains of two adult males were discovered (Thomas et al. 1977). While the expectation of encountering human remains was of course expected, what was unexpected in our analyses was a complex of skeletal and material culture characteristics that were decidedly unusual and certainly unexpected. These characteristics included ancestry (African descent), coffin interment, and presence of nineteenth-century grave associations. My strong interest in reading more about unusual mortuary treatment in funerary remains and their overall context has taken on considerably more meaning now with this comprehensive volume containing 20 chapters representing state-of-the-art investigations of atypical burials. The volume is especially enriched by having a global discussion representing a remarkable range of settings in North America, South America, Europe, and Asia. The studies dig deep into the description of unusual burials, their mortuary treatment, and the historical, social, cultural, and behavioral circumstances so essential for answering questions and addressing hypotheses pertaining to odd, unusual, or atypical treatment of remains of deceased and their funerary remains. The chapters go well beyond presentation of descriptions of graves and the remains contained within. Rather, each of the chapters gives considerable attention to the cultural and social behaviors that are central to understanding in a deep way the mortuary record of non-normative treatment of the remains of deceased persons. I am thrilled to read this compendium of comprehensive studies addressing variation in treatment of the deceased in such a wide range of settings worldwide. While the mortuary record—burial, body treatment, and context—presented in this book does not fit commonly held perceptions of “normal” mortuary behavior and body treatment, nonetheless, it is the non-normative circumstances that give meaningful insights into individual deaths and the societies they represent, the diversity of the unusual, and the science behind its study. Clark Spencer Larsen Series Editor

Reference Cited Thomas, David Hurst, Stanley South, and Clark Spencer Larsen 1977 Rich Man, Poor Men: Observations on Three Antebellum Burials from the Georgia Coast. Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History 54(3): 393–420.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the University of Florida Press and editor Meredith Babb, in addition to series editor Clark Spencer Larsen. To the chapter authors, thank you for your insightful and fascinating contributions and patience throughout this process. Thank you to the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions, which have improved this volume. Thank you to Eileen Murphy and Andrew Reynolds for contributing a foreword and an afterword to this volume.

1 Deconstructing “Deviant” An Introduction to the History of Atypical Burials and the Importance of Context in the Bioarchaeological Record

A m y B. S c ot t, T r ac y K . Betsi nge r, a n d A na sta si a Tsa l i k i

The treatment of the dead is one of the few universals of all human societies, past and present. In every culture, people do something with the dead. What death represents biologically, socially, and culturally, is very different, as there are a myriad of practices and traditions that facilitate these changes in the physical and spiritual states of being, whether immediately obvious or experienced over the long term (see Lizza 2006; Youngner et al. 1999). The complex nature of death, and more specifically how we treat the dead is significant as the intricacies of this process speak to various elements of the individual and the community. While we recognize that funerary rites and mortuary practices do not always involve burials or may not leave archaeological evidence, this volume focuses predominantly on tangible mortuary practices with the acknowledgement that there is more to death beyond physical evidence. Mortuary practices, specifically burials, have been the subject of research and discussion in archaeology and bioarchaeology for more than ninety years, including early articles such as Kroeber’s 1927 treatise, Disposal of the Dead, which explores variation in cremation and inhumation practices among indigenous groups of California as well as cross-cultural examples of mortuary customs. This meaning and understanding of the mortuary process was also examined by Hertz (1960) in Death and the Right Hand and the social require-

ments (i.e., mourning) needed when one moves from “the visible society of the living into the invisible society of the dead” (86). Binford (1972) and Saxe (1970) solidified mortuary archaeology as a specialty within anthropology, utilizing a “social systems” approach to burials and mortuary treatments (see also O’Shea 1984; Shay 1985). More recently, there has been a broadening of the field to include mortuary individualism and agency (e.g., Aspöck 2008; Tsaliki 2008a, 2008b). Mortuary practices are a focus of research because these treatments are thought to reflect the role of the deceased and their soul “in the lives of the living” (Rakita and Buikstra 2005b: 93). Burial treatments, however, are not just about the dead, they are also about the living (Parker Pearson 1999) and their thoughts, ideas, interpretations, and practices. As Rakita and Buikstra (2005a) point out, “mortuary rites involve manipulations of material culture, social relations, cultural ideals, and the human body” (1). Mortuary treatments, then, represent a nexus of the individual being buried and their social role in life as well as those doing the burying. Burial is a combination of what the deceased requested be done with their remains after death (if such a request was made), the interpretations and feelings about the deceased by the people doing the burying and their adherence to social norms, and the overarching cultural customs that guide and dictate how and why a certain burial type is employed. Teasing these factors apart can be quite difficult and, in some cases, impossible; however, the importance of assessing mortuary practices in a population cannot be denied. Arguably, we learn a significant amount about a culture when we examine their dead and the physical bodies left behind. This volume focuses on archaeological mortuary practices, and more specifically, on practices considered atypical or non-normative in the expected mortuary traditions of specific geographic regions and temporal periods. By comparing and contrasting various influencing factors to identify the shifting ideologies that influence these practices, we are able to highlight the commonality of creating unique mortuary treatments for unique individuals. This consideration of identity established by the individual in life and subsequently maintained/reconstructed/abandoned/altered by their community after death, inevitably alters how the dead are not only treated but also remain engaged beyond their physical presence. In considering burial specifically, Chapman (2010) outlines that this is a process by which a fragmentation occurs, as a complete representation of the individual cannot possibly be attained within a mortuary context as carried out by the still living population. However, by recognizing this juxtaposition of information provided by the deceased (e.g., age, 2

Amy B. Scott, Tracy K. Betsinger, and Anastasia Tsaliki

sex, diet, disease) and that provided by the living (e.g., artifact inclusion, body positioning, burial location), it is possible to identify common threads of the mortuary process that can speak to larger notions of life and death. As Aspöck (2015) argues, we must embrace the complexity of mortuary behavior by moving beyond simplistic, typologically driven classifications of burial expectations. Humans are a species of extreme variation in life, so why are there expectations of simplicity after death? Atypical or non-normative burials are those mortuary treatments that differ from what is considered typical for a population (Aspöck 2009; Tsaliki 2008a, 2008b); however, defining what is unusual within a population’s complex, diverse mortuary treatments can be difficult. Chapman (2010) has argued that determining what the minimum difference needs to be to classify something as atypical is also challenging, thus making the basic step of identifying a burial as atypical problematic. Additionally, the use of westernized norms to define what is considered atypical is a typological constraint in which mortuary traditions are simplified into only two possible categories (i.e., typical and atypical). As Aspöck (2015) argues, “in any cultural context there are different ‘norms’ of funerary practices for different types of dead individuals” (88). Within these practices are subtle shifts or “improv[isations] within the larger traditions of funerary performance” that represent local geographic and temporal contexts that can eventually result in larger mortuary changes (Aspöck 2015; Gordon 2014: 42). It is through this continuous range of variation from “ideal to improper” (Aspöck 2015: 88) we are able to highlight the contextual elements of mortuary analysis beyond typological classifications of positive versus negative burial types. As Parker Pearson (1993) argues, understanding the burial process is dependent on the ability of archaeologists to decipher the ever-changing relationship that the living create with the dead. Atypical mortuary practices first became a focus of processual archaeological inquiry in the early 1970s, as questions of the intentionality and the meaning behind these burials was at the forefront of mortuary research (Aspöck 2008). More broadly, this processual period focused on how variability in mortuary practices fit within a systems model of society (see Binford 1971). Binford (1972) argued that the social persona of an individual during life influenced the mortuary process, where a community had specific obligations to the deceased that were directly influenced by elements of sex, age, status, or other roles the individual may have played within the community. This “duty relationship” between the living and the deceased was therefore considered Deconstructing “Deviant”: An Introduction to the History of Atypical Burials

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a direct and true reflection of that individual’s biological, social, and cultural identity (Binford 1972: 225–226). Concurrent with Binford, Saxe (1970) explored the notion of “deviant” social persona and how certain circumstances during life may alter the way in which an individual was treated after death. From this perspective, Saxe (1970) argued that a deviant social persona would inevitably cause a change in mortuary rituals as these individuals would not be afforded a normal mortuary treatment, but rather one that reflected their degree of social deviancy. Further to this, Saxe (1970) suggested that a deviant individual would not be buried according to the normal traditions based on age, sex, and status, but would likely display a mortuary treatment showing less appreciation and care for the deceased, a notion also supported and further investigated by Goldstein (1981). Together, this work of Binford and Saxe became known as the Saxe-Binford hypothesis, but it was criticized for its rigidity by supporters of Van Gennep (1960), who saw death and burial as a more fluid rite of passage. The identity ascribed to the dead depended on the successful completion of this process, with Ucko (1969) demonstrating this variability of body treatment across cultures. Following this initial work by Binford and Saxe, O’Shea (1984) and Shay (1985) examined atypical burials using both archaeological and ethnographic evidence. O’Shea (1984) recognized the difficulties in identifying atypical burials, as evidence found in the archaeological record has no ethnographic model to be compared against, and similarly, some ethnographic examples of mortuary traditions are nearly impossible to locate archaeologically (Aspöck 2008). O’Shea (1984) argued that because of this inevitable gap in the archaeological record, it would be impossible to locate and examine all examples of atypical burials. This difficulty associated with archaeological recovery was further explored by the work of Shay (1985), who examined the changing nature of atypical burials and how this categorization is not a static entity within a mortuary context, but rather has the ability to change over time and in different societies. Shay (1985) argued that this variability among atypical burials is an important tool to better analyze social norms and rules, as “deviance helps to mark the boundaries of society” (222). It was based on these early processual models that atypical burials were regarded as a means by which to conceptualize the boundaries of social acceptability. Moving beyond these processual notions of atypical burials, current postprocessual studies involve an exploration of individualism, agency, and the 4

Amy B. Scott, Tracy K. Betsinger, and Anastasia Tsaliki

impact of these burials on the surrounding natural landscape (Aspöck 2008). Recent studies have also encouraged the inclusion of multiple lines of evidence when assessing atypical burials, such as biological factors, pathological factors (e.g., stress, disease), and social factors, all of which can contribute to the better understanding of these burials and why they are created. This post-processual framework stresses the need for a multidisciplinary approach in research design, analysis, and interpretation (see Knüsel 2010; McHugh 1999; Tsaliki 2008a, 2008b). Aspöck (2009) argues that atypical burials have undergone a transformation within archaeology, from being a secondary concern of the larger social system, to becoming more focused on the individual and elements of agency and identity (see Chapman 2010; Jonsson 2009; Riisøy 2015). Context, then, is of supreme importance. Without context, researchers may not be gaining a full understanding of the atypical burials themselves or of the larger social group under study. As the exploration of atypical burials has evolved, so has its definition and the terminology used to explore variation in the mortuary process. Originally, the term “deviant” was introduced through the statistical modeling of processual archaeology to identify those that deviated from the norm; however, over time the term deviant and its use in mortuary archaeology has become stigmatized as these burials have, more often than not, been interpreted as representations of the bizarre (Aspöck 2009). While in some circumstances these burials do embody the negative connotations of social, cultural, or biological deviancy, this is not a universal pattern, and as such, terms like “atypical” better represent the flexibility needed when interpreting variation in mortuary practices. For example, the spatial distribution of graves while at times has been argued to represent those considered socially deviant to be separated from their community (e.g., Donnelly and Murphy 2008), such distribution may also represent examples of elite burial requiring separation based on revered status (e.g., Janowski and Kurasiński 2010). Moreover, these types of burials may have played an important role in strengthening early Christian beliefs (e.g., Riisøy 2015) or in contributing to social order (e.g., Betsinger and Scott 2014). Atypical burials exist beyond the confines of deviant behavior or deviant social persona. A holistic focus provides a means by which to move beyond these binary categorizations in which skeletal analysis, ethnohistorical records, and archaeological interpretations can be combined in a way that highlights the individuality of these particular burials through an allied context. As FitzDeconstructing “Deviant”: An Introduction to the History of Atypical Burials

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patrick-Matthews (2007) points out in their study of Iron Age and Roman cemeteries, group identity in a mortuary context can be pulled from three levels of context: (1) the material elements of the burial, (2) the burial rite, and (3) the skeletal remains, representing both group expression of identity in burial treatment but also individual experiences captured within the skeletal remains. This contextual breakdown of burials into various elements that together create a comprehensive dataset is similar to the work of Stojanowski and Duncan (2017) and their discussion of biohistories. Whereas, FitzpatrickMatthews’ (2007) model focuses on how burial data may distinguish individual and community social groups, the biohistorical approach by Stojanowski and Duncan (2017) highlights our ability both to serve the individual through historical construction of identity and also to use that individualized focus to reflect on the scale of these mortuary practices and how they intersect with the interests of the dead (i.e., funerary requests, agency as a once living individual). Both examples use this holistic approach to demonstrate the merit of contextual data to provide both emic and etic perspectives on the burial process and variations within it. While the term “deviant” is valid from a statistical perspective to describe the outliers of a particular dataset, the word “atypical” dominates this volume in an attempt to diminish preconceived, negative connotations associated with the use of “deviant” as a descriptor. We recognize that the dichotomous undertones surrounding this language are still present; however, through this volume we hope to move away from binary classifications with continuous datasets that showcase the continuum of variation outside of expectation. Similar to recent discussions in gender archaeology, there is a need to “de-contain” individuals from binary classifications to ensure that the entire spectrum of variability can be acknowledged and interpreted (see Ghisleni et al. 2016). Because of the nature of atypical burials, the patterns and examples in this volume represent geographic and temporal variation that are highlighted by in-depth contextual analyses. The chapters have been arranged based on geography, beginning in the Western hemisphere and moving east, and then by time period, beginning with the oldest examples of atypical burials (fig. 1.1). Each chapter builds on the notion that while these burials display individualized elements speaking to specific cultural, social, or biological expectations, atypical burials are a cross-cultural phenomenon contributing to our universal understanding of death and burial. These chapters also place emphasis on context and build on earlier works by using a large temporal span and ex6

Amy B. Scott, Tracy K. Betsinger, and Anastasia Tsaliki

Figure 1.1. World map showing the geographic range of research included in this edited volume.

panding the geographic scope of the evidence and examples considered. The authors approach atypical burials by first identifying and exploring what is considered typical mortuary treatment and how atypical elements are defined in each specific case study. This is then further investigated through potential causative factors explaining why these mortuary treatments exist. So, rather than simply presenting a case study of a unique atypical burial and what that might mean, the authors in this volume have considered broader practices and implications for the study of atypical burials overall. Moreover, this volume seeks to examine atypical burials on a broader scale and to highlight the theoretical aspects of such investigations. The chapters herein consider that atypical burials reflect both the deceased and those who buried them and provide sound contextual analysis and use multiple lines of evidence in order to gain a better understanding of atypical burials within a population. This work expands on earlier volumes that also consider unusual mortuary practices but from case study and geographic and temporal perspectives, such as Eileen Murphy’s (2008) volume, Deviant Burial in the Archaeological Record, and Andrew Reynolds’s (2009) Anglo-Saxon Deviant Burial Customs. Both Murphy and Reynolds present a broad overview of the deviant burial and how its definition is influenced by cultural notions of belonging and social acceptability but also by elements of folklore and superstition. Reynolds focuses on geographic boundaries that define atypical treatment, using the Anglo-Saxon period in England to demonstrate the true breadth of these unique treatments under the ideological, cultural, and political constraints of the early medieval period. Murphy takes a wider approach by using specific case study examples to survey deviant burials across Europe and over time with chapters exploring how deviant burials can represent both the deceased and the living through distinct care for the dead. The significance of this volume lies in its ability to highlight not only the diversity of these atypical treatments but also the underlying similarities in how death is approached across time and space. Whether these mortuary treatments have evolved to benefit the deceased in the afterlife or the stillliving community, their archaeological presence across the globe warrants further investigation. Collectively, this volume moves the study of atypical burials forward by providing a diverse array of comprehensive and critical analyses. This introduction focuses on the broader notions of atypical burials, how their study has evolved, the terminology that defines this research, and the 8

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benefits of a context-driven approach. Chapter 2 by Cerezo-Román explores the practices of inhumation and cremation in the Prehispanic American Southwest and outlines how atypical mortuary customs changed over an 800year period, AD 700–1500. Cerezo-Román considers biological reconstructions of the deceased in combination with posthumous treatments in order to reconstruct the complexity of funeral customs and their social significance and how those shift over time. By comparing inhumations with cremations, the author addresses how these discrete mortuary practices are related and are part of the complex mortuary customs of the populations inhabiting this region. In chapter 3, Stodder addresses how interpretation of atypical burials has shifted in the Mesa Verde region of Southwestern Colorado in North America. Initially in the 1980s, burials found in the floor of pit houses, dating to AD 725– 900, were argued to be suspected witches who had been executed or individuals who died accidentally. With further research and contextual consideration, the more recent interpretation has identified these burials as less common but not necessarily atypical burial practices. Stodder’s chapter emphasizes the need to rethink what constitutes normative and non-normative mortuary practices and illustrates the efficacy of using context and multiple lines of evidence to draw conclusions concerning them. Cook and colleagues (chapter 4) focus on the Late Woodland (AD 830) and Mississippian (AD 1030) periods in west-central Illinois and a case of hand amputation. Situating this unique burial within a rich historical context that speaks to burial continuity over time, Cook and colleagues investigate how physical disability may dictate mortuary practices where factors that lead to physical disability in life (i.e., being burned) may also be incorporated into burial practices (i.e., burial being burned). In chapter 5, Lambert discusses a mid-nineteenth-century example of an atypical burial from an early Mormon colony in San Bernardino, California. Lambert uses dental pathology and metrics to examine population affiliation, comparing and contrasting the results with historical records. Lambert argues that despite evidence suggesting acculturation of this “outsider” into this Anglo-American community, this burial acts as a symbol of social change during that time and demonstrates how these political relationships might have been navigated in life and after death. Chapter 6, by Mickleburgh and colleagues, addresses the difficult task of identifying atypical burials in the Ceramic Age (500 BC–AD 1500) Caribbean Deconstructing “Deviant”: An Introduction to the History of Atypical Burials

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archipelago, where there was much variation in mortuary treatment. Utilizing a basic quantitative assessment and social network analysis, they identify specific cases of atypical burial, then subject them to multidisciplinary contextual analysis. Their study makes a strong argument for the necessity of using substantial contextual information in order to elucidate what is typical and what is atypical across related populations. Gabelmann and Owens present a unique case study of burial positioning in chapter 7. Dating to the Bolivian Formative period (1300 BC–AD 200), this individual, while provided with burial goods similar to the remainder of the population and whose burial was located centrally within the cemetery, showed a tightly flexed, partially prone body position with distinct finger positioning. Gabelmann and Owens argue that body position represents “disposal format” and as such there are many possible interpretations for this unique positioning, ranging from social or sexual indiscretions to coming of age maturation rites; however, they stress that the care imbued in this burial negates the common negative interpretations that such a burial would normally evoke. Continuing to explore this South American context in chapter 8, Więckow­ski and colleagues discuss four atypical burials dating to the Early Horizon period (800–100 BC) in Peru. Exploring both pre- and post-depositional alterations, the authors investigate the importance of iconographic comparisons and the transfer of personhood and identity through practices of postmortem body arrangements or trophy collecting. Connecting cosmology with the physical body allows the authors to investigate the social and cultural similarities of these burials which occupy different biological contexts (i.e., age and sex differences). Müller-Scheessel and collaborators (chapter 9) investigate what are regular and irregular burials from the Early Iron Age (800–250 BC) Central Europe. The authors examine burials found in grain-storage settlement pits and consider proposed explanations to determine who and why individuals were buried in these unusual locations. Criticizing the lack of contextual information given in past assessments, Müller-Scheessel et al. use bioarchaeological, isotopic, and archaeological data to conclude that many of the earlier interpretations of these burials were incorrect. In chapter 10, Tsaliki presents an unusual case of body disposal in a disused kiln from Roman Greece, dating to the fourth century AD. Discovery of burials outside established burial grounds has been rare in Greece until recently, mainly because of financial and methodological constraints surrounding excavations. In an effort to interpret this highly atypical burial, the author explores 10

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notions of social structure, punishment, and dismemberment, which occupy a prominent position in ancient Greek myth and law. Chapter 11 by Hosek discusses atypical burials in tenth century AD Bohemia at the site of Kanín and the significance of body position. Hosek argues that as Christianization spread across Bohemia, mortuary traditions reflected the ongoing negotiation between pagan tradition and the rise of Christianity. Using skeletal data in addition to body positioning, Hosek discusses emerging patterns in how social identity or status may have influenced the burial process during this politically and ideologically unstable period. While many of these atypical burial treatments seen at Libice may speak to the fear surrounding the dead, to local traditions, or to disease outbreaks, Hosek articulates that despite their atypical treatment, these burials represent “differentiation rather than exclusion” (page 219). Atypical burials, with single or multiple interments, display a recognition of and care for the deceased whether for the benefit of the deceased in the afterlife or of the still-living community. Chapter 12 by Moilanen investigates what is good death and bad death in AD 900–1200 Finland. Drawing on Finnish folklore combined with archaeological data and large-scale regional analyses, Moilanen examines burials previously identified as deviant. The author concludes that the reasons behind this atypical practice are much more diverse than previously thought and argues that a “microarchaeological framework” is needed to identify variation in mortuary treatments as well as in atypical burials. In addition to finding substantially more variation in historic Finnish burials, Moilanen also contends that sociohistorical research should be combined with scientific methods to gain a more complete understanding of past mortuary practices. Gardeła (chapter 13) evaluates atypical burials from early medieval (tenth– thirteenth centuries AD) Poland and examines their interpretation as “vampire” burials. He considers other possible meanings behind unusual mortuary customs, drawing on historical records, folklore, and archaeological data. Gardeła considers various atypical practices, such as prone burial, decapitation, unusual body orientation, and others, and offers alternative explanations. He concludes that the broad application of “vampire” burials or “anti-vampire” burials obscures the variety of reasons that people may have been subjected to atypical mortuary practices. Similarly, in chapter 14, Betsinger and Scott investigate how health may dictate atypical burial treatment in post-medieval Poland (seventeenth–eighteenth centuries AD). Because atypical burials may represent those of individuals Deconstructing “Deviant”: An Introduction to the History of Atypical Burials

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considered deviant during life, whether because of social or biological differences, this chapter assesses the health status of individuals given distinct “antivampire” burial treatments to determine whether disease, trauma, or overall poor health may have contributed to certain artifacts being included in these distinct graves. The authors also explore the complexity of these burials through a review of “anti-vampire” practices in Poland during this period, with results suggesting that while no obvious health differences are associated with these burials, social or cultural factors not involving the physcial skeleton were most likely the reason for their creation. In chapter 15, Garvie-Lok and Tsaliki examine anti-revenant mortuary practices in Early Modern (eighteenth–nineteenth centuries AD) Greece. Utilizing ethnographic, ethnohistorical, biological, and archaeological data, the authors assess Greek “vampire”-related mortuary ritual. They also discuss why “vampire” burials may be underreported archaeologically and how they might be identified in the archaeological record. Piombino-Mascali and Nystrom (chapter 16) investigate atypical burial practices involving mummification in sixteenth- to twentieth-century Sicily. Drawing on historical research and archaeological data, they consider how such a novel treatment of the dead began to develop, beginning as a non-normative practice and evolving into a more typical practice over time. Additionally, they assess the reasons this mortuary practice came into fashion and who was subjected to it. This chapter illustrates how atypical mortuary treatments are time sensitive and may not always be outside the norm. Chapter 17 takes a temporal approach to atypical burials, focusing on four examples from the Neolithic period through to the twentieth century AD at the Çatalhöyük site in Turkey. Haddow and colleagues argue that, while these examples demonstrate non-normative traditions, there are at least some recognizable factors in these treatments that suggest a calculated exclusion of these individuals from the community. Their temporal approach highlights the impressive time depth at the Çatalhöyük site, but also how the definition and creation of atypical mortuary treatment changes over time. In addition, the comparative analysis demonstrates a community understanding of how individuals should be interred and how those choices reflect personal histories and the relationship between individual and community. In chapter 18, Ishikawa discusses atypical burial treatments in the middle Jomon period (3500–2500 BC) at the Kusakari site in Japan. Focusing on body position and body direction, Ishikawa highlights a unique example of atypical 12

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burial treatment with the removal of limbs and argues that removal or shifts in body position may be related to post-depositional changes but also to the fear surrounding the dead. By incapacitating the body through physical changes such as amputation, the belief was that an individual’s remains would be fixed within the grave. Chapter 19 by Lee examines a broad geographic and temporal range of mortuary practices in China and Mongolia from the Neolithic (3500–3000 BC) to the Period of Disunion (AD 744–840). This analysis, which utilizes archaeological, bioarchaeological, and historical data, demonstrates the breadth of mortuary diversity, reflecting the social, religious, and linguistic variability in the region. Lee’s chapter underscores the importance of local contextual information when interpreting atypical burials, as large amounts of social diversity make a single explanation and understanding unlikely. Finally, in chapter 20, Reusch investigates the burials of castrates, comparing such burials in China (200 BC–AD 1912) with those in Europe (AD 1500– 1950) in order to determine whether there were cross-cultural prescribed burial rites for castrates and whether those burial treatments deviated from the norm. Their analysis, utilizing historical and archaeological data, reveals that castrates in both societies often received typical burials, suggesting that while they may have been “viewed as both socially and physically deviant, [they] were not considered deviant enough to require separate burial” (page 387, emphasis added). Moreover, in China, while the mortuary rites were typical, the historical record indicates that castrates received anomalous funerary rites. Reusch’s study demonstrates that in any population, there may have been atypical funerary rites or rituals, with only those affecting burial observable archaeologically. While all these examples focus on mortuary treatments within the confines of space and time, they share a similar exploration of what defines atypical treatment, specifically how these atypical elements are recognized, analyzed, and interpreted. These chapters utilize similar, but not identical, methods for making interpretations and drawing conclusions about these unusual practices. Moreover, these chapters develop a theoretical foundation for future research. Moving away from the narrowly focused assumption that these burials represent only those considered deviant within society, these contributions recognize that elements of biology, culture, social status, gender, and more all contribute to mortuary variability and representations of the individual. Most prominent throughout this volume is the understanding that while these burials may repDeconstructing “Deviant”: An Introduction to the History of Atypical Burials

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resent the bizarre or unknown, they do not necessarily mean exclusion, but simply a different manner in which to represent the diversity of personhood and identity experienced during life. There are many different types of atypical burial practices described in this volume, but the one thing that remains consistent among these chapters is the necessity of providing context. Context allows us to move away from the predominant dichotomous framework that surrounds these burials by showcasing the mortuary fluidity embodied by the dead and their continuous relationship with the living.

Acknowledgments To my husband, James, who is atypical and unusual in all things.—T.K.B. To Tracy, my mentor and dear friend. How lucky we are to have taken this journey together.—A.B.S. To my Mother: I will always remember you.—A.T.

Bibliography Aspöck, Edeltraud 2008 What Actually Is a “Deviant Burial”? Comparing German-Language and Anglophone Research on “Deviant Burials.” In Deviant Burial in the Archaeological Record, edited by Eileen Murphy, pp. 17–34. Oxbow Books, Oxford. 2009 The Relativity of Normality: An Archaeological and Anthropological Study of Deviant Burials and Different Treatments of Death. PhD dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Reading, Reading. 2015 Funerary and Post-Depositional Body Treatments at the Middle Anglo-Saxon Cemetery Winnall II: Norm, Variety—and Deviance? In Death Embodied: Archaeological Approaches to the Treatment of the Corpse, edited by Zoë Devlin and Emma-Jayne Graham. Oxbow Books, Oxford. Betsinger, Tracy K., and Amy B. Scott 2014 Governing from the Grave: Vampire Burials and Social Order in Post-Medieval Poland. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 24: 467–476. Binford, Lewis 1971 Mortuary Practices: Their Study and Their Potential. Memoirs of the Society for American Archaeology, Approaches to the Social Dimensions of Mortuary Practices 25: 6–29. 1972 Mortuary Practices: Their Study and Their Potential. In An Archaeological Perspective, edited by Lewis Binford, pp. 208–243. Seminar Press, New York. Chapman, John 2010 “Deviant” Burials in the Neolithic and Chalcolithic of Central and South Eastern Europe. In Body Parts and Bodies Whole: Changing Relations and Meanings, ed-

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ited by Katharina Rebay-Salisbury, Marie Stig Sorensen, and Jessica Hughes, pp. 30–45. Oxbow Books, Oxford. Donnelly, Colm, and Eileen Murphy 2008 The Origins of Cilliní. In Deviant Burial in the Archaeological Record, edited by Eileen Murphy, pp. 191–223. Oxbow Books, Oxford. Fitzpatrick-Matthews, Keith 2007 Subculture and Small Group Identity in Iron Age and Roman Baldock. In TRAC 2006: Proceedings of the Sixteenth Annual Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference, edited by B. Croxford, N. Ray, R. Roth, and N. White, pp. 150–171. Oxbow Books, Oxford. Ghisleni, Lara, Alexis Jordan, and Emily Fioccoprile 2016 Introduction to “Binary Binds”: Deconstructing Sex and Gender Dichotomies in Archaeological Practice. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 23: 765–787. Goldstein, Lynne 1981 One Dimensional Archaeology and Multi-Dimensional People: Spatial Organization and Mortuary Analysis. In The Archaeology of Death, edited by Robert Chapman, Ian Kinnes, and Klavs Randsborg, pp. 53–69. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Gordon, Stephen 2014 Disease, Sin and the Walking Dead in Medieval England c.1100–1350: A Note on Documentary and Archaeological Evidence. In Medicine, Healing and Performance. Edited by Effie Gemi-Iordanou, Stephen Gordon, Robert Matthew, Ellen McInnes, and Rhiannon Pettitt, pp. 55–70. Oxbow Books, Oxford. Hertz, Robert 1960 Death and the Right Hand. Translated by Rodney Needham and Claudia Needham. Free Press, Illinois. Janowski, Andrzej, and Tomasz Kurasinski 2010 Rolnik, Wojowsnik czy “Odmieniec”? Próba Interpretacji Obecności Sierpów w Grobach Wczesnośredniowiecnych na Terenie ziem Polskich. Acta Archaeological Lodziensia 56: 79–96. Jonsson, Kristina 2009 Practices for the Living and the Dead: Medieval and Post-Reformation Burials in Scandinavia. PhD dissertation, Department of Archaeology and Classical Studies, University of Stockholm, Stockholm. Knüsel, C. J. 2010 Bioarchaeology: A Synthetic Approach. Bulletins et Mémoires de la Société d’Anthro­ pologie de Paris 22(1): 62–73. Kroeber, Alfred L. 1927 Disposal of the Dead. American Anthropologist 29(3): 308–315. Lizza, John 2006 Persons, Humanity, and the Definition of Death. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore. McHugh, Feldore 1999 Theoretical and Quantitative Approaches to the Study of Mortuary Practice. BAR International Series 785. Archaeopress, Oxford. Deconstructing “Deviant”: An Introduction to the History of Atypical Burials

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Murphy, Eileen M. (editor) 2008 Deviant Burial in the Archaeological Record. Oxbow Books, Oxford. O’Shea, John 1984 Mortuary Variability: An Archaeological Investigation. Academic Press, New York. Parker Pearson, Michael 1993 The Powerful Dead: Archaeological Relationships Between the Living and the Dead. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 3(2): 203–229. 1999 The Archaeology of Death and Burial. Sutton, Phoenix Mill, UK. Rakita, Gordon F. M., and Jane E. Buikstra 2005a Introduction. In Interacting with the Dead: Perspectives on Mortuary Archaeology for the New Millennium, edited by Gordon F. M. Rakita, Jane E. Buikstra, Lane A. Beck, and Sloan R. Williams, pp. 1–11. University Press of Florida, Gainesville. 2005b Bodies and Souls. In Interacting with the Dead: Perspectives on Mortuary Archaeology for the New Millennium, edited by Gordon F. M. Rakita, Jane E. Buikstra, Lane A. Beck, and Sloan R. Williams, pp. 93–95. University Press of Florida, Gainesville. Reynolds, Andrew 2009 Anglo-Saxon Deviant Burial Customs. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Riisøy, Anne 2015 Deviant Burials: Societal Exclusion of Dead Outlaws in Medieval Norway. In Culture, Death and Dying in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, edited by Mia Korpiola and Anu Lahtinen, pp. 49–81. Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, Helsinki. Saxe, Arthur 1970 Social Dimensions of Mortuary Practices. PhD dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan. University Microfilms, Ann Arbor. Shay, Talia 1985 Differentiated Treatment of Deviancy at Death as Revealed in the Anthropological and Archaeological Material. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 4: 221–241. Stojanowski, Christopher, and William Duncan (editors) 2017 Defining an Anthropological Biohistorical Research Agenda: The History, Scale, and Scope of an Emerging Discipline. In Studies in Forensic Biohistory, edited by Christopher M. Stojanowski and William N. Duncan, pp.1–28. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Tsaliki, Anastasia 2008a Unusual Burials and Necrophobia: An Insight into the Burial Archaeology of Fear. In Deviant Burial in the Archaeological Record, edited by Eileen Murphy, pp. 1–16. Oxbow Books, Oxford. 2008b An Investigation of Extraordinary Human Body Disposals with Special Reference to Necrophobia. A Multi-Disciplinary Analysis with Case-studies from Greece and Cross-Cultural Comparisons. PhD dissertation, Department of Archaeology, University of Durham, Durham. 16

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Ucko, Peter J. 1969 Ethnography and Archaeological Interpretation of Funerary Remains. World Archaeology 1(2): 262–280. Van Gennep, Arnold 1960 The Rites of Passage. Translated by Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London. Youngner, Stuart, Robert Arnold, and Renie Schapiro 1999 The Definition of Death: Contemporary Controversies. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.

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2 Bodies among Fragments Non-Normative Inhumations among the Preclassic and Classic Period Hohokam of the Tucson Basin

J e s sic a I. Ce r e z o -Rom á n

The Tucson Basin Hohokam practiced cremation as the main burial treatment in both the Preclassic (AD 700–1150) and Classic (AD 1150–1450/1500) periods, with few examples of inhumation burials. Inhumation burials among the Tucson Basin Hohokam are atypical and unusual, performed only with a minority of the population. Past research has explored these funerary treatments in isolation regardless of whether they were practiced in the same location and time period (e.g., Cushing 1890; Haury 1976; McGuire 1992; Sayles 1937; Wilcox 1987). This research examines changes through time of infant and adult inhumation burial customs from ten Tucson Basin (Arizona) Hohokam archaeological sites (see fig. 2.1 and table 2.1). Specifically, this will be done by contrasting this minority burial practice with the “normative” mortuary rituals on a regional scale. Inhumation contrasts with cremation as the dead body is treated differently. For example, in a cremation, the body is burned in a matter of hours if the pyre is properly constructed, whereas with inhumation the body decomposes underground. However, cremation and inhumation can have similarities in commemorative practices; in both cases, the dead ultimately are buried in the ground as part of the funeral process. The research reported here explores both biological reconstruction of bodies and posthumous treatments within and between sites.

Figure 2.1. Site locations and time period.

Hohokam Mortuary Customs In the past, archaeological research on mortuary customs in the American Southwest centered on the analysis of formal variation in grave structures and contexts, based primarily on associated objects, to infer social status and ranking (Brunson-Hadley 1989; McGuire 1992; Mitchell and Brunson-HadNon-Normative Inhumations among the Preclassic and Classic Period Hohokam

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Table 2.1. Sites from the Preclassic and Classic Period in the Tucson Basin Archaeological Sites

References

Honey Bee Village (AZ BB:9:189[ASM])

Craig 1989; Wallace 2012

Tortolita Mountains Area (AZ AA:12:84[ASM], AZ AA:13:83[ASM], AZ AA:12:170[ASM], AZ AA:12:785[ASM])

Swartz 2008

Sleeping Snake Village (AZ BB:9:104[ASM])

Ezzo 2005

Los Morteros (AZ AA:12:57[ASM]; AZ AA:12:58[ASM])

Wallace 1995a, 1995b

Fagan Ranch (AZ EE:1:345[ASM]; AZ EE:1:384[ASM])

Ezzo 2008

West Branch (AZ AA:16:3[ASM])

Huntington 1986; Whittlesey 2004

Rabid Ruin (AZ AA:12:46[ASM])

Hammack 1969

Martinez Hill (AZ BB:13:3[ASM])

Gabel 1931

University Indian Ruin (AZ BB:9:33[ASM])

Hayden 1957

Yuma Wash (AZ AA:12:311[ASM], AA:12:312[ASM], AA:12:122[ASM], AA:12:314[ASM])

Cerezo-Román and McClelland 2009; Hall et al. 2016

ley 2001). Subsequent research in Southwestern mortuary studies has moved beyond themes of stratification and ranking based exclusively on mortuary goods. For example, McGuire (1992, 2001) discussed social inequalities and cremation customs at La Cuidad, a Hohokam Preclassic period site in the Phoenix Basin of Arizona. Other research also began examining sex-gender hierarchies (Crown and Fish 1996), age, kin, and corporate groups (Mitchell and Brunson-Hadley 2001; Neitzel 2001). The analyses of Hohokam cremated remains were initially conducted using limited data sets and osteological analyses of remains from single sites (Birkby 1976; Fink 1988a, 1988b, 1989; Reinhard 1978; Reinhard and Fink 1993). However, more recently, cremation mortuary rituals have received more in-depth examination across broader regions and within and between multiple sites (Beck 2005, 2008; CerezoRomán 2014a, 2014b, 2015). Among the Hohokam, both inhumation and cremation were practiced throughout the Preclassic and Classic periods, but their frequency and mode varied. In the Preclassic period, secondary deposits of cremated remains 20

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were most common and inhumations infrequent (Haury 1976; McGuire 1992; Minturn and Craig 2001). During the Classic Period, inhumation became the prevalent mode of interment in the Phoenix Basin (Mitchell and BrunsonHadley 2001), but not so in the Tucson Basin (Cerezo-Román 2014a, 2014b, 2015). The presence of inhumations among this society had been described as atypical or unusual burials. The word “deviant” is not used, as it could suggest an overtly negative connotation that perhaps is rooted in present beliefs systems and not used among past populations. Previous Hohokam studies have suggested several reasons some individuals were inhumed and treated differently from the rest of the population. Researchers suggested that they might have been chiefs or members of a priesthood (Cushing 1890), elites (Wilcox 1987), and/or different ethnicities (Haury 1976; Sayles 1937). Other explanations were that these inhumed individuals were not considered part of the community and were outsiders or that these individuals died under unusual circumstances in violent encounters, among other possibilities (McGuire 1992). Differential burial treatment for individuals who died under unusual circumstances has been documented in ethnographic and historic accounts, and in archaeological studies among Southwestern Native American groups (Brew and Huckell 1987; Russell 1908; Underhill 1939, 1946). Previous studies had considered all inhumations from a given Hohokam site as a homogeneous group (e.g., Cushing 1890; Haury 1976; Sayles 1937; Wilcox 1987). However, McGuire (1992, 2001) mentions some ethnographic accounts of groups that practiced cremation as the main burial custom, such as the riverine Yuman, but which did not cremate infants and kinless individuals. He does not specify why they did not cremate these individuals and provides a general description. More recently, Cerezo-Román (2015) mentions that social age1 was likely a major factor in determining whether young individuals were going to be inhumed, especially for those who died before the age of two. However, in cases of adults, other identity attributes and factors likely were more important, such as group membership, as no osteological evidence of unusual manner of death was found.

Inhumations vs. Cremations: Theoretical Considerations Similar to the methods used in past research on Hohokam burial rituals, atypical, deviant, unusual, non-normative burials are on many occasions discussed as case studies in isolation from the rest of the burial treatments (e.g., Hawkey Non-Normative Inhumations among the Preclassic and Classic Period Hohokam

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1998; Murphy 2008; Stodder and Palkovich 2012). However, Aspöck (2008) argues against this and urges broader discussion of the unusual or atypical burials, centering them within a broader context by discussing them as “minorities” of funerals performed only for a small segment of the population (Cherryson 2008; Holloway 2008; Weiss-Krejci 2008). The contextual cultural significances and relevancies of minority funerals and atypical burials are revealed by highlighting the differences and similarities between them and “normative” treatments. Emphasizing the differences will unveil part of the picture but not expose their full significance. Inhumation and cremation mortuary treatments are composed of different stages in which the bodies are prepared, dressed, and disposed. Cremation differs from inhumation as it involves an intentional and rapid transformation of the body. In the case of the Hohokam, it also typically involved secondary burial, as the bones were collected from the pyre and placed in a cemetery or in the landscape, or both. On the other hand, the physicality of the deceased’s body during inhumation remained fairly intact up to the point of burial, and secondary burial was rarely performed (e.g., Beck 2005, 2008; Cerezo-Román 2014a, 2014b, 2015; McGuire 1992, 2001). Cremation and inhumation are typically found together in both time and space; however, they are usually studied separately and are diametrically opposed to each other. Larsson and Nilsson Stutz (2014) commented on this dichotomy, suggesting that it is commonly assumed that one is the “norm” while any other different treatment of the dead tends to be “exceptional” (e.g., Bloch and Parry 1982; Brew and Huckell 1987; Hanlon 1972; Murphy 2008; Russell 1908; Underhill 1939). Williams (2014) provided an interesting framework to conceptualize the co-occurrences of cremation and inhumation in the past as related but distinct technologies of remembrance. Both practices operated to transform and rebuild the personhood2 of the deceased by selective social remembering and forgetting, albeit via contrasting times of the rituals’ process and materialities. This framework offers an innovative and different perspective to explore cremation and inhumation as ways in which the survivors made choices to negotiate identities and social memories. Death rituals were constitutive, not simply reflective, of new sociopolitical formations. Following Williams’ ideas, it is possible to explore how an inhumed person was perceived through time and the complex relationships that existed between the living and dead by analyzing who was inhumed and how their remains were treated in parallel with cremations. 22

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Methods Data collection focused on two principal types: (1) the human skeletal remains themselves, and (2) posthumous treatment of the dead, including associated burial objects. Site and burial chronologies were generated from published data and site reports. Analytical results consisted of the evaluation of statistical frequencies using Microsoft Excel 2010 and SPSS Statistics version 22.

Biological Profile Reconstruction of the biological profile used protocols for data collection based on Buikstra and Ubelaker (1994), and subsequent revisions to some of those methods (Buckberry and Chamberlain 2002; Donnelly et al. 1998; Haun 2000; Langley-Shirley and Jantz 2010; Loth and Henneberg 1996; Osborne et al. 2004; Scheuer and Black 2000; Walker 2005, 2008). Burned and unburned individual were analyzed using the same methods to obtain comparable results. The biological profile includes estimation of the biological sex, biological age-at-death, and pathological conditions, among other variables. Because of preservation issues, sex and age could not be determined for all individuals. In addition, the thermal alteration and degree of fragmentation limited the assessment of clinical diagnosis of pathological conditions and oral health to individuals. Taking this disparity between cremated and unburned human remains into account, in this chapter I present only on patterns found related to age and sex. In addition, there were clear differences between sex and age and posthumous treatment of the body within the samples. Biological profile data allow for reconstructing portions of the social life histories of individuals for subsequent correlation with the way they were remembered at death. Of course, all aspects of social life histories or different intersecting identities of an individual cannot be reconstructed and extracted from the past as they leave no archaeological traces or osteological evidence on the skeleton; however, some individuals will often be portrayed or emphasized by the mourners in funeral customs who leave material evidence. There also are some aspects of an individual’s identity, such as social age and some aspects of gender differences, that can be partially reconstructed using sex and age estimations in combination with posthumous treatment of the body. This reconstruction can be successfully done by contextualizing the practices without imposing our own Western perspectives, centering on the population under study and moving away from broader cross-cultural generalizations. Non-Normative Inhumations among the Preclassic and Classic Period Hohokam

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Several researchers have successfully explored the differences between biological sex and the cultural construction of gender in more contextualized manners (e.g., Arnold 2002; Geller 2005, 2008, 2009; Hollimon 2000, 2001; Sørensen 2000; Stockett 2005; Stone and Walrath 2006). Arnold (2002), for example, commented on distinctions between gender and sex in mortuary practices. She favored viewing sex and gender as part of an interconnected continuum rather than as a distinct pair of binary opposites. Geller (2008), specifically focusing on bioarchaeological research, correlated important ideas derived from feminist-inspired scholars, biomedicine, and bioarchaeology to gain a comprehension of sex through time. She promoted the contextualization of bodies from the larger archaeological setting. Some authors commented on the practical problems of questioning the construction of sex and/or gender, particularly when used for the estimation of sex of human remains (e.g., Sofaer 2006). It is impractical and perhaps erroneous to ignore “biological” data and how it relates to material culture when interpreting and reconstructing past practices. Disregarding these relationships can overlook or ignore biological realities (e.g., physical manifestation of aging and secondary sexual characteristics) that clearly influence the way bodies were treated and perceived in the past by ancient populations. Mortuary attributes that relate to social age were obtained by contrasting physiological age with sex and posthumous treatment of the body without restricting comparisons to physiological age ranges (e.g., Baxter 2005; Gilchrist 2004; Gowland 2006; Sofaer Derevenski 2004). Gender attributes were evaluated by analyzing patterns that relate to the individual’s biological sex, and posthumous treatment of the body without restricting comparisons to physiological age ranges and sex (e.g., Cannon 2005; Díaz-Andreu 2005; Geller 2005; Gilchrist 2004). Sex was estimated only for individuals older than 18 years at death. All estimations were made following protocols standardized by Buikstra and Ubelaker (1994). This research centers on the analysis of individuals from 10 archaeological sites. The sample consists of 63 primary inhumations, 2 secondary inhumations, and 396 cremation deposits3 from the Preclassic Period, and 84 primary inhumations, 1 secondary inhumation, and 278 cremation deposits from the Classic Period. Individuals of all ages were buried as primary inhumations in both the Preclassic and Classic periods. Infants and neonates (0 to ≤2 yrs.), children (>2 to ≤12 yrs.), adolescents (>12 to ≤18 yrs.), individuals older than 15 yrs. at death,4 and adults (>18 yrs.) were analyzed from both time periods. (fig. 2.2). 24

Jessica I. Cerezo-Román

Posthumous Treatment of Bodies Burial deposits were classified as primary,5 secondary,6 or undetermined. The analysis of burial objects was based on published data, unpublished site reports, and field notes from each site (see fig. 2.1 for references). For each burial object, functional categories were also recorded. The burial object classification used in this work was derived from systems proposed by McGuire (2001), Mitchell (1994), and Mitchell and Brunson-Hadley (2001). These systems employ general categories, such as utilitarian, ornamental, ritual, and miscellaneous items, to classify different objects; however, there are many inconsistencies in how associated objects were described and analyzed in the published data, site reports, and field notes. In this research, it was generally possible to evaluate the presence of certain types of objects by using raw material as a general category, as most published data, site reports, and field notes contained this information.

Results Preclassic Period cremations consisted of infants, children, adolescents, and adults (including individuals older than 15 years at death). In the Preclassic Period, inhumations comprised infants, about equal in number to cremations, but considerably fewer children and adults (see fig. 2.2). In the Classic Period, cremations and inhumations comprised all age groups, but infants are more frequently inhumed than the rest of the individuals, presenting a distribution similar to that of the Preclassic Period. About equal numbers of females and males were identified from inhumation and cremation deposits in the Preclassic and Classic periods. Relationships between objects and age groups were explored for both periods. In the Preclassic, the predominant burial object was ceramics for all age groups in both inhumation and cremation burials (see figs. 2.3 and 2.4). Inhumations of neonates/ infants, children, and adults had a comparable variability of objects (fig. 2.3). This finding differs from cremations in which neonates and infants were buried with the least amount of variability of objects, while children and adults present the most variability of objects. Inhumed and cremated neonates and infants were buried mainly with ceramic vessels and lithic objects (fig. 2.3), but cremated neonates and infants were also buried with beads (fig. 2.4). Similar types of objects were found with inhumed and cremated children; however, inhumed children also had stone objects and shell bracelets, while cremated children had more variation (fig. Non-Normative Inhumations among the Preclassic and Classic Period Hohokam

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Figure 2.2. Individual age at death, time period, and burial type.

2.4). Inhumed and cremated adolescents were found with ceramic vessels and isolated sherds. In the Classic Period, inhumed neonates and infants had some similarities with cremated neonates and infants in types of objects. Inhumed children exhibited higher frequencies of vessels, isolated sherds, and flaked stone objects (fig. 2.5), a pattern similar to that found with cremated infants and children (fig. 2.6); however, children in Classic Period inhumations were buried with less variability of objects than with cremations of the same age, and no objects were found with adolescent inhumations. Classic Period inhumed adults had high frequencies of isolated sherds and flaked stone objects, followed by ceramic vessels, shell, and animal bones. Classic Period cremated adults had high frequencies of vessels and isolated sherds, flaked stone objects, beads, shell, and animal bones (fig. 2.6). Differences between burial type and sex were found only in the frequencies of types of burial objects (figs. 2.7 and 2.8). Preclassic Period inhumed males 26

Jessica I. Cerezo-Román

Figure 2.3. Preclassic Period inhumations, burial objects, and age groups.

Figure 2.4. Preclassic Period cremations, burial objects, and age groups.

Figure 2.5. Classic Period inhumations, burial objects, and age at death groups.

Figure 2.6. Classic Period cremations, burial objects, and age at death groups.

Figure 2.7. Inhumations, sex, burial objects, and time periods.

Figure 2.8. Cremations, sex, burial objects, and time periods.

exhibited more types of objects than inhumed females (fig. 2.7). Different from inhumations, cremated females and males had equivalent variation of objects. Females tended to have the highest frequencies of ceramic vessels, and both females and males had relatively similar frequencies in the presence of beads, shell bracelets, and shell. Sex-based differences in the Classic Period are somewhat different from those of the Preclassic Period in that the variability of objects increased for both inhumed males and females. In the Classic Period, inhumed males and females have roughly equal variability of objects (fig. 2.7). Flaked stone objects were the most frequent object found in male inhumations, while isolated ceramic sherds were most common in female inhumations. Cremated males and females were found with an equal variability of objects (fig. 2.8); however, cremated females had significantly more ceramic vessels and isolated sherds than males.

Discussion Cremation and inhumation are distinct but related ways of commemorating and disposing of the dead. In an inhumation, the presence of the intact body could evoke memories that could be attributed to the deceased while still alive and/ or the role the deceased will take at death (Cerezo-Román et al. 2017; Williams 2004). The body and associated material culture are not destroyed. Transformation in these cases typically occurs away from observation of the mourners, as the wholeness and integration of the body are preserved until it decomposes in the grave (underground), over an extended period of time (Cerezo-Román et al. 2017). Cremation, on the other hand, is immediately transformative to both the deceased and the associated funerary objects. Several researchers have commented on this process within Hohokam cremation customs, describing this transition as a transformational process (Beck 2005; Cerezo-Román 2014a, 2015; Rakita and Buikstra 2005). The burning of the body created a new way of dealing with the remains in which the bones were collected and later placed in secondary deposit(s) (Cerezo-Román 2014a, 2015). In a Hohokam inhumation burial, it is possible that a metaphorical transformation could occur socially in deceased and inhumed individuals as they pass through the funerary rituals, especially from the liminal (funeral and burial) to postliminal stages (postburial and associated mourning ceremonies; see Cerezo-Román 2014a). These stages of mortuary rituals are based on Hertz’s ([1907] 1960) transitional states of funeral rituals and van Gennep’s ([1909] 1960) uni30

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versalist theory of the rites of passage, later elaborated by Turner (1967). They set out a tripartite model based on processes of transition from one social stage to another (van Gennep [1909] 1960). The model includes rites such as pregnancy, childbirth, marriage, and death. These transitions are accompanied by preliminal (separation), liminal (transition), and postliminal (reincorporation) rites. Van Gennep ([1909] 1960) highlighted the symbolic importance of mortuary ritual performance to facilitate the rite of passage from death (preliminal) to funeral and burial (liminal), and eventually to incorporation of the deceased into the world of the dead and the mourners back into society (postliminal). Among the Hohokam, after the final interment, other rituals also may have occurred, but no evidence has been found of secondary burials or manipulation of the bodies of inhumed individuals. There are clear differences in tempo7 and treatment of inhumed versus cremated bodies among the Hohokam; however, there are also similarities in strategies between the two funeral processes. In this study, similarities were also found in the types and variability of associated burial material, suggesting different but parallel commemorative practices. Age seems to be an important factor that determined who was inhumed. In both time periods, infants were mainly inhumed, compared with children, adolescents, and adults who mostly were cremated. Cerezo-Román (2014a), using ethnographic analogs from the region, mentioned that possibly age-at-death and personhood were intertwined and important variables in decisions about how bodies were treated at and immediately after death. That is, personhood likely was acquired gradually among the Hohokam as individuals aged. Differential mortuary treatments of infants and children have also been documented in ethnographic and ethnohistoric research in the Southwest (Cushing 1888; Russell 1975; Spicer 1980; Spier 1933; Underhill 1939, 1946). For example, the riverine Yuma practiced cremation as their principal mortuary treatment; however, they did not cremate infants or individuals who were kinless (Levy 1978; McGuire 1992; Spier 1933; Wallace 1978a, 1978b). Schillaci et al. (2011) mentioned that children must move through different rites of passage before being considered part of the group among the Hopi, Zuni, Tewa of San Juan Pueblo, and Keres Pueblo of Cochiti and Zia. Ethnographic records for the Tohono O’odham (southern Arizona) report that dead infants did not present any “spiritual” danger to the living because they were not yet fully persons (Kozak 1991). Among the Tucson Basin Hohokam, however, some infants and children were cremated. It is possible that they passed through some kind of rites of passage comparable to historic accounts in which they were considered to have personNon-Normative Inhumations among the Preclassic and Classic Period Hohokam

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hood and/or were part of the wider community, while the majority of inhumed infants were not. Personhood, or what constitutes the state or condition of being a person, can be assigned gradually to individuals depending on their social standing within the society and the perceptions of groups toward these individuals. Comparing the types of burial objects among different types of deposits and age groups can highlight some of these differences and degrees of personhood. In the Preclassic Period, no major statistical differences were found in the variability of objects between Classic Period cremated and inhumed neonates/infants or children, suggesting parallel commemorative rituals for these age groups. Infants and children, both cremated and inhumed, were buried with objects associated with both utilitarian and ritual activities. Interestingly, for the Preclassic Period, no major statistical differences by age were found in terms of the variability of burial objects within inhumations. This result is contrary to cremations in which, as individuals aged, more variability of objects was observed. In addition, most cremations of adolescents and adults had more variability of objects than did inhumations, suggesting that as individuals aged, the number of objects and possibly the societal role(s) associated with individuals increased. Differential body and burial treatment for adult individuals can be reflective of many different factors of the dead and/or their mourners, encompassing different intersecting identities, life histories, and social standings, among others (e.g., Arnold 2002; Baxter 2005; Cannon 2005; Cherryson 2008; Díaz-Andreu 2005; Gilchrist 2004). Among the Hohokam, differential body treatment for adult inhumations has been attributed to the possibility that they died under unusual circumstances or were not part of the community. Neither of these possibilities can be excluded based on osteological analysis of the human remains alone; unusual manners of death or unusual pathological conditions different from the rest of the population were not evident in the remains alone. It was also not possible to discern these possibilities just by determining whether the bodies were inhumed or cremated; however, contrasting how these adults were treated in relationship to subadults, as well as the intersection between the variability of objects between males and females and burial treatment, reveals interesting patterns that shed light on these unusual adult inhumations. These unusual inhumations could be related to social group membership and gender/sex differences between these individuals and the rest of the group. Recent research argues for discussing differences between biological sex and the cultural construction of gender in more contextualized manners (e.g., Hollimon 2011; Robb 2002). For example, Robb (2002) stated that we cannot draw 32

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direct connections between sex and gender and assume a relationship between these biological phenomena and their cultural expressions. A middle ground is necessary from which biological processes are recognized but contrasted with contextual cultural interpretations without rigidly dictating the way they were understood in the past. Sex per se was not an important factor in determining whether individuals were inhumed or cremated, as both males and females were found in cremations and inhumations; however, particular biological sex, likely related to gender roles combined with other social group identity(ies) intersections, played an important role in the selection of objects that were placed by the mourners. Preclassic Period adult cremations had variations in the number and types of objects, but also if the individuals were a male or a female. Differences between males and females were seen in the presence of utilitarian objects associated with food production and preparation, such as ceramic vessels. Females tended to have more ceramic vessels and isolated sherds than males. This finding is similar to what is described by Crown and Fish (1996) and Mitchell (1991, 1994), also working in this region. The distribution of stone objects was split; projectile points were found mainly with males, while ground stone and some lithic artifacts (not projectile points) were found mainly with females. Females seemed to be associated with the production and preparation of food whereas males were associated with the use of weapons for hunting and other purposes, such as warfare, games, and sports employing projectile points. However, the presence of these objects was not exclusive to either males or females, suggesting that roles likely were fluid and individuals of either sex could assume them in life. More importantly, their families, or persons in charge of the burial, placed the objects in the grave or with them on the pyre at death, emphasizing these associations. The inclusion of these types of objects was not limited to adults, either; these types of objects also were observed in limited frequencies with infants, children, and adolescents. Preclassic Period individuals who were cremated, particularly adolescents and adults, had more variability of objects than inhumed individuals, but there were differences between burial type and sex. Inhumed males had more variability of objects than inhumed females, suggesting slightly different representations of activities and networks. This is similar in cremations in which the burial objects were not exclusive to either males or females. If the burial objects were related to social roles, they were not static but fluid and either males or females could be associated with them. In light of variation in burial objects between males and females, it could be conceivable that inhumed males were Non-Normative Inhumations among the Preclassic and Classic Period Hohokam

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involved in more social networks or roles than females during life, or at least their mourners presented it that way. This is a strong possibility, particularly when it is suggested that the Preclassic Hohokam had a patrilineal kinship organization (Ensor 2013). This differential treatment between inhumed males and females could also be associated with the display of “ideal” or “real” wealth and the social standing of the mourners. Relatively similar to the suggestion by Cannon (2005), it is possible that mourners of males, potentially their partners and close family, used the arena of the inhumation burial ritual to display some material wealth differently from the mourners of females. This would entitle a differential commemoration between males and females in Preclassic Period inhumation burials. Likewise, in the Classic Period, cremated and inhumed neonates and infants did not present major frequency differences in terms of variability of objects. Burials of cremated infants contained fewer objects than cremated children or older individuals. No artifacts were found exclusive only to infants or children. Objects associated with cremations of infants and children were found in higher frequencies with adolescents and older individuals; however, different from the Preclassic Period, children cremated in the Classic Period did present significantly more variability in object types than inhumed children. Possibly, as individuals aged, other social-related roles were portrayed more in cremation funerals. Adolescents could not be evaluated due to the low number of individuals. Greater differences between inhumed and cremated females and males were also found in the Classic Period, but inverse to the pattern observed in the Preclassic Period. In general, inhumation had more variability of objects than cremation. It is possible that through time some members adopted earlier traditions and others abandoned them. Differences between males and females, associated burial objects, and burial treatment were also found in the Classic Period. Inhumed and cremated males did not present many differences other than inhumed males having more flaked stone objects than cremated males. Greater statistical differences were apparent between inhumed and cremated females. Most of the inhumed females did not have reconstructable ceramic vessels but had shells, while more cremated females had reconstructable vessels and isolated sherds. Similar to the Preclassic Period, cremated females were found with greater frequencies of vessels, suggesting that this portrayal of females related to food production and processing did not change greatly through time, but it also was not generalized to all females (i.e., inhumed females) in the society. In addition, these associations were fluid as both females and males could have them. 34

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Adult inhumations in the Classic Period seem to have been an arena to display different social and economic relationships, more so than in cremations. Cremated females were more likely associated with food and subsistence production in both periods than inhumed females. Funerary customs in the Classic Period are interpreted as resulting from a fairly segmented population, possibly with the social division between members of community-based intersections being based on social groups and gender; however, these social divisions through time were not strict but likely more fluid than originally conceived.

Conclusion The Preclassic and Classic period Hohokam from the Tucson Basin (Arizona) offer fascinating case studies for understanding changes through time in nonnormative inhumation burial customs, particularly how they relate to age and sex differences. This study was done by exploring both biological reconstruction of bodies and posthumous treatments within and between sites. Previously, inhumation and cremation were usually explored in isolation regardless of the fact that they may be practiced in the same culture and time period. They present different tempos and ways of treating the bodies but also parallel commemorative rituals. Age was an important factor in determining who was inhumed; however, sex and/or gender as a single social identity was not a factor that determined whether individuals were inhumed or cremated. It was more likely that their particular social group identity intersections combined with social roles related to biological sex played a more important role in observed differential funeral customs. These social roles likely were fluid but they were usually associated with males or females. Finally, critical and contextualized approaches to the study of non-normative burials are necessary in order to reconstruct the complexity of funeral customs and their associated cultural significance through time.

Acknowledgments I am indebted to my former advisor Dr. Barbara Mills for her time, support, and advice. I am grateful for the comments and suggestions of the anonymous reviewers and editors on how to improve this chapter. I am thankful to Drs. Thomas Fenn and Jessica MacLellan for their valuable support and suggestions. I would like to thank Dr. Saul Hedquist for producing the map for this publication. Non-Normative Inhumations among the Preclassic and Classic Period Hohokam

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Access to collections and materials were granted thanks to the support of Dr. Lane Beck, Dr. John McClelland, Dr. James Watson, the Bioarchaeology Laboratory at the Arizona State Museum, and Alan Ferg. I would also like to acknowledge the Tohono O’odham Nation, Henry Wallace, Deborah L. Swartz, Dr. Michael W. Lindeman, Dr. William H. Doelle, Desert Archaeology Inc., and Dr. Joe Ezzo and Michael Margolis for their support in accessing the collections, data, and field notes. Financial assistance for data collection was provided by the William Shirley Fulton Scholarship (School of Anthropology, UA), Raymond H. Thompson Endowment Research Award (Arizona State Museum, UA), and a National Science Foundation Dissertation Improvement Grant (Grant #1132395).

Notes 1. Social age refers to socially constructed norms concerning appropriate behavior and attitudes for an age group (Gowland 2006). 2. Personhood is what constitutes the state or condition of being a person (CerezoRomán 2015). 3. Including pyres and secondary deposits of cremated bone. 4. The individuals were classified as older than 15 years at death when the degree of thermal alteration and/or degree of fragmentation did not allow estimating a narrowed age category such as adolescence or adult. 5. Primary inhumations refer to deposits in which the remains were first placed and where decomposition occurred. 6. Secondary deposits refer to deposits in which human remains were placed after removal from primary deposits. 7. Tempo refers to the speed or pace of a given subsection of a funeral, how fast or slow the event proceeds.

Bibliography Arnold, Bettina 2002 A Landscape of Ancestors: The Space and Place of Death in Iron Age West-Central Europe. Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association Special Issue: The Place and Space of Death 11(1): 129–143. Aspöck, Edeltraud 2008 What Actually is a “Deviant Burial”? Comparing German-Language and Anglophone Research on “Deviant Burials.” In Deviant Burial in the Archaeological Record, edited by Eileen M. Murphy, pp. 17–34. Oxbow Books, Oxford. Baxter, Jane Eva 2005 The Archaeology of Childhood: Children, Gender, and Material Culture. Altamira Press, Walnut Creek, California. 36

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Beck, Lane Anderson 2005 Secondary Burial Practices in Hohokam Cremations. In Interacting with the Dead: Perspectives on Mortuary Archaeology for the New Millennium, edited by Gordon F. M. Rakita, Jane E. Buikstra, Lane A. Beck, and Sloan R. Williams, pp. 150–154. University Press of Florida, Gainesville. 2008 Human Remains. In Craft Specialization in the Southern Tucson Basin: Archaeological Excavations at the Julian Wash Site, AZ BB:13:17 (ASM), Part 1, Introduction, Excavation Results, and Artifact Investigations, edited by Henry D. Wallace. Anthropological Papers 40. Center for Desert Archaeology, Tucson, Arizona. Birkby, Walter H. 1976 Cremated Human Remains. In The Hohokam: Desert Farmers and Craftsmen: Excavations at Snaketown, 1964–1965, edited by Henry F. Dobyns and Emil W. Haury, pp. 380–384. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. Bloch, Maurice, and Jonathan Parry (editors) 1982 Death and the Regeneration of Life. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Brew, Susan A., and Bruce B. Huckell 1987 A Protohistoric Pima Burial and a Consideration of Pima Burial Practices. Kiva 52(3): 163–191. Brunson-Hadley, Judy L. 1989 The Social Organization of the Los Muertos Hohokam: A Reanalysis of Cushing’s Hemenway Expedition Data. PhD dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Arizona State University, Tempe. Buckberry, Jo L., and Andrew T. Chamberlain 2002 Age Estimation from the Auricular Surface of the Ilium: A Revised Method. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 119: 231–239. Buikstra, Jane E., and Douglas Ubelaker 1994 Standards for Data Collection from Human Skeletal Remains: Proceeding of a Seminar at the Field Museum of Natural History organized by Jonathan Haas. Arkansas Archeological Survey 44, Fayetteville. Cannon, Aubrey 2005 Gender and Agency in Mortuary Fashion. In Interacting with the Dead: Perspectives on Mortuary Archaeology of the New Millennium, edited by Gordon F. M. Rakita, Jane E. Buikstra, Lane A. Beck, and Sloan R. Williams, pp. 41–65. University Press of Florida, Gainesville. Cerezo-Román, Jessica I. 2014a Pathways to Personhood: Cremation as a Social Practice among the Tucson Basin Hohokam. In Transformation by Fire: The Archaeology of Cremation in Cultural Context, edited by Ian Kuijt, Colin P. Quinn, and Gabriel Cooney, pp. 148–167. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. 2014b Unpacking Personhood and Identity in the Hohokam Area of Southern Arizona. PhD dissertation, School of Anthropology, University of Arizona, Tucson. 2015 Unpacking Personhood and Identity in the Hohokam Area of Southern Arizona. American Antiquity 80(2): 353–375. Cerezo-Román, Jessica I., and John McClelland 2009 Mortuary Practices at Yuma Wash and the Hohokam Classic World. In ArchaeoNon-Normative Inhumations among the Preclassic and Classic Period Hohokam

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logical Investigations at Five Sites West of the Santa Cruz River in Marana, Arizona, edited by Arthur C. MacWilliams and Allen Dart, pp. 6.1–6.22. vol. 1. Old Pueblo Archaeology Center, Tucson, Arizona. Cerezo-Román, Jessica, Anna Wessman, and Howard Williams (editors) 2017 Cremation and the Archaeology of Death. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Cherryson, Annia Kristina 2008 Normal, Deviant and Atypical: Burial Variation in Late Saxon Wessex, c. AD 700– 1100. In Deviant Burial in the Archaeological Record, edited by Eileen M. Murphy, pp. 115–127. Oxbow Books, Oxford. Craig, Douglas B. 1989 Archaeological Testing at Honey Bee Village (AZ: BB:9:88 ASM). Technical Report 89-6. Institute for American Research, Mesa, Arizona. Crown, Patricia L., and Suzanne K. Fish 1996 Gender and Status in the Hohokam Pre-Classic to Classic Transition. American Anthropologist, New Series 98(4): 803–817. Cushing, Frank H. 1888 Preliminary Notes on the Origin, Working Hypothesis and Primary Researches of the Hemenway Southwestern Archaeological Expedition. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the International Congress of the Americanists. 1890 Preliminary Notes on the Origin, Working Hypothesis and Primary Researches of the Hemenway Southwestern Archaeological Expedition. In Proceedings of the Congress International des Americanistes, pp. 151–194. Berlin. Díaz-Andreu, Margarita 2005 Gender Identity. In The Archaeology of Identity Approaches to Gender, Age, Status and Ethnicity and Religion, edited by Margarita Díaz-Andreu, Sam Lucy, Staaš Babić, and David N. Edwards, pp. 13–42. Routledge, New York. Donnelly, Steven M., Samantha M. Hens, Nikki L. Rogers, and Kennan L. Schneider 1998 Technical Note: A Blind Test of Mandibular Ramus Flexure as a Morphologic Indicator of Sexual Dimorphism in the Human Skeleton. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 107: 363–366. Ensor, Bradley E. 2013 The Archaeology of Kinship: Advancing Interpretation and Contributions to Theory. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. Ezzo, Joseph (editor) 2005 Ballcourt on the Bajada: Data Recovery at Sleeping Snake Village (AZ BB:9:104 [ASM]) and Los Venados (AZ BB:9:186 [ASM]), Oro Valley, Arizona. SWCA Environmental Consultants, Tucson, Arizona. 2008 Archaeological Data Recovery at Fagan Ranch, Corona de Tucson, Pima County, Arizona. SWCA Environmental Consultants, Tucson, Arizona. Fink, Michael T. 1988a Human Skeletal Remains and Mortuary Practices at La Lomita Pequeña. In Excavations at La Lomita Pequeña, A Santa Cruz/Sacaton Phase Hamlet in the Salt River Valley, edited by Douglas R. Mitchell, pp. 339–350. Soil Systems Publications in Archaeology 10. Soil Systems, Inc., Phoenix, Arizona. 1988b The Practice of Cremation at the Yale-Sheridan Locus of Casa Buena. In Excava38

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tions at Casa Buena: Changing Hohokam Land Use along the Squaw Peak Parkway, Volume 2, edited by Jerry B. Howard, Ethne Barnes, and Cory D. Breternitz, pp. 67–83. Soil Systems Publications in Archaeology 11. Soil Systems, Phoenix, Arizona. 1989 The Cremated Human Remains from Los Morteros. In The 1979–1983 Testing at Los Morteros (AZ AA:12:57 ASM), A Large Hohokam Village Site in the Tucson Basin, edited by Richard C. Lange and William L. Deaver, pp. 277–284. Archaeological Series 177. Archaeology Section Research Division, Arizona State Museum, University of Arizona, Tucson. Gabel, Norman 1931 Martinez Hill Ruins: An Example of Prehistoric Culture of the Middle Gila, Anthropology, University of Arizona, Tucson. Geller, Pamela L. 2005 Skeletal Analysis and Theoretical Complications. World Archaeology 37(4): 597– 609. 2008 Conceiving Sex. Fomenting a Feminist Bioarchaeology. Journal of Social Archaeology 8(1): 113–138. 2009 Bodyscapes, Biology, and Heteronormativity. American Anthropologist 111(4): 504–516. Gilchrist, Roberta 2004 Archaeology and the Life Course: A Time and Age for Gender. In A Companion to Social Archaeology, edited by Lynn Meskell and Robert W. Preucel, pp. 142–160. Blackwell, Oxford. Gowland, Rebecca 2006 Ageing the Past: Examining Age Identity from Funerary Evidence. In Social Archaeology of Funerary Remains, edited by Rebecca Gowland and Christopher Knüsel. Oxbow Books, Oxford. Hall, Susan D., CaraMia R. Whitney, Chance Cooperstone, April Whitaker, Michael Margolis, Deborah L. Swartz, and Michael W. Lindeman 2016 Human Mortuary Features. In Archaeological Investigations at the Yuma Wash site and Outlying Settlements, edited by D. L. Swartz, pp. 247–538. Anthropological Papers 49. Desert Archaeology, Tucson. Hammack, Nancy S. 1969 An Analysis of the Ceramic Vessels from Mortuary Pits, Ariz. AA:12:46, Rabid Ruin, Tucson, Arizona. Arizona State Museum, University of Arizona, Tucson. Hanlon, Capistran J. 1972 Papago Funeral Customs. Kiva 37(2): 104–113. Haun, S. J. 2000 Brief Communication: A Study of the Predictive Accuracy of Mandibular Ramus Flexure as a Single Morphologic Indicator of Sex in an Archaeological Sample. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 111: 429–432. Haury, Emil Walter 1976 The Hohokam: Desert Farmers and Craftsmen: Excavations at Snaketown, 1964– 1965. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. Hawkey, Diane E. 1998 Disability, Compassion, and the Skeletal Record: Using Musculoskeletal Stress Non-Normative Inhumations among the Preclassic and Classic Period Hohokam

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Markers (MSM) to Construct an Osteobiography from Early New Mexico. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 8: 326–340. Hayden, Julian D. 1957 Excavations, 1940 at University Indian Ruin Tucson, Arizona. Technical Series, Vol. 5. Southwestern Monuments Association, Gila Pueblo, Globe, Arizona. Hertz, Robert 1960 (1907) Death and the Right Hand: A Contribution to the Study of the Collective Representation of Death. Translated by R. Needham and C. Needham. Free Press, Glencoe, Illinois. Hollimon, Sandra E. 2000 Sex, Health, and Gender Roles Among the Arikara of the Northern Plains. In Reading the Body: Representations and Remains in the Archaeological Record, edited by Alison E. Rautman, pp. 25–37. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia. 2001 Warfare and Gender in the Northern Plains: Osteological Evidence of Trauma Reconsidered. In Gender and the Archaeology of Death, edited by Bettina Arnold and Nancy L. Wicker, pp. 179–194. Altamira Press, Walnut Creek, California. 2011 Sex and Gender in Bioarchaeological Research Theory, Method, and Interpretation. In Social Bioarchaeology, edited by Sabrina C. Agarwal and Bonnie A. Glencross, pp. 149–182. Wiley-Blackwell, Malden, Massachusetts. Holloway, James 2008 Charcoal Burial: A Minority Burial Rite in Early Medieval Europe. In Deviant Burial in the Archaeological Record, edited by Eileen M. Murphy, pp. 131–147. Oxbow Books, Oxford. Huntington, Frederick W. (editor) 1986 Archaeological Investigations at the West Branch Site Early and Middle Rincon Occupation in the Southern Tucson Basin. Institute for American Research, Tucson. Kozak, David Lee 1991 Dying Badly: Violent Death and Religious Change Among the Tohono O’odham. Journal of Death & Dying 23(3): 207. Langley-Shirley, N., and Richard L. Jantz 2010 A Bayesian Approach to Age Estimation in Modern Americans from the Clavicle. Journal of Forensic Science 55(3): 571–583. Larsson, Åsa M., and Liv Nilsson Stutz 2014 Reconcilable Differences: Cremation, Fragmentation, and Inhumation in Mesolithic and Neolithic Sweden. In Transformation by Fire: The Archaeology of Cremation in Cultural Context, edited by Ian Kuijt, Colin P. Quinn, and Gabriel Cooney, pp. 47–66. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. Levy, Richard 1978 Costanoan. In Handbook of North American Indians. Vol. 8, California, edited by R. F. Heizer, pp. 485–495. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. Loth, Susan R., and Maciej Henneberg 1996 Mandibular Ramus Flexure: A New Morphologic Indicator of Sexual Dimorphism in the Human Skeleton. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 99: 473–485. 40

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McGuire, Randall H. 1992 Death, Society and Ideology in a Hohokam Community. Investigations in American Archaeology. Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado. 2001 Ideologies of Death and Power in the Hohokam Community of La Ciudad. In Ancient Burial Practices in the American Southwest: Archaeology, Physical Anthropology, and Native American Perspectives, edited by Douglas R. Mitchell and Judy L. Brunson-Hadley, pp. 27–44. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. Minturn, Penny Dufoe, and Douglas B. Craig 2001 Burials. In The Grewe Archaeological Research Project Volume 1: Project Background and Feature Descriptions, edited by Douglas B. Craig, pp. 137–145. Anthropological Papers No. 99-1. Northland Research, Inc., Flagstaff, Arizona. Mitchell, Douglas R. 1991 An Investigation of Two Classic Period Hohokam Cemeteries. North American Archaeologist 12(2): 109–127. 1994 The Pueblo Grande Burial Artifact Analysis: A Search for Wealth, Ranking, and Prestige. In The Pueblo Grande Project: An Analysis of Classic Period Hohokam Mortuary Patterns, edited by D. R. Mitchell and C. Carr. Soil Systems Publications in Archaeology, vol. 7. Soil Systems, Phoenix, Arizona. Mitchell, Douglas R., and Judy L. Brunson-Hadley 2001 An Evaluation of Classic Period Hohokam Burials and Society: Chiefs, Priests, or Acephalous Complexity? In Ancient Burial Practices in the American Southwest: Archaeology, Physical Anthropology and Native American Perspectives, edited by Douglas R. Mitchell and Judy L. Brunson-Hadley, pp. 45–67. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. Murphy, Eileen M. (editor) 2008 Deviant Burial in the Archaeological Record. Oxbow Books, Oxford. Neitzel, Jill E. 2001 Gender Hierarchies: A Comparative Analysis of Mortuary Data. In Women & Men in the Prehispanic Southwest: Labor, Power, & Prestige, edited by Patricia L. Crown, pp. 137–168. School of American Research Press, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Osborne, Daniel L., Tal L. Simmons, and Stephen P. Nawrocki 2004 Reconsidering the Auricular Surface as an Indicator of Age at Death. Journal of Forensic Sciences 49: 905–911. Rakita, Gordon F. M., and Jane E. Buikstra 2005 Corrupting Flesh: Reexamining Hertz’s Perspective on Mummification and Cremation. In Interacting with the Dead: Perspectives on Mortuary Archaeology for the New Millennium, edited by Gordon F. M. Rakita, Jane E. Buikstra, Lane A. Beck, and Sloan R. Williams, pp. 97–106. University Press of Florida, Gainesville. Reinhard, Karl J. 1978 Prehistoric Cremations from Nogales. Kiva 43(3–4): 23–251. Reinhard, Karl J., and Michael T. Fink 1993 Cremation in Southwestern North America: Aspects of Taphonomy that Affect Pathological Analysis. Journal of Archaeological Science 21: 597–605. Robb, John 2002 Time and Biography: Osteobiography of the Italian Neolithic Lifespan. In Thinking Non-Normative Inhumations among the Preclassic and Classic Period Hohokam

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Through the Body: Archaeologies of Corporeality, edited by Yannis Hamilakis, Mark Pluciennik, and Sarah Tarlow pp. 153–171. Kluwer Academic/Plenum, New York. Russell, Frank 1908 The Pima Indians. Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. 1975 The Pima Indians. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. Sayles, E. B. 1937 Excavations at Snaketown: Material Culture. In Disposal of the Dead, edited by Harold S. Gladwin, Emil W. Haury, E. B. Sayles, and Nora Gladwin. Medallion Papers No. 25. Gila Pueblo Globe, Arizona. Scheuer, Louise, and Sue Black 2000 Developmental Juvenile Osteology. Academic Press, San Diego. Schillaci, Michael A., Dejana Nikitovic, Nancy J. Akins, Lianne Tripp, and Ann M. Palkovich 2011 Infant and Juvenile Growth in Ancestral Pueblo Indians. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 145(2): 318. Sofaer, Joanna 2006 The Body as Material Culture: A Theoretical Osteoarchaeology. Topics in Contemporary Archaeology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Sofaer Derevenski, Joanna 2004 The Materiality of Age: Osteoarchaeology, Objects, and the Contingency of Human Development. Ethnographisch-Archaologische Zeitschrift 45(2–3): 165–180. Sørensen, Marie Louise Stig 2000 Gender Archaeology. Polity Press, Cambridge. Spicer, Edward H. 1980 The Yaqui: A Cultural History. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. Spier, Leslie 1933 Yuman Tribes of the Gila River. Ethnological Series. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Stockett, Miranda K. 2005 On the Importance of Difference: Re-Envisioning Sex and Gender in Ancient Mesoamerica. World Archaeology 37(4): 566–578. Stodder, Ann Lucy Wiener, and Ann M. Palkovich (editors) 2012 The Bioarchaeology of Individuals. University Press of Florida, Gainesville. Stone, Pamela, and Dana Walrath 2006 The Gendered Skeleton: Anthropological Interpretations of the Bony Pelvis. In The Social Archaeology of Funerary Remains, edited by Rebecca L. Gowland and Christopher Knüsel. Oxbow Books, Oxford. Swartz, Deborah L. (editor) 2008 Life in the Foothills: Archaeological Investigations in the Tortolita Mountains of Southern Arizona. Center for Desert Archaeology, Tucson, Arizona. Turner, Victor W. 1967 The Forest of Symbols. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, N.Y. Underhill, Ruth 1939 Social Organization of the Papago Indian. Columbia University Press, New York. 42

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1946 Papago Indian Religion. Columbia University Press, New York. van Gennep, Arnold 1960 [1909] The Rites of Passage. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London. Walker, Phillip L. 2005 Greater Sciatic Notch Morphology: Sex, Age, and Population Differences. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 127: 385–391. 2008 Sexing Skulls using Discriminant Function Analysis of Visually Assessed Traits. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 136: 39–50. Wallace, Henry D. (editor) 1995a Archaeological Investigations at Los Morteros, A Prehistoric Settlement in the Northern Tucson Basin. Part 1. Center for Desert Archaeology, Tucson, Arizona. 1995b Archaeological Investigations at Los Morteros, A Prehistoric Settlement in the Northern Tucson Basin. Part 2. Center for Desert Archaeology, Tucson, Arizona. 2012 Life in the Valley of Gold: Archaeological Investigations at Honey Bee Village, a Prehistoric Hohokam Ballcourt Village, Part 1. Archaeology Southwest, Tucson, Arizona. Wallace, William J. 1978a Northern Valley Yokuts. In Handbook of North American Indians. Vol. 8, California, edited by R. F. Heizer, pp. 462–470. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. 1978b Southern Valley Yokuts. In Handbook of North American Indians. Vol. 8, California, edited by R. F. Heizer, pp. 448–462. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Weiss-Krejci, Estrella 2008 Unusual Life, Unusual Death and the Fate of the Corpse: A Case Study for Dynastic Europe. In Deviant Burial in the Archaeological Record, edited by Eileen M. Murphy, pp. 169–190. Oxbow Books, Oxford. Whittlesey, Stephanie M. (editor) 2004 Pots, Potters, and Models: Archaeological Investigations at the SRI Locus of the West Branch Site, Tucson, Arizona, Volume 2, Synthesis and Interpretations. Statistical Research, Tucson, Arizona. Wilcox, David R. 1987 Frank Midvale’s Investigation of the Site of La Ciudad. Anthropological Field Studies 19, Ciudad Monograph Series. Arizona State University, Tempe. Williams, Howard 2004 Ephemeral Monuments and Social Memory in Early Roman Britain. In TRAC 2003: Proceedings of the Thirteenth Annual Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference, edited by Ben Croxford, Hella Eckardt, Judy Meade, and Jake Weekes, pp. 51–61. Oxbow Books, Oxford. 2014 A Well-Urned Rest: Cremation and Inhumation in Early Anglo-Saxon England. In Transformation by Fire: The Archaeology of Cremation in Cultural Context, edited by Ian Kuijt, Colin P. Quinn, and Gabriel Cooney, pp. 93–118. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.

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3 Interpreting a Multiple Burial in an Early Ancestral Pueblo Village

A n n L . W. Stodde r

In early August 1981, archaeologists working for the Dolores Archaeological Program (DAP), about 20 miles north of Mesa Verde National Park in southwestern Colorado, encountered an unusual mortuary feature: four adults, two men and two women, lying in various positions but parallel to each other on the floor of pit structure 3, a semisubterranean house, at site 5MT5106, Weasel Pueblo (fig. 3.1). The roof was collapsed onto the floor and onto the four bodies, sealing the house as a burial chamber (Morris 1988: 725). This was the middle one of three semisubterranean 4–4.5 m diameter pit houses aligned in front of an arc of 18 masonry surface rooms at Weasel Pueblo which was in turn part of McPhee Village, an extraordinarily large (for its time) ancestral Pueblo village (fig. 3.2). McPhee Village and its constituent roomblock and pit structure groups (about 21.5 ha in area) were occupied from about AD 800 to 900, the middle and late Pueblo I period (AD 700–900). At its peak, ca. AD 860–870, an estimated 300 people lived in this village, one of seven along a 10 km stretch of the Dolores River (Wilshusen 1989: 102). The people of McPhee were farmers, hunters, craftsmen, and foragers. They moved to and lived in the Dolores Valley during a time of unusually warm temperatures and high precipitation that favored dry farming (without major irrigation features) in the relatively high elevation Dolores Valley (2085 m asl). This ideal climate regime was short lived. The local population declined rapidly in the 880s and 890s as people moved to lower elevations with longer growing seasons for maize, squash, and other

Figure 3.1. Multiple burial in Pit Structure 3, site 5MT5106. (Adapted from fig. 5.46, Morris 1988: 730 and fig. 5.54, Morris 1988: 739.)

crops, and after AD 900 the Dolores area was only sparsely occupied by ancestral Puebloans (Kane 1988; Wilshusen et al. 2012). This relatively short-term occupation of settlements is characteristic of early Pueblo habitations, in contrast to the very long-lived Pueblo communities established in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, some of which are still occupied today. What made DAP Burial 38 (the collective term for Features 17, 18, 35, and 59) so striking? First, while multiple burials in subterranean storage cists and rock Interpreting a Multiple Burial in an Early Ancestral Pueblo Village

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Figure 3.2. McPhee Village sites (surface rooms only) and site 5MT5106. (Adapted from fig. 1.1, Kane 1988: 5, and fig. 5.8 Morris 1988: 675.)

shelters are present in Basketmaker II and III sites (AD 200–700) across the northern Southwest (Flores and Kearns 1996; Mowrer 2007; Mulhern in press), very few multiple primary burials (with more than two individuals) have been recorded in the hundreds and hundreds of Pueblo I through Pueblo III (AD 700–1300) sites in the Mesa Verde region (Karhu 2000; Mowrer 2015; Potter 2010; Stodder 1987, Stodder in press). Second, long-held interpretations of an46

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cestral Pueblo mortuary behavior, based on nearly a century of excavations at later Pueblo II (AD 900–1100) and Pueblo III (AD 1100–1300) sites, held that normative mortuary context was either in extramural midden deposits or in the talus slopes in front of cliff dwellings, with a few individuals placed in subfloor pits in disused surface rooms (Fewkes 1911; Morris 1939; Stanislawski 1963). The Dolores Project was the first extensive study of Pueblo I (AD 700–900, PI) villages, and while middens were used for interment, half the burials (24 of 47) encountered were on the floor or in postoccupational fill of pit houses (Stodder 1987, Stodder in press). Given the rarity of multiple burials and the unexpected frequency of pit house floors as a context for burial in Dolores, where does Burial 38 fit in the picture of local mortuary practice? How has the interpretation of Burial 38 changed in the past 30 years, and what does the interpretation of this burial reveal about the course of archaeology and bioarchaeology in the Mesa Verde region?

Mortuary Practice at Pueblo I Dolores Villages Despite the large scale of the Dolores Archaeological Program, only 47 individuals were recovered from mortuary features: 8 nonadults, including 1 infant, 1 adolescent, and 6 children aged 2 to 8; 19 females, 14 males, and 6 adults of unknown sex. Many ancestral Pueblo sites yield far fewer burials than expected based on population estimates, but the Dolores case is extreme even given the fact that many of the sites were not completely excavated. As always, our view of mortuary treatment is incomplete. As detailed in figure 3.3, Dolores burials can be grouped into six contexts. Thirty percent of the individuals (n = 15) were found in the postoccupational fill of pit houses. Twenty-eight percent (n = 13) were found in extramural midden deposits, and 26% (n = 12) were found on the floors of pit houses. Eleven percent (n = 5) of the burials were in masonry surface room fill. Two percent of the individuals (n = 1 each) were found on the floor of a surface room (an infant) and in a pit in an extramural activity area (an adolescent). Two of the individuals in floor burials were young women (identifiable on the basis of body size and pelvic and cranial features), ages 15–19 and 16–19, both in double burials with somewhat older adult males, but there were no children on pit house floors in the Dolores sites. The large number (125) of mortuary features at the slightly earlier PI communities in Ridges Basin, about 40 miles southeast of Dolores, presents a clear contrast with the Dolores burials, as the great majority of the Interpreting a Multiple Burial in an Early Ancestral Pueblo Village

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Figure 3.3. Contexts of Dolores Pueblo I burials.

Ridges Basin PI burials were in extramural middens and nonmidden burial areas (Potter 2010). The distinction between burial in postoccupational fill of an out-of-use structure, and the deposition of one, two, or four individuals on the floor of a house where the roof is collapsed onto the bodies, making the house into a tomb, is an important one. Also of interest is the slightly higher prevalence of women than men buried in postoccupational fill of pit houses, a pattern also evident at the early PI communities in Ridges Basin (Potter 2010). This pattern hints at matrilocality, with women as the owners of houses. The extension of kinship and residence patterns from Pueblo ethnography into prehistory is a perennial topic of interest (Kennett et al. 2017; Peregrine 2001; Schillaci and Stojanowski 2003; Ware 2014).

Burial 38 All four of the individuals in this multiple burial were young to middle-aged adults, two with unusual pathological conditions. Age and sex assessments were based on standard methods and references used in the early 1980s (Bass 1971; Brothwell 1971; El-Najjar and McWilliams 1980; Krogman 1962; Olivier 1969; Ortner and Putschar 1981; Steinbock 1976; Todd 1921; Ubelaker 1978) and spe48

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cialized paleopathology and clinical reference materials. Data collection protocols were consistent with those used in University of Colorado Mesa Verde Research Center projects in the 1970s and 1980s. All the Dolores Project burials were reburied in the early 1990s, shortly after the passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. Regarding the body positions of the four people in Burial 38, the site report states that “the arrangement appeared somewhat careless because the final disposition of each individual was different and because the 2 westernmost individuals were lying partially in the charcoal fill of the hearth” (Morris 1988: 725). This observation reflects the expectation that considerately buried bodies will be arranged in a normative position—neatly flexed or extended on the back, legs straight and arms along the side of the body, perhaps with the forearms and hands near the abdomen, and not in the hearth. The westernmost individual, Feature 17, was a male aged 27–33 years. His skull, face, vertebrae, and sacrum were damaged and disarticulated and displaced by backhoe trenching, and crushed by the 15 to 40 cm layer of roof fall which was overlain by water deposited silt, clay, and silty loam. The depth of the floor ranged from 1.5 to 1.9 m below the modern ground surface. Feature 18, also a male, was 21 to 24 years old. His skull was also partly crushed. A solitary cartilaginous exostosis (2.9 cm long and 1.3 cm wide) projected distally from the lateral posterior aspect of his left proximal tibia, and the articular end of the proximal fibula was correspondingly malformed (Stodder 1987: 401). The full extent to which this developmental anomaly impaired the young man’s mobility is not known, but the condition might be related to the extreme hyperextension of his left knee, evident in figure 3.1. The articular surfaces of the knee and attachment sites for muscles and tendons bore no suggestion of antemortem traumatic dislocation and healing; the distinctly unnatural position of the lower leg might reflect perimortem trauma or breaking of tendons and ligaments that were in a state of rigor after death. Feature 35 was a female aged 22 to 25 years old. Pathological deformation of her right hip, leg, and ankle suggests that she suffered an injury (or virus, possibly poliomyelitis) that resulted in paralysis and postparalytic deformity. Her right leg bones are somewhat shorter and markedly smaller in diameter than the left leg, reflecting underdevelopment and disuse atrophy. She was likely crippled during late childhood and lived into young adulthood with impaired mobility and deformity. At death, she had an active infection (Brodie’s abscess) in her right knee (Stodder 1987: 393). Feature 50, the easternmost of the four inInterpreting a Multiple Burial in an Early Ancestral Pueblo Village

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dividuals was 24 to 28 years old. Her cranium was damaged and partly crushed by roof fall. She had a healed fracture of the sternum. Other conditions in these individuals are those commonly observed in ancestral Pueblo people of the Mesa Verde region (Karhu 2000, 2004; Lambert 1999; Malville 1997; Mowrer 2015; Stodder 1984, 1987; Stodder et al. 2010). All four individuals exhibited linear enamel hypoplasias in one or more teeth, and three had evidence of remodeled cribra orbitalia and/or porotic hyperostosis. Slight to moderate osteoarthritis was present in various appendicular and intervertebral joints. With the possible exception of the knee infection, none of the skeletons exhibited evidence of cause of death (Morris 1988; Stodder 1988). A variety of normal domestic objects—utilitarian pottery, grinding stones, bone and stone tool kits—were present on the floor of the house, but the only objects deemed possibly (but not definitively) associated with the burial were 40 bone gaming pieces (Morris 1988: 725). Two clusters of these (nonhuman bone clusters 4 and 5 on fig. 3.1) were located west and north of Features 18 and 50, and one piece (number 70 on fig. 3.1) was on the right shoulder of Feature 35. The ovoid and circular pieces range from one to three cm long. They were made from split, polished portions of mammal tubular bones, with a convex undecorated side and a flat side with incised parallel or cross-hatched designs (Morris 1988: 725). Sometimes referred to as bone dice, gaming pieces are associated with games of chance or skill (Culin 1907; De Boer 2001; Edwards 2009; Weiner 2018). These were not found with any other Dolores burials, but they have been found, typically as much smaller sets, with earlier Basketmaker (preAD 700) burials (Charles 1996; Morris 1988: 725; Morris and Burgh 1954), and in a variety of contexts in later Pueblo I and II period sites. It is possible that these items were in a perishable container stored in or hanging from the roof of the structure and they fell onto the bodies when the roof was intentionally collapsed. Gaming pieces and fragments of a yucca fiber bag were recovered from roof fall in a middle PI site in northern New Mexico (Webster 2009: 122). In Pueblo ethnographies, gambling is associated with rainmaking and divination, intergroup competition, economic exchange and accumulation of wealth, and presumably also within aspects of inequality in power and prestige (Weiner 2018). The presence of these objects in this particular house could have positive or negative implications for the social identity of the people buried there. The people in Burial 38 were not arranged in expected formal positions. A large number of gaming pieces were in proximity to the bodies instead of typical grave goods like ceramic vessels, ornaments, or tools. Two of these people had 50

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a visible physical deformity and impaired mobility. This mortuary feature was also interpreted in terms of the location and function of this particular house and its role in village social organization. The relatively narrow age range of the four adults, “suggests these individuals belonged to at least 2 different family units, or households. . . . consistent with the model that [some] pit structures were interhousehold domestic / integrative use areas” (Morris 1988: 743). Variation in architectural details, nonlocal ceramic assemblages, faunal remains with different proportions of large vs small game, and the presence or absence of specific ritual-associated floor features in pit houses are important components in the reconstruction of social and ritual organization of McPhee village. To oversimplify, some pit houses had special floor features that are seen as representing hierarchy of ritual intensity and differentiating households within the village (Schachner 2010; Wilshusen 1988, 1989; Wilshusen et al. 2012). Some markedly large pit structures are interpreted as predominately used for ritual rather than domestic activities (Wilshusen 1986, 1989), representing intra- and interhousehold levels of social integration in these earliest aggregated villages. Pit house 3 at Weasel Pueblo, the location of Burial 38, was not one of the oversized structures, but it did have features that have been associated with a middle level of the ritual hierarchy (encompassed by the dashed line on fig. 3.1).

Pit House Floor Burials in the Mesa Verde Region Burial 38 was not the first multiple floor burial discovered in the Mesa Verde region. A semisubterranean pitroom (a room incorporated into a row of surface rooms) at Mesa Verde Site 1676 was the burial location for four adult males recorded a few decades before the multiple burial at McPhee. The report on site MV1676 focuses on Badger House, the later site component, and offers no interpretation of this mortuary feature (Hayes and Lancaster 1975). One floor burial had been found in the previous field season at Dolores: a young adult male and an older adolescent were placed on the floor of a pit house at site 5MT4725 in McPhee Village (Chenault 1983). After the discovery of Burial 38, three more floor burials were found at McPhee sites in the late summer and fall of 1981. Excavations since then bring the total to 16 mortuary features on PI pit house floors in the Mesa Verde region. As listed in table 3.1, these include nine single burials: five with an adult male, and six with a female. Of the three double burials, two include a male and female adult, one has two adult males, and one Interpreting a Multiple Burial in an Early Ancestral Pueblo Village

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Table 3.1. Pueblo I burials on pit structure floors, Mesa Verde Region Site group site # burials dates(AD) Ridges Basin 5LP237 ALP B137a 700–825

M

Non- In/on Structure adult hearth? burned? Comments

25–30

Ridges Basin 5LP379 Feat.102 800–820 Ridges Basin 5LP203 Feat.3 Early 800s

F

25–35

25–35

No

Yes

Projectile points; individual wrapped in or wearing blanket

No

Yes

Projectile point in rib interpreted as cause of death in the house

Maybe

Roof

Body disturbed by carnivores before covering by natural deposits and roof collapse

Ridges Basin 5LP2026 ALP B181 800–825

A

No

Yes

Fragmentary disarticulated burned remains on house floor, not processed

House Creek 5MT2320 DAP B47b 800–840

24–26

No

No

Unusually large associated assemblage including 36 ceramic vessels, bear skull Large floor assemblage

Badger House Mesa Verde 1676 B4,5,6,8 820–860

Adult 30–35 35–40 40+

B6

No

Duckfoot Site 5MT3868 B1,2 855–880

30–35 30–39

B1

Roof

No

No

Yes

Roof

Floor assemblage intact

Adult

Roof

Floor assemblage intact

Duckfoot Site 5MT3868 B3 855–880 Duckfoot Site 5MT3868 B4 855–880 Duckfoot Site 5MT3868 B11,12,14 855–880

30–39

30–39

50+

3–4 5–6

B1 had well-healed cranial trauma Probable secondary deposit

Site group site # burials dates(AD)

M

McPhee Village 5MT4725, PS3c DAP B26,27 850–880

23–27

McPhee Village 5MT5106, PS3 DAP B38–1,2,3,4 860–880

F

Non- In/on Structure adult hearth? burned? Comments No

No

Floor features include complex sipapu; bodies placed to north and south of hearth; only associated artifact is a tibia tinkler

27–33 22–25 21–24 24–28

Males’ lower legs, feet

No

Floor features include complex sipapu; large floor assemblage but only bone gaming pieces associated

McPhee Village 5MT4475, PS7 DAP B35–1,2 870–890

35–40 35–40

No

Roof

Floor features include complex sipapu; skeletons partly charred by roof fall; associated ceramics, textiles, ground stone.

McPhee Village 5MT5108 DAP B45 860–880, PS1

35–40

No

Yes

No definitely associated artifacts

McPhee Village 5MT5108, PS2 DAP B46–1,2 860–880

23–27 16–19

Female

No

Floor features include complex sipapu; bodies face down, described as having one or both hands “grasping the throat”; ceramics and bone tool cache associated

No

No

Two women in main chamber, one behind wing wall; large floor assemblage

Hummingbird 5MT7522 Feats 42.02, 42.03, 42.05 Pueblo I

15–18

27–34 20–29 18–22

Sources: 5LP237: Potter 2010; 5LP379: Fritz and Honeycutt 2003, Chuipka et al. 2007; 5LP203: Fritz 2003 and Honeycutt 2003; 5LP2026: Chuipka et al. 2007; 5MT2320: Robinson and Brisbin 1986: 735; MV1676: Hayes and Lancaster 1975; 5MT3868: Hoffman 1993, Lightfoot and Etzkorn 1993; 5MT4725: Chenault 1983; 5MT5106: Morris 1988, Wilshusen 1986; 5MT4475: Brisbin et al. 1988; 5MT5108: Kuckelman 1988; 5MT7522: Chenault 2004, Karhu 2004; DAP pit structure dates and ritual features: Wilshusen 1988. a ALP = Animas–La Plata project. b DAP = Dolores Archaeological Program. c Pit structure.

has a male and a young adult of uncertain sex. Burials of three individuals on pit structure floors include an adult female and two children at the Duckfoot site (5MT3868), and three adult females at Hummingbird Pueblo (5MT7522). The burials with four individuals include Burial 38 with two males and two females, and the Pitroom F burial of four adult males at MV1676. While none of the floor burials at the Dolores sites included children, the larger regional data set indicates that floor burial was not restricted to adults.

Body Location With the exception of a woman behind the wing wall (a low wall behind the hearth that incorporates the deflector shield) in Feature 42 at Hummingbird Pueblo, all the individuals on pit structure floors were in the main chamber of the house. In several burials the bodies were lying on either side of the hearth, but six individuals were placed partly on the hearth. This is not a matter of space restriction; there is plenty of room on a 4 to 6 m diameter floor for several bodies without contacting the hearth.

Body Position There is a considerable range of body position among the floor burials. A minority of individuals are in what would be considered normative or formal (considerate) position—extended on the back, arms at the side. Others were lying extended and face down with elbows flexed and arms tucked under the chest, and some were flexed at hip, knee, shoulder, and elbow, lying on one side. The positions of most individuals on floors would be described with the unhelpful term “semi-flexed” (everyone not fully extended or tightly flexed at the hip and knee) and many of these would be considered non-normative, especially individuals face down with arms or legs in an irregular position. These bodies, typically described as sprawled or haphazard, are taken as evidence of disrespectful treatment in death and poor treatment in life (Karhu 2003; Martin and Akins 2001).

Structure Closure All floor burials constitute closure of the house, and most of the burial forms and site reports explicitly state that the roof fall was in direct contact with the bodies as well as with the floor. The pit houses at three sites in Ridges Basin (5LP237, 5LP379, and 5LP2026) were completely burned with bodies on the floor. The individuals at sites 237 and 379 appear to have been shot by arrows, 54

Ann L. W. Stodder

and one or both are thought to have died in the houses (Chuipka et al. 2007; Potter 2010). At site 5LP2026 the burned, fragmentary, and disarticulated remains of an adult female on the floor of a burned house were originally reported as processed—intentionally disarticulated and fragmented by human agency (Chuipka et al. 2007: 108); however, taphonomic analysis revealed no tool marks or perimortem fractures in the fragmentary remains (Stodder and Osterholtz, unpublished data). Of the burials listed in table 3.1, four are in structures described as burned, and in five cases the roofs of the houses were burned and then collapsed onto the bodies. Some of the skeletons exhibit localized heat alteration from contact with burning roof collapse, but they are not described as burned or cremated bodies. Experimental studies have amply demonstrated the difficulty of burning a pit house (Glennie 1983). Burned houses and roofs are not seen as accidents, but the result of intentional destruction as part of abandonment ritual of a particular structure or of an entire settlement (Wilshusen 1986, 1989).

Floor Burials and Social Status If social importance is reflected by the relative amount of energy expended on burial (Tainter 1978), then we might see these as important individuals for whom entire structures were sacrificed to provide a place of burial (Stodder 1987). On the other hand, the fine-grained chronology of the Dolores pit houses indicate that they were used for a surprisingly short time, with use-life estimates ranging from 8–10 to 25–30 years (Kohler and Higgins 2016; Wilshusen 1986). Maybe the floor burials, or at least some of them, are in houses whose term of use was over anyway. Hoffman (1993) opined that floor burial could not indicate elevated social status because there were several women and children on structure floors at the Duckfoot site. Hoffman further normalized this mortuary practice through careful discussion of the absence of any indicators of violent death or perimortem trauma in the Duckfoot site floor burials. Pit house floors were certainly not the most prevalent context for PI burials in the Mesa Verde region, and there is substantial variation within this context category; however, the floor burials at McPhee seem to represent a distinctive mortuary program used in one village for a brief time. The terminal dates (based on dendrochronology, ceramics, and archaeomagnetic dating) for the McPhee houses with floor burials indicate that between AD 880 and 900, during the last years of McPhee Village, 11 people, some in early adulthood and none past middle age, were interred on house floors, 10 of them in double or multiple Interpreting a Multiple Burial in an Early Ancestral Pueblo Village

55

burial features. Each of these houses had floor features classified as complex sipapus, elaborated versions of the simple sipapu—a pit feature found in all houses, signifying the entrance to the underworld, whence humans emerged (Wilshusen 1988). These people were not interred in the midden at the edge of the village or in the upper fill of a house occupied by a previous generation, but in structures thought to have been used by two or three families for ritual as well as domestic purposes (Wilshusen 1988). This could be seen as an honorific context for the dead: house burials and the transformation of house to tomb are often interpreted as dedicatory acts honoring the dead as they become ancestors (Adams and King 2011; Heitman and Plog 2005; Toohey et al. 2016). But the interpretations of the McPhee burials have been quite the opposite.

Interpreting House Floor Burials Other than the initial suggestion that house-as-tomb burials could signify elevated status of the deceased, the McPhee floor burials and most other PI house floor burials have been portrayed as evidence of disregard for the deceased, and the McPhee burials as evidence of murder and sacrifice. The interpretations have become more extreme over time. The vagaries of body position are a recurring theme: bodies lying face down or with limbs not neatly arranged indicate that the dead were hastily and carelessly thrown into the houses (Chenault 2004; Karhu 2003; Morris 1988). The hands of DAP Burials 46-1 and 46-2 at 5MT5108 are described as “grasping the throat,” and taken as evidence that these individuals expired there in the structure as the roof was collapsed onto them (see Kuckleman 1988: 958 and Wilshusen 1986: fig. 2). Wilshusen states that the McPhee burials “deposited in ritual structures of secondary importance” suggests “that they lacked social status at their death and yet that their demise had sufficient ritual importance to provoke the community into destroying a ritual structure in order to bury them (e.g., they were ‘witches’)” (Wilshusen 1986: 254). Witch execution (Darling 1999) has been invoked to explain a wide range of what Walker calls “anomalous depositions of human remains” in pit structures at ancestral Pueblo sites (Walker 1995, 1998, 2008). Witch persecution is suggested as a tool of political repression: “in the earliest pit house villages, it is likely that shamans unsuccessful in their healing tasks were assumed to be covert witches and treated accordingly” (Walker 2008: 153). A more politically slanted discussion depicts the people in Burial 38 and the double burials at McPhee as victims of ritual murder in the context of the 56

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collapsing social and ritual hierarchy at McPhee Village: “with the failure and abandonment of one of the most hierarchically organized villages, adult couples (male and female) were deliberately killed and buried in ritual contexts” (Wilshusen and Van Dyke 2006: 245). The original interpretation (Morris 1988) that the four young adults in Burial 38 must have been from at least two households is not unreasonable, but it is worth noting that they were not aligned as “couples” although they are characterized as such (Wilshusen and Van Dyke 2006: 245). More recently the burials are referred to as acts of “violent sacrifice. . . . the result of internal conflicts within the village rather than warfare” (Wilshusen et al. 2012: 31). While the archaeological interpretation of the house floor burials has evolved, there can be no reanalysis of the long reburied skeletal remains wherein we might take advantage of recent literature on perimortem trauma (Wedel and Galloway 2014) or implement the fine-grained field procedures advocated by the tenets of archaeothanatology (Duday 2009). Even with these advances in the interpretation of skeletal fractures and contextual taphonomy, it might not be possible to distinguish between damage to the bodies from the collapsed roof beams and other potential perimortem trauma. And so the damaged skulls are glossed as evidence of murder, and the interpretation of the hands at the throat elides consideration of the principles of natural decomposition and flexure of finger joints and other body parts as tendons shrink (Duday 2009). Given forensic documentation of this phenomenon, especially in the context of high heat and low humidity, couldn’t the arrangement of the hands of Burials 46-1 and 46-2 be the result of tendon contraction in the fingers after the deaths of individuals whose arms were tucked under their torsos with the elbows flexed and hands correspondingly located at throat level? We might also consider mortuary practices and taphonomic factors that impact other aspects of body position. The apparent disrespectful dumping of bodies could be the result of gravitational forces that move body parts after deposition (Roksandic 2002) or the impact of roof fall on body positions. Could the “hastily thrown” bodies have been disarranged or rolled over by collapsing roof beams, or were they originally wrapped in textiles that decomposed allowing the bodies to shift? There are no extended burials in PI sites in Dolores other than those on house floors. Of the 88 Ridges Basin PI burials for whom flexure could be recorded there is only one extended burial (Potter 2010). Perhaps the notion of the neatly laid out extended burial as the only respectful disposition of a body is inappropriate here. Interpreting a Multiple Burial in an Early Ancestral Pueblo Village

57

It is certainly possible that these people were disrespected, sacrificed, murdered. No physical evidence of violent death was observed on the skeletal remains, but that does not prove they were not killed deliberately. Cranial trauma may be masked by postdepositional damage, they might have starved or been poisoned. Were the man and woman in Burial 38 with functional impairments treated as “others” (or witches, or shamans) and held responsible for the drastic downturn in climate, the decreasing crop yields, and exhaustion of local wild resources by the largest-ever village in the region? The framework of violence in which these mortuary features have been interpreted is the one in which almost all studies of human remains from the Mesa Verde region have been framed for the past 25 years. Assemblages of processed human remains and unburied bodies dating to the middle 1200s document considerable violence in the last decades of ancestral Pueblo occupation of the Colorado Plateau (Billman 2008; Billman et al. 2000; Kuckleman 2002, 2012; Turner and Turner 1999; White 1992), and evidence of extreme violence is also present in the short-lived PI community in Ridges Basin (Osterholtz 2013; Potter and Chuipka 2010; Stodder et al. 2010). The paradigm of violence and violent death tracks the increasing focus on the evolution of inequality at early large villages, where unstable hierarchies developed and crashed, and settlements were abandoned (Potter et al. 2012; Wilshusen et al. 2012).

Conclusion The question of whether Burial 38 still stands out as a unique mortuary feature in the Mesa Verde region can be answered in the affirmative. The association of houses with ritual floor features with multiple burials at McPhee has been interpreted as evidence of ritual violence, of abandonment of structures rather than dedication of structures to the dead. The floor burials at other sites are interpreted as disrespectful treatment of the dead based on a perhaps culturally irrelevant notion of what constitutes proper body position, and little attention to the contextual taphonomy of the mortuary features. The course of interpretation of Burial 38 is an intriguing example of a cumulative and now paradigmatic explanation in Southwestern archaeology, wherein witch execution and ritual violence are the labels applied to all non-normative occurrences of human remains, partly to avoid the unseemly topic of cannibalism (McGuire and Van Dyke 2008: 19). I cannot help but wonder if reanalysis of the human remains from these sites would have changed the story of how some ancestral Puebloans 58

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were treated in death. There are many more questions to ask about these burials, and about the significance of each house as a context for burial, and the life history of each person interred in this manner. Closing a house, a room in a house, or a ceremonial structure with the entombment of one or more persons can be honorific or negligent, hostile or commemorative. This study suggests the possibility that Pueblo I pit structure burials may represent all of these.

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Lambert, Patricia M. 1999 Human Skeletal Remains. In The Puebloan Occupation of the Ute Mountain Piedmont. Volume 5: Environmental and Bioarchaeological Studies, edited by B. R. Billman, pp. 111–161. Soil Systems Publications in Archaeology 22, Phoenix. Lightfoot, Ricky R., and Mary C. Etzkorn 1993 The Duckfoot Site. Volume I: Descriptive Archaeology. Occasional Papers of the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center No. 3. Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, Cortez, Colorado. Malville, Nancy J. 1997 Enamel Hypoplasia in Ancestral Puebloan Populations from Southwestern Colorado. 1, Permanent Dentition. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 102(3): 351–367. Martin, Debra L., and Nancy J. Akins 2001 Unequal Treatment in Death: Trauma and Mortuary Behavior at La Plata (A.D. 1000–1300). In Ancient Burial Practices in the American Southwest: Archaeology, Physical Anthropology, and Native American Perspectives, edited by D. R. Mitchell and J. L. Brunson-Hadley, pp. 223–248. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. McGuire, Randall H., and Ruth M. Van Dyke 2008 Dismembering the Trope: Imagining Cannibalism in the Ancient Pueblo World. In Social Violence in the Prehispanic American Southwest, edited by D. L. Nichols and P. L. Crown, pp. 7–40. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. Morris, Earl H. 1939 Archaeological Studies in the La Plata District. Publication 519. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, D.C. Morris, Earl H., and Robert F. Burgh 1954 Basket Maker II Sites near Durango, Colorado. Publication 604. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, D.C. Morris, James N. 1988 Excavations at Weasel Pueblo (Site 5MT5106), a Pueblo I–Pueblo III Multiple Occupation Site. In Dolores Archaeological Program: Anasazi Communities at Dolores: McPhee Village, edited by A. E. Kane and C. K. Robinson, pp. 665–784. U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Engineering and Research Center, Denver. Mowrer, Kathy 2007 Basketmaker II Mortuary Practices: Social Differentiation and Regional Variation. Kiva 72(2): 259–281. 2015 Human Skeletal Remains. In The Archaeology of Albert Porter Pueblo (5MT123): Excavations at a Great House Community Center in Southwestern Colorado, edited by S. C. Ryan, pp. 403–447. Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, Cortez, Colorado. Mulhern, Dawn M. In press Mortuary Practice of the Durango Basketmakers. In Ancient Southwestern Mortuary Practice, edited by J. T. Watson and G. F. M. Rakita. University of Colorado Press, Boulder. Olivier, Georges 1969 Practical Anthropology. Charles C. Thomas, Springfield, Illinois. 62

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Ortner, Donald J., and Walter J. G. Putschar 1981 Identification of Pathological Conditions in Human Skeletal Remains. Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology 28. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C. Osterholtz, Anna J. 2013 Extreme Processing at Mancos and Sacred Ridge: The Value of Comparative Studies. In Commingled and Disarticulated Human Remains: Working Toward Improved Theory, Method, and Data, edited by A. J. Osterholtz, K. M. Baustian, and D. L. Martin, pp. 102–128. Springer, New York. Peregrine, Peter N. 2001 Matrilocality, Corporate Strategy, and the Organization of Production in the Chacoan World. American Antiquity 66(1): 36–46. Potter, James M. 2010 Mortuary Features in Ridges Basin. In Animas-La Plata Project Report Series, Volume 15: Bioarchaeology, edited by E. Perry, A. L. W. Stodder and C. Bollong, pp. 15–50. SWCA Environmental Consultants, Phoenix. Potter, James M., and Jason Chuipka 2010 Perimortem Mutilation of Human Remains in an Early Village in the American Southwest: A Case for Ethnic Violence. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 29(4): 507–523. Potter, James M., Jason Chuipka, and Jerry Fetterman 2012 The Eastern Mesa Verde Region: Migrants, Cultural Diversity, and Violence in the East. In Crucible of Pueblos: The Early Pueblo Period in the Northern Southwest, edited by R. H. Wilshusen, G. Schachner, and J. R. Allison, pp. 53–71. Costen Institute Press, Los Angeles. Robinson, Christine K., and Joel Brisbin 1986 Excavations at House Creek Village (Site 5MT2320), a Pueblo I Habitation. In Dolores Archaeological Program: Anasazi Communities at Dolores: Middle Canyon Area, edited by A. E. Kane and C. K. Robinson, pp. 661–757. U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Engineering and Research Center, Denver. Roksandic, Mirjana 2002 Position of Skeletal Remains as a Key to Understanding Mortuary Behavior. In Advances in Forensic Taphonomy: Method, Theory and Archaeological Perspectives, edited by W. D. Haglund and M. H. Sorg, pp. 99–117. CRC Press, Boca Raton, Florida. Schachner, Gregson 2010 Corporate Group Formation and Differentiation in Early Puebloan Villages of the American Southwest. American Antiquity 75(3): 473–496. Schillaci, Michael, and Christopher Stojanowski 2003 Postmarital Residence and Biological variation at Pueblo Bonito. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 120: 1–15. Stanislawski, Michael 1963 Extended Burials in the Prehistoric Southwest. American Antiquity 28(3): 308–319. Steinbock, R. Ted 1976 Paleopathological Diagnosis and Interpretation: Bone Diseases in Ancient Human Populations. Charles C. Thomas, Springfield, Illinois. Interpreting a Multiple Burial in an Early Ancestral Pueblo Village

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Stodder, Ann L. W. 1984 Paleoepidemiology of the Mesa Verde Region Anasazi. Master’s Thesis, Department of Anthropology, University of Colorado, Boulder. 1987 The Physical Anthropology and Mortuary Behavior of the Dolores Anasazi: an Early Pueblo Population in Local and Regional Context. In Dolores Archaeological Program Supporting Studies: Settlement and Environment, edited by K. L. Petersen and J. D. Orcutt, pp. 339–504. U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Engineering and Research Center, Denver. 1988 Human Remains from the McPhee Village Sites. In Dolores Archaeological Program: Anasazi Communities at Dolores: McPhee Village, edited by A. E. Kane and C. K. Robinson, appendixes 2B, 3B, 5C, 6B, 7B, 8D. U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation Research and Engineering Center, Denver. In press Mortuary Contexts and Pit Structure Burials in Mesa Verde Region Pueblo I Villages. In Ancient Southwestern Mortuary Practice, edited by J. T. Watson and G. F. M. Rakita. University of Colorado Press, Boulder. Stodder, Ann L. W., Anna J. Osterholtz, Kathy Mowrer, and Jason Chuipka 2010 Processed Human Remains from the Sacred Ridge Site: Context, Taphonomy, Interpretation. In Animas-La Plata Project Volume 15: Bioarchaeology, edited by E. Perry, A. L. W. Stodder and C. Bollong, pp. 279–415. SWCA Environmental Consultants, Phoenix. Tainter, Joseph A. 1978 Mortuary Practices and the Study of Prehistoric Social Systems. Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory 1: 105–141. Todd, T. W. 1921 Age Changes in the Pubic Bone. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 4: 1–70. Toohey, Jason L., Bryn Geddes, Melissa S. Murphy, Claudia P. Iturry, and Jimmy Bouroncle 2016 Theorizing Residential Burial in Cajamarca, Peru: An Understudied Mortuary Treatment in the Central Andes. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 43: 29–38. Turner, Christy G., II, and Jaqueline A. Turner 1999 Man Corn: Cannibalism and Violence in the Prehistoric American Southwest. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City. Ubelaker, Douglas 1978 Human Skeletal Remains: Excavation, Analysis, Interpretation. Aldine, Chicago. Walker, William Howard 1995 Ritual Prehistory: A Pueblo Case Study. PhD dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Arizona, Tucson. 1998 Where are the Witches in Prehistory? Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 5(3): 245–308. 2008 Practice and Nonhuman Social Actors: The Afterlife Histories of Witches and Dogs in the American Southwest. In Memory Work: Archaeologies of Material Practices, edited by B. J. Mills and W. H. Walker, pp. 137–157. School of American Research Press, Santa Fe. 64

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Ware, John A. 2014 A Pueblo Social History: Kinship, Sodality, and Community in the Northern Southwest. School for Advanced Research Press, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Webster, Laurie D. 2009 Pueblo I Perishable Artifacts. In Volume 13. Special Studies, Animas-La Plata Project, edited by J. M. Potter, pp. 103–190. SWCA Environmental Consultants, Phoenix. Wedel, Vicki L., and Allison Galloway (editors) 2014 Broken Bones: Anthropological Analysis of Blunt Force Trauma, second edition. Charles C. Thomas Publishers, Springfield, Illinois. Weiner, Robert S. 2018 Sociopolitical, Ceremonial, and Economic Aspects of Gambling in Ancient North America: A Case Study of Chaco Canyon. American Antiquity 83(1): 34–53. White, Tim D. 1992 Prehistoric Cannibalism at Mancos 5MTUMR-2346. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey. Wilshusen, Richard H. 1986 The Relationship between Abandonment Mode and Ritual Use in Pueblo I Anasazi Protokivas. Journal of Field Archaeology 13: 245–254. 1988 Sipapus, Ceremonial Vaults, and Foot Drums (Or, a Resounding Argument for Protokivas). In Dolores Archaeological Program Supporting Studies: Additive and Reductive Technologies, edited by E. Blinman, C. C. Phagan and R. H. Wilshusen, pp. 649–671. US Bureau of Reclamation Engineering and Research Center, Denver. 1989 Unstuffing the Estufa: Ritual Floor Features in Anasazi Pit Structures and Pueblo Kivas. In The Architecture of Social Integration in Prehistoric Pueblos, edited by W. D. Lipe and M. Hegmon, pp. 89–111. Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, Cortez, Colorado. Wilshusen, Richard H., and Ruth M. Van Dyke 2006 Chaco’s Beginnings. In The Archaeology of Chaco Canyon, An Eleventh Century Pueblo Regional Center, edited by S. H. Lekson, pp. 211–259. School of American Research Press, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Wilshusen, Richard H., Scott G. Ortman, Shanna Diederichs, Donna M. Glowacki, and Grant Coffey 2012 Heartland of the Early Pueblos: The Central Mesa Verde. In Crucible of Pueblos: The Early Pueblo Period in the Northern Southwest, edited by R. H. Wilshusen, G. Schachner and J. R. Allison, pp. 14–34. Costen Institute of Archaeology, University of California, Los Angeles.

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4 A Young Man Twice Burned A Deviant Burial from West-Central Illinois

De l l a C ol l i ns C o ok, L au r a Ga no, K r ist i n M . H e dm a n, Susa n Spe nce r H e l fr ich, a n d A n dr ew R . T hom ps on

Talia Shay’s demonstration that deviant social identity in life or deviant circumstances of death may find expression in unusual mortuary practices has stimulated much new research in the three decades since her short essay appeared (Shay 1985). Shay did not use the phrase “deviant burial” in borrowing the concept of social deviance from sociology. Nevertheless, the phrase has become an established label for burials that combine rare, unusual, or exceptional features that suggest a stigmatized social persona (Murphy 2008). Recognizing such a burial depends on thorough understanding of regional mortuary practices. The Schild site in west-central Illinois comprised nine Late Woodland burial mounds (ca. AD 830) and two Mississippian cemeteries, Knoll A and Knoll B (ca. AD 1030). The cemeteries served local communities and do not contain elite burials. The two temporal components represent continuity in use of the locale for disposal of the dead, as well as biological continuity in the population (Droessler 1981; Reynolds et al. 2014; Thompson 2013). This continuity is fascinating since it spans the time period in which large, complex, mound-building societies dependent on corn agriculture—referred to by archaeologists as Mississippian—developed at Cahokia near St. Louis about 60 miles distant.

The Schild cemeteries and mounds appear to have contained all community members, including an appropriate proportion of infants (Cook 2007). During the 1962 excavations, 142 Late Woodland and 263 Mississippian burials were recognized (Perino 1971); however, a thorough study of the human remains in bundle and group burials identified a total of 320 Late Woodland individuals and 442 Mississippian individuals (Spencer 2014), plus an additional 11 people represented by scattered elements. Both Late Woodland and Mississippian peoples sometimes practiced secondary burial, defleshing or dismembering the body or allowing it to decompose, then gathering the bones for a second ritual, perhaps in the charnel structure detected long after excavation at Schild (Goldstein 1980). Because of its size, its excellent preservation, and its long-term curation at Indiana University, Schild is one of the most extensively studied ancient cemeteries (Cook 2007), but much of this work compared groups of people in analyses of varying statistical abstraction. Here we focus on reconstructing the life history of one exceptional person, a young adult male (SA117) who experienced a longstanding pathology of his left arm. Understanding his experiences in life and in death is enriched by examining him in the context of the many larger studies of Schild and neighboring sites. Gregory Perino, who excavated Schild, noted the absence of the left hand in a young adult male (SA117) buried on the periphery of Mississippian Knoll A in a small cluster he called Group 4. It is particularly fortunate that Perino noted the absent hand in the site report because recovery of hand elements is often incomplete, even when field work is careful. Perino clearly regarded this burial as unusual and described it at length (1971: 61): The articulated, semi-flexed skeleton of a male was found lying on the left side in a grave located on the hillside. The left hand had been amputated earlier in life, and infection of the left forearm resulted in fusion of the ulna and radius at several points. The lower left leg was also missing, but this may have been due to mishandling after death. A large fire, with a diameter of 5 feet, had been made on top of 10 inches of fill that had been placed over the remains. The purpose of the fire was not apparent to us because bone or other carbonized material was not found; only a heavy layer of fire-reddened earth was in evidence above the skeletal remains. We reexamine SA117’s injuries and his burial, developing a more complicated scenario that suggests a deviant social identity for this unfortunate young man. A Young Man Twice Burned: A Deviant Burial from West-Central Illinois

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Mortuary Practices While the Schild cemeteries have been interpreted as egalitarian, there was considerable variation in mortuary practices that may reflect individual roles in the community (Goldstein 1980). SA117 was unlike many Mississippian males because he was not provided with nonperishable grave goods. Most Mississippian burials are accompanied by a ceramic bowl that likely contained food or medicine meant to assist the dead in their journey in the afterlife. In contrast, Late Woodland burials seldom have grave goods. Mississippian primary burials were usually placed with the body extended (hip at 180 degrees; 53% at Schild), but SA117 was buried in a semi-flexed position (table 4.1). Late Woodland burials were commonly fully flexed (hip at 90 degrees or less; 58% at Schild). Perino (1971) understood semi-flexed burials as intermediate between the two predominant styles and therefore interpreted SA117’s burial position as evidence for acculturation of Late Woodland persons toward Mississippian life ways. Perino did not record arm positions systematically, but some information can be gleaned from his site plan (see fig. 4.1, redrawn from Perino 1971: 6 to reflect age differences in body size). The right arm of SA117 is bent acutely at the elbow, whereas the left is bent at 110 degrees, and the forearms are represented as a single line. This arm position is unique at Schild. The obtuse angle of the left elbow supports the skeletal evidence presented below for a flexion contracture, a scar limiting movement. SA117’s grave is highly unusual in that an intense fire was built over the grave fill (see introductory quotation). Evidence for use of fire in mortuary rituals is limited at Schild, in contrast to other Late Woodland and Mississippian mortuary sites in the region, especially Yokem to the west and Kane Mounds near Cahokia to the south (Emerson and Hargrave 2000; Schurr and Cook 2014), where

Table 4.1. Schild burial positions Component Late Woodland Mississippian

Extended

Semi-flexed

Flexed

Bundle

Total (percent)

3 (2%)

34 (18%)

107 (58%)

40 (22%)

184 (100%)

129 (53%)

65 (26%)

19 (8%)

32 (13%)

245 (100%)

Note: Data include both adult and child burials as reported in Perino (1971). Skull burials and disturbed burials are not included.

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Figure 4.1. Perino’s Group 4 (1971: 6) redrawn to reflect age/size information. The dotted line indicates fired earth in the grave fill of SA117; stippled shapes are limestone slabs over the feet of SA113 and SA114, whose labels are reversed to correspond with their ages; stippled area east of SA122 represents “charred wood, bone, and hickory nuts” dated 1200 AD (Perino 1971: 136); and crossed circles indicate vessels.

some bodies or dry bones were cremated. Goldstein (1980; Goldstein and Meyers 2014) proposed that fire was used for Mississippian closing rituals at Schild, but she does not address the fire over the grave of SA117 in detail. She identified SA117 as the first burial in Perino’s Group 4, southeast of a charnel structure, oriented to its southeast wall, and placed later than the Mississippian charnel structure. Six other individuals, SA113-SA120, four extended, one flexed, and one a bundle burial, as well as SA122 (a bundle burial of partial skeletons of two adults and 3 juveniles) and SA123, a child, compose this group. As a group, they are well supplied with characteristic Mississippian grave goods, including both shell beads and ceramics (Goldstein 1980). These burials surround SA117 and appear oriented with respect to his grave, unlike the orderly rows that characterize the Schild Mississippian component as a whole. A Young Man Twice Burned: A Deviant Burial from West-Central Illinois

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These interments may have disturbed SA117, as Perino suggests, accounting for the missing left leg and foot. However, none of the missing elements—the left tibia, fibula, and foot, both patellas, the right fifth metatarsal and three right phalanges—were recovered from any other burials in the group. Elsewhere at Schild disturbed elements were frequently recovered from the burial responsible for the disturbance. Spencer’s (2014) element count failed to match the missing elements of SA117 with any other burials at Schild. Furthermore, she saw no rodent gnawing on the bones to indicate disturbance, which was observed on 26% of the burials overall. Perhaps the missing left leg and foot were missing when SA117 was buried. As part of a separate project, one of the authors (KMH) carried out strontium and isotope analysis on burials from Schild, including SA117. To our surprise, his date, AD 775–892, is in keeping with isotope values showing minimal consumption of maize, and in keeping with his lack of grave goods. SA117 was not an acculturated Late Woodland person as Perino imagined. His grave predates the Mississippian component and the charnel structure, but it was isolated 30 feet away from the edge of Late Woodland mound 9. The fire made over his grave fill may well have been a Late Woodland “closing symbol or marker” analogous to the later closing rituals Goldstein describes for Mississippian Knolls A and B (Goldstein 1980: 123). Alternatively, the firing episode may have occurred at the outset of the placement of the Group 4 burials. It is certainly noteworthy that Goldstein’s statistical procedure was unable to fit the Group 4 burials into her analysis of rows in Knolls A and B. The Mississippian burials in Group 4 were arranged around SA117 or the fired area marking his grave, but this was done a century or more after his death.

Paleopathology SA117 is a young adult male who has unambiguously male os coxae and moderately masculine cranium and mandible. His stature was 174 cm, taller than average for Schild males (calculated using the Genovés standards; Krogman and İşcan 1986). He was likely between the ages of 25 and 30 based on his dental wear exposing dentine on the second molar, fusion of the clavicular epiphyses with epiphyseal lines still distinct, pubic symphysis at Todd1 phase 4–5, and open cranial sutures (Droessler 1981; Krogman and İşcan 1986). Perino was interested in fused joints, and he retained examples from several sites in his research materials at the Gilcrease Institute, Tulsa, Oklahoma, 70

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labeling them without regard to their site of origin. During his long collaboration with Georg Neumann, Perino sent most skeletal material directly from the field to Indiana University (IU), but Neumann’s interest was in typology rather than pathology, and the missing elements may have seemed unimportant. Unusually, Perino did not include a photograph of the retained forearm in his site report. Thus, when it came to IU in 1974, it was unclear to which site or individual it belonged. One of the authors (LG) carried out a lengthy matching procedure to reunite the remains and to exclude this forearm from association with any other burial from other sites excavated by Perino. We are entirely confident that the association with SA117 is correct because elbow joint surfaces and pathological changes correspond. By 1974, the radius and ulna were no longer fused (fig. 4.2), but excavation damage to the distal ends may have obscured fusion at the distalmost extreme of the interosseous crests. Several small, blunt paired osteophytes extending from the interosseous ligament meet when the radius and ulna are articulated in semipronation. Much of the interosseous membrane is ossified. The distal epiphyseal surface of the radius is completely altered, but a sharp transverse ridge may be a remnant of the dorsal ulnocarpal ligament. Both the radius and the ulna are greatly increased in diameter. The dorsal and palmar surfaces are dissimilar. Thick, convex trabecular bone with little consolidated cortex and smooth, very fine, and even trabeculation showing no

Figure 4.2. SA117 forearms.

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architectural orientation has replaced the entire shaft of both bones. The lack of loosely organized fiber bone indicates that the pathological process was inactive at the time of death (fig. 4.2). Grooves resembling the sinuous paths of the radial and ulnar arteries are deeply impressed into the edges of the posterior or dorsal surface. Vascular grooves from the periosteal vessels are commonly seen in periosteal new bone growth in the lower limb, not the upper limb, and they have a checkered interpretive history in paleopathology (Stewart 1937; Wells 1963). These grooves do not correspond to periosteal vessels. They are not the radial and ulnar arteries, as these normally lie between the deep and superficial layers of the flexor muscles. They may be greatly enlarged branches of the posterior interosseous artery. There is a shallow diagonal groove in the distal third of the two bones that may correspond to the edge of the extensor pollicis brevis, a member of the deep extensor layer. These vessel impressions are unique in the literature in location and extent. They do not correspond to any of the published anatomical variations of the forearm (RodríguezNiedenführ et al. 2001) and are likely a response to the forearm pathology. The anterior, palmar, or flexor surfaces of both bones are covered with spiculated periosteal new bone that is somewhat consolidated but has a more fibrous character. The palmar surfaces are flat to slightly concave and are corrugated by a fine network of vessel impressions that corresponds to the usual placement of periosteal vessels, although they are much enlarged. On both bones this network connects with the principal nutrient foramen. The humeri are strikingly asymmetrical (table 4.2). On the left, the trochlear surface is irregular, and oval in cross section with lipped margins. Flexion and extension of the left elbow must have been reduced by half, with loss at both extremes of the range of motion. There is coarse, reactive bone filling the olecranon fossa and at the attachments of the joint capsule, particularly at the medial epicondyle. The capitulum is missing due to excavation damage. The left humeral head is smaller than the right, an asymmetry that is even more pronounced on the glenoid fossae of the scapula. The deltoid crest region is smaller and more oval than on the right. The left humerus is markedly lighter than the right. The normal right elbow has a septal aperture, an asymmetry unusual in a male. Winder (1981) reports septal apertures are present in 42% of males and 60% of females and negligible asymmetry in a large series that included Schild but not SA117. There is some lipping of the joint surfaces on the right elbow, suggesting overuse on the normal side. Spencer (2014: 665) describes both clavicles in SA117 as “undulating”. While 72

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the shaft surfaces are smooth, they are irregular in shape. There is a 20 mm indentation just medial to the midline on the superior surface of the left clavicle. Spencer suspected that SA117 may have survived some sort of systemic disease process that affected his clavicles and distal femora in youth. The marked asymmetry in length of the humeri (table 4.2: right 354 mm, left 345 mm) and clavicles (right 160 mm, left 156 mm) suggests that this lesion occurred before long bone growth was complete, perhaps in late adolescence. The left humeral head is smaller and angled dorsally, indicating limited rotation. Robusticity differences in the humeri and in the acromion processes of the scapulae suggest that the left arm and shoulder may have had limited function beginning in adolescence as well. The asymmetry data might suggest survival by as much as 10 years after the injury occurred. The skull shows subtle pathological changes (fig. 4.3). The mandible is fractured in the midline and the broken edges are stained like the adjacent surfaces, suggesting that the fracture is old rather than related to excavation, if not peri-

Figure 4.3. SA117 cranium.

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mortem (de Boer et al. 2015). There is no gross evidence of remodeling. Spencer (2014) considered that mandible fractures such as this one in persons buried with the face to the side are likely to be the result of ground pressure, and she omitted them from her systematic study of trauma at Schild; however, in the present study we remain suspicious that this fracture was perimortem, given the context of the other pathological changes. The right orbit is narrower than the left, and the zygomatic process of the frontal is oddly shaped on the left. These features may indicate very well-healed trauma, but Spencer treated them conservatively as well. The fifth lumbar vertebra exhibits a left unilateral spondylolysis, perhaps making movement painful. There are no cut marks on the left distal femur to account for the missing left leg and foot. However, Spencer (2014) found little cut mark evidence in disarticulated Late Woodland and Mississippian bundle burials at Schild, so this absence is not unusual, and secondary burial must have followed extensive decomposition at Schild. In contrast, cut mark evidence is common in secondary burials at Wilson, an elite mortuary mound near Cahokia (Baires 2017) where the newly dead were bundled.

Diagnosis We have considered three diagnoses: amputation with infection, tumor, and burn with heterotrophic ossification. The first is the diagnosis suggested by Perino (1971). He does not specify whether he means therapeutic, traumatic, or spontaneous amputation. There is little historical support for therapeutic amputation in native North America, and amputation of a foot to punish slaves is reported in just one source (Vogel 1970). We are aware of only two reports of therapeutic amputation, an Alaskan woman who performed a successful double leg amputation for frostbite on her husband (Fortuine 1989) and an Inuit man who amputated his own frostbitten fingers (Merbs 1989). Amputation of digits as an aspect of mourning is reported in several North American groups but is not relevant to our case. There are several historic accounts of amputation as a component of execution or torture (Knowles 1940; Owsley et al. 2007; Peregrine 2008). Extremities can be lost to accidental trauma. An example is a hunter’s hand bitten off by a sea lion; the Inuit amputee survived his experience for many years (Fortuine 1989). Various disease processes can also result in necrosis and spontaneous amputation, for example in leprosy or diabetes (Dupras et al. 2010). Neither of these diseases is likely to account for SA117’s condition because the former is absent in the Precolumbian New World, and the latter strikes the feet. 74

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There are surprisingly few case studies of amputation in the literature on paleopathology in North America (Morse 1968; Stothers 1976), and Stewart (1974) has cast doubt on the few he discusses, pointing out that the proximal portion of a pseudarthrosis can be mistaken for a survived amputation. His critique stimulated a fine case study of a prehistoric Huron man with a well-healed, fused stump just above the ankle and reduced bone density (Stothers 1976). It is interesting that another published survived amputation, 11C36-51, is from Perino’s earlier excavations at the Pete Klunk Mounds. His colleague, Dr. Dan Morse, says of it “Possible amputation . . . trauma may be the cause instead of surgery” (Morse 1968: 118; Steinbock 1976); however, this case predates SA117 by more than a thousand years. Morse calls this case Hopewell, circa 500 BC–AD 500, whereas Perino (1968) identifies this middle-aged man as Late Archaic, circa 920 BC. Perino presents other evidence for perimortem trauma in 11C36-51 but fails to mention the well-healed amputation stump fusing the radius and ulna. This paucity of description is in contrast to the extensive Old World and South American literature on therapeutic and punitive amputation. A review is beyond the scope of this chapter, but there are many informative case studies (Dupras et al. 2010; Mays 1996; Rogers 1973; Verano et al. 2000; Zäuner et al. 2013). However, the distal radius and ulna of SA117 do not form a consolidated stump characteristic of healed amputation by cutting. Webb (1995) is one of the few paleopathologists to discuss cautery as a treatment for injury, let alone burns or amputation. His modern case study of an Australian Aborigine who survived a leg amputation and sealed the stump using cautery is a cautionary tale regarding the assumption that effective treatment of injuries is beyond the capability of technologically simple societies. Infection of the amputation stump in this study is difficult to support as a diagnosis, given the surprising radiographic evidence (fig. 4.4). The marrow spaces are greatly expanded, and the cortex is quite thin throughout. Much of what should be cortical bone consists of fine trabecular tissue. There is no remnant of the normal trabecular organization that one expects to see in the ulna and radius, even in old healed amputation stumps with loss of bone density (for examples see de Boer et al. 2015; Chhem et al. 2008: 83). There is no evidence of the sequestrum, involucrum, and cloaca characteristic of osteomyelitis, and no evidence of increase in bone density resulting from inflammation and infection (for examples of these features see Mays 2008: 82). Lesions that are primarily destructive suggest tumors; however, the voids in SA117’s forearm lack the focal quality and the septa that characterize destructive A Young Man Twice Burned: A Deviant Burial from West-Central Illinois

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Figure 4.4. SA117 radiograph.

tumors and tumorlike lesion in bone. We considered osteosarcoma, fibroma, chondroblastoma, giant cell tumor, hemangioma, and aneurysmal bone cyst. We are aware of no published examples of these tumors that affect the whole shaft of both bones, and the lack of loosely organized new fiber bone argues against rapid bone formation or a pathological process that was advancing at the time of death. Accounting for the missing hand is difficult using tumors and related processes as diagnostic models, and we are aware of no reports of Native American use of surgery for this purpose. Instead, the expansion of the cortical envelope of both the radius and the ulna has enclosed the radial and ulnar arteries and reached what would approach the ordinary soft tissue diameter of the forearm. The appearance conforms to heterotopic ossification, which is the formation of bone in traumatized soft tissue. Exuberant heterotopic ossification is a complication of deep soft tissue burns in which scarring of soft tissue results in restricted movement and eventual ankylosis, and burns often result in flexion contractures of damaged joints (Levi et al. 2015; Medina et al. 2014; Tucker 2011). Flexion contractures account for the loss of density because restriction of movement at the elbow and shoulder and loss of hand function resulted in cortical bone atrophy. Amputated arms show bone density loss of as much 15% (Krogman and İşcan 1986). Other diagnoses were not supported. It is most likely that 76

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SA117 experienced a burn on his hand and forearm that may have necrotized and sloughed off as the injury healed and led to limitations in the rotation and flexion at the elbow and atrophy of the humerus shaft. Such an injury would have presented a substantial disability for several years prior to his death. The subtle changes to the clavicles and orbit might also be attributed to soft tissue burn injuries. An epileptic Kikuyu man who fell into a fire, lost both hands below the wrist bones, and suffered burns to his face provides a close match to what we observe in SA117 regarding the association of spontaneous amputation of the hand, scarring, boney reaction, and flexion contractions (Grattan and Keer Keer 1953); western physicians later removed the carpals and released scars. Seizures resulting from various parasites and toxins are common in modern foragers, and at least one plausible case is reported from Precolumbian North America (Williams 1985). Health surveys of foragers with limited or no access to modern medical care report many serious, survived burn injuries (Howell 1979; Sugiyama 2004). A study of healing interval in modern surgical amputations suggests a minimum of three years for closing of the medullary cavity, formation of a stump, and cortical thinning (de Boer et al. 2015).

Identity Individually, none of the mortuary features of SA117 is unique in the archaeological record for Late Woodland or Mississippian burials. Several Mississippian burials at Schild were flexed, and some have been discussed as anomalous with regard to group membership or cultural affiliation (Perino 1971), gender identity (Emerson 2003), and health (Cook 2007). Further afield at the Angel Site in Indiana, an anomalous burial consisting of an extended man and a bundled woman who had a distinctive isotopic signature was burned in the course of filling the grave (Alt 2008; Schurr 1992). Several other people interred at Schild exhibited skeletal lesions that give evidence of substantial disability from bone and joint tuberculosis, trauma, and other conditions. As a group, they did not receive differential treatment in death (Goldstein 1980). The loss of a hand, flexion contracture of the elbow, and fusion or near fusion of the forearm in SA117’s case would hamper many activities. For example, use of a canoe paddle, a bow and arrow, or a fire drill would be compromised, as would sewing, weaving, and knapping. While many adaptations and accommodations are possible for a person with one A Young Man Twice Burned: A Deviant Burial from West-Central Illinois

77

remaining hand, it is likely SA117 was marginal regarding his work capacity and his appearance. Was SA117 marginal to the remainder of the Schild community in a biological sense? Unfortunately, ancient DNA study of his remains failed to produce a useful sequence (Reynolds et al. 2014). Artificial cranial modification, perhaps resulting from the use of cradle boards, is common at Schild, but it is variable and moderate in extent (Droessler 1981). SA117 is one of just five males (10% of those scored) lacking any evidence for cranial modification, and in this regard, he resembles Mississippians from the contemporary Ledders site 10 miles to the west of Schild (Droessler 1981). A principal components analysis of cranial morphology (fig. 4.6) in both temporal groups at Schild supports the argument that SA117 may have been a nonlocal individual, since he is an outlier with respect to other Mississippian males and marginal with respect to females. If he is of nonlocal origin, his marginal position in the cemetery is less surprising. SA117 occupies an interesting position in a multivariate, sex-adjusted analysis of tooth measurements conducted by one of the authors (Thompson 2013). If he is analyzed as male, as other dimorphic features of his skeleton indicate, his dentition is quite marginal to Schild and Yokem Late Woodland and Mississippian samples, and his dentition is unusually small. If he is analyzed as female, he is at the center of the distributions for these groups (fig. 4.5). Other studies provide complementary perspectives on SA117’s unusually small teeth. SA117 is uncommon in having many deep linear enamel hypoplasias on his anterior teeth (fig. 4.7). Most individuals at Schild have few or no hypoplasias, and Late Woodland males have more than others (Bengston 2012; Cook 1981), but SA117 is exceptional. Perhaps SA117 has small teeth because of childhood illness or malnutrition (Cohen et al. 1977). Another view of marginality is provided by stable isotope studies that reflect diet and the geology of the region where a person formed particular skeletal tissues. One of the authors (KH) evaluated strontium isotopes in M1 and M3 enamel from Schild. The local 87Sr/86Sr signature for the Lower Illinois River Valley and much of the Midwest is approximately 0.7095–0.7105. Values for SA117’s M1 (0.7103) fall within this range, suggesting that he spent early childhood nearby. A smaller group of Schild teeth have higher values. This group includes SA117’s M3 (0.7107), suggesting that he may have grown up elsewhere and returned to the region. Perhaps he rejoined his kin after suffering his injury in adolescence as metric data on his arms suggest (table 4.2). 78

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Figure 4.5. Principal components analysis of Late Woodland and Mississippian dentitions from the region: (a) SA117 entered as a male into an analysis of males from Late Woodland and Mississippian components at Schild and Yokem; (b) SA117 entered as a female into an analysis of females.

Enamel apatite 13C values for both the M1 (-14.6%) and M3 (-14.2%) suggest a low or no-maize diet. Rose (2003) did not include SA117 in her study of carbon and nitrogen isotopes at Schild and several neighboring sites, and she did not analyze apatite; however, many individuals from the Mississippian component A Young Man Twice Burned: A Deviant Burial from West-Central Illinois

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Figure 4.6. Principal components analysis of Late Woodland and Mississippian crania from Schild and Yokem. Left ellipse is females including SA117 at top, and right ellipse is males.

at Schild have quite low delta 13C values (range -21.5 to -11.3). One interpretation of these data is that unrecognized Late Woodland burials may have been labeled Mississippian. Our radiocarbon date on SA117 supports this view in his case; he was an isolated burial distant from the Late Woodland mounds who was later surrounded by Mississippian graves. A contrasting interpretation suggests high community or individual variability in food ways (Cook 2007). There is a relatively smooth distribution of isotope intermediate values rather than clear bimodality, and some of the individuals with low delta 13C values have Mississippian grave goods. Thus far, we have radiocarbon dates on 18 Schild skeletons (Spencer 2014); only two chosen for lack of evidence for maize use have changed components as a result. 80

D. Collins Cook, L. Gano, K. M. Hedman, S. Spencer Helfrich, and A. R. Thompson

Figure 4.7. Linear enamel hypoplasia of mandibular canine in SA117.

Table 4.2. Young adult male SA117: Arm measurements, asymmetry, and interval since injury Right (mm)

Left (mm)

HUMERUS L.

354

345

Head Diameter

46

45

Midshaft Max

23

25

Midshaft Min

20

16

Surgical Neck Max

25

22

Surgical Neck Min

24

20

Glenoid Max

40

36

Glenoid Min

29

26

CLAVICLE L.

160

156

Another explanation involves his unusual disability. Several American Indian groups marked unusual causes of death, for example drowning (Johnson and Ready 1992; Tooker 1964), with distinct mortuary practices, and survivors of some kinds of trauma, for example scalping, were treated in life as if they had died (Hollimon and Owsley 1994). In her brief review of world ethnographic literature, Shay (1985) reports fire as a cause of differentiated mortuary treatment in only one society, but lightening in four and drowning in three. If drowning was distinguished, perhaps burn injuries were as well. The use of fire in the torture of captives is reported in several ethnographic accounts of Eastern North American groups (Alt 2008; Knowles 1940; Peregrine 2008). Many of these accounts include mutilation or removal of the hands and feet. While there is ample iconographic evidence for hands as trophies in later Eastern North American prehistory (see Hatch 2015 for review), there is little direct evidence in the form of trophy hands recovered from excavations. This contrasts with the many trophy heads or skulls from Mississippian sites. At Schild, trophy bones or body parts are uncommon: SA66, a Mississippian woman and child who were buried with two robust male femora that Perino interpreted as a trophy, and a Late Woodland child who was decapitated, although the head was placed in the grave. Recent scholarship interprets many such examples as psychopomps, postmortem companions or guides, rather than as trophies (Smith 2015). Torture of captives generally ended in the death of the captive and thus would not result in long-term disability or in unambiguous visibility in the archaeological record (Alt 2008; Knowles 1940; Peregrine 2008). Some victims may have escaped or been rescued and survived, as witnessed by accounts of adoption of captives, and the many published examples of skulls showing healed scalping (Hollimon and Owsley 1994; Milner 1999; Strezewski 2006). Alternatively, ritualized ordeals resulting in limited injury marked the transformation of captives into slaves or adopted members of the captor community through a metaphor of death and rebirth. For one such example see Susannah Willard Johnson’s captivity narrative (1834). Ordeals need not be reserved for the subaltern; Sioux hekoya sacred clowns dipped their hands in boiling water, reportedly with no ill effect (Lewis 1982). A person unlucky enough to engage in this practice without the necessary secret knowledge or skill might well wind up with serious burn scars and contractures. Alternatively, the seizure scenario outlined above might mark a person as deviant because of the nature of his injury and might connect his social identity to 82

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ritual burning. The many examples of burned Late Woodland and Mississippian houses support the argument that accidental or aggression-related burn injuries may have been frequent (Pauketat et al. 2013). More mundane burning played a hygienic role in the renovation of Mississippian houses (Simon 2002), offering another opportunity for injury. SA117 may have been among such victims. A component of his mortuary ritual echoes his disability, suggesting that his history of injury was a powerful aspect of his social identity. The missing leg may shed some light on his special status. The missing left leg and foot may have been missing, or removed, when SA117 was buried. If this is so, and our diagnosis is correct, he was not only a burn survivor whose filled grave was marked with fire, but also a long-term hand amputation survivor whose body was later subjected to a further perimortem or postmortem leg amputation. How violent were the Late Woodland and Mississippian societies in the Midwest? Data and interpretations are decidedly mixed, but evidence for conflict appears to have increased over time (Bardolph 2014; Hatch 2015, Spencer 2014; Steadman 2008; vanDerwarker and Wilson 2015), and the rise of Mississippian Cahokia may have damped earlier conflict among Late Woodland communities. Milner’s (1999; Milner et al. 1991) remarkable example of Oneota raiding victims from Norris Farms (ca. AD 1300) should not be allowed to overshadow limited and highly variable evidence for violence from earlier Mississippian and Late Woodland polities, but this echo suggests that SA117 was an exception to the Pax Cahokiana (Pauketat 2007), and that his exceptional status in life followed him to the grave.

Acknowledgments We thank Tom Emerson for his comments on this chapter.

Note 1. We report the Todd phase data here because Droessler and Cook’s 1974 age-sex analysis (unpublished) has served as the basis for almost all later research on Schild (Goldstein 1980). Husmann (2011: 260) produced new age-sex estimates using the Lovejoy multifactorial method. Her age assessment for SA-117 is 35.43 years.

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Levi, Benjamin, Prakash Jayakumar, Avi Giladi, Jesse B. Jupiter, David C. Ring, Karen Kowalske, Nicole S. Gibran, David Herndon, Jeffrey C. Schneider, and Colleen M. Ryan 2015 Risk Factors for the Development of Heterotopic Ossification in Seriously Burned Adults: A National Institute on Disability, Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research Burn Model System Database Analysis. Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery 79(5): 870–876. Lewis, Thomas H. 1982 The Evolution of the Social Role of the Oglala Hekoya. Plains Anthropologist 27(97): 249–253. Mays, Simon A. 1996 Healed Limb Amputations in Human Osteoarchaeology and their Causes. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 6(3): 101–113. 2008 Radiography and Allied Techniques in the Paleopathology of Skeletal Remains. In Advances in Human Palaeopathology, edited by Ron Pinhasi and Simon Mays, pp. 77–100. Wiley, New York. Medina, Abelardo, Heather Shankowsky, Bohdan Savaryn, Barb Shukalak, and Edward E. Tredget 2014 Characterization of Heterotopic Ossification in Burn Patients. Journal of Burn Care Research 35(3): 251–256. Merbs, Charles F. 1989 Trauma. In Reconstruction of Life from the Skeleton, edited by Mehmet Yasar İşcan and Kenneth A. R. Kennedy, pp. 161–189. Wiley-Liss, New York. Milner, George R. 1999 Warfare in Prehistoric and Early Historic Eastern North America. Journal of Archaeological Research 7(2): 105–151. Milner, George R., Eve Anderson, and Virginia G. Smith 1991 Warfare in Late Prehistoric West-Central Illinois. American Antiquity 56(4): 581–603. Morse, Dan 1968 Ancient Disease in the Midwest. Illinois State Museum Reports of Investigations 15. Illinois State Museum, Springfield. Murphy, Eileen M. (editor) 2008 Deviant Burial in the Archaeological Record. Oxbow Books, Oxford. Owsley, Douglas W., Karin S. Bruwelheide, Laurie E. Burgess, and William T. Billeck 2007 Human Finger and Hand Bone Necklaces from the Plains and Great Basin. In The Taking and Displaying of Human Body Parts as Trophies by Amerindians, edited by Richard J. Chacon and David H. Dye, pp. 124–166. Springer, New York. Pauketat, Timothy R. 2007 Chiefdoms and other Archaeological Delusions. Altamira Press, Lanham, Maryland. Pauketat, Timothy R., Andrew C. Fortier, Susan M. Alt, and Thomas E. Emerson 2013 A Mississippian Conflagration at East St. Louis and its Political-Historical Implications. Journal of Field Archaeology 38(3): 210–226. Peregrine, Peter N. 2008 Social Death and Resurrection in the Western Great Lakes. In Invisible Citizens: 86

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Captives and their Consequences, edited by Catherine M. Cameron, pp. 223–232. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City. Perino, Gregory H. 1968 The Pete Klunk Mound Group, Calhoun County, Illinois: The Archaic and Hopewell Occupations (with an Appendix on the Gibson Mound Group). Illinois Archaeological Survey Bulletin 6: 9–124. 1971 The Mississippian Component at the Schild Site (no. 4), Greene County, Illinois. Mississippian Site Archaeology in Illinois I: Site Reports from the St. Louis and Chicago Areas. Illinois Archaeological Survey Bulletin 8: 1–148. Reynolds, Austin W., Jennifer A. Raff, Deborah A. Bolnick, Della Collins Cook, and Frederika A. Kaestle 2014 Ancient DNA from the Schild Site in Illinois: Implications for the Mississippian Transition in the Lower Illinois River Valley. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 156(3): 434–448. Rodríguez-Niedenführ, M., G. J. Burton, J. Deu, and J. R. Sañudo 2001 Development of the Arterial Pattern in the Upper Limb of Staged Human Embryos: Normal Development and Anatomic Variations. Journal of Anatomy 199(4): 407–417. Rogers, Spencer L. 1973 A Case of Surgical Amputation from Aboriginal Peru. Ethnic Technology Notes 11. San Diego Museum of Man. Rose, Fionnuala R. 2003 A Fresh Perspective: Isotopic Evidence for Prehistoric Human Subsistence in the Upper Mississippi River Valley of West-Central Illinois. PhD dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey. Schurr, Mark R. 1992 Isotopic and Mortuary Variability in a Middle Mississippian Population. American Antiquity 57: 300–320. Schurr, Mark R., and Della Collins Cook 2014 The Temporal and Cultural Contexts of the Enigmatic Cremation Burials from the Yokem Site, Illinois, USA. In Transformation by Fire: The Archaeology of Cremation in Cultural Context, edited by Ian Kuijt, Colin P. Quinn, and Gabriel Cooney, pp. 67–92. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. Shay, Talia 1985 Differentiated Treatment of Deviancy at Death as Revealed in Anthropological and Archeological Material. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 4: 221– 241. Simon, Mary L. 2002 Red Cedar, White Oak, and Bluestem Grass: The Colors of Mississippian Construction. Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology 27(2): 273–308. Smith, Maria Ostendorf 2015 Contextualizing the Precolumbian Postmortem “Life” of Modified Human Remains. In Transforming the Dead: Culturally Modified Bone in the Prehistoric Midwest, edited by Eve A. Hargrave, Shirley J. Shermer, Kristin M. Hedman, and Robin M. Lillie, pp. 262–286. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. A Young Man Twice Burned: A Deviant Burial from West-Central Illinois

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Spencer, Susan Dale 2014 Violence in the Lower Illinois River Valley (ca AD 700–1250): An Examination of Injuries at Schild Utilizing Taphonomy, Paleopathology and Forensic Science. PhD dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Indiana University, Bloomington. Steadman, Dawnie L. Wolfe 2008 Warfare Related Trauma at Orendorf, a Middle Mississippian Site in West-Central Illinois. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 136(1): 51–64. Steinbock, R. Ted 1976 Paleopathological Diagnosis and Interpretation: Bone Diseases in Ancient Human Populations. Charles C. Thomas, Springfield, Illinois. Stewart, Thomas Dale 1937 Did American Indians use the Cautery in Bone Surgery? American Journal of Physical Anthropology 23: 83–89. 1974 Nonunion of Fractures in Antiquity, with Descriptions of Five Cases from the New World Involving the Forearm. Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine 50(8): 875–891. Stothers, David M. 1976 Evidence of a Prehistoric Huron Leg Amputation. Pennsylvania Archaeologist 46: 20–23. Strezewski, Michael 2006 Patterns of Interpersonal Violence at the Fisher Site. Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology 31: 249–279. Sugiyama Lawrence S. 2004 Illness, Injury, and Disability among Shiwiar Forager-Horticulturalists: Implications of Health-Risk Buffering for the Evolution of Human Life History. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 123(4): 371–389. Thompson, Andrew R. 2013 An Analysis of Biological Variation during the Late Woodland-Mississippian Period in the Midwest Using the Dentition. PhD dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Indiana University, Bloomington. Tooker, Elisabeth 1964 An Ethnography of the Huron Indians 1615–1649. Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 190. Tucker, S. C. 2011 Reconstruction of Severe Hand Contractures: An Illustrative Series. Indian Journal of Plastic Surgery 44: 59–67. vanDerwarker, Amber M., and Gregory D. Wilson 2015 War, Food and Structural Violence in the Mississippian Central Illinois Valley. In The Archaeology of Food and Warfare: Food Insecurity in Prehistory, edited by Amber M. vanDerwarker and Gregory D. Wilson, pp. 75–105. Springer, New York. Verano, John W., Laurel S. Anderson, and Régulo Franco 2000 Foot Amputation by the Moche of Ancient Peru: Osteological Evidence and Archaeological Context. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 10: 177–188. 88

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Vogel, Virgil J. 1970 American Indian Medicine. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman. Webb, Stephen 1995 Palaeopathology of Aboriginal Australians: Health and Disease across a HunterGatherer Continent. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Wells, Calvin 1963 Cortical Grooves on the Tibia. Man 63: 112–114. Williams, John A. 1985 Evidence of Hydatic Cyst Disease in a Plains Woodland Burial. Plains Anthropologist 30: 25–28. Winder, Sue Carolyn Snyder 1981 Infracranial Nonmetric Variation: An Assessment of Its Value for Biological Distance Analysis. PhD dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Indiana University, Bloomington. Zäuner, Stefan P., J. Wahl, Yavor Boyadziev, and Ioannis Aslanis 2013 A 6000-Year-Old Hand Amputation from Bulgaria—The Oldest Case from South-East Europe? International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 23(5): 618–625.

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5 The Odd Man Out in a Pioneer Cemetery at Seccombe Lake Park, San Bernardino, California

Pat r ici a M . L a m be rt

An unusual interment at a historic cemetery in southern California provides a unique opportunity to explore the value of differentiating “atypicality” and “deviant” (Saxe 1970, 1971; Scott et al. this volume) as distinct and meaningful attributes for describing and interpreting unusual mortuary treatments. In this case, both terms apply, but for different reasons. The burial is clearly non-normative, but the specific treatment of the body also goes beyond this to convey—in no uncertain terms—the deviant status of this individual in the eyes of the dominant community. The story behind this burial illustrates both the validity of mortuary archaeology for elucidating social attributes of the living in relation to the dead, but also the importance of bioarchaeology for revealing life histories that may be very much at odds with mortuary characterizations of the deceased. The atypical burial described in this chapter was discovered in 1990 in an unmarked grave at Seccombe Lake Park in San Bernardino, California. The grave, which contained the remains of a single individual identified as Burial 5, was one of ten discrete graves found beneath a layer of soil and historic trash during the construction of a baseball field and subsequent archaeological recovery work at the park in 1990–1991 (Marmor et al. 1991; Walker and Lambert 1991; fig. 5.1). Although the presence of wood coffins dated the interments to the post-European-contact era (Marmor et al. 1991), the existence of the burial ground was unknown to modern residents of San Bernardino before construction work began to uncover the graves. The identification and affiliation of the

Figure 5.1. Map of the Seccombe Lake Cemetery (Marmor et al. 1991: fig. 4). Revised figure reprinted by permission of Oliver Mujica, Planning Division Manager, Community Development Department, City of San Bernardino, and Debbie McLean, Principal Archaeologist, LSA, Irvine, California.

cemetery was ultimately determined through a combination of artifact attributes, archaeological context, and historic records (Hallaran 1990). Only after the cemetery was identified could the search for the story behind Burial 5’s unusual interment begin.

The Seccombe Lake Cemetery and Its Founders The Seccombe Lake Cemetery, as it came to be known, was initially assigned a chronological age based on the stratigraphic placement of the graves and temporal attributes of grave-associated artifacts. Stratigraphically, the burials lay directly beneath a layer of historic trash emplaced between 1910 and 1920. Within the graves, the artifacts that helped to define the use period of the cemetery included Prosser buttons (post-1841), ornamented imitation shell buttons (1840s–1870s), and square nails (largely replaced by wire nails ca. 1890s) (Fontana and Greenleaf 1962: 44–62). Collectively, these lines of evidence placed the cemetery in the mid to late nineteenth century and more specifically in the period AD 1840–1870 (Marmor et al. 1991; Tobey and HalThe Odd Man Out in a Pioneer Cemetery, San Bernardino, California

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laran 1990). Using this chronological information, Kevin Hallaran, then a graduate student at the University of California, Riverside, was able to trace land ownership during this period and ultimately to affiliate the graves with an early Mormon settlement dating from 1851 to 1857 (Hallaran 1990; Tobey and Hallaran 1990). The San Bernardino Mormon colony was founded in 1851 by Mormon pioneers from Utah. Most were Anglo-American, about half of whom hailed from the Deep South—some accompanied by their African American slaves. The group was sent to California by Brigham Young, the leader of the nascent LDS Church (Latter-Day Saints). His purpose was to establish a western outpost for the Church to channel goods and Mormon converts from missionary efforts in the Pacific Islands through a chain of assistance stations from the California coast to Utah. The settlement was founded on Rancho San Bernardino, a 35,509 acre ranch purchased from the Lugo family by leaders of the new Mormon colony on behalf of its members (Belden 1960; Lyman 1996; Tobey and Hallaran 1990). Due to a Native American uprising led by Antonio Garra that gained the sympathies of some local Cahuilla-Serrano tribesmen, the settlers quickly built a stockade to house and protect community members, though an attack never came (Belden 1960; Brown and Boyd 1922; Lyman 1996). During the 1850s the colony was the largest Anglo-American settlement in southern California (Belden 1960; Lyman 1996). Although in many cases good relations were established between the Mormon community and local tribespeople, events such as the Garra-led uprising indicate these were complex and varied by tribe and individual, observations important in the unfolding story of Burial 5. According to an 1883 account (Haenzel 1979, in Hallaran 1990: Appendix D), the San Bernardino settlement established its first cemetery on a bluff about a half mile north of the fort near the present-day site of Pioneer Memorial Cemetery. Pioneer Cemetery was founded by the Mormon community in 1857, six years after their arrival in the valley. A number of settlers are known to have died in the intervening years (Lyman 1990, 1996) and their bodies most likely were buried in the original cemetery, although some of these were later moved to family plots in the new cemetery by relatives of the dead (Elliott 1965; Thompson 2008; see also Hallaran 1990: Appendix D). This may explain why fewer graves were encountered during the project than the number of community members known to have died between 1851 and 1857, and may also explain apparent gaps in the burial program at the Seccombe Lake Cemetery (fig. 5.1). 92

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Burial 5: An Atypical Burial in the Seccombe Lake Cemetery The path to understanding the circumstances surrounding the atypical interment of Burial 5 necessarily began with the identification of the cemetery and exploration of the history of the San Bernardino Mormon community. As discussed below, however, it would appear that this history—though important— was tangential to that of Burial 5. Burial 5 was one of 12 people whose remains were recovered from the Seccombe Lake Cemetery, including three male adults, three female adults, two adolescents (female?), two children, and two infants (table 5.1). Nine of ten individuals excavated from primary burial contexts were interred in simple wooden coffins. In typical Christian fashion, these individuals were placed on their backs with legs outstretched and hands at the side or, in one case, over the abdomen, and heads facing to the west. Burial 5, a young adult male of about 19–25 years, represented the single exception to this burial pattern. While his upper body lay in a supine position, his legs were bent to the right in a semi-flexed, non-aligned configuration, his right arm extended between his legs and his left arm lying across his chest and right arm (fig. 5.2), a position suggesting an informal and expedient interment (Marmor et al. 1991; Walker and Lambert 1991). Unlike the other burials, there was no evidence of a coffin

Figure 5.2. Diagram of Burial 5 in situ (Marmor et al. 1991: fig. 10). Revised figure reprinted by permission of Oliver Mujica, Planning Division manager, Community Development Department, City of San Bernardino, and Debbie McLean, Principal Archaeologist, LSA, Irvine, California.

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Table 5.1. Burials recovered from the historic cemetery at Seccombe Lake State Park Burial #

Age (yrs)

Sex

Stature Estimate

SSI/CC/REa Ethnicity?

Burial Type

1

35±5

F

5’8"

-/-/0

Coffin

-

Coffin wood and hardware

2

45±5

M

5’9"

-/-/0

Coffin

Supine, hands over abdomen

Coffin hardware, 6 Prosser and 2 large bone buttons

3

27.5±5

F

5’2"

0/-/0 European

Coffin

Supine

Coffin hardware, bone button, 1-hole button

4

3.5±1

F?

-

-/+/-

Coffin

-

Coffin hardware, 182 blue and 120 white glass beads (female child?)

5

22±3b

M

5’4"

+/-/Asian/Native American

No coffin

Supine, legs flexed R, R hand between legs, L hand across chest

No coffin wood/hardware. Metal button with cloth cover, metal buckle or pants cinch.

6

12.5±2

F??

-

0/+/0 European

Coffin

Supine, hands at side of body

Coffin hardware, paint from coffin lid, zipper tab. Gracile morphology of mandible suggests this individual may be female.

Position

Mortuary context/Grave Goods

7

50±10

F

5’4"

-/-/0

CoffinHexagonal

Supine, hands at side of body

Preserved coffin with tacks & other hardware, 2 shell cuff buttons, copper or brass hairpins(?)

8

2±0.5

-

-

-

Coffin?

Supine, arms at side

Thin sheet of desiccated wood, “2 real piece” coin minted in Mexico City in 1772

9

45±5

M

5’9"

-

Coffin

-

Coffin hardware, 2 Prosser buttons

11

15±2.5b

F?

-

0/+/0 European

Coffin

Extended supine?

Coffin hardware. Gracile long bones suggest this adolescent is female.

12

1±0.5

-

-

-

-

-

Found with remains of Burial 6

13

4±1

-

-

-

Identified in lab, no information on burial context

Sources: Marmor et al. 1991; Walker & Lambert 1991. a SSI = shovel-shaped incisors; CC = Carabelli’s cusp; RE = mandibular ramus eversion (Angel and Kelley 1990; Walker & Lambert 1991: table 2); 0 = trait absent; + = trait present; - = no information. b Original, broad age estimate refined using age indicators in Walker and Lambert (1991) with reference to recent literature on epiphyseal fusion.

or other type of burial container in association with Burial 5, and, in his case alone, the head faced east. Though a cultural norm was clearly apparent in the burial program at the Seccombe Lake Cemetery, Burial 5 did not conform to this tradition, raising questions early on about his identity and presence in the cemetery. Burial 5 also appears to have been spatially segregated from the other interments in the Seccombe Lake Cemetery. As can be seen on the site map (fig. 5.1), there is a greater distance between Burial 5 and all the mapped coffin burials than between any other burial and its nearest neighbor.1 While this gap may be the result of the transfer of some coffin burials to Pioneer Memorial Cemetery, it is equally plausible for reasons discussed below that the segregation was intentional.

Methods All the human skeletal remains recovered from the Seccombe Park Cemetery were transported to Dr. Phillip Walker’s osteology lab at UCSB in 1991, where they underwent comprehensive osteological analysis (Walker and Lambert 1991). Systematic data were collected on the following: age and sex characteristics; discrete and metric dental and cranial traits (see Buikstra and Ubelaker 1994; Turner et al. 1991); dental health data: dental caries, wear (Scott 1979), chipping, antemortem tooth loss, dental plaque, and enamel hypoplasia (Walker and Lambert 1991); long bone metrics; and cranial and postcranial indicators of pathology. These data were used to characterize the physical attributes, diet, health, and lifestyle of the burial sample, and to explore possible differences in the identity and life experience of Burial 5 relative to the individuals interred in coffins. In hindsight, it would have been helpful to have aDNA data on Burial 5 to clarify the question of his biocultural affiliation. However, this analysis was not standard practice at the time and bone samples were not taken for biochemical analysis. The remains were reburied following the end of the project in 1992 (MacDuff 1992), eliminating the possibility of obtaining these data in the future.

Discussion Who was Burial 5 and how did his body come to be buried in the Seccombe Lake Cemetery? Several lines of evidence were brought to bear on this question, including dental data, artifact associations, and historic records. Before 96

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the remains could potentially be matched to an actual individual and the story behind his unusual interment reconstructed, a determination of his ancestry and ethnic affiliation was needed.

The Bioarchaeological Evidence The most important clues concerning Burial 5’s biocultural affiliation came from his dentition. Data on the full suite of nonmetric dental traits (Turner et al. 1991) were collected on the dentitions of burials 1–9 and 11. Those most important for identifying the ancestry of Burial 5 were several associated with the Sinodont complex, a suite of dental characteristics associated with Native American (and East Asian) populations and uncommon in peoples of European ancestry (Scott et al. 2016): shoveling, double-shoveling, and a well-developed tuberculum dentale of the maxillary incisors. Of the four individuals with scorable maxillary incisors (Burials 3, 5, 6, 11), only Burial 5 had evidence of shoveling (fig. 5.3a): scores of 3 and 4 respectively for the left I1 and I2 indicate that these traits were well developed (fig. 5.3a). Both teeth also showed evidence of double-shoveling (score of 2) and the I1 had the most pronounced tuberculum dentale of any in-

Figure 5.3. Dental features of Burial 5: (a) shovel-shaped incisors; (b) comparison of dental wear in the right maxillary molars of Burial 5 (right) and Burial 2; (c) carious lesions in the right mandibular molars; (d) enamel hypoplasia in the left maxillary canine. (Photographs by Phillip L. Walker.)

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dividual examined in the sample (score of 3).2 Furthermore, none of Burial 5’s maxillary molars had a Carabelli’s cusp, a dental feature commonly associated with people of European ancestry (Bernstein 1997) and present in several other individuals in the sample (Burials 4, 6, and 11). In combination, the dental trait data suggested that Burial 5 was of Native American ancestry, whereas the other individuals were more likely of European ancestry. Because historic accounts of the Seccombe Lake settlement indicate that some members of the community had African ancestry, burials were also scored for a morphological trait of the mandible associated with an African origin. This trait, referred to as “ramus eversion,” is characterized as an inversion of the posterior edge of the jaw (Angel and Kelley 1990). Of the six individuals in the sample with preserved mandibles (table 5.1), none showed evidence of this trait (Walker and Lambert 1991). In combination with the dental data and evidence for Euro-American coffins, buttons, and other grave goods (table 5.1), these data support the conclusion that the other individuals in the Seccombe Lake Cemetery were Euro-Americans. Several other dental indicators provided evidence for further establishing the biocultural affiliation of Burial 5. These include dental wear, antemortem chipping, and dental disease. Dental wear was scored for the molar teeth in four individuals (Burials 2, 5, 6, 11) using the Scott (1979) system. The mean wear rate for the sample as a whole was estimated at 1 wear point per year based on a mean wear differential between the first and second molars of 6 points, or 1 point for each of the six years that separate the eruption of the M1s and M2s. However, Burial 5 had a mean wear score of 22 and 12 for these teeth, and a wear differential score of 10. This translates into a wear rate of 1.7 points per year, compared with a mean wear differential of 4.5 points and a wear rate of 0.8 points per year for the other three Seccombe Lake individuals. Although two of the comparative individuals (Burials 6 and 11) may have been female adolescents, whose scores could reflect gender differences in diet, the other individual (Burial 2) was a 45-year-old male with mean wear scores of 15.5 and 11 for the M1s and M2s and a wear differential score of 4.5. This differential wear rate is less than half that recorded for Burial 5’s molar teeth (fig. 5.3b) and more similar to wear rates observed in other nineteenth- and early twentieth-century skeletal collections containing European and African American individuals (mean differential wear scores of 2.2–3.4; Rose 1985; Shogren et al. 1989; Walker and Lambert 1991). Burial 5’s mean wear scores for the M1s and M2s are comparable to the mean wear scores for much older 98

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individuals (50-year-olds and 43-year-olds, respectively) in the Terry Collection, a late nineteenth–early twentieth century collection of urban blacks and whites (Walker and Lambert 1991: table 23). His diet clearly differed from that of broadly contemporaneous European and African Americans, and appears to have been more similar to that of prehistoric California hunter-gatherers (Jurmain 1990). In concert with the higher rate of dental attrition, Burial 5 also had more antemortem chipping (22% or 4/18 teeth affected) in his dentition than any other individual in the Seccombe Lake sample. Burial 1, a 35-year-old female, had the next highest rate (14.3%, 2/14). In the comparative sample as a whole, only 6% (6/102) of teeth were affected (Walker and Lambert 1991: table 25). These data suggest that Burial 5 ate harder foods and/or foods containing sand, fragments of stone, or other inclusions, or perhaps used his teeth more often as tools than other people in the Seccombe Lake sample. Although these dental indicators provide evidence that Burial 5 consumed a different diet from that of the other individuals in the Seccombe Lake Cemetery, there is also evidence that his diet evolved to include more heavily processed Euro-American foods. The wear score for Burial 5’s right M3 is 5 points, and in contrast with the mean wear differential of 12 between the M1s and M2s, that between his right M2 and M3 (the only scorable third molar) is only 5 points. This apparent shift in rate of attrition suggests that his diet may have changed during adolescence from more abrasive, indigenous foods such as acorns, pinyon nuts, seeds, seed pods, and dried berries, which would have been ground in stone mortars (Bean 1972; Bean and Smith 1978), to less abrasive Euro-American foods such as milled wheat flour and refined cane sugar. This observation is consistent with other evidence of acculturation, including the metal belt buckle and button found with his remains (Marmor et al. 1991; table 5.1), which show that he had adopted European-style clothing as well. The patterns and prevalence of dental caries in the Seccombe Lake sample support the interpretation that Burial 5 had undergone some degree of acculturation due to contact with Euro-Americans. Dental caries is a disease process associated with the consumption of fermentable dietary sugars, especially refined forms of sucrose, glucose, fructose, and maltose (Moynihan 2003; and see discussion as applied to bioarchaeology by Larsen 2015). It is not surprising that this oral disease affected the San Bernardino Mormon population, because cane sugar was a staple food item, baked goods were common meal accompaniments, and candy pulls were a transgenerational holiday traThe Odd Man Out in a Pioneer Cemetery, San Bernardino, California

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dition (Lyman 1996). In fact, four of the five Euro-American adults in the Seccombe Lake sample who were scored for dental caries had carious lesions in their anterior teeth, a location consistent with sucking on boiled sweets or biting into sticky candy. Burial 5 also had a number of carious lesions in his dentition, evidence that he was consuming cariogenic foods, but in his case these exclusively affected his molar teeth (5/6 molars and 5/18 teeth affected; fig. 5.3c). Dental disease, including both dental caries and antemortem tooth loss, affected all five Euro-American adults in the Seccombe Lake Cemetery sample in frequencies ranging from 7% for the youngest (Burial 3, 27.5 years) to 93% for the oldest (Burial 7, 50 years) (Walker and Lambert 1991). While Burial 5’s rate of dental caries (28% of teeth affected) was higher than that observed in several prehistoric California hunter-gatherer samples (e.g., Griffin 2014), it was not out of line with the age-based trend seen in the Seccombe Lake adults, further evidence of a shift to a Euro-American diet emphasizing refined carbohydrate foods (Moynihan 2003). Unlike most of the other adults, Burial 5 had no carious anterior teeth, so candy or other confections may not have been food items to which he had access. Although traditional staple foods such as acorns are unlikely to have caused this high rate of dental caries (Griffin 2014), the lesions may have resulted from the consumption of maize, a Mesoamerican import known to have increased the rate of dental disease throughout prehistoric North America upon its adoption as a staple food item (Lambert 2008; Larsen 2015). Although maize was not a typical food crop for the San Bernardino Mormons (Lyman 1996) or the pre-European-contact peoples of this region (Antelope Valley Indian Museum 2016; Bean 1972; Hooper 1920), maize cultivation was probably introduced to local Serrano and Cahuilla tribespeople in the early 1800s by Spanish missionaries associated with Rancho San Bernardino, an outpost of Mission San Gabriel established in 1819. This ranchland comprised the property purchased by the San Bernardino Mormon settlers in 1851 (Belden 1960; Lyman 1996; Simondi 2015), and their records note the presence there of Native American cornfields in the first year of the settlement (Lyman 1996: 63). Enamel hypoplasia data provide another line of evidence that Burial 5’s early life may have been different from that of the Mormon settlers. Enamel hypoplasia is a developmental defect in tooth enamel associated with systemic infection or severe malnutrition during the growth years (Giro 1947; Zhou and Corruc100

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cini 1998). Only two of eight individuals with scorable anterior teeth in the Seccombe Lake Cemetery sample showed evidence of linear enamel hypoplasia: Burials 5 and 6. Its absence in most of the settlers suggests that they managed to survive childhood without a health event severe enough to cause growth disruption, although perhaps most children who experienced such episodes died before developing these lesions (Wood et al. 1992). In Burial 6, a Euro-American (female?) of about 12 years, the primary age of growth disruption was estimated at about two years (1.7–2.3 years) based on the location of narrow linear defects above the cemento-enamel junction in the mandibular incisors (4.37 mm), canines (7.75 mm), and first premolars (5.30 mm). A second set of linear bands in these teeth corresponds to a dental age of about four years (Larsen 2015: 49; Walker and Lambert 1991: 18, 116). Given the age of occurrence of these hypoplastic defects, it seems unlikely that any corresponds with weaning diarrhea or other stressors associated with this dietary transition. Birth spacing tended to be about two years in nineteenth-century America, with babies fully transitioned to weaning foods by about one year of age (McMillen 2008). More likely, these narrow bands reflect episodes of acute infection accompanied by high fever (see Hillson 1992), perhaps with childhood diseases such as measles and whooping cough, the latter of which is known to have killed several children in the San Bernardino Mormon community (Ellsworth 1998; Lyman 1996; table 5.2). Systemic growth disruption in Burial 5’s childhood, on the other hand, was either more severe and/or occurred over a longer period of time (from about 2.5 to 4.5 years), based on the location and width (1.88–5.44 mm above the CEJ) of the hypoplastic defect in his left C1 (based on Larsen 2015: 49–51; Walker and Lambert 1991; fig. 5.3d). The extent of tooth surface involvement suggests a more sustained period of compromised health during the growth years (Hillson 1992), perhaps reflecting a childhood marked by low-grade infections and chronic malnutrition (Blakey et al. 1994). Whatever the root cause, however, the enamel hypoplasia data indicate a different childhood health experience for Burial 5 than for Burial 6 and, presumably, for the other European American individuals in the Seccombe Lake cemetery. It is possible that these early health issues resulted in greater frailty and increased susceptibility to infectious diseases later in life. This is suggested by the presence of fiberbone periosteal lesions on the visceral surfaces of many of Burial 5’s left ribs (Walker and Lambert 1991). Although this type of rib lesion is not pathognomonic for any particular lung disease, such lesions have The Odd Man Out in a Pioneer Cemetery, San Bernardino, California

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been observed in the ribs of individuals with pulmonary tuberculosis (Roberts and Buikstra 2003) and tuberculosis could therefore account for the observed rib lesions. The presence of tuberculosis is well documented in the San Bernardino Mormon community (Lyman 1996) and would likely have taken its toll on members of the local Native American community as well; individuals with compromised immune systems would have been particularly susceptible to this opportunistic infection (Roberts and Buikstra 2003; Tiemersma et al. 2011). Whether related to TB, pneumonia, or some other pulmonary disorder, the active rib lesions nonetheless indicate that Burial 5 was suffering from lung disease at the time of his death. Stature estimates based on long bone metrics suggest that Burial 5 was about 5 inches shorter (femur head diameter = 45.13 mm; stature 163.54 cm, 5 ft 4.3 in) than the other two Seccombe Lake male adults (Bur. 2, max. femur length = 485 mm; Bur. 9, max. ulna length = 276 mm; mean stature: 176.51 cm, 5 ft 9.5 in). It should be noted, however, that the error factor associated with stature estimation using femur head diameter is greater than for the other measurements used in this comparison (Walker and Lambert 1991: tables 8, 10). The differences, to the extent that they may reflect actual differences in stature, do not appear to reflect poor growth attainment for Burial 5 (see Larsen 2015), as he was similar in height to late prehistoric Chumash males from the Santa Barbara Channel mainland coast (n = 41, mean stature 161.37 cm, 5 ft 3.5 in; based on Trotter and Gleser 1958). Rather, his stature is consistent with an indigenous Californian ethnic attribution. Collectively, the bioarchaeological data suggest that Burial 5 was a 22-yearold acculturated Native American, perhaps affiliated with the Serrano or Cahuilla tribes who occupied the San Bernardino Valley when the Mormon colonists arrived. His childhood appears to have been spent in a more traditional, California Native American setting, but one that would change dramatically during his lifetime with the growing Euro-American presence in the valley. Although it is possible that his body was interred before the Mormon burial ground was established, his Euro-American clothing and the evidence for an unceremonious burial argue against the hypothesis of a traditional, pre-contact interment. Additionally, the native Serrano are known to have practiced cremation (Bean and Smith 1978), so a primary interment of any kind is not in keeping with local, indigenous mortuary practices. Rather, historic records suggest that this individual was buried by intent in the Seccombe Lake cemetery. 102

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The Historic Record: An Identity for Burial 5? The bioarchaeological data presented above provide an important window into the biocultural history of Burial 5, yielding important clues that assisted in the search for his identity. Much of what is known about the 1850s San Bernardino Mormon community comes from the personal journals and correspondence of its members and leaders. Those of Amasa Lyman, the colony’s leader for much of its six-year existence, are among the most informative of these in terms of the present inquiry (A. Lyman 1958; E. Lyman 1990, 1996). Along with his co-leader Charles Rich, Lyman was responsible for the purchase of the land, establishment of the San Bernardino Mormon settlement, and management of the religious and economic affairs of the community on a day-to-day basis. As such, it was his responsibility to keep track of a range of financial, political, legal, and church matters, as well as more mundane events such as births, marriages, and deaths. The last is of greatest relevance to this inquiry. Lyman’s (and others’) journal accounts of deaths among the settlers from 1851 to 1856 yield important insights into the causes of mortality in the colony and pertinent demographic information about those who died (Lyman 1990, 1996). It is this information that provides potential links between named individuals in the community and the human burials encountered in the Seccombe Lake Cemetery—and the possible identity of Burial 5. Journal accounts identify at least 21 deaths in the established colony for the period 1851–1856: six adult females, six adult males, two adolescent girls (12–15 years), four children (2–6 years), and three infants (18 years. Entries in gray represent individuals not interred in the Seccombe Lake Cemetery. a Burial 2 is likely one of these two men. b Burial 3 is likely one of these two women based on age and burial associations in cemetery. c Burials 4, 8, or 13 may represent these two little girls who died in the same epidemic.

In some cases, it is not possible to associate specific deaths reported in journal records (table 5.2) with individuals recovered from the Seccombe Lake Cemetery (table 5.1). However, there are two burial groupings that do suggest possible links. The first and most definitive includes two gracile adolescents (Burial 6, 10.5–14.5 years, and Burial 11, 13–17 years) buried in close proximity to one another (fig. 5.1). According to historic accounts (Lyman 1996), only two adolescents died in the colony during the years 1851–1856: Sariah Tanner (12.7 years; Esshom 1913) and Leonora Holladay (13.8 years), two girls with strikingly similar age profiles to Burials 6 and 11, respectively, and whose deaths occurred only three weeks apart in 1853. Further, bones of a 1±0.5-year-old infant found intermixed with those of Burial 6 correspond closely in age to the 11-month-old infant son of Andrew Jackson Cox, who died a week after Leonora and two weeks before Sariah. Finally, the remains of a 40–50-year-old man (Burial 2) unearthed to the south of these subadults probably correspond with David Cade, a 40-year-old man who died of a broken neck in June of 1853, although another Euro-American man of unspecified age also died about a month later that year. The second grouping comprises a woman in her twenties (27.5±5 years; Burial 3) and a 3.5±5-year-old child (Burial 4), probably a little girl based on the presence of a glass bead necklace in the coffin (Ross 1991). As with the first cluster, their close proximity in the burial ground suggests that they died and were buried within a few weeks or months of each other. Among the list of deaths occurring during the period 1851–1856, this age and sex combination occurs only in 1855, where there are a couple of possible combinations that fit the profiles of these burials (table 5.2). The adult female burial could be one of two women who died in the late summer and fall: 27-year-old Jane Lewis, who more closely matches the age estimate for Burial 3, or 22.5-year-old Susan Fabun (Lyman 1996). The child could be one of two little girls who died during an outbreak of whooping cough at the end of the year: Emma Grinnell, whose skeletal age would be 4–6 years, or an unnamed little girl said to be younger than Emma (Ellsworth 1998: 220; Lyman 1996). It is perhaps noteworthy that Louisa Platt, a close friend and relative of Jane Lewis (Ellsworth 1998: 217), was the loving caretaker of Emma Grinnell, so such a burial pairing might have occurred for this reason. If the burial attributions above are correct, it appears that the earliest (1853) interments were emplaced in the southern sector of the cemetery in one or more E-W rows. Later burials were then interred to the north of these, although not necessarily in the same row orientation (fig. 5.1). According to this schema, 106

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the location of Burial 5 at the southern end of the burial ground in the same row as Burials 6 and 11 suggests that this male adult may also have died and been buried in 1853. Given his probable identification as a Native American, Burial 5 could therefore conceivably be the “Indian” described in Amasa Lyman’s journal as “shot by Sheriff Clift [in 1853] in the line of his duty [and] brought to the fort, where he soon died” and was buried (Lyman 1990, 1996: 97). While Lyman (1996: 97) provides another account of a Native American shot to death “while trying to steal a horse belonging to a Mexican” in 1854, there is no indication that this man was actually shot by Mormon colonists or buried in their cemetery. Although no evidence of a gunshot wound was observed in the remains of Burial 5, very little of the axial skeleton was preserved intact, so the probability of finding skeletal evidence of such an injury was low; however, his body appears to have been dumped or tossed directly into the grave pit rather than placed in a coffin or otherwise laid out in a respectful fashion. This treatment suggests that the interment was expedient and unceremonious, and it accords well with the circumstances of the Native American shooting death to which he appears to be linked. In other words, Burial 5 appears to have been identified as a criminal by the Mormon colonists in life and given the burial of a social deviant by them in death. If Burial 5 was indeed the individual killed in 1853, then he was likely a local Native American rather than a raider or trader from desert regions to the south and east, as it was noted that “fellow tribesmen visited the settlement where they satisfied themselves that all had been done with just cause” (Lyman 1996: 97). The Mormon colonists generally had good relations with the local Serrano and Cahuilla and proselytized among them (e.g., Tenney and Tenney 2007: 19–20). The peaceful nature of the visit, perhaps by Serrano-Cahuilla elders from San Timoteo Canyon where local Native Americans were settled after the Mormons purchased Rancho San Bernardino (Lyman 1996), suggests that some level of familiarity and trust had been established between the two groups. While the fact that both the interment and the inquest over Burial 5’s death transpired before his kin could arrive to claim the body (Lyman 1990: 2, in Hallaran 1990) does raise questions about due process, there does not appear to have been an effort on the part of his fellow tribesmen to challenge the determination or recover the body. That said, it seems unlikely that they would have been made aware of how the body of their kinsman was treated in the burial process; perhaps they would have had a different response had they known. The Odd Man Out in a Pioneer Cemetery, San Bernardino, California

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Conclusion When Spanish missionaries first established an outpost for Mission San Gabriel in the San Bernardino Valley in 1810, the land was occupied by Serrano and Cahuilla tribespeople (Belden 1960). The young man labeled Burial 5 was probably born around 1831 into this tribal community, perhaps in proximity to the mission outpost at Rancho San Bernardino. Several years later, the mission station was burned and many neophytes killed by indigenous raiders from the desert, though some survived and remained on the mission grounds in the aftermath of the attack. In the interim years between the secularization of the mission system in 1834 and the 1842 transfer of the San Bernardino Rancho to the Lugo family via a Mexican land grant (Belden 1960: Simondi 2015), Burial 5 and his kin may have returned to a more traditional, foraging lifeway. Change would come again nine years later when, following years of livestock raids by bands of Ute marauders, the Lugos sold the land to Mormon emigrants from Salt Lake City, Utah (Belden 1960). After the purchase Native Americans residing on the Lugo’s rancho were resettled on unoccupied lands in San Timoteo Canyon, about six miles southeast of the new Mormon colony (Lyman 1996: 63). The Mormon colonists went on to establish the first Euro-American settlement in the valley in 1851 and to incorporate the City of San Bernardino in 1854 (Belden 1960). The first half of the nineteenth century thus was a time of rapid change and major cultural disruption for indigenous peoples of the San Bernardino Valley. Burial 5 would have experienced a world of upheaval characterized by the influx of Europeans, land grabs, raiding, resettlement, political jockeying, and major landscape modification associated with a burgeoning agricultural economy and a growing urban center (Belden 1960). He was a young man caught between two very different worlds, and this cultural inconsonance may well have contributed to his demise. The act that led to the shooting death of the unnamed Native American does not appear to have been recorded, so if he was associated with a “crime,” the nature of the incident remains unknown. Whether his tribespeople concurred with the proffered justification for his death, or simply made a decision to accept what could not be changed, is open to debate, but there is no record of a retaliatory act following the killing. However, during this era and for considerable time thereafter, the indigenous peoples of California had few legal rights and little recourse to justice (McKanna 2002). Although this does not appear to have characterized their relations with the Mormon colonists,

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it is perhaps noteworthy that the only individuals reported as having been killed in the years 1851–1855 were Native American men (table 5.2). Albeit anecdotal, these findings suggest that it was the native inhabitants who more often than not came up losers when Euro-Americans and Native Americans experienced a clash of cultures, be it over land, livestock, or principles. In this sense, contra the epitaph inscribed in the grave by the gravediggers, Burial 5’s interment survives as a potent symbol of what the great westward migration meant for indigenous Californians, however well-intentioned emigrants may have been.

Acknowledgments The original research on which this chapter is based was conducted by Phillip L. Walker and myself at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1991. We had long planned to publish an article on the Seccombe Lake Cemetery and were in the early planning stages at the time of his death in 2009. I submit this chapter in his honor. I would also like to thank the editors of this volume for the opportunity to publish an important and intriguing component of this research and Kevin Hallaran for graciously providing me with a copy of his Master’s thesis on the Seccombe Lake Park cemetery.

Notes 1. Burial 9 was a highly disturbed interment and its placement in the cemetery is unknown. “Burial 10” remains were determined to be part of Burial 1, whose placement is not included in the site map. 2. Burial 6 had a score of 2 for double-shoveling of the lateral I2s and a score of 2 for the tuberculum dentale of the I1s.

Bibliography Angel, J. Lawrence, and Jennifer O. Kelley 1990 Inversion of the Posterior Edge of the Jaw Ramus: New Race Trait. In Skeletal Attribution of Race: Methods for Forensic Anthropology, edited by George W. Gill and Stanley Rhine, pp. 33–30. Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, Anthropological Papers 4, Albuquerque, New Mexico. Antelope Valley Indian Museum 2016 Antelope Valley Indian Peoples: The Late Prehistoric Period, Serrano. http://www. avim.parks.ca.gov/people.

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Bean, Lowell J. 1972 Mukat’s People: The Cahuilla Indians of Southern California. University of California Press, Berkeley. Bean, Lowell J., and Charles R. Smith 1978 Serrano. In Handbook of North American Indians. Vol. 8, California, edited by Robert F. Heizer, pp. 570–574. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Belden, L. Burr 1960 San Bernardino 150 Years Old Today. San Bernardino Sun-Telegram, May 20: S2– S8. https://www.ci.san-bernardino.ca.us/about/history/sesquicentennial/s_3_ pageantof_history.asp Bernstein, Mark 1997 Forensic Odontology. In Introduction to Forensic Science, second edition, edited by William G. Eckert, chapter 12. CRC Press, Boca Raton, Florida. Blakey, Michael, Teresa E. Leslie, and Joseph P. Reidy 1994 Frequency and Chronological Distribution of Dental Enamel Hypoplasia in Enslaved African Americans: A Test of the Weaning Hypothesis. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 95: 371–383. Brown, John, Jr., and James Boyd 1922 History of San Bernardino and Riverside Counties. Lewis Publishing, Chicago. Buikstra, Jane E., and Douglas H. Ubelaker 1994 Standards for Data Collection from Human Skeletal Remains: Proceedings of a Seminar at the Field Museum of Natural History. Arkansas Archeological Report, Research Series 44, Fayetteville. Elliott, Wallace W. 1965 History of San Bernardino and San Diego Counties, California. Riverside Museum Press, Riverside, California. Ellsworth, George (editor) 1998 The History of Louisa Barnes Pratt: Mormon Missionary Widow and Pioneer. Utah State University Press, Logan. Esshom, Frank Ellwood. 1913 Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah. Utah Pioneers Book Publishing, Salt Lake City. Fontana, Bernard, and J. Cameron Greenleaf 1962 Johnny Ward’s Ranch. Kiva 28: 1 and 2. Giro, Carlos M. 1947 Enamel Hypoplasia in Human Teeth: An Examination of Its Causes. Journal of the American Dental Association 34: 310–317. Griffin, Mark C. 2014 Biocultural Implications of Oral Pathology in an Ancient Central California Population. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 154: 171–188. Haenszel, Arda 1979 History in the Seccombe Park Area, San Bernardino, California. Appendix J. In Martin Adobe: Historical Research, Seccombe State Park, San Bernardino, CA, by Marsha Lee Planning and Harris Architects for Florian/Martinez Associates, Tustin, California. 110

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Hafen, LeRoy R. 1965 Fur Trappers and Traders of the Far Southwest. Utah State University Press, Logan. Hakes, Harry 1886 The Hakes Family. Wilkes-Barré, Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. Hallaran, Kevin B. 1990 The Seccombe Lake Park Burials: A Pioneer Cemetery in San Bernardino, California. Master’s thesis, Department of History, University of California, Riverside. Hillson, Simon W. 1992 Dental Enamel Growth, Perikymata and Hypoplasia in Ancient Tooth Crowns. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 85: 460–466. Hooper, Lucile 1920 The Cahuilla Indians. University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 16(6): 315–338. Jensen, Andrew 1920 Latterday Saints Biographical Encyclopedia, Vol. 3. Andrew Jensen History Co., Salt Lake City. Jurmain, Robert 1990 Paleoepidemiology of a Central California Prehistoric Population from CAAla-329: Dental Disease. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 81: 333–342. Lambert, Patricia M. 2008 Biological Impacts of Agriculture on Human Populations. In Encyclopedia of Archaeology, edited by D. M. Pearsall, pp. 115–123. Academic Press, San Diego. Larsen, Clark S. 2015 Bioarchaeology: Interpreting Behavior from the Human Skeleton, second edition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Lyman, Albert R. 1958 Biography: Francis Marion Lyman 1840–1916. Published by Melvin A. Lyman, M.D., Delta, Utah. Lyman, Edward L. 1990 Appendix A: Excerpts from Several Chapters of Forthcoming Book, The Rise and Decline of the Mormon Community at San Bernardino in the 1850s. In The Seccombe Lake Park Burials: A Pioneer Cemetery in San Bernardino, California, by Kevin B. Hallaran. Master’s thesis, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Riverside. 1996 San Bernardino: The Rise and Fall of a California Community. Signature Books, Salt Lake City. MacDuff, Cassie 1992 San Bernardino Pioneers Put to Rest. San Bernardino County Sun, Jan. 19: 2. Marmor, Jason, Phillip L. Walker, and Carl Lipo 1991 Phase II Archaeological Investigation and Removal of Human Burials from an Historic Cemetery in Seccombe Lake Park, San Bernardino, California. LSA Project #CBD101. LSA Associates, Irvine, California. McKanna, Clare V. 2002 Race and Homicide in Nineteenth-Century California. University of Nevada Press, Reno. The Odd Man Out in a Pioneer Cemetery, San Bernardino, California

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McMillen, Sally G. 2008 Infant Feeding. In Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood in Society and History. FAQS.ORG. The Gale Group, Inc. http://www.faqs.org/childhood/In-Ke/ Infant-Feeding.html. Moynihan, Paula J. 2003 Diet and Dental Caries. In Prevention of Oral Disease, 4th edition, edited by John J. Murray, June H. Nunn, and James G. Steele, pp. 7–34. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Roberts, Charlotte A., and Jane E. Buikstra 2003 The Bioarchaeology of Tuberculosis: A Global View on a Reemerging Disease. University Press of Florida, Gainesville. Rose, Jerome R. (editor) 1985 Gone to a Better Land: A Biohistory of a Black Cemetery in the Post-Reconstruction South. Arkansas Archaeological Survey, Research Series 25, Fayetteville. Ross, Lester A. 1991 Appendix B: Beads from Seccombe Lake Park Historic Cemetery (CA-SBR6796H). In Phase II Archaeological Investigation and Removal of Human Burials from an Historic Cemetery in Seccombe Lake Park, San Bernardino, California, edited by Jason Marmor, Phillip L. Walker, and Carl Lipo. LSA Project #CBD101. LSA Associates, Irvine, California, Saxe, Arthur A. 1970 Social Dimensions of Mortuary Practices. PhD dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. 1971 Social Dimensions of Mortuary Practices in a Mesolithic Population from Wadi Halfa, Sudan. Memoirs of the Society for American Archaeology 25, Approaches to the Social Dimensions of Mortuary Practices, pp. 39–57. Scott, E. C. 1979 Dental Wear Scoring Technique. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 51: 213–217. Scott, G. Richard, Kirk Schmitz, Kelly N. Heim, Kathleen S. Paul, Roman Schomberg, and Marin A. Pilloud 2016 Sinodonty, Sundadonty, and the Beringian Standstill Model: Issues of Timing and Migrations into the New World. Quaternary International 466: 233–246. Shaffer, Donald R. 1990 A Forgotten Missionary: Hiram Clark, Mormon Itinerant British emigration organizer, and first president of the L.D.S. Hawaiian Mission, 1795–1853. California State University, Fullerton. Shogren, Michael G., Kenneth R. Turner, and Jody C. Perroni 1989 Elko Switch Cemetery: An Archaeological Perspective. University of Alabama, Alabama State Museum of Natural History, Division of Archaeology, Report of Investigations 58, Tuscaloosa. Simondi, Thomas E. 2015 Citing MissionTour. MissionTour Website. 2001–2015. http://missiontour.org/wp/ sangabriel/san-bernardino-asistencia.html

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Tenney, Janice W., and Paul A. Tenney 2007 Nathan Cram Tenney 1817–1882: Convert, Colonizer, Missionary, Peacemaker. http://www.payneirwin.com/nct34. Thompson, Richard D. 2008 Library News, April 2008: Historic Tours of the San Bernardino Area. City of San Bernardino Historical and Pioneer Society, San Bernardino, California. Tiemersma, Edine W., Marieke J. van der Werf, Martien W. Borgdorff, Brian G. Williams, and Nico J. D. Nagekerke 2011 Natural History of Tuberculosis: Duration and Fatality of Untreated Pulmonary Tuberculosis in HIV Negative Patients: A Systematic Review. PLOS One 6(4): e17601. Tobey, Ronald C., and Kevin B. Hallaran 1990 The Seccombe Lake Park Burials: A Pioneer Cemetery in San Bernardino, California: Final Report. Submitted to City of San Bernardino, California Department of Parks, Recreation, and Community Services in fulfillment of University of California, Riverside Contract Agreement No. CSB/TOBEY/90 with the City of San Bernardino. Trotter, Mildred, and Goldine C. Gleser 1958 A Re-evaluation of Estimation of Stature Based on Measurements of Stature Taken During Life and of Long Bones after Death. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 16: 79–123. Turner, Christy G., II, C. R. Nichol, and G. Richard Scott 1991 Scoring Procedures for Key Morphological Traits of the Permanent Dentition: The Arizona State University Dental Anthropology System. In Advances in Dental Anthropology, edited by Mark Kelley and Clark S. Larsen, pp. 13–31. Alan R. Liss, New York. Walker, Phillip L., John R. Johnson, and Patricia M. Lambert 1988 Age and Sex Biases in the Preservation of Human Skeletal Remains. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 76: 183–188. Walker, Phillip L. and Patricia M. Lambert 1991 Human Skeletal Remains from the Historic Cemetery at Seccombe Lake Park, San Bernardino, California. Prepared for City of San Bernardino Parks, Recreation, and Community Services Department, San Bernardino, California. Wood, James W., George R. Milner, Henry C. Harpending, and Kenneth M. Weiss 1992 The Osteological Paradox: Problems of Inferring Prehistoric Health from Skeletal Samples. Current Anthropology 33: 343–370. Zhou, Liming, and Robert S. Corruccini 1998 Enamel Hypoplasia Related to Famine Stress in Living Chinese. American Journal of Human Biology 10: 723–733

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6 Defining Non-Normative Practices in a Diverse Funerary Record Insights from the Caribbean

H ay l ey L . M ick l e bu rgh, M e n no L . P. Ho o gl a n d, Ja s on E . L a ffo on, Da r l e n e A . W e ston, Robe rto Va l c á rce l Roja s , A n n e va n Du i j v e n bode , a n d A ngus A . A . Mol

In the absence of written records, assessing whether a particular burial may qualify as non-normative or not often relies on the relative scarcity of the observed burial mode in the archaeological record of the region and time period. Quantifying what may constitute deviant practices is complex and is sometimes considered an undesirable approach, due to the context specific (qualitative) nature of non-normative behavior (Gardeła and Kajkowski 2013). Moreover, researchers have stressed the fact that non-normative burial practices are not necessarily “deviant” but may simply comprise a less commonly used form of burial that is part of the repertoire of normal burial practices (Aspöck 2008; Cherryson 2008; Holloway 2008). Research dealing with these issues has argued for a multidisciplinary approach, combining archaeological, historical, and where possible ethnographic evidence of “normal” burial practices, to provide a broad contextual view on what can be considered normative practices (e.g., Charlier 2008; Knüsel 2010; Tsaliki 2008). In this chapter, we make a basic quantitative assessment of potentially nonnormative funerary treatment in the insular Caribbean, based on the frequency

Figure 6.1. Map of the Caribbean.

of different documented practices. We use social network analysis to study relations within the data set, and to find other indicators of non-normative practices besides frequency. We subsequently investigate three cases identified as non-normative in more depth, using a multidisciplinary contextual assessment. By combining quantitative, qualitative, and network relational analyses of what could constitute non-normative practices in the region, we were able to assess “deviancy” in a context of diversity. Our analyses bring to light some important considerations for assessing deviancy in the funerary record. Our findings emphasize that the “normal” repertoire of burial practices may include infrequently used practices, and our case studies illustrate the effects of the scale of contextual analysis on the identification of non-normative practices in the funerary record.

Background The Caribbean archipelago (fig. 6.1), which was first populated from the surrounding mainland areas of Mesoamerica and South America around 4000 Defining Non-Normative Practices in a Diverse Funerary Record: The Caribbean

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BC, shows sociopolitical development and material culture repertoires distinct from the mainland, while at the same time maintaining strong sociocultural ties and interaction with mainland communities (Hofman and Bright 2010). This earliest phase of occupation, the Lithic or Archaic Age, continues until the start of the Early Ceramic Age (~500/400 BC–AD 600/800). This period brought village-based sociopolitical organization and a food economy based on horticulture and hunting-fishing to the region (Boomert 1999; Siegel 1992). The Late Ceramic Age (~AD 600/800–1500) saw changes in social organization in the Greater Antilles and parts of the northern Lesser Antilles were characterized by regional-scale political organization in (complex) “chiefdoms” (Curet 2005; Keegan 2000; Wilson 1997, 2007). The colonial period began with the transatlantic voyage of Christopher Columbus in 1492 and brought with it major social and political upheaval throughout the Caribbean region. Geographically, the area is divided into four main areas: the Greater Antilles, the Lesser Antilles, the Bahamas, and the Southern Caribbean Islands (or Southern Antilles). These areas differ in their biogeography and geology, and in the past few decades, researchers have increasingly come to understand that the archaeological record of the region shows a measure of sociocultural variation across the archipelago and through time. The history of archaeological research in the region varies greatly, partly a result of its modern geopolitical division and its diverse colonial history. As such, our knowledge of funerary practices in the Caribbean is variable. In general, a much larger number of human burials has been archaeologically documented in the Greater Antilles than in the Lesser and Southern Antilles. Furthermore, the subtropical environment and vulnerability of coastal environments to human and natural destruction has led to considerable variability in the quality of preservation of human burials. For the entire region, relatively few Lithic/Archaic Age burials have been documented in controlled archaeological excavations, with much of the research concentrated in Cuba. For this reason, we restrict the discussion here to the Early and Late Ceramic Age, and some sites spanning the Late Ceramic Age and the earliest colonial contact (i.e., 500/400 BC–AD 1550). While some broad trends in funerary practices have been noted, the region displays a wide range of burial locations, body positions, body treatments, and grave goods (Curet and Oliver 1998; Hoogland and Hofman 2013). Observed trends in burial treatment indicate that the majority of precolonial burials consist of small oval grave pits, with the skeletal remains in upright seated or dorsal flexed positions, with the arms and legs flexed toward the torso. Burials 116

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are frequently found in domestic areas, sometimes under the floors of house structures, and occur in trash middens, caves, and formalized spaces such as plazas. Archaeothanatological research (an approach that seeks to reconstruct the original mode of burial and subsequent taphonomic processes in the grave by examining the position of the skeletal remains and associated materials) has revealed evidence of what is thought to be human manipulation of skeletal remains long after burial and decomposition of the soft tissues. These practices include secondary burial (interment or re-interment of disarticulated bones after soft tissue decomposition) and reopening of the grave and deliberate movement and rearrangement or removal of skeletal elements within the grave. Indications have also been found at a number of sites in the Lesser and Southern Antilles that the grave pit was left open during decay, and that in some cases bodies may have been intentionally desiccated prior to inhumation. In others, evidence has been found for wrapping of the body in perishable materials (Altena 2007; Hofman et al. 2012; Hoogland et al. 2001; Hoogland and Hofman 2013; Valcárcel Rojas 2016; van den Bel et al. 2009; van den Bel and Romón 2010). Some of these practices are also referred to in Colonial period European historical sources, including the flexed and seated position of the body, wrapping of the body in a hammock, revisiting of a grave and removal of bones, and the curation of bones from graves kept for ancestor veneration (e.g., Verrand 2001). Ethnohistoric sources also provide insight into the use of perishable materials and items during funerary treatment, as well as social and spiritual aspects of death and mourning. For example, European observations of seventeenth-century Carib communities in the Lesser Antilles describe the painting of the deceased’s body with red pigment, the burning of their belongings over the grave, and the ritual cutting of the hair of family members (Verrand 2001).

Methods To provide insight into the frequency of certain modes of burial in the Caribbean during the Ceramic Age, we assessed 1,298 burials based on published data and site reports. The data set includes as much contextual information per burial as possible, including biological profiles of the skeletal remains, skeletal and dental pathology, dietary and provenance isotopic information, as well as burial type, burial location, body treatment, body position and orientation, and grave goods. However, because of a lack of standardization in documentation of burial features in the literature, comparisons on the basis of all variables are not possible. Defining Non-Normative Practices in a Diverse Funerary Record: The Caribbean

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For the purposes of this chapter we have made a basic comparison of burial type, burial location, burial position, body position and orientation, and grave goods. Since the data comprise categorical variables, “deviant” burial modes cannot be detected using statistical outlier detection. Potentially non-normative practices are therefore identified based on their infrequent occurrence. For the purposes of this chapter, we arbitrarily selected a threshold prevalence of 5% or lower to identify relatively scarce practices. We further investigated the relation between the different burial types using network analysis. Network analysis is the study of relations within a data set. Networks consist of nodes (individual actors, people, or things within the network) and the ties (relationships or interactions) that connect them, represented by dots and lines in most network visualizations. Network analysis focuses on the relationships between nodes, as opposed to their attributes. To visualize the relations and variability between burial types, the data set was explored as a two-mode network. Two-mode networks deviate from the more common, one-mode networks because they connect entities (nodes) of two different types rather than entities of the same kind. Two-mode networks are often used in social network analysis (SNA) to study social interactions based on group membership. An example of this may be individuals (one type of entity) who are acquainted because they frequent the same social events (another type of entity). Each tie therefore represents an individual node’s affiliation with a group. This information can then be used to create one-mode networks from two-mode networks, showing, for instance, a network of individuals connected by co-membership in groups or a network of groups connected by co-participation of individuals (Borgatti and Everett 1997). While these structural analyses are best known from SNA, network (descriptive) statistics or visualizations can also be applied to other types of two-mode relational data that are not necessarily directly reflective of social networks, such as sites connected based on cross-ties in their assemblages, or objects connected based on stylistic similarities (Brandes et al. 2013; Mol 2014). Here we use a two-mode network as an alternative method to assess the “deviancy” of specific burial types by conceptualizing how site burial assemblages (actors) can be members of burial types (groups) using visone, a network analytic and visualization software tool (Brandes and Wagner 2004). This tool gives a measure of the frequency of co-occurrence of burial types with any other burial type at sites, providing a different perspective on the role of each individual burial type within the total repertoire of funerary practices. In addition, we investigate three specific examples of funerary practices that could be considered non-normative based on deviation in burial location, body 118

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Figure 6.2. The prevalence of different forms of funerary treatment in the Caribbean.

treatment, body position, and/or grave goods from the majority of burials. We draw on multiple lines of evidence, including isotopic provenance analyses, osteological analyses of skeletal alterations and pathology, and ethnohistoric sources to assess these specific cases of non-normative behavior.

Atypical Burials The descriptive data visualized in figure 6.2 show the prevalence of different forms of funerary treatment in the Caribbean based on a basic categorization Defining Non-Normative Practices in a Diverse Funerary Record: The Caribbean

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of different burial types, burial locations, body positions and cardinal orientations, and grave goods. It is clear that the majority of burials comprise primary interments. Most individuals are found in a flexed burial position, and the body is typically found lying on the back (dorsal). Grave goods have been reported in just over one-quarter of the burials, with vessels and “other”1 representing the most commonly reported goods. Body orientation and burial location are more evenly distributed across the different categories (disregarding “unknown” cases). Based simply on prevalence of 5% or less, secondary, urn, cremation, primary rearranged, and all forms of composite burial are atypical (i.e., infrequent) burial types. In fact, at this threshold, all but primary burials would be considered non-normative. Similarly, seated/semi-seated and prone body positions, as well as dorsal while leaning to either the left or right are clearly infrequent practices based on prevalence alone. Deposition in extended position, as opposed to flexed or disarticulated, again appears to be a much less frequently used mode of burial. Shell, bone, stone, and coral grave goods, as well as body adornments are also uncommon. Burial location is often not specified in reports and published literature, meaning that the majority of individuals are grouped in the category site; however, burials in plazas would qualify as an infrequent practice. Thus, using the relative frequency of burial types, locations, and positions, we can identify potentially non-normative practices. The network in figure 6.3 shows the variance in 10 major burial types as they are connected through 942 burials distributed over 81 sites. The width of the ties is indicative of tie strength: the wider, the more frequently these types co-occur within sites. The size of the nodes indicates the centrality of this type in the network, or in other words the frequency of co-occurrence with any other burial type, based on the total weighted number of ties (aka “degree centrality”). The network shows that primary burials are the most frequent, co-occurring with every other type of burial. In fact, with the exception of “composite” and “cremation,” all burial types co-occur at least once with all other types, indicating that variation in burial types at individual sites is a central connecting factor for burial practices in the region. In the case of “composite,” which denotes those burials containing multiple individuals, the lack of information on the primary or secondary nature of the deposit likely caused this burial type’s exceptional position in the network. In the case of “cremation,” the singular position in the network indicates a true deviance from the pattern of co-occurrence that typifies the region as a whole. Therefore, based on both its low relative frequency 120

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Figure 6.3. Two-mode network visualization of co-occurrence of burial types at the different sites.

and the lack of co-occurrence with many other modes of burial, cremation could be considered a non-normative practice in the precolonial Caribbean. Although the frequency of use of different forms of funerary treatment differs considerably, most practices can be observed together at a single archaeological site. This demonstrates that funerary treatment throughout the region is above all characterized by variation in practices, regardless of the frequency of use of individual modes of burial. This suggests that certain less frequently occurring modes of burial were widely recognized throughout the Caribbean region, despite occurring in small numbers. In the following we discuss some specific examples of funerary practices that could be considered non-normative in the Caribbean context. The first example highlights the fact that the interpretation of deviancy in funerary treatment is highly context specific, and it emphasizes the importance of considering various lines of evidence. In the two following examples, we demonstrate how adapting the scale of analysis can drastically alter the interpretation of what may be considered deviant mortuary behavior, again stressing how context shapes our assessment of non-normative practices.

El Chorro de Maíta, Cuba: Burial 72B El Chorro de Maíta is a large settlement and cemetery site located in northeastern Cuba, with radiocarbon dates indicating use spanning the late precoDefining Non-Normative Practices in a Diverse Funerary Record: The Caribbean

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lonial and early Colonial period (AD 1400–1650). A total of 133 individuals were excavated, a large number of whom are thought to have lived under early colonial European control, within an encomienda (a Spanish colonial system for the exploitation of the indigenous workforce) system of forced labor (Valcárcel Rojas 2016). Funerary treatment at the site is diverse and includes primary and secondary interment, extended dorsal “Christian” body positions, and flexed positions on the back, side, or front. Grave goods consist of personal ornaments of stone, coral, resin, and metal, including some objects of European origin. Individual 72B is a young female (18–25 years), buried in prone position with a large rock placed over the femora. The head is resting on the left cheek, the arms are flexed with the hands placed beside the shoulders, and the legs are flexed at the knees with the lower legs to the left. The prone body position is atypical, but not unique at the site, as three other individuals were uncovered in this position, albeit without rocks. Prone burial is rare in the Caribbean islands in general, with only 3.08% of individuals found in this position (fig. 6.2), and no others have been found interred with a rock placed over the body. Based on these data, burial 72B could be considered non-normative, in both a site and a regional context. To investigate potential reasons for this non-normative treatment, we created an osteobiographic profile (Stodder and Palkovich 2014). The results of multiple-isotope analysis (strontium, carbon, oxygen) indicate that this female did not originate from the site, but most likely came from the Mesoamerican mainland (Laffoon et al. 2013; Valcárcel Rojas et al. 2011). She has vertical fronto-occipital modification, which is unique at the site and uncommon in the islands in general (van Duijvenbode 2017). She displays dental modification of her upper anterior teeth, which is consistent with Mesoamerican types, such as those documented for Postclassic skeletal remains in the Lowland Maya region (Williams and White 2006). This type of modification is unique in the Caribbean islands (Mickleburgh 2013). Finally, she is by far the tallest female in the burial population. At 161.21 cm (63.47 in.), she is almost 13 cm (5.12 in.) taller than the site’s average female height of 148.21 cm (58.35 in.); a further suggestion of her nonlocal origins. Individual 72B’s funerary treatment is also in keeping with practices observed in the Lowland Maya region. Research at three Lowland Maya sites in Belize has uncovered a series of Terminal Classic (AD 800–1000) through Late Postclassic (AD 1300–1450) period burials in which many individuals are buried prone, with the legs flexed at the knees (Graham et al. 2013). The combined evidence therefore suggests that this individual migrated to 122

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Cuba from the Mesoamerican mainland (Valcárcel Rojas et al. 2011). Considering the site context, it is possible she was brought to Cuba through European slave transport in the early Colonial period; forced migration of mainland populations to the Caribbean islands took place in the early Colonial period, when Europeans made indigenous slavery a commercial activity and a source of labor to replace the declining local workforce (Valcárcel Rojas 2016; Valcárcel Rojas et al. 2011; Yaremko 2010). Unfortunately, the radiocarbon dating of 72B is not conclusive regarding a pre-Colonial or early Colonial origin (cal. AD 1465–1685, 1 σ) although the large number of Amerindian burials at the site dating to the early Colonial period may support the hypothesis of forced migration. If this was the case, her funerary treatment may indicate that she was not alone in migrating to Cuba. The mode of burial implies that the population at the site had detailed knowledge of the appropriate funerary treatment for an individual from the mainland, potentially meaning that a small community of Mesoamerican individuals lived at El Chorro de Maíta or nearby Colonial locations, and they were able to uphold their spiritual, ritual, and sociocultural beliefs, at least regarding the burial of this young female. The osteobiographic investigation of 72B and the combination of numerous lines of evidence have allowed us to identify broad sociocultural processes and long-distance migrations as the potential cause of non-normative funerary behavior. The burial treatment of 72B can be considered deviant within the context of El Chorro de Maíta, yet if she was indeed a forced migrant from the Lowland Maya region, it may represent a common practice in her community of origin.

Kelbey’s Ridge 2, Saba: Burial F068 This is a highly atypical case in which the cremated remains of two subadults (5–6 and 3–4 years of age) were deposited in an already skeletonized burial of an adult male (36–45 years old). Cremation is extremely rare in the archaeological record of the Caribbean, and this is the only case known from the Lesser Antilles. When viewed in the context of the broader region, burial F068 could be considered non-normative; however, when examined within the site context, this picture changes. Kelbey’s Ridge 2 is a fourteenth-century habitation site on the small volcanic island of Saba. It is thought to have been a short-lived eastern outpost of the Taíno chiefdom communities of the Greater Antilles, potentially specializing in the exploitation of the valuable marine resources of the Saba Bank and controlDefining Non-Normative Practices in a Diverse Funerary Record: The Caribbean

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ling a “gateway” for interaction between the Greater and Lesser Antilles. Seven burials containing the remains of 11 individuals were found within the house features. The profile of the burial population, with high child mortality, and the short occupation span (ca. 100 years), suggest the outpost failed and was abandoned. All skeletons were found in a flexed position, either on the back or on the side, but apart from this similarity, funerary treatment is diverse (Hoogland and Hofman 1993, 1999). One burial was identified as a primary interment and three were identified as primary rearranged features, in which the primary interment was reopened after soft tissue decomposition and parts of the skeleton were rearranged or removed. In addition to burial F068, another composite burial was identified that consisted of the primary interment of an older female, and the later primary placement of an infant in the burial feature once the female’s remains had skeletonized. Furthermore, the disarticulated partial skeleton of a subadult of 5–6 years was uncovered in a separate deposit and matched with the partial cremated remains of one of the subadults in F068, indicating that this subadult composed a primary interment that was revisited after soft tissue decomposition and a part of the skeleton removed for cremation and deposition in F068 (Hoogland and Hofman 1993, 1999). There does not seem to be a common mode of burial at Kelbey’s Ridge 2, so when considered within the context of the varied and complex funerary practices, burial F068 is not likely to be considered deviant. Shifting our scale of analysis to a regional perspective (i.e., the Ceramic Age Caribbean islands), we see that the revisiting of a primary burial and removal or rearrangement of bones, or the deposition of secondary remains in an existing primary burial, are infrequent yet widely followed practices. Removal or rearrangement of bones is thought to point to ancestor veneration and has been linked to ethnohistorical descriptions of retaining human bones in houses as deities or ancestral spirits (Hoogland and Hofman 2013); however, the deposition of cremated dry bones in an existing grave is unique. Burial F068 could therefore be considered nonnormative in a wider geographical context, but not in the local site context, demonstrating that the scale of analysis can have profound effects on the evaluation of non-normative practices in the funerary record. Biological and social information on the Kelbey’s Ridge 2 individuals indicates that this small community may have been under physical and nutritional stress. For example, F068 exhibits signs of significant degeneration of his cervical, thoracic, and lumbar spine, including a vertebral compression fracture, 124

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traumatic damage to his left knee, and evidence of severe muscle strain (enthesopathy) in his shoulders and knees. The cremated remains of the 3–4-yearold child demonstrate evidence of possible nutritional deficiencies in the form of cribra orbitalia of the left orbit. Furthermore, F148, a probable female aged 30+ years, shows evidence of having experienced a severe episode of violence that resulted in trauma to her skull and forearms. She had four well-healed depressed fractures on the cranial vault—three on the parietals and one on the frontal, and well-healed bilateral fractures to the radius and ulna. The similar degree of healing suggests they were contemporaneous. The right ulna and radius were fractured at the distal ends of the shafts, while the left ulna and radius were fractured on the proximal thirds of the shafts. We can visualize a scenario where the forearms were fractured as they were raised and crossed, distal right shafts over left proximal shafts, protecting the head. The community may have adopted divergent funerary treatment including the cremation of juvenile remains and interment in an existing skeletonized burial, in response to biological and social stress factors. The range of funerary treatment observed at Kelbey’s Ridge 2 may have been an appropriate reaction to the social stresses of a failed outpost community. As such, the funerary practices at the site are non-normative at a regional scale, but locally the observed degree of variation in funerary practices appears to have been the norm.

Secondary Skull Deposits One-quarter of the burials categorized as primary/secondary composite burials throughout the Caribbean consist of the interment of disarticulated skulls in an existing primary burial (n = 10) (fig. 6.4). Secondary skull deposits with primary interments have been suggested to represent the continuity of the ancestral bond in death (Crespo 2011) and have been found at sites across the archipelago (Bonnissent and Stouvenot 2003; Crespo 2011; Dorst and Altena 2005; Hofman et al. 2012; Osborne 2013; van den Bel et al. 2009). At the site of Lavoutte, St. Lucia, taphonomic indicators suggest that the deposition of a disarticulated (secondary) skull belonging to a male aged 26–35 years occurred at the same time as the interment of the articulated (primary) female aged 18–25 years (Hofman et al. 2012). In the other cases archaeothanatological evidence for the timing of depositional events is not reported. While the practice has been documented at multiple sites with a widespread distribution, at each site there are only one or at most three reported cases. As such, at the site level this form of funerary treatment certainly appears non-normaDefining Non-Normative Practices in a Diverse Funerary Record: The Caribbean

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Figure 6.4. Burial F58-23, Lavoutte, St. Lucia, showing primary individual with secondary skull deposit. The lower portion of the skeleton was missing due to damage by vehicles using the site prior to rescue excavations.

tive; however, secondary skull depositions make up 26.32% of primary/secondary composite burials included in our analyses, suggesting that this form of deposition was an important practice within this category, and perhaps it would not have been considered distinct from the secondary deposition of other skeletal elements with primary interments. As demonstrated through the two-mode network in figure 6.3, while the primary/secondary composite category represents an infrequent practice, it co-occurs with most other practices at most sites, while also showing a broad regional distribution; therefore, while the practice of secondary skull deposition could certainly have been reserved for individuals who were peculiar in life (or in death) in a way that did not commonly occur, the repetition of this practice on a broad regional scale suggests that even highly uncommon practices could be considered a part of the “funerary lingua franca.”

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Discussion Defining “deviancy” is by its very nature largely dependent on context and our evaluation of context (Aspöck 2008). Nonetheless, there is still a strong reliance on the relative frequency of occurrence of particular modes of burial to identify non-normative funerary treatment. A basic assessment of burial practices within the Caribbean regional context allowed us to identify potentially nonnormative practices based on their low prevalence in the archaeological record, in most cases both at the site level and within a regional framework. Interpreting these practices using contextual analysis is complex, considering the high degree of diversity in funerary practices in the region, as well as differences within the available dataset. However, the two-mode network visualization revealed that despite the low frequency of certain practices, their co-occurrence at the majority of archaeological sites suggests that they may have composed a part of the “normal” repertoire of funerary behavior, albeit a less commonly used mode. In other words, while these practices are less frequently observed, they appear to have been established modes of burial, broadly recognized in the “funerary lingua franca” of the region. While a number of burial types occur in low frequencies, the network visualization suggests that cremation, because of its lack of co-occurrence with other burial types, may be truly non-normative. Our study underscores that while there is an interdependent relation between how we define what is “normal” and what is not, distinguishing the two can never be a simple matter of scarcity and ubiquity, particularly when there is a high degree of diversity in funerary practices in the region. A multidisciplinary approach that provides as much contextual information for the individual burial as possible is essential to assess non-normative behavior. We argue that network analysis provides an additional tool to understand relationships within a (variable) funerary data set. The first case study we presented emphasizes this by demonstrating how the use of multiple lines of evidence allowed us to identify broad-scale, tumultuous sociocultural events as the likely reasons for non-normative funerary treatment. Moreover, this example demonstrates the need to consider the geographical scale of contextual analysis, given that 72B’s burial treatment is considered deviant in a Cuban context yet falls within the normal repertoire for parts of the Lowland Maya region. The last two case studies we presented further highlight the effects of scale of analysis (e.g., site level vs. regional level) on how we define normative behavior. The Caribbean data demonstrate

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that what could be considered non-normative at the smaller scale may appear “normal” at the greater scale, and vice versa.

Conclusion Our investigation of what may constitute non-normative funerary treatment in the pre-Colonial Caribbean confirms that while the frequency of different burial modes can help identify non-normative practices, it is important to consider the total repertoire of practices at different scales. Funerary treatment throughout the Caribbean is above all characterized by variation; however, network analysis revealed relationships within these diverse patterns that can help understand patterns within this variation. The use of two-mode network visualization allowed us to demonstrate the co-occurrence of multiple modes of burial (a “funerary repertoire”) at sites across the region, suggesting that even uncommon modes of burial comprised widely recognized practices. Future work will include further exploration of the data using network analysis. The fact that assessing non-normative behavior in the funerary record is highly contextual has been emphasized in previous work. Suggestions for potential avenues for dealing with these issues have mostly argued for the building of a broad contextual view on what can be considered normative practices, by using a multidisciplinary approach, combining archaeological, historical, and where possible ethnographic information; however, the Caribbean funerary record sheds further light on the complexity of assessing non-normative modes of burial based on archaeological parameters. Our examples illustrate that altering the contextual scale can drastically change our concept of what can be considered non-normative behavior in the funerary record, and they emphasize the fact that such behavior cannot merely comprise those practices observed less frequently. Interpretations of burial practices require knowledge of these within both the local and regional contexts: by changing the scale of analysis, our assessment of forms of funerary treatment may alternate between normative and non-normative. We therefore suggest that besides the use of a multidisciplinary approach to identify non-normative funerary behavior, research should include a review of the effects of scale and context on the results of the analysis.

Note 1. This category includes a large variety of materials, for example, red ochre, pieces of unworked coral, bone, or shell, and shell and ceramic artifacts that could not be identified as tools, vessels, or bodily adornments. 128

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Bibliography Altena, Eveline 2007 The Burials of the SAN I Site at Manzanilla, Eastern Trinidad: A Preliminary Study on Reconstructing Funerary Behavior of the Late Palo Seco and Arauquinoid Inhabitants. Proceedings of the Congress of the International Association for Caribbean Archaeology 21: 306–314. Aspöck, Edeltraud 2008 What Actually Is a “Deviant Burial”? Comparing German-Language and Anglophone Research on “Deviant Burials.” In Deviant Burial in the Archaeological Record, edited by Eileen M. Murphy, pp. 17–34. Oxbow Books, Oxford. Bonnissent, Dominique, and Christian Stouvenot 2003 Un Site D’Habitat Post-Saladoïde Dans Les Terres Basses: Baie Aux Prunes (Plum Bay) Saint-martin, Petites Antilles. Proceedings of the Congress of the International Association for Caribbean Archaeology 20: 31–40. Boomert, Arie 1999 Saladoid Sociopolitical Organization. Proceedings of the Congress of the International Association for Caribbean Archaeology 18(2): 55–77. Borgatti, Stephen P., and Martin G. Everett 1997 Network Analysis of 2-Mode Data. Social Networks 19: 243–269. Brandes, Ulrik, and Dorothea Wagner 2004 Analysis and Visualization of Social Networks. In Graph Drawing Software, edited by Michael Jünger and Petra Mutzel, pp. 321–340. Springer Verlag, Berlin. Brandes, Ulrik, Garry Robins, Ann McCranie, and Stanley Wasserman 2013 What Is Network Science? Network Science 1(1): 1–15. Charlier, Philippe 2008 The Value of Palaeoteratology and Forensic Pathology for the Understanding of Atypical Burials: Two Mediterranean Examples from the Field. In Deviant Burial in the Archaeological Record, edited by Eileen M. Murphy, pp. 57–70. Oxbow Books, Oxford. Cherryson, Annia K. 2008 Normal, Deviant and Atypical: Burial Variation in Late Saxon Wessex, c. AD 700– 1100. In Deviant Burial in the Archaeological Record, edited by Eileen M. Murphy, pp. 115–130. Oxbow Books, Oxford. Crespo, Edwin 2011 Bioarchaeological Evidence of Ancestor Worship from Paso del Indio: An Archaeological Site in the Island of Puerto Rico. In Aportes Universitarios. Antología de Ensayos Interdisciplinarios de las Ciencias Sociales, edited by J. Rodríguez, pp. 194–217. University of Puerto Rico. Curet, L. Antonio 2005 Caribbean Paleodemography. Population, Cultural History, and Sociopolitical Processes in Ancient Puerto Rico. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. Curet, L. Antonio., and José R. Oliver 1998 Mortuary Practices, Social Development, and Ideology in Precolumbian Puerto Rico. Latin American Antiquity 9(3): 217–239. Defining Non-Normative Practices in a Diverse Funerary Record: The Caribbean

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Dorst, Marc C., and Eveline Altena 2005 Manzanilla (SAN1): Research of an Amerindian Habitation Area, October 2004. Report on file at Leiden University. Gardeła, Leszek, and Kamil Kajkowski 2013 Vampires, Criminals or Slaves? Reinterpreting “Deviant Burials” in Early Medieval Poland. World Archaeology 45(5): 780–796. Graham, Elizabeth, Scott E. Simmons, and Christine D. White 2013 The Spanish Conquest and the Maya Collapse: How “Religious” is Change? World Archaeology 45(1): 161–185. Hofman, Corinne L., and Alistair J. Bright 2010 Mobility and Exchange from a Pan-Caribbean Perspective. Journal of Caribbean Archaeology, Special Publication 3. Hofman, Corinne L., Menno L. P. Hoogland, Hayley L. Mickleburgh, Jason E. Laffoon, Mike H. Field, and Darlene A. Weston 2012 Life and Death at Precolumbian Lavoutte, Saint Lucia, Lesser Antilles. Journal of Field Archaeology 37(3): 209–225. Holloway, James 2008 Charcoal Burial: a Minority Burial Rite in Early Medieval Europe. In Deviant Burial in the Archaeological Record, edited by Eileen M. Murphy, pp. 131–147. Oxbow Books, Oxford. Hoogland, Menno L. P., and Corinne L. Hofman 1993 Kelbey’s Ridge 2, a Fourteenth Century Taino Settlement on Saba, N.A. Analecta Praehistorica Leidensia 26: 163–181. 1999 Taino Expansion Towards the Lesser Antilles. The Case of Saba. Journal de la Société des Américanistes 85: 93–113. 2013 From Corpse Taphonomy to Mortuary Behaviour in the Caribbean. In The Oxford Handbook of Caribbean Archaeology, edited by William F. Keegan, Corinne L. Hofman, and Reniel Rodríguez Ramos, pp. 452–469. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Hoogland, Menno L. P., T. Romon, and P. Brasselet 2001 Troumassoid Burial Practices at the Site of Anse à la Gourde, Guadeloupe. Proceedings of the 18th International Congress for Caribbean Archaeology. Grenada, 173–178. Keegan, William F 2000 West Indian Archaeology. 3. Ceramic Age. Journal of Archaeological Research 8(2): 135–167. Knüsel, Christopher J. 2010 Bioarchaeology: A Synthetic Approach. Bulletins et Mémoires de la Société d’Anthropologie de Paris 22(1–2): 62–73. Laffoon, Jason E., Roberto Valcárcel Rojas, and Corinne L. Hofman 2013 Oxygen and Carbon Isotope Analysis of Human Dental Enamel from the Caribbean: Implications for Investigating Individual Origins. Archaeometry 55(4): 742–765. Mickleburgh, Hayley L. 2013 Reading the Dental Record: A Dental Anthropological Approach to Foodways, 130

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Health and Disease, and Crafting in the Pre-Columbian Caribbean. PhD dissertation, Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University, Leiden. Mol, Angus A. A. 2014 The Connected Caribbean: A Socio-Material Network Approach to Patterns of Homogeneity and Diversity in the Pre-Colonial Period. Sidestone Press, Leiden. Osborne, Jessica L. 2013 Deciphering Patterns of Burial Distribution: A Mortuary Analysis of a Precontact Sample Population from the Island of Carriacou. Master’s thesis, Department of Anthropology, North Carolina State University. Siegel, Peter E. 1992 Ideology, Power, and Social Complexity in Prehistoric Puerto Rico. PhD dissertation, Department of Anthropology, State University of New York, Binghamton. University Microfilms, Ann Arbor. Stodder, Ann L. W., and Ann M. Palkovich (editors) 2014 The Bioarchaeology of Individuals. University Press of Florida, Gainesville. Tsaliki, Anastasia 2008 Unusual Burials and Necrophobia: An Insight into the Burial Archaeology of Fear. In Deviant Burial in the Archaeological Record, edited by Eileen M. Murphy, pp. 1–16. Oxbow Books, Oxford. Valcárcel Rojas, Roberto 2016 Archaeology of Early Colonial Interaction at El Chorro de Maíta, Cuba. University of Florida Press, Gainesville. Valcárcel Rojas, Roberto, Jason E. Laffoon, Darlene A. Weston, Hayley L. Mickleburgh, and Anne van Duijvenbode 2011 El Chorro de Maíta. A Diverse Approach to a Context of Diversity. In Communities in Contact. Essays in Archaeology, Ethnohistory, and Ethnography of the Amerindian circum-Caribbean, edited by Corinne L. Hofman and Anne van Duijvenbode, pp. 225–252. Sidestone Press, Leiden. van den Bel, Martijn, Fabrice Casagrande, Thomas Romon, Sebastiaan Knippenberg, Christophe Tardy, Sandrine Grouard, and Eris Pellé 2009 Le Site de La Pointe de Grande Anse. Une Occupation Amérindienne et Coloniale dans le Sud de Basse-Terre, Commune de Trois-Rivières, Guadeloupe. Document Final de Fouille Inrap, Ms. van den Bel, Martijn, and Thomas Romón 2010 A Troumassoid Site at Trois-Rivières, Guadeloupe FWI Funerary Practices and House Patterns at La Pointe de Grande Anse. Journal of Caribbean Archaeology 9: 1–17. Van Duijvenbode, A. 2017 Facing Society: A Study of Identity through Head Shaping Practices among the Indigenous Peoples of the Caribbean in the Ceramic and Colonial Period. PhD dissertation, Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University, Leiden. Verrand, Laurance 2001 La Vie Quotidienne des Indiens Caraïbes aux Petites Antilles: XVIIe siècle. Éditions KARTHALA, Paris.

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Williams, Jocelyn S., and Christine D. White 2006 Dental Modification in the Postclassic Population from Lamanai, Belize. Ancient Mesoamerica 17(1): 139–151. Wilson, Samuel M. 1997 The Taíno Social and Political order. In Taino. Pre-Columbian Art and Culture from the Caribbean, edited by Fatima Bercht, Estrellita Brodsky, John A. Farmer, and Dicey Taylor, pp. 46–55. Monacelli Press, New York. 2007 The Archaeology of the Caribbean. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Yaremko, Jason M. 2010 Colonial Wars and Indigenous Geopolitics: Aboriginal Agency, the Cuba-Florida-Mexico Nexus and the Other Diaspora. Canadian Journal of Latin American & Caribbean Studies 35(70): 165–196.

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7 Good, Bad, or Indifferent? A Unique “Deviant” Burial from the Formative Site of Aranjuez-Santa Lucía, South Central Andes

Ol ga U. Ga be l m a n n a n d L aw r e nce S. Ow e ns

Andean deviant burials are a rich yet relatively untapped resource of otherwise unobtainable behavioral information. Previous studies suggest that atypical burial formats reflect society’s way of signaling their dis/approval of the interred individuals’ modus vivendi or moriendi. This has led to a negative sense of “deviant” burial, allied almost exclusively with the diseased, the socially excluded, the powerless, and the in/voluntarily marginalized. However, recent works indicate that while ancient motivations are usually opaque, sensitive reading of contextual signals can elevate the perception of deviant burials beyond merely reflecting social repugnance toward the deceased. This chapter explores this ambiguity in the context of what we believe to be a unique case for the Andes: a corpse buried with a finger inserted into their own anus/vagina. The burial context has yielded markers potentially consistent with social persona and both positive and negative social attitudes by the burial population. This chapter adds to arguments concerning deviant burial in general, and ancient Andean funerary traditions in particular.

Formative Period Burial Patterns—State of the Art The Formative period of the South Central Andes (1300 BC–AD 200) saw a shift from small, undifferentiated villages to more complex habitation patterns, social stratification (Stanish and Cohen 2005: 6), regionalization and craft spe-

Figure 7.1. Location of Formative Period burial sites in Bolivia mentioned in the text.

cialization (Gabelmann 2001, 2008, 2012), trade of luxury items, and the appearance of corporate architecture (Hastorf 2005). However, Bolivian Formative funerary archaeology is comparatively understudied, with little consensus on Formative burial norms, as summarized below. Thirty-one graves excavated in the residential sector of the Wankarani site (Early Formative, 1010–800 BC) in the Bolivian altiplano (fig. 7.1) contained lateral-flexed and upright-seated burials in earthen pits or stone-lined cists (Walter 1966: 102). Grave goods were rare, except a malachite bead necklace and 154 shell beads. An extraordinary burial of an individual being “nailed” to the floor with an antler was interpreted to be a foundation offering (Walter 1966: 28–29). Wankarani contrasts with findings from the contemporary discrete cemetery 134

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of Mizque-Conchupata (1190–890 BC) to the southeast of Cochabamba, where burials are typically extended supine. The 25 burials were interred in pit graves cut into soft ashy soil mixed with domestic refuse (Pereira H. et al. 1992: 16), occasionally lined or covered with stone slabs. Unlike the Wankarani graves, these burials yielded rather rich grave goods—including sodalite, malachite, and marine shell beads, stone, ceramic vessels, and elaborate basalt axes—as evidence of a participation in long-distance trade systems. While the two sites demonstrate distinct burial patterns,1 each of their characteristics can be found in the Cochabamba region. The mound of Sierra Mokho in the Central Valley (fig. 7.1) yielded a discrete cemetery dating to the Early (1300–900 BC) and Middle Formative (900–500 BC), containing adult burials in flexed lateral and extended positions, on stone slabs, inside stone-lined grave structures or stone chambers (Döllerer 2013: 241– 300, table 7.6). Children under five were buried in ceramic urns, a treatment also used for adults later in the Middle Formative. The most elaborate graves (containing ceramics and gold objects) date to the Early Formative, but most interments lack grave goods (Döllerer 2013: 238). Recent excavations at Vilaque (approx. 900–500 BC), in the High Valley of Cochabamba (fig. 7.1), unearthed five burials in laterally flexed positions. Adults were placed in stone chambers and shallow pit graves, while children were also buried in urns (Gabelmann 2016). Grave goods consisted of a few ceramic vessels. Although data are fragmentary, these sites provide some understanding of Formative burial practices, which seem to have been largely determined by regional preferences (Wankarani vs. Mizque-Conchupata), while differences in burial location (i.e., intra-settlement [Wankarani, Vilaque] vs. discrete cemeteries [Mizque-Conchupata, Sierra Mokho]) may signal group identity differentiation. The burial diversity in Cochabamba may reflect the fact that the valley comprised an important corridor between the highlands and the eastern lowlands (Gabelmann 2012: 29), and it was exposed to varied influence and re/settlement.

The Site of Aranjuez-Santa Lucía Aranjuez-Santa Lucía is situated in the High Valley of Cochabamba (fig. 7.1) and was investigated in the 1950s and the 2000s (Gabelmann 2008, 2012; Gabelmann et al. 2009; Ibarra Grasso 1956, 1965). At 16.08 ha, the settlement is exceptionally large for the Formative Period. Around 230 firing facilities are arranged around the residential area, indicating intensive pottery production. Several A Unique “Deviant” Burial, Aranjuez-Santa Lucía, South Central Andes

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Figure 7.2. Aranjuez-Santa Lucía: burial mound MO1 seen from the northwest. (Photo: O. Gabelmann.)

large ash mounds are located at the western and northwestern edges of the site (Gabelmann 2008: appendix A1). The site was continually occupied from at least 900 BC until the Late Formative, although the lower layers are yet to be dated.2 Historical emphases on cultural material rather than settlement analysis (Brockington et al. 1985, 1995; Ibarra Grasso and Querejazu Lewis 1986) lack examples for comparative analysis; however, its size, the scale of ceramic production, and the presence of exotic artifacts suggest the site was of considerable importance (Gabelmann 2008, 2012).

Burial Context Ten human burials and several disarticulated elements were recovered from an ash mound (MO1) at the western edge of the settlement (fig. 7.2). There was no sign of mound structuring. Two burials (E10 and E11) contained offerings of ceramic vessels or marine shell (table 7.1) and their positions follow the standard pattern of Cochabamba described above; however, they were buried into the clay layers under the ash (Gabelmann 2008: 96–111) and thus predate the other interments. Eight burials of all ages and both sexes in a variety of positions, differing from the “Cochabamba standard,” were located in the upper section of the 136

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Table 7.1. Short description of burials in mound MO1, Aranjuez-Santa Lucía Age

Sex

Position

Preservation

E1 E2 E3

13–16 Adult

F

Scattered Complete Complete

M -

Indeterminate Lateral flexed Prone, arms over head Indeterminate Supine Prone Extended lateral

E4 E5 E6 E7

Adult about 7 Adult

E8 E9 E10 E11

(Camelid) about 40 Adult

M F?

Indeterminate Extended supine Lateral flexed (L)

Scattered Complete Incomplete Incomplete

Incomplete Complete Complete, badly preserved

Grave Goods Gold disk? Camelid bone beads? Unfired clay object

Marine shell 5 ceramic vessels

mound, in an ash layer about 50–150 cm thick with loosely associated artifacts (table 7.1, fig. 7.6). No perimortem trauma or osteologically visible pathology was noted.

Burial E2 Among the upper section burials is E2, which comprises a simple interment without discernible grave cut or superstructures, in indirect association with other individuals. The bones showed no sign of physical incapacity, impairment, or trauma. Notable entheseal changes (Jurmain and Villotte 2010) suggest high levels of physical activity; minor postcranial porosity, large calculus deposits, and abnormal eruption of the upper central incisors were also noted. Advanced dental wear indicates a rather abrasive diet. The individual was aged between 13 and 16 years, based on dental development and bone fusion (Gustafson and Koch 1974), and thus cannot be sexed with confidence. The burial was tightly flexed on its right side and partially prone, oriented to the east and the face pointing downward (figs. 7.3 and 7.4). The right arm was wrapped around the posterior aspect of the body to the level of the pelvis, the middle digit inserted into the body cavity below the coccygeal vertebrae. While archaeothanatological issues were considered, there was no anatomical A Unique “Deviant” Burial, Aranjuez-Santa Lucía, South Central Andes

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Figure 7.3. Position of burial E2 during excavation. (Photo: O. Gabelmann.)

Figure 7.4. Position of burial E2. (Drawing: O. Gabelmann.)

or sedimentary indication that taphonomic forces had affected the body. The metacarpals were parallel with the body’s long axis, while all three phalanges of the third digit were perpendicular to the hand and fully inserted (fig. 7.5). None of the other digits had been disturbed. The context, contrary to other 138

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Figure 7.5. Detail of burial E2. (Photo: O. Gabelmann.)

burials, was undisturbed, and the position was confirmed photographically throughout excavation. Only two of the ash burials showed more reliably associated offerings, as bone beads (E3) and fragments of unfired clay (E7) (table 7.1). A gold disk3 was found in sediments immediately overlying E2, but its association remains uncertain. The ash sediments contained tara seeds (Caesalpina tinctoria), a byproduct of the fuel used in the ceramic firing process, which seems to indicate an industrial refuse dump. Because of the continued reworking of the sediments, most artifacts were in only general association with the interments. The context tends to suggest a disposal paradigm rather than a careful burial; however, the negative associations of the industrial waste should be balanced against the fact that prestige burials are often thus interred (Mizque-Conchupata). Stratigraphic and radiocarbon data indicate that the interments took place over a fairly short period of time, perhaps with some redeposition of ashes originally stored elsewhere (Gabelmann 2008: 124). Thus, the horizon may in fact be a purposefully built cemetery, underlined by the burial of a llama neonate (E8) and various smashed vessels that may have served as pars pro toto offerings for the deceased. A Unique “Deviant” Burial, Aranjuez-Santa Lucía, South Central Andes

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Figure 7.6. Aranjuez-Santa Lucía: excavation plan of burial mound MO1. (Graphic: O. Gabelmann.)

The ash layer covering the lowest grave pit of E10 gave a terminus post quem date of 200–60 BC (C14 sample SL-C2) for the ash deposits. This dates to the latest occupation phase of the site (Gabelmann 2008: 125; Gabelmann et al. 2009: table 1), indicating that the burials in the ash horizon were among the last activities to take place prior to the site’s abandonment.

Approaches to Deviant Burial The concept that special individuals may be buried in commensurately exceptional ways (Murphy 2008: xii) has attracted considerable controversy in discus140

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sions of archaeological funerary behavior. Deviant burial is loosely defined as any interment format that deviates from the norms of the society in question, using cultural, biological, and ethnohistoric data streams; however, deviancy is mostly perceived as the result of solely negative attitudes toward ancient outcasts4 (Aspöck 2008; Tsaliki 2008), whereas it is equally able to convey aspects of the persona of the deceased (Binford 1971) and/or reflect positive social attitudes toward the revered, the respected, or the elite (Rengifo Chunga and Castillo B. 2015). Deviancy is contingent upon establishing temporospatially—and culturally—specific baselines for social norms. The variables (body position, body location, body manipulation, pathology/trauma, burial treatment, and associated artifacts) can be treated using cluster analysis for the purposes of comparison (Milella et al. 2015), although most studies are necessarily anecdotal, given cultural specificities and the problems of generating relevant comparative samples. Body location and position are key, although ambiguities in both intention and perception should be considered. For example, the prone position has traditionally been interpreted negatively (Smith 2003), as those thus interred often show signs of illness, or trauma indicating execution, fatal conflict, or sacrifice (Balter 2005; Lucy and Reynolds 2002; Milella et al. 2015). Yet prone positions are associated with reverence for Kiowa Apache elites (Opler and Bittle 1961), while other groups bury their revered dead in sitting positions (Hawaii), in isolation (Tsotso), or disarticulated (Ashanti; Tibetan Buddhism) (McHugh 1999: 54–55). Sprawled burials suggest a lack of regard or attention on the part of the burying population and have also been associated with perimortem trauma, sacrificial contexts, and individuals suffering ill health (Eeckhout and Owens 2008, 2018; Owens and Eeckhout 2015); however, individuals suffering from severe and disfiguring diseases may also be interred in a conventional manner (Marsteller et al. 2011), whereas aberrant burials may reflect archaeologically invisible phenomena (i.e., behavior, mental health, accusations of witchcraft, appearance). Archaeothanatology can assist in elucidating taphonomic phenomena and differentiating these from traditions such as manipulation (Eeckhout and Owens 2015), live burials (Hirst 1985), deliberate exposure (Korpisaari 2006), dismemberment (Verano 2014), and cannibalism (Pijoan and Mansilla Lory 1997). Regardless, interpretation of any “deviant” burial position is inevitably vulnerable to the whim of the analyst. For example, the tendency for British Early Neolithic groups to bury their injured or unwell individuals in isolated caves could be read as a measure of social/spiritual exclusion, but also as a cherishing gesture (Balter 2005). Differential signals may also be present; while burials A Unique “Deviant” Burial, Aranjuez-Santa Lucía, South Central Andes

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outside Christian cemeteries may reflect social censure of suicides, executed criminals, or unbaptized infants (Parker Pearson 1999), it technically reflects institutional interpretation of religious strictures, rather than wider condemnation by the burying group (Donnelly and Murphy 2008). Finally, deviant burials may reflect pragmatic actions stemming from necrophobia, the urge to prevent revenants from returning, or a fear of corpses considered noisome or diseased (Binford 1971; Gregoricka et al. 2017; Riisøy 2015; Tsaliki 2008). Perego et al. (2015: 150–151) speculate that “marginalization was the prime mover in deviant interments, and that those who suffered hardship in life would be buried in aberrant positions in order to safeguard the wellbeing of the non-marginal community.”

Potential Interpretations for E2 Historical sources may help such studies; from references of social transgressions in Iron Age Europe as a potential cause for burials in bogs (Tacitus Germania 13.2 [Rives 1999]) to accounts of the rationale behind Inka capacocha interments (Sarmiento de Gamboa 1572 [1965]), but are inevitably colored by the authors’ own sociopolitical outlook (Hirst 1985; Urton 1999); however, the Formative is too remote a period for the use of colonial sources. There is no archaeological reference to similarly positioned bodies in the Andean region, nor relevant contemporary epigraphic or iconographic information. Contorting the body was one of several Moche methods for denigrating enemies, which were denied burial, displayed publicly, and folded with the limbs inside the thorax (Verano 2014; Verano et al. 2008). Cultural materials are sometimes placed in decedents’ mouths (Shimada et al. 2004), but the only remotely comparable case we located is a Moche/Lambayeque female “shaman” buried with a flute inside her vagina (Castillo B. 2005: fig. 20), interpreted as a marker of virginity (Tomasto 2011). This Andean example comes closest to E2, as both were carefully positioned in a multi-individual funerary context.

Demographic Considerations The fact that subadults are unable to garner their own status in life makes their burials vulnerable to manipulation by kinship groups and the wider burying population (Parker Pearson 1999). Their frequent exclusion from standard Andean burial ritual has been interpreted as the children themselves being burial goods for adults (Eeckhout and Owens 2008; Owens and Eeckhout 2015), as 142

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benedictions for domestic environments (Nash 2009; Sillar 1996),5 or as sacrificial foundation deposits. However, our case is different: the interment is located in a cemetery with adults and grave goods. According to the cemetery layout (fig. 7.6), E2 was not central but also not peripheral to the other burials and thus lacks the tight contextual associations necessary for a retainer burial (Lucy 2000, Verano 2001). E2 was not interred with indifference, and the remains show no sign of sacrifice, marginalization, or being ancillary to another burial. The adolescent age of E2 may signal (special?) burgeoning sexuality; social maturation concepts and criteria for adulthood/personhood include marriage, wealth attainment, hunting success, menarche, or parenthood (McHugh 1999; Parker Pearson 1999; Taylor 1996), which may or may not be signaled in funerary contexts (Barley 1995). This burial style may perform the same function as the “shaman” alluded to above, as none of the associated adults or the 7-year-old child (E6) were thus positioned. There is no evidence that Andean populations used aberrant burial practice as a punishment for social/sexual misdemeanor, as argued for the Dolní Vestonice triple burial (Taylor 1996: 113) or the Iron Age bog bodies (Tacitus’ Germania 13.2 [Rives 1999]); rather, the disgraced were denied funerary treatment, being removed from archaeological visibility through immersion or exposure (Riisøy 2015). Equally, the contact-period tendency for Andean healers to rectify medical/spiritual ills (Marsteller et al. 2011) suggests little need for extramundane stigmatization.

Climate and Social Change Climatically based archaeological narratives are commonplace in the Andes (Eeckhout and Owens 2018; Shimada et al. 1991) as elsewhere. Climatic perturbations have also been claimed to result in changes to burial traditions. Gronenborn (2007) argues that social changes during the German Neolithic Linienbandkeramik (LBK) culture were driven by climate fluctuations around 5100 BC that triggered social unrest that found expression in numerous non-normative or irregular burials (Meyer et al. 2013). Given that Linienbandkeramik socioeconomics somewhat resemble those of the Bolivian Formative (Gabelmann 2008, 2012; Ibarra Grasso 1956, 1965), the data were assessed for comparative purposes. Although there are no specific paleoclimatic data for the Cochabamba valleys, there is evidence for strong ENSO6 events in the altiplano around 2200 BP (Argollo and Mourguiart 2000; Wirrmann and Mourguiart 1995), with resultant decreased precipitation in the valleys. This change—along with presumed A Unique “Deviant” Burial, Aranjuez-Santa Lucía, South Central Andes

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extensive anthropogenic deforestation (for kiln fuel)—would have resulted in ecological changes, and the resultant shortages may have caused social disarray and settlement dislocation beginning around 200 BC. There is no evidence for conflict at the site (i.e., defensive architecture, weaponry, or combat trauma); however, the appearance of Tupuraya ceramics at the neighboring settlement of Chullpa Pata—where the Formative Period ended per terminus ante quem around AD 60–260 (Walter 1966: 185)—demonstrates cultural discontinuity. The Tupuraya style has been interpreted as evidence for population influx (Ibarra Grasso 1965), with a possible displacement of the original Cochabamba population toward the hilltop sites that become more common in the terminal Late Formative (Gabelmann 2012). Future investigations should help elucidate whether such events (i.e., fuel shortage, dry periods, arrival of a new population) could have triggered a crisis in the Cochabamba Valleys, and—whether such a crisis can be related to a new burial pattern in the ash horizon in Aranjuez-Santa Lucía.

The Andean Living Dead Contextual (McHugh 1999; Parker Pearson 1999), bioarchaeological (Larsen 1997; Owens and Eeckhout 2015; Shimada et al. 2004) and non-normative (Balter 2005; Murphy 2008) approaches to burials are moderated by beliefs in the deceased’s connection with both their corpse and the mortal world (Eeckhout and Owens 2015: 2). Andean polities from the Chinchorro to the Inka have preserved, curated, and transported bodies of revered ancestors (Moseley 2001). The pan-Andean necromantic attitude toward the somatic aspects of human remains is antipodal to necrophobia (Tsaliki 2008); Andean groups show little fear of the deceased. Interment was evidently the norm unless the bodies (or portions thereof) were required for divine supplication, veneration, or abasement; if E2 were either revered or condemned by the burying population, he or she would not have been buried with other individuals, or even buried at all.

Discussion Interpretations of disparate demographic, spatial, contextual, artifactual, and ecological data reflect academic emphasis as much as anything else. Ecologists will prioritize ENSO, those studying sexuality will emphasize the burial’s sexual overtones, processualists would consider it a reflection of the deceased’s persona in life (Binford 1971), and postprocessualists would favor an explanation 144

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involving agency and social display (Parker Pearson 1999; Stoddart and Malone 2015); however, this conflict between emic and etic views has led to the kind of paradigm crisis that bedeviled modern human origins research (Willermet and Clark 1995). It is clear that the buried individual (the persona) and the burying population (the actors) jointly drove the mechanism of funerary ritual and process; it would be facile to claim that burials can say nothing of the personhood of the interred, while the dead, equally, do not bury themselves (Parker Pearson 1999: 3). Any mature approach to burial analysis must instead conceive of a dynamically fluid interplay between social persona, ethnic identity, modus moriendi, institutional convention, religious practice, cultural tradition, personal accomplishment, professional achievement, and social aspiration. Equally, whether the interment is considered positive or negative is predicated upon the attitudes and social context of the analyst (Balter 2005). While inserting the finger of the deceased into their own anus/vagina may not intuitively suggest a display of affection on the part of the burying group, the care with which E2 was interred, the position within the cemetery, and the association with other individuals and grave goods does not match the ethnohistorical tendency to exclude social exiles from cemeteries or habitation sites (Barley 1995). Equally, the ash/refuse context into which the burial is dug could be seen to signify disdain for the interred, but it is apparent from the MizqueConchupata cemetery (Pereira et al. 1992: 16) that even elite burials may be thus interred. The importance of large-scale industry to the site may suggest that keeping the deceased close by was a measure more of inclusion than of exclusion.

Conclusion It would be unwise to posit a definitive answer as to the significance of E2’s position and context, not least because of the epistemological issues arising from data stream conflict and prioritization. In terms of the question in the title, the burial format may suggest “good,” seems too involved for “indifferent,” and is by no means necessarily “bad.” Like all children, Andean subadults were perfect foils for their elders’ social mores, beliefs, and ambitions (Perego et al. 2015: 150), but the adolescent age of the current individual arguably allows for the development of a social persona—however defined—while interment with adults and subadults in a careful, measured fashion and with a range of pars pro toto ofrenda seems to argue for social inclusion rather than marginalization. Yet the context appears to A Unique “Deviant” Burial, Aranjuez-Santa Lucía, South Central Andes

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have been relatively ordinary, lacking any signs of social foci or theatricality (Stoddart and Malone 2015). We therefore suggest that this burial may have served as a form of extramundane supplication or signaling, perhaps also serving as a marker of adolescence and the sociobiological maturation thereby implied. Studies of deviant burials permit a glimpse into aspects of ancient and modern social mores, but with that perception comes the implicit understanding that these be seen as peaks within the topographically complex social rubric of the deceased, and their place within the burying group. The assumption of burying group maleficence as the primary force behind these more-visible funerary phenomena must necessarily be a simplistic one.

Acknowledgment1s We are grateful to David Pereira and Ramón Sanzetenea (INIAM-Museum, UMSS Cochabamba), who supported this investigation from 2003 to 2005. Lawrence Owens would like to thank Adam Burr, Lyn Hollyer, and Tatiana Vlemincq-Mendieta. Olga Gabelmann would like to thank the Free University of Berlin (NaFöG-Commission) and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) for their support.

Notes 1. Unfortunately, the field currently lacks the bioarchaeological research into demographics, health, and population biology that might help to explain why grave goods and burial positions differ so widely. 2. Radiocarbon dates range from 1090–790 BC to 200 BC–AD 60 (Gabelmann et al. 2009). 3. This valuable object’s social significance remains obscure. 4. Sonderbestattung, rendered loosely as “exceptional burial,” has been proposed as an alternative to “deviant burial” (Aspöck, 2008: 17). 5. The fact that the burials all date to the site’s terminal occupation phase may signify a specific ceremony concerned with the site’s abandonment. 6. El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO).

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caca Basin Archaeology-1, edited by Charles Stanish, Amanda Cohen, and Mark Aldenderfer, pp. 1–11. UCLA Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, Los Angeles. Stoddart, Simon, and Caroline Malone 2015 Prehistoric Maltese Death: Democratic Theatre of Elite Democracy? In Death Embodied. Archaeological Approaches to the Treatment of the Corpse, edited by Zoë Devlin and Emma-Jayne Graham, pp. 160–174. Oxbow Books, Oxford/Philadelphia. Taylor, Timothy 1996 The Prehistory of Sex. Fourth Estate, London. Tomasto, Elsa 2011 Los Chamanas. Paper presented at San Jose de Moro Bioarchaeology Program, San Jose de Moro (July 4, 2011). Tsaliki, Anastasia 2008 Unusual Burials and Necrophobia: An Insight into the Burial Archaeology of Fear. In Deviant Burial in the Archaeological Record, edited by Eileen M. Murphy, pp. 1–16. Oxbow Books, Oxford. Urton, Gary 1999 Inca Myths. University of Texas Press, Austin. Verano, John 2001 Physical Evidence of Human Sacrifice in Ancient Peru. In Ritual Sacrifice in Ancient Peru, edited by Elizabeth Benson and Anita Cook, pp. 165–184. University of Texas Press, Austin. 2014 Warfare and Captive Sacrifice in the Moche Culture: The Battle Continues. In Embattled Bodies, Embattled Places: War in Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica and the Andes, edited by Andrew Scherer and John Verano, pp. 283–309. Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington, D.C. Verano, John, Moisés Tufinio, and Mellisa Lund Valle 2008 Esqueletos Humanos de la Plaza 3C de Huaca de la Luna. In Investigaciones en la Huaca de la Luna 2001, edited by Santiago Uceda, Elias Mujica, and Ricardo Morales, pp. 225–254. Universidad Nacional de Trujillo, Peru. Walter, Heinz 1966 Beiträge zur Archäologie Boliviens. Die Grabungen des Museums für Völkerkunde Berlin im Jahre 1958. Verlag Dietrich Reimer, Berlin. Willermet, Catherine, and Geoffrey A. Clark 1995 Paradigm Crisis in Modern Human Origins Research. Journal of Human Evolution 29: 487–490. Wirrmann, Denis, and Philippe Mourguiart 1995 Late Quaternary Spatio-temporal Limnological Variations in the Altiplano of Bolivia. Quaternary Research 43: 344–354.

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8 The Hunchback, the Contortionist, the Man with the Stolen Identity, and the One Who Will Be Born in the Afterlife Pre-Hispanic Deviant Burials from Huarmey Valley, Peru

W i e s ł aw W i ęckowsk i, M ił osz Gi e r sz , a n d Robe rto Pi m e n t e l N i ta

The analysis of burial assemblages from mortuary sites in Peru is usually limited to the presentation of the material culture, discussion of analogies in the archaeological context, and examination of patterns and commonalities of burials in order to provide a broader picture. This type of examination is due to both the usual state of preservation of the mortuary sites and the methodology used. A lot of mortuary sites in Peru have undergone heavy looting; therefore, many of the assemblages are disturbed at best. However, there are some sites that remain intact and are available for research. The mortuary behavior of the pre-Columbian inhabitants of Peru was very diverse and included a variety of practices: inhumation (with countless types of burials and graves used), mummification, sophisticated body curation, and manipulation of the bodies, all of which were common (see Eeckhout and Owens 2015, Shimada and Fitzsimmons 2015). The objective of this article is to present a different approach, fairly well-established in Europe, but still developing in other parts of the world, including South America. After describing the burial pattern, we offer an explanation of the existence of the burials that do not follow that pattern, that is, the deviant burials (as described in Murphy

2008). A small mortuary site located within the range of Castillo de Huarmey archaeological site is the focus of this study (Giersz 2014).

Huarmey—The Site and the Excavations The Huarmey Valley is one of many typical Peruvian river valleys running through the desert coast, thus creating an environment suitable for human occupation. This valley, like many others, forms a green oasis with lands suitable for cultivation of crops, thanks to the perennial waters of the river, which has its source in the Andes (Pulgar Vidal 1987). There are many archaeological sites identified in the area, especially on the borders of the agricultural land and the desert (Bonavia 1982; Horkheimer 1965; Tabío 1977; Thompson 1966). Among them the most prominent site of the valley is Castillo de Huarmey, where in 2012–2013, the first unlooted royal Wari tomb was discovered and excavated by Polish and Peruvian scholars (Giersz and Pardo 2014). The site is located 1 km to the east of the town of Huarmey, in the province of the same name, in the region of Ancash. Its monumental sector lies in the widest part of the valley, on its north edge, 4 km west from the Pacific Ocean coast. There are almost 45 ha with archaeological remains, some visible and others revealed by archaeological and geophysical surveys. The Castillo (castle) is known for its monumental mudbrick and stone architecture, which forms a large complex of ceremonial, funeral, and palatial buildings as well as a vast necropolis of the high-ranking members of pre-Hispanic elites. Unfortunately, because of proximity to the town and its fame, the site has suffered more looting than most other pre-Hispanic sites in the region (Giersz 2014, 2016). Prior to Castillo de Huarmey Archaeological Research Project (aka PIACH) investigation, Castillo de Huarmey was widely known and visited by archaeologists (Bonavia 1982; Bueno Mendoza 1979; Tabío 1977;). It had never been subjected to systematic excavation-based studies, although some past attempts to begin such research are known (Prümers 1990, 2000). Although PIACH is focused on the Middle Horizon (AD 600–1050) Wari monumental architecture, the entire area of the site has been thoroughly surveyed. In 2010, a full archaeological survey using RTK1 mapping, kite aerial photogrammetry, cesium magnetometry, and spatial analysis of surface artifact distribution led to a better understanding of the complexity and chronology of the entire site (Bogacki et al. 2010, 2011). The results indicated that Castillo de Huarmey was a multioccupational archaeological site, with remains of different Pre-Hispanic Deviant Burials from Huarmey Valley, Peru

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Figure 8.1. Location and plan of the cemetery (deviant burials—outlines with the skeleton drawing inside; square shape on the inlet site map—Wari Imperial Mausoleum). Copyright by PIACH.

chronological occupations from the Early Horizon to the Inca Period, spanning more than 2,000 years. In the sector where remnants of a mudbrick and stone raised platform are still visible in the fields, the survey revealed subterranean architectural structures and a series of anomalies suggesting the presence of undisturbed burials (Bogacki et al. 2010, 2011). Archaeological excavations carried out in 2010 and 2012 seasons exposed an Early Horizon (800–100 BC) cemetery overlaid by a masonry and mudbrick Middle Horizon (AD 600–1050) platform (fig. 8.1). The earliest documented strata of the Early Horizon cemetery are most probably related to a dense occupation of the entire Huarmey Valley, best reflected in the emergence of a monumental ceremonial-civic center known as Pedregal (PV35-74), located less than 2 km from the examined area (Bonavia 1982: 438).

Materials and Burial Pattern A total of 22 individuals were excavated from 19 burial assemblages at the cemetery (table 8.1). One of the assemblages (2010-CF-6), with one infant buried 154

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Table 8.1. Characteristics of the burials from Huarmey Type Body of orientation State of buriala (head toward) preservation

Burial Number

Location

2012-CF1

U10-SW

S

-

2012-CF2

U10-NW

P

W

2012-CF3

U10-NW

P

2012-CF4

U10-NW

P

2012-CF5

U10-NW

2012-CF6

Body position, side of deposition

Age

Sex

partial

adult

?

-

complete

young

?

flexed, R side

N

complete

adult

F?

flexed, R side

?

partial

fetus?

?

extended?

P

W

complete

adult

M

flexed, R side

U10-NW

P

W

partial

infant

?

2012-CF7

U10-NW

P

SW

partial

?

2012-CF8

U10-NW

P

-

complete

new born infant

extended, face down flexed?

2012-CF9

U10-NW

P

N

complete

infant

?

flexed, upside down extended, L side

2012-CF10

U10-NW

P

W

complete

adult

M

flexed, L side

2012-CF11

U10-NW

P

N?

partial

adult

?

fragmented

2012-CF12 A

U10-NW

P

W

complete

adult

M

flexed, L side

2012-CF12 B

U10-NW

P

W

complete

adult

F?

flexed, R side

2012-CF12 C

U10-NW

P

N

complete

adult

M

flexed, L side

2012-CF12 D

U10-NW

P

W

complete

infant

?

seated?

2012-CF13

U10-NW

P

E

complete

infant

?

extended, face up

2010-CF-6b

U7

P

?

complete

infant

?

extended?

2010-CF-7

U7

P

?

complete

adult

M?

seated

2010-CF-8

U7

P

NW

complete

young

F?

flexed, R side

2010-CF-9

U7

P

NE

complete

young

F?

flexed, R side

2010-CF-10

U7

P

NW

complete

adult

M?

flexed, R side

2010-CF-11

U7

P

SW

complete

infant

?

aS

?

extended?

= secondary burial, P = primary burial excluded from the analysis in italics.

b Burial

within, was clearly of a different cultural origin, according to its stratigraphic position, and it was therefore excluded from the analysis. Most of the remaining assemblages lacked any grave goods. A few had simple beads and pottery fragments associated with them, while two others had more elaborate grave goods. Burial 2010-CF-11 was found with a ceramic figurine, and one individual from Pre-Hispanic Deviant Burials from Huarmey Valley, Peru

155

the multiple burial 2012-CF12 was associated with a well-preserved Early Horizon style stirrup spout bottle, a stone mortar, and a shell container filled with a red pigment (hematite or cinnabar). Only one out of 18 burials was a secondary one, the rest being primary undisturbed depositions. It is easy to note the burial pattern arising from analysis of the position and treatment of the bodies. Most of the burials were primary and single interments. The only secondary burial (2012-CF1) is probably of relatively recent origin. Ancient bones had been collected by someone and deposited in a shallow pit right under the topsoil. There was only one multiple interment—2012-CF12. It consisted of four individuals in total, three adults (one female and two males) and a child below them. This burial, however, should be treated separately because of the presence of the grave goods and red pigment (hematite or cinnabar) associated with individual 12A, and also because of a specific arrangement of the bodies of the three adults above the child’s skeleton. The rest—16 burials—were single interments. Of these, six belonged to adult individuals (two possible females, two males, and two possible males), three to late adolescents/ young adults (between 14 and 20 years old, of indeterminate sex), and seven to children of varying ages (two newborns, one less than two years old, three between two and ten years old). Most of the remains were deposited either directly in the sandy layer, with no visible pit lines, or in pits covered with a layer of clay mixed with stones. Adult individuals were usually associated with the clay layer, while children were not. There was also an obvious difference in body arrangements between children and adults (including adolescents and young adults). Children were usually deposited in a variety of different positions, apparently, their remains being thrown into a shallow pit dug in the sand. The bodies of adult individuals were arranged with more care. The majority were deposited in a very flexed position, laid on either the left or right side, with bent arms and legs. It is possible that originally the bodies were wrapped in textiles or their positions secured with ropes or bands, but no perishable materials have been preserved. This pattern seems quite consistent with other Early Horizon sites known from the north coast of Peru, especially from the middle through a large portion of the late part of that period. Burials known from the Cupisnique culture, from the Jequetepeque, Chicama, and Supe Valleys, could be characterized by a few common features, resembling those known from Huarmey. Almost all the burials were deposited in shallow pits dug in sand. Some had stones and/ or clay layer covering the top part and the body. The edges of the pits were 156

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sometimes lined with stones or mats (Briceño and Millones 1998; Donnan and Mackey 1978). Only in the case of site La Bomba was the form of the burial different. Buried individuals were deposited in a side niche dug at the bottom of a deep cylindrical shaft (Seki 1997). Most of the buried individuals are found in a very flexed position, although Larco (1941) states that there is great variety in this respect. Donnan and Mackey (1978) add that there is no uniformity in the orientation of the deceased toward any cardinal point. Research at the site of Puémape from Classic Cupisnique phase (ca. 1500–500 BC), showed a considerable diversity among burials, but the flexed position of the body prevailed. Different treatments of the deceased such as intentional burial disturbance and decapitation are also known from the same cultural phase (Kaulicke 2015). The use of red pigment for corporal and facial postmortem painting, as well as placement of objects, such as stirrup spout bottles, is also relatively common (Elera 2006). In the case of La Bomba, grave goods were rather simple and comprised mostly pottery and bone artifacts, although one golden nose ornament called a nariguera was also found (Seki 1997). Burials from the Chicama Valley from Pampa de los Fósiles, for example, feature flexed skeletons with different orientations, scant grave goods, and remains of mats used to wrap the upper body before deposition (see bibliography in Briceño and Millones 1998). The burials found in Kuntur Wasi belonged to elites and had rich grave goods; nevertheless, the skeletons were deposited in a flexed position, with different orientations (Onuki 1997; Onuki and Kinya 2011). During the final phases of the Cupisnique culture (Elera 1993, 2006; Larco 1941), and in what is known as the Salinar tradition (Donnan and Mackey 1978; Larco 1944), both in the latter part of the Early Horizon, the burial pattern changes completely.

Outliers—Deviant Burials Four interments analyzed in this chapter are atypical in the burial pattern. One of them was discovered in 2010 and the other three in 2012.

Burial 2010-CF-10 (Fig. 8.2A) This burial was found very close to the southwest corner of 2010 trench (Unit 7). It was a primary interment of an adult (possible male) whose remains were placed in a narrow pit and subsequently covered with chunks of mud and clay mixed with small stones. The body was deposited slightly tilted onto the right side, with the head pointing northwest. The tightly flexed position of the indiPre-Hispanic Deviant Burials from Huarmey Valley, Peru

157

Figure 8.2. Deviant burials from Huarmey: (A) 2010-CF-10; (B) 2012-CF6; (C) 2012-CF11. Copyright by PIACH.

vidual indicates that his body was possibly wrapped in a type of textile or tied with ropes, which were not preserved. The right arm was arranged under the legs while the hand lay over the abdominal area. The left arm was arranged over both legs, which were placed perpendicularly to the chest, resulting in an unusual form of burial. The feet were located close to the head. It is important to note that there is plenty of space to arrange the corpse in any other manner; however, the body was intentionally deposited in this way. The burial was associated with a small worked shell of a sea snail (Oliva peruviana) and with an extra atlas bone, both located near the right elbow. Because of their location, the items should be regarded as grave goods.

Burial 2012-CF6 (Fig. 8.2B) This burial was found in the northwest square of Unit 10, close to the eastern section and the edge of Unit 7. It was a primary single interment. The remains 158

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belong to an older child (approximately 10–12 years old) of unknown sex. The body, lacking the lower part of the skeleton from the last thoracic vertebra down, was placed face down. The neck was stretched, so the skull was placed almost on its base with the face pointing west. The upper part of the body was deposited on the front of the chest, with both arms found articulated along the body. The arms were bent, so the elbows protruded toward the upper back part of the rib cage. Although there is no direct evidence (no perishable material has been preserved at the site), it seems that the arms were tied together in the back before the deposition of the body in the grave. The individual had multiple pathological changes to the skeleton. First, the child suffered from severe cribra orbitalia. Deep lesions are clearly visible on both orbital roofs. A hemi-vertebra is present in the thoracic part of the spine. The eighth thoracic vertebra lacks the lateral part of the body, resulting in severe deformation of the spine. The formation of a single rib between the eleventh and twelfth thoracic vertebrae on the right side is probably also an effect of this deformation. During the individual’s life, this deformation must have been clearly visible as a congenital scoliosis accompanied by well-pronounced kyphosis. The child was, or would become eventually, hunchbacked. No traces of the lower body were found, nor any traces of its removal. It is clear the lower portion of the body must have been removed before the deposition of the individual, since no additional pit, nor a looter’s trench, was identified.

Burial 2012-CF8 (Fig. 8.3) This burial was found in the northwest square of Unit 10, north of the stone construction and Feature 4 (concentration of shells, mainly Choromytilus chorus, fish bones, and pieces of pottery). It was a primary interment of a child of unknown sex that died at an age of 6–7 years. The child’s body was deposited in a relatively deep but narrow pit dug in the sand and arranged in a very different position from any of the interments excavated at the site. It was deposited head down, with the arms and legs bent tightly towards the trunk, so the body would fit a narrow space. The spine broke during or shortly after the deposition of the body—the thoracic part was found perpendicular to the cervical. Two large fragments of pelvic bones of an adult individual were arranged around the skull. Both had the greater sciatic notch preserved, suggesting the individual from which they had been taken was female. Additionally, on the top of the skull, at the very bottom of the pit and the whole context arrangement, a large mollusk shell of Concholepas concholepas (known as “chanque” or “pata de burro”) was Pre-Hispanic Deviant Burials from Huarmey Valley, Peru

159

Figure 8.3. Burial 2012-CF8, tentative reconstruction. Copyright by PIACH.

deposited together with a small part of a human scapula. This piece of bone also came from an adult individual, so it is possibly associated with the pelvic bones. No other grave goods were found.

Burial 2012-CF11 (Fig. 8.2C) This burial was found in the northeastern corner of the northwest square of Unit 10. It was first identified based on the clayish matrix usually associated with burials of adult individuals. A small depression containing very soft, burnt organic material deposit was located within the area of this layer. The ash featured a very distinct color—it was dark gray ash with purple and violet layers and chunks of unidentified burnt matter in it. The skeletal remains were deposited in an extraordinary manner. First, the body was dismembered before the deposition. The primary character of the interment was assumed because all discovered body frag160

Wiesław Więckowski, Miłosz Giersz, and Roberto Pimentel Nita

ments were in anatomical position. Therefore, the dismemberment must have occurred when the body was either intact, or when there was enough soft tissue present to keep the fragments buried within this assemblage together. The poor state of preservation of the bones precludes any observation on the nature of the fragmentation—no visible cut marks were identified. The skeleton was arranged in layers. The upper part of the trunk, thoracic and lumbar part of the spine and the rib cage, pointing north, were deposited over the complete right arm and the lower part of the left one. The pelvis and sacrum were in their anatomical position, almost beneath a strongly bent lumbar portion of the spine. Completely articulated bones of the feet were placed below all the fragmented skeletal remains, in their correct positions, with toe bones oriented to the north. All the fragments of the body were articulated and in their anatomical position; the arm bones were separated from the trunk. The skull and leg bones, as well as the left humerus and the first four cervical vertebrae, were absent. The remains were associated with a single small-carved ceramic bead, which was found under the left pelvic bone.

Possible Interpretations and Conclusions The reasons for deviant burials vary and may have various explanations. Possible reasons include fear of the dead or certain death circumstances, the special status of the deceased within the society, or how fellow members of the group perceived the individual during his or her lifetime. It may also reflect social identity or simply the behavior and appearance of the person (Tsaliki 2008). In other words, an unusual life, unusual look, or unusual death circumstances may lead to an unusual treatment of the corpse and, as a result, to an atypical burial (Weiss-Krejci 2008). Taking all the above into account, and looking for the simplest explanation of the phenomena observed at the site within the wider cultural context, it is possible to propose an interpretation of the body treatments and the reason for them, gathering data from the bioarchaeological analysis of human remains, as well as from pre-Columbian Andean art and iconography, and ethnohistoric sources. Of the four atypical interments described here, each seems unusual for a completely different reason, as the remains of each individual were treated differently. The body of individual 2012-CF11 was deposited dismembered. Two major anatomic regions, the head and long bones of the legs, had been removed. Parts of the bones from the upper extremities had also been either taken away or rearranged. The rest was carefully arranged in layers: the remaining bones of Pre-Hispanic Deviant Burials from Huarmey Valley, Peru

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the trunk (spine, rib cage, and pelvis—in one piece originally) over the remaining arm bones and precisely aligned feet. Why was the body of the deceased dismembered? When did it occur—around or after the individual’s death? If the deceased individual was the victim of war-related violence, why would some parts be collected and others not, such as the removal of the legs, but the retention of the feet? One explanation could be that this is a secondary burial of somebody who died elsewhere, and the remains were brought to be buried within the boundaries of the cemetery. However, if so, why are some parts complete or almost complete, and others missing? In the case of secondary depositions, the inventory of bones usually lacks small ones, such as the bones of the hands and feet, and not long bones or the skull, which are the easiest to collect. Additionally, the parts of the body present seem to be buried in their anatomical positions, which means that if the body was indeed transported, it must have been at least partially preserved. Another explanation would suggest that this is a human sacrifice. But if so, why were the remains deposited in a way very similar to other, more “normal” burials, with the careful arrangement and use of clay matrix, as well as with grave goods (i.e., a single decorated bead)? Beyond doubt, the pre-Columbian Andean cultures were familiar with postmortem manipulation of the body (Blom and Janusek 2004; Nelson and Castillo 1997; Giersz 2014, 2016; Hecker and Hecker 1992; Isbell 2004) and many other practices, such as collecting trophies (Verano 1995). Early pre-Columbian Andean art also depicts expressive representations of dismemberment and decapitation, such as those depicted on engraved stone slabs along the outer wall of Cerro Sechín temple dated to 1770–1510 BC (Cárdenas 1995). Therefore, perhaps the absence of the head could indicate this explanation. In many cultures around the world the head is regarded as the source of personhood, the locale where the soul resides, or the basic source of one’s identity separating the owner from other people (Bonogofsky 2011). It is a known and widespread phenomenon that the cranium was removed from the body for many different reasons: ritual use, ancestor worship, or trophy taking being the most important (see Bonogofsky 2006). The removal of heads for ritual use has a long tradition in the central Andes (Proulx 1971). The first such examples date to the Pre-Ceramic Period, prior to 1800 BC; however, the best-known example is the ritual use of trophy heads in the ancient Nasca culture (Proulx 2001). Also, the burials of decapitated individuals are known from the sites of that culture (Conlee 2007). Decapitation is also a quite common theme in the Andean iconography. Both the “decapitator” and the “decapitated head” are known from almost all Andean 162

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cultures (Benson 2001; Cordy-Collins 2001). Removing the head would mean transferring the dead individual’s personhood and personal identity to a new reality, where the skull (and its previous “owner”) obtains a new and modified ritual meaning (Andrushko 2011). Of course, it is not possible to confirm that the identity of individual 2012-CF11 was “stolen” this way, but knowing that such phenomenon is well attested in later periods, it might be a potential explanation of the deviant nature of this burial. This interpretation seems to be supported also by the lack of other parts of the skeleton. This kind of body curation (grave opening and removal of body fragments in order to deposit them elsewhere as offerings or cult objects) is also well attested in the Andes (Nelson 1998). As for individual 2010-CF-10, the unusual position of the body encourages a bold interpretation using parallels with the Early Horizon iconography. In the Cupisnique art, a small number of inscrutable ceramic representations of socalled contortionists are found (Elera 1993: 243). Those figures, also depicted on Tello Obelisk, a famous granite monolith from the archaeological site of Chavín de Huantar, are often interpreted as male supernatural warriors responsible for the coherence of the different spheres of the cosmic universe (Makowski 1996). Perhaps like the mythical acrobat balancing on the border of the Earth and the underworld, individual 2010-CF-10 was intentionally placed for his last journey in such a meaningful and symbolic way. Individual 2012-CF6 obviously looked different from other members of the society. Since the hemivertebra is present in the lower thoracic part of the spine, resulting in congenital scoliosis, the child would have tilted, uneven shoulders, with one shoulder blade protruding more than the other, together with ribs more prominent on one side. Advancing kyphosis would eventually become visible as a protrusion in the middle part of the back, possibly forming a hump. The overall appearance of the posture was also different from that of a healthy person—showing uneven proportions of the body sides, “leaning” to the left. All of that was also accompanied with other, less visible, pathological conditions, which gave some hints about the child’s life. For example, well-developed cribra orbitalia can have different etiologies, but it is generally related to anemia (iron-deficiency due to diet or parasites, or genetic hemolytic and megaloblastic anemia) and severe vitamin C and B-group deficiency. Individuals with such conditions may have exhibited symptoms of nervous system demyelination such as irritability, various psychiatric disorders, abnormal reflexes, and reduced alertness, potentially leading to a coma (Walker et al. 2009). It is known that individuals with similar body deformations, especially with Pre-Hispanic Deviant Burials from Huarmey Valley, Peru

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a well-pronounced hump, had a special place in the Andean cosmology. All the depictions originate from later periods, but it is possible that the phenomenon had its source in the Early Horizon period. In the Inca2 tradition, the hunchbacks had a special status within the society, were considered children of the thunder god, Tunupa, and were predestined for special social functions, such as magicians or soothsayers (Ponce Sanginés 1969: 38). In the colonial keros (ceremonial cups), they are portrayed as members of the Inca royal court (Flores Ochoa et al. 1998: 177; Ziółkowski 2000: 128–137). Traces of this special status for such disfigured persons can also be seen in the iconography of the earlier traditions, prior to the Incas. Other vessels, ascribed to the Chimú culture, feature representations of hunchbacked people being either members of the elite, wearing headdress and orejeras, ear ornaments usually associated with the high ranked elite (Museo Larco collection bottle ML0210553), or accompanying elites (ML021178). One vessel of the Chancay culture also depicts a hunchbacked individual with an asymmetrical body, wearing a headdress and orejeras (ML031106). Moche culture fine line painted scenes also portray hunchbacks as musicians attending important ceremonies (Golte 2009: 263). Figurative vessels of Moche4 origin sometimes represent hunchbacked individuals wearing intermediate elite garments (for example: ML002863 depicts a hunchback wearing a turban and tunica and carrying a bundle). Collectively, this might suggest why individual 2012-CF6 was treated differently when buried. The question why the lower body of this child was removed, and what happened to it, remains open. The remains of the other child from the group described here, individual 2012-CF8, did not feature any visible deformations or pathological changes. The depositional and postdepositional processes can easily explain the spine breakage. Thus, there is no physical evidence that this six- or seven-year-old child was different from other children or members of the society from which he or she originated, which would help to explain the deviant character of the burial. It seems that this deposition was the result of an effort to re-create circumstances that would permit a rebirth of the child. Unlike most of the other remains of children, which were deposited in the sand without a special body arrangement (apparently reserved for adult members of the society in most cases), this child’s body was carefully placed head down in a very narrow pit, re-creating a position of the fetus within the womb. Additionally, those who buried the child put fragments of two ilia originating from an adult woman around the head and a Concholepas concholepas shell, which may symbolize the vulva (Eliade 1961: 125–143). We interpret these findings as evidence that this child was destined 164

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to be reborn in the afterlife. To assure this rebirth, the body was once more in the person’s life put into the “womb.” Unfortunately, the poor state of preservation of the bones precludes any attempts to reconstruct the actual relationship between the child and the female pelvic remains. The interpretations presented above do not cover all possibilities. There is no way to confirm whether the phenomena known from the later periods were indeed rooted in the Early Horizon. However, analysis of the burials that do not fit within the frame of the normal burial pattern provides a unique opportunity to gain insight into the life stories of the particular individuals and may add to the overall knowledge of the past Andean cultures.

Acknowledgments The authors are grateful to the National Science Center of Poland (NCN Sonata no. 2011/03/D/HS3/01609 and Harmonia 2014/14/M/HS3/00865) for financial support of the Project. Roberto Pimentel and Julia Chyla prepared the drawings, and Barbara Majchrzak edited the text.

Notes 1. Real Time Kinematic (RTK) satellite navigation technique was used in PIACH first stage of nondestructive survey to enhance the precision of position data derived from satellite-based positioning systems, providing centimeter-level accuracy. 2. Inca civilization flourished in the Andes in the fifteenth century AD and forged the largest empire in pre-Columbian America. 3. All artifacts presented with a catalogue number starting with ML can be viewed at www.museolarco.org 4. Moche civilization flourished on the north coast of Peru between approximately AD 100 and 800.

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Elera, Carlos 1993 El Complejo Cultural Cupisnique: Antecedentes y Desarrollo de su Ideología Religiosa. Senri Ethnological Studies 37: 229–257. National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka. 2006 La Cultura Cupisnique a Partir de los Datos Arqueológicos de Puémape. In De Cupisnique a los Incas. El Arte del Valle de Jequetepeque, edited by Luis Jaime Castillo and Cecilia Pardo, pp. 68–111. MALI, Lima. Eliade, Mircea 1961 Images and Symbols: Studies in Religious Symbolism. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. Flores Ochoa, Jorge A., Elizabeth Kuon Arce, and Roberto Samanez Argumedo 1998 Qeros. Arte Inka en Vasos Ceremoniales. Colección Arte y Tesoros del Perú. Banco de Crédito del Perú, Lima. Giersz, Miłosz 2014 The Discovery of the Imperial Mausoleum. In Castillo de Huarmey. El Mausoleo Imperial Wari, edited by Miłosz Giersz and Cecilia Pardo, pp. 295–301. Museo de Arte de Lima, Lima. 2016 Castillo de Huarmey: Centro Político Wari en la Costa Norte del Perú. In Nuevas Perspectivas En La Organización Política Wari. ANDES. Boletín del Centro de Estudios Precolombinos de La Universidad de Varsovia, edited by Miłosz Giersz and Krzysztof Makowski, pp. 217–262. Polskie Towarzystwo Studiów Latynoamery­ kanistycznych and Bulletin de l’Institut français d’études andines, Warsaw/Lima. Giersz, Miłosz, and Cecilia Pardo (editors) 2014 Castillo de Huarmey. El Mausoleo Imperial Wari. MALI, Lima. Golte, Jürgen 2009 Moche. Cosmología y Sociedad. Una Interpretación Iconográfica. Instituto de Estudios Peruanos and Centro de Estudios Regionales Andinos Bartolomé de Las Casas, Lima. Hecker, Gisela, and Wolfgang Hecker 1992 Ofrendas de Huesos Humanos y uso Repetido de Vasijas en el Culto Funerario de la Costa Norperuana. Gaceta Arqueológica Andina 6(21): 33–53. Horkheimer, Hans 1965 Identificación y Bibliografía de Importantes Sitios Prehispánicos del Perú. Arqueológicas 8: 1–51. Isbell, William 2004 Mortuary Preferences: a Wari Culture Case Study from Middle Horizon Peru, Latin American Antiquity 15: 3–32. Kaulicke, Peter 2015 Death and Dead in Formative Peru. In Funerary Practices and Models in the Ancient Andes: The Return of the Living Dead, edited by Peter Eeckhout and Lawrence Owens, pp. 12–23. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Larco, Hoyle Rafael 1941 Los Cupisniques. Casa Editora “La Crónica” y “Variedades”, Lima. 1944 La Cultura Salinar. Síntesis Monográfica. Sociedad Geográfica Americana, Buenos Aires. Pre-Hispanic Deviant Burials from Huarmey Valley, Peru

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Makowski, Krzysztof 1996 Dioses del Templo de Chavín. Reflexiones Sobre la Iconografía Religiosa. Estudios Latinoamericanos 17: 9–60. Murphy, Eileen M. (editor) 2008 Deviant Burial in the Archaeological Record. Oxbow Books, Oxford. Nelson, Andrew 1998 Wandering Bones: Archaeology, Forensic Science and Moche Burial Practices. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 8(3): 192–212 Nelson, Andrew, and Luis J. Castillo 1997 Huesos a la Deriva. Taxonomía y Tratamiento Funerario en Entierros Mochica Tardío de San José de Moro. Boletín de Arqueología PUCP 1: 137–163. Onuki, Yoshio 1997 Ocho Tumbas Especiales de Kuntur Wasi. Boletín de Arqueología PUCP 1: 79–114. Onuki, Yoshio, and Inokuchi Kinya 2011 Gemelos Prístinos. El Tesoro del Templo de Kuntur Wasi. Fondo Editorial del Congreso del Perú & Minera Yanacocha, Lima. Ponce Sanginés, Carlos 1969 Tunupa y Ekako. Estudio Arqueológico Acerca de las Efigies Precolombinas de Dorso Dduzco. Editorial Los Amigos del Libro, Cochabamba-La Paz. Proulx, Donald A. 1971 Headhunting in Ancient Peru. Archaeology 24(1): 16–21. 2001 Ritual Uses of Trophy Heads in Ancient Nasca Society. In Ritual Sacrifice in Ancient Peru, edited by E. Benson and A. Cook, pp. 119–136. University of Texas Press, Austin. Prümers, Heiko 1990 Der Fundort im Huarmeytal, Peru. Ein Beitragzum Problem des Moche-Huari Texstil-stils. Mundus Reihe Alt-Amerikanistik 4, Bonn. 2000 El Castillo de Huarmey: Una Plataforma Funeraria del Horizonte Medio. Boletín de Arquelogía PUCP 4: 289–312. Pulgar Vidal, Javier 1987 Geografía del Perú Las Ocho Regiones Naturales, 9th edition, Peisa. Seki, Yuji 1997 Excavaciones en el Sitio La Bomba, Valle Medio de Jequetepeque, dpto. Cajamarca. Boletín de Arqueología PUCP 1: 115–136. Shimada, Izumi, and James L. Fitzsimmons 2015 Living with the Dead in the Andes. University of Arizona Press, Tuscon. Tabío, Ernesto 1977 Prehistoria de la Costa del Perú. Academia de Ciencia de Cuba, Havana. Thompson, Donald E. 1966 Archeological Investigations in the Huarmey Valley, Peru. In Actas y Memorias del 36th Congreso International de Americanistas, España 1964, Vol. 1, pp. 541–548. Sevilla. Tsaliki, Anastasia 2008 Unusual Burial and Necrophobia: An Insight into the Burial Archaeology of Fear.

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In Deviant Burial in the Archaeological Record, edited by Eileen M. Murphy, pp. 1–16. Oxbow Books, Oxford. Verano, John 1995 Where do They Rest? The Treatment of Human Offerings and Trophies in Ancient Peru. In Tombs For the Living: Andean Mortuary Practices, edited by T. D. Dillehay, pp. 189–228. Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington, D.C. Walker, Phillip L., Rhonda R. Bathurst, Rebecca Richman, Thor Gjerdrum, and Valerie A. Andrushko 2009 The Causes of Porotic Hyperostosis and Cribra Orbitalia: A Reappraisal of the Iron-Deficiency-Anemia Hypothesis. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 139(2): 109–125. Weiss-Krejci, Estella 2008 Unusual Life, Unusual Death and the Fate of the Corpse. In Deviant Burial in the Archaeological Record, edited by Eileen M. Murphy, pp. 169–190. Oxbow Books, Oxford. Ziółkowski, Mariusz 2000 Los Keros del Museo Estatal de Etnografía de Varsovia. In Iconografía de los Keros. ANDES. Boletín del Centro de Estudios Precolombinos de la Universidad de Varsovia, vol. 5, edited by Oriana Wichrowska and Mariusz Ziółkowski, pp. 123–139. Polskie Towarzystwo Studiów Latynoamerykanistycznych, Warsaw.

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9 What Is the Norm? “Irregular” and “Regular” Burial Practices of the Early Iron Age in Central Europe

N i l s M ü l l e r-S ch e e s se l , C a rol a Be r sz i n, Gise l a Gru pe , A n n et t e S ch w e n t k e , A n ja Sta sk i ew icz , T hom a s T ü t k e n, a n d Joach i m Wa h l

The Early Iron Age (Hallstatt and Early Latène period, ca. 800–250 cal BC) of Central Europe—roughly the region from Eastern France in the west to Bohemia in the east and from the German midrange mountains in the north to the Alps in the south (fig. 9.1)—is best known for its impressive burial mounds (up to 100+ meters in diameter) with lavishly furnished burials. Human remains found in atypical contexts outside of such regular burial places were for a long time either dismissed or their existence was explained with ad hoc hypotheses suggesting these individuals were victims of murder or raids (e.g., Kurz 1997). In recent years, however, an awareness is growing that human remains in such contexts are too frequent to be easily dismissed (e.g., see contributions in Müller-Scheessel 2013a). This chapter concentrates on complete individuals from settlement contexts from Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria and aims to examine these atypical burials by including evidence from archaeological contexts, bioarchaeological analyses, and stable isotope analyses. The general question to be answered is whether the decision of how to treat the dead—to place them in regular burials or to dispose of them in pits—was ruled by overarching motives, such as sacrifice, or was grounded in the individuals themselves, in their social persona or in acts they did or did not commit or suffer during life.

Figure 9.1. Central Europe with sites mentioned in the text. The study area is marked by a bold line, the middle Neckar region (see also detailed map in the lower right corner) by a gray rectangle. 1 “Magdalenenberg” near Villingen-Schwenningen; 2 Eberdingen-Hochdorf; 3 “Grafenbühl” in Asperg; 4 Mundelsheim; 5 “Heuneburg” near Herbertingen-Hundersingen; 6 Kallmünz-Schirndorf.

Iron Age Society Although some hill forts of supraregional importance like the “Heuneburg“ in southwestern Germany (Krausse et al. 2016) existed, most of the population lived in agrarian settlements in the open landscape. Archaeologically, these settlements consist of postholes, sunken dwellings (also known as pit houses) and, most characteristically, storage pits, often formed like a beehive (e.g., Biel et al. 2015). It is commonly understood that gender and age were the structuring principles of Iron Age societies in Central Europe (Burmeister 2000; Burmeister and Müller-Scheessel 2005; Steffen 2012). Overall, the most lavishly equipped graves are confined to a very small number of elderly men (40–60 years old). Second to this, in terms of expenditure in grave size and furnishing, are the graves of younger men and younger women (20–40 years old). The burials with the least expenditure are allocated to children, older women (40+ years old), and the majority of older men (Burmeister 2000; Burmeister and Müller-Scheessel 2005; Steffen 2012). Judging from the large gap between the burials with the highest and the lowest expenditure in terms of furnishing and What Is the Norm? Burial Practices of the Early Iron Age in Central Europe

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burial construction, the degree of social differentiation was at least moderate. Furthermore, it can be safely assumed that burial practices were of high importance for expressing social differences (Müller-Scheessel 2018).

“Regular” Burial Practices For a large part of the Early Iron Age, a substantial portion of the dead can be found in burial mounds, which sometimes take on impressive dimensions (Müller-Scheessel 2013b). Usually, they were erected for one particular individual, who was buried in a wooden chamber in the center of the mound. Additionally, depending partly on the size of the mound, dozens, even hundreds of individuals, were later buried in them (e.g., the “Magdalenenberg” near Villingen-Schwenningen in southwest Germany; Zäuner and Wahl 2013). In other parts of Central Europe, burial chambers were either built on top of an older chamber, or older chambers were reopened and additional individuals

Figure 9.2. The reconstruction of the central chamber of the burial mound of Eberdingen-Hochdorf/BadenWürttemberg in the Keltenmuseum Hochdorf (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/ Hochdorf_keltenmuseum0815.jpg).

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were interred (e.g., Kallmünz-Schirndorf in Bavaria; Müller-Scheessel 2009a), very much in the manner of a collective burial. Remarkably, despite the variation in terms of expenditure and furnishing of graves, even the most impressive graves, like that of Eberdingen-Hochdorf (fig. 9.2; Biel 1985), still follow relatively clear-cut rules concerning the furnishing and the general layout of the grave. These rules include placement of the dead in the western half of the chamber, orientation of his or her head toward the south, and furnishing of the grave with parts of the individual’s personal equipment, like weapons or jewelry, as well as a means of feasting like cauldrons or drinking vessels (Müller-Scheessel 2013b).

Atypical Burials Aside from the regular burial locations discussed, human remains are most frequently encountered in the context of settlements (Müller-Scheessel et al. 2013). Other unusual contexts in which human remains are found are in close proximity to or within seemingly naturally significant places like caves (e.g., Baum 1999), towering monoliths (Hendel and Noack 2013), and rivers (Rosendahl et al. 2005). While these contexts are also significant, they will not be discussed in the present chapter. In settlements, human remains are most often found in the aforementioned beehive pits. Such pits are typically shaped like a beehive or truncated cone and have a diameter of 2–3 m at the base, with a probable depth of at least 3 m. According to ethnographic parallels, the entrance would have been 1 m or less in diameter (Kriegler 1929). They are usually thought to have originally been used to store grain (Sicherl 2012); however, in a few cases they were also used as storage places for whole sets of ceramics (probably with content; e.g., Abels 1985: 74, “Staffelberg” near Staffelstein/Bavaria, pit 3 with 16 complete vessels). Because the bottom of beehive pits is very often covered by a heap of dark soil, an intrusion from the surface, it can be inferred that the pits had already lost their original function when the deposition of human bodies took place. The main reason to label these human remains “deviant” burials lies in the fact that they are very different from what is found in regular burial places. In regular burials, everything seems to be underlain by some kind of order that determines which objects have to accompany the dead and where they should be placed in the grave. These aspects are lacking in bones found in settlement contexts. While regular burials give a very strong impression that it was important What Is the Norm? Burial Practices of the Early Iron Age in Central Europe

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for the individual as well as for society that the grave was properly furnished, and that this furnishing said something important about the position of the deceased in life, the other modes of burial seem a complete contradiction of this principle. In these atypical burial locations, very little or no effort was put into disposal of the body, and grave goods were not supplied. All these observations have made acknowledging human remains in contexts other than burial places very problematic and seem to require differing modes of explanation and interpretation. In the past, three main reasons for the deposition of human bodies in settlement pits have been brought forward. In German research, those dead are most commonly seen as underprivileged, possibly slaves (e.g., Meyer et al. 2013), who were not socially important enough to deserve a proper burial in a regular cemetery. Among French- and English-speaking researchers (e.g., Cunliffe 1992; Delattre 2000; Williams 2003), the interpretation of the dead in settlement pits, also frequently encountered in France and the South of England (e.g., Cunliffe 1992; Delattre 2000; Williams 2003), has shifted toward the idea of sacrifice. These scholars usually draw an explicit connection between the supposed function of the pits as granaries and fertility rites (e.g., Cunliffe 1992; Delattre 2000; Williams 2003). It is assumed that, in order to secure copious resources in the future, it was important to deposit human bodies, along with other gifts, in the earth and especially in granary pits. Alternatively, it has been suggested that the bodies in pits were part of secondary burial rites, that they represent only one stage in a chain of events leading finally to a proper burial, and that, for reasons unknown, this chain was broken and the bodies not recovered (Trebsche 2013). What is lacking, however, is a contextual analysis of the human remains. Most of what has been published so far (with the notable exception of the hill fort of Danebury/Hampshire discussed in Cunliffe and Poole 1995; see also a number of contributions in Müller-Scheessel 2013a) is based on anecdotal studies of exceptional finds, but not on an analysis of all the evidence. In order to come to a proper understanding of these seemingly all too obvious “deviant” burials, it is important to study the human remains, the position and completeness of the bodies, as well as their contexts without predetermined interpretations.

Materials and Methods Up until 2013, 181 individuals (partial and complete skeletons) from 73 sites were recovered from settlement contexts of the Hallstatt and Early Latène period in 174

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Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria. Of these, 144 yielded more contextual information, because they were discovered recently and were therefore excavated and documented properly. The archaeological study concentrated on the context, in the case of multiple individuals on the sequence of deposition, and on traces of manipulation during or after depositing. In addition to carefully scrutinizing the available archaeological record, we studied the human remains using established methods to determine age and sex (Grupe et al. 2015: 254ff.), to assess their health status (e.g., degenerative diseases, dental caries; Grupe et al. 2015: 340ff.), and to investigate possible factors related to their death (e.g., trauma; Grupe et al. 2015: 355ff.). Some anthropological data are available for at least 153 of the skeletal remains. Stable isotope analyses were—among others—carried out to gain information about the place where the individuals grew up. Strontium (Sr) isotope analyses can be used as provenance tracer and allow insights into the mobility of individuals (e.g., Chenery et al. 2010; Eckardt et al. 2009; Evans et al. 2006; Tütken et al. 2008a, 2008b; Tütken 2010). Strontium isotope ratios (87Sr/86Sr) of teeth are related to those of the bioavailable Sr, which reflects the geological age and/or lithology of the bedrock substrate on which food is grown and ingested by animals and humans during childhood (i.e., time of enamel mineralization) (e.g., Beard and Johnson 2000; Bentley 2006; Maurer et al. 2012; Price et al. 2002), enabling us to assess the provenance and migration histories of individuals. Here, we report the Sr isotope results from the largest subsample of human teeth from the middle Neckar region.

Results Archaeological Observations Of the human bodies deposited in these Early Iron Age settlement pits in Bavaria and Baden-Wurttemberg, many seem to have been simply thrown into the pit. On closer scrutiny, however, the positioning of the bodies is less chaotic than it first appears. This is especially true when more than one individual was deposited in one pit. Of 181 individuals recovered from settlement pits, 38, found in 12 pits, were deposited together with other individuals. In many of those cases, the dead were laid out along the margin at the bottom of the pit. It is very unlikely that this arrangement could have happened by chance if the dead had just been thrown into it. This in turn means that somebody must have climbed into the pit to arrange or rearrange the bodies. In one particularly striking example What Is the Norm? Burial Practices of the Early Iron Age in Central Europe

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Figure 9.3. Mundelsheim “Ottmarsheimer Höhe”/BadenWürttemberg. Settlement pit with at least four individuals stacked upon one another.

from Mundelsheim/Baden-Wurttemberg, at least four individuals were virtually stacked on top of each other, each of them facing down (fig. 9.3). In the western part of the pit from Mundelsheim—the eastern half was unfortunately destroyed before excavation—a female individual, aged around 30 years (J1), lay at the bottom, prone, with the head to the northwest. On top of her, a juvenile1 of unknown sex, around 15 years old, was deposited in the same direction (J2). Individual J3, another female of around 40 years, was in turn laid on top of J2, also prone, but with the head oriented in the other direction, to the southeast. Finally, a child of around 7 years (J4) was deposited on top of the legs of J1 and J2, but this time with the head to the southwest. Apart from the piling of bodies, the case of Mundelsheim is typical insofar as there are no indications that a significant time lapse occurred between depositions of the individuals, implying that the individuals must have died within a very short time interval. 176

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Figure 9.4. Orientation of the heads of newborns and adult individuals in settlement pits of the Early Iron Age.

Even when only one individual is present, we have some hints about manipulations that occurred after the bodies were put into the pit. For example, some of the dead were probably turned over so that one arm ended up underneath and the other on top of the body. In other cases, the legs were intertwined. In quite a few cases (21 of 123 assessable individuals, 17.1%), stones were found on top of the bodies, which is also at odds with a casual deposition practice. The existence of stones on top of the individuals is connected to age, as they were much more commonly placed on top of juveniles (13–19 years old; 4 of 11 individuals), and never or only in rare circumstances on very young individuals (0–1 year old; 0 of 17 individuals) or older individuals (>40 years old; 2 of 13 individuals). Another striking disparity is encountered when it comes to the orientation and placement of the individuals in the pits (fig. 9.4). A large proportion of the sample consists of newborns or very young children less than 1 year of age (see below). In pits, they are usually placed at the northern edge of the pit so the What Is the Norm? Burial Practices of the Early Iron Age in Central Europe

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head points south, the usual orientation of the dead in regular burials (see introduction). Adults, however, are often found with their head pointing in other directions. The most common direction is northeast, contrary to what is found in regular burials. As mentioned above, individuals in regular burials are often accompanied by lavish burial goods. Approximately 39.9% of the adults in the Hallstatt period (ca. 800–450 cal BC; Müller-Scheessel 2011: 210) and 69.8% of adults in the Early Latène phase (ca. 450–250 cal BC; Lorenz 1978: 190) were buried with characteristic burial goods like ring jewelry, belt fittings, clothing brooches, or various weapons. In comparison, only 18.3% of the adults in settlement pits had at least one grave good. Remarkably, the latter consisted only of female jewelry worn on the body, including any kinds of rings worn on the neck, arm, fingers, or feet. In no case were other grave goods (Müller-Scheessel 2013c) accompanying the dead in pits, unlike what is found in regular graves.

Skeletal Analysis Of the 153 individuals examined, 71 were younger than 20 years of age and 82 were older than 20. Among the latter, males and females are present in approximately equal proportions; however, a high proportion of very young children aged 1 year or younger are found in settlement contexts (fig. 9.5), especially as they are usually missing from regular cemeteries (Guy et al. 1997; for example, there are none [of 111 individuals] in the very large burial mound “Magdalenenberg”; Zäuner and Wahl 2013). Also conspicuous is a high number of older children (7–10 years old; 6.0%) and early adolescents (10–15 years old; 9.5%). In life tables derived from modern developing countries as well as archaeological populations, the latter usually show the lowest mortality rates (Coale & Demeny 1966; Hassan 1981: 95ff.). The maximum number of deaths among the adults (disregarding sex) is in the late 30s, which is slightly later than what is found in regular cemeteries. There, the peak is in the early 20s. To determine the cause of death is difficult in most of the cases, of course; however, an often-cited case of purported cannibalism (Lichtenfels-Mistelfeld/ Bavaria discussed in Abels and Radunz 1975) cannot be verified. Some of the adults suffered perimortem fractures to the skull, but these can be explained by the heavy stones that were placed or, possibly, thrown on top of the bodies at the time of inhumation. However, whether it was intentional or accidental that the crania were fractured, the fact that the heads were hit by stones shows that the individuals putting the stones in the pits did not care if they damaged the bodies. 178

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Figure 9.5. Age distribution of individuals from “regular” burials (n = 1328) and settlement context (n = 153). Note the high percentage of newborns among the latter.

The bones of the subadults show some indicators of metabolic stress, such as cribra orbitalia (Rivera and Mirazón Lahr 2017). The adults exhibit a high frequency of degenerative diseases, such as spondylosis deformans, and carious lesions. The caries intensity2 of Iron Age adults from regular cemeteries is approximately 10% (e.g., Baum 1999: 97f.). For the adults from settlement pits, the caries intensity rate is on average 23%, more than double.

Strontium Isotope Results of Human Teeth The most striking Sr isotope results were obtained for the largest sample from the Neckar region, an area dominated by eolian silt deposits (loess), from which we have large numbers of specimens from nearly all archaeological periods. The local bioavailable Sr isotope composition ranges from an 87Sr/86Sr of roughly 0.709 to 0.710. Of the 32 individuals from settlement pits, 19 (59.4%) fall within this range (overall range: 0.70855–0.71262; mean: 0.70986; standard deviation: 0.00091; n = 32). Comparing this with the regular burial site of Asperg “GrafenWhat Is the Norm? Burial Practices of the Early Iron Age in Central Europe

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bühl” (Müller-Scheessel et al. in prep), only 5 of 12 individuals (41.7%) exhibited values of 0.709–0.710 and thus spent their youth in the Neckar region, presumably on loess substrates or in an area with comparable bedrock 87Sr/86Sr (overall range: 0.70942–0.71211; mean: 0.71058; standard deviation: 0.00097; n = 12). This result is all the more surprising as one would expect that the individuals from settlement contexts, coming from a range of sites and an area of 1000 km2, would yield far more variable 87Sr/86Sr than those coming from a single site.

Discussion Taking all the evidence together, the resulting picture is, perhaps not surprisingly, very heterogeneous; however, it is clear that deposition of humans outside of cemeteries can be understood only in relation to the “regular” way of handling the dead. There is evidence to suggest that the initial impression of a casual deposition of bodies is misleading. Many of the bodies in settlement pits were manipulated, arranged, or rearranged in relation to other bodies, or handled in some way (e.g., turned over). Furthermore, the fact of stone coverings over some of the bodies is at odds with an explanation of the deposition practice in pits as only a matter of (little) burial expenditure. Finally, the fact that burial goods such as clothing brooches, belt-fittings, and weapons, which are usually part of regular burials, are missing, as well as the differing orientation of the older individuals, require a careful examination and explanation. All these observations suggest that the deposition of human bodies in settlement pits was not simply a matter of a “least-cost solution.” On the other hand, the jewelry found with individuals in settlement pits does not include pieces as exceptional as those recovered from regular graves. On the contrary, many objects show signs of heavy wear, and others likely were originally intended for someone else and had been refitted and resized based on the changes observed on the jewelry. Furthermore, the age distribution of the sample differs in some aspects from that of regular cemeteries. The percentage of subadults aged 10–15 years is remarkably high and there are more older adults (in late 30s) than are observed in regular cemeteries. While the exact determination of the age of adults is strongly debated among physical anthropologists (e.g., Séguy et al. 2013; Grupe et al. 2015: 273ff.), we view the higher percentage of caries and degenerative diseases among adults from settlement pits as an additional indication that, overall, the age distribution of irregularly deposited adults was more skewed toward older ages than in regular cemeteries. 180

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The final aspect to take into account are the results of the strontium isotope analyses. The relatively wider range of 87Sr/86Sr for the regularly buried individuals can be interpreted as the result of far-reaching networks and contacts resulting in a greater mobility they had during life (e.g., by marriages, but also by fostering; Müller-Scheessel et al. 2015). The individuals from pits with far more local 87Sr/86Sr appear to have been excluded from these networks. This heterogeneity of observations defies any simple, monocausal explanation for the deposition of human bodies in settlement pits. The three main interpretation patterns outlined above—socially less-valued individuals, victims of sacrifices, or secondary burial rites not fully carried out—all suffer from the problem that they cannot explain all the evidence. From the perspective of the social differentiation hypothesis, the very ordinary jewelry with heavy signs of usage accompanying some of the dead in pits certainly fits the picture and can be interpreted as a clue about negative social selection that led to the deposition in settlement pits. However, the special circumstances surrounding some of the burials as outlined above remain thus unexplained and so does the peculiar age distribution. The sacrifice-for-fertility theory, on the other hand, has very little empirical support and ignores fundamental issues of the critical assessment of sources. What is not taken into account is the fact that actually, in most circumstances, very little has survived of Iron Age settlements due to erosion except the pits. So, the impression that we often find bodies in pits might be misleading in the first place. There are no other archaeological features where we could find them; furthermore, we see no repeating modus operandi as one would expect with sacrifices taking place on a regular basis; on the contrary, the relatively careful handling of the newborns begs the question why only they were treated in such a manner and not all the dead in settlement pits. Regarding the incomplete secondary burial rites concept of the third hypothesis, we would expect that the pits would be full of small human bones like phalanges from feet or hands from previous primary burials, as these are the first to get detached (Roksandic 2002), but this is not the case. Furthermore, the peculiar age distribution remains unexplained. So, we have to look for other explanations that take such diverse evidence into account. In view of the seemingly primary importance of biological age for defining the social position of individuals in Iron Age societies (see introduction), it seems sensible to start with age as an important reason for depositing individuals in settlement pits. The deposition of newborns or small children below the age of one is the What Is the Norm? Burial Practices of the Early Iron Age in Central Europe

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easiest to explain. Among researchers, there seems to be a consensus that these very young individuals were not considered social personae in that they had not yet “earned” the right to a place in the regular cemeteries of the European Iron Age (Beilke-Voigt 2010; Jarecki et al. 1999; Karl and Löcker 2011; Trebsche 2012). The dominant orientation of the head to the south as in regular burials, the position often in the north of the pits, and the orderly burial posture speak to a careful positioning. Even though they were not yet individuals fit to claim their position in society, the circumstances of their deposition indicate some degree of care. Often, a connection is drawn to a note by Pliny the Elder (AD 23/24–79) who, during Roman times, reported that very young children were not yet considered fully human until their first teeth had broken through (Naturalis historia VII 15: 72). Despite the distance in time and space, this might be the likely scenario for the placement of the newborns in settlement pits of the Early Iron Age. The deposition of newborns in pits can help us to understand the deposition of older individuals as well. As the deposition of newborns in pits was such a common practice in Iron Age settlements, we can assume that the general population was aware of this habit. Therefore, it seems highly likely that there was a connection drawn between such pits and individuals who were not “complete” social beings. As such, the association with pits was probably an unfavorable one, especially if we take into account the effort and order invested in regular burials. The next age category to be considered because it is relatively more common in settlement pits than in regular cemeteries are the adolescents (13–19 years old). It should be emphasized again that stone coverings were more strongly associated with that age category than with any other age group. While the stone coverings can be interpreted as a deferential measure to shelter and safeguard the dead, they seem more likely to have a pejorative connotation, especially if we consider the large stones that by chance or intent crushed some of the skulls (see above). We do not know the exact reason that led to their deposition in pits, but the fact that these individuals died prematurely might simply be sufficient to warrant a differential burial practice. Dying without descendants is, in many societies, a reason to treat the individual in question with less care or at least differently from other dead (Frazer 1934: 235ff.; Sell 1952). Essentially, dying young and childless could be regarded as a “bad” death. Especially in the cases of several individuals deposited together without an archaeologically visible time interval, which in turn implies that they died to182

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gether or in close temporal succession, other forms of bad death, in particular those that kill several individuals at once such as infectious disease, lightning strike, drowning, and childbirth are conceivable (see the catalogues of possibilities of Frazer 1934 and Sell 1952). The final age category with differing mortality patterns between regular cemeteries and settlement pits are the adults. Among adults interred in settlement pits, the maximum in the age distribution is late 30s, while in regular cemeteries, the peak in the age distribution is the early 20s. That this is not a random result is highlighted by the much higher frequencies of caries among the dead from settlement pits, most probably related to their higher overall age. Age was an important structuring principle according to the evidence from regular burials, which results in the richest burials being associated with a small set of older males (40+), followed by younger adult males and females. The majority of the older population in regular burials (males as well as females) were treated in a manner implying that their “best time” was already over. In this vein, the overall higher age of individuals in settlement pits falls into place. These dead were already too old to receive a lavish burial like those of most of the adult individuals aged 20 to 40. Furthermore, the Sr isotope analyses indicate that the individuals from pits were more likely to be local than those from regular cemeteries, and thus potentially excluded from far-reaching social connections. An overall low social standing is also implied by the worn and not very elaborate jewelry. Thus, it seems that the place of the adult dead in settlement pits in society was so insignificant that even a regular burial place was out of the question. This is not to say that the deposition of dead bodies in pits was taken lightly by Iron Age people. Manipulation of the bodies within the pits shows that the choice of deposition involved some considerations. The dead might have been deposited in the pits without clothes or in shrouds, as implied by the lack of belts or brooches, but they were not stripped of the rings they wore directly on the body. This could be due to respect for the dead or to some kind of taboo surrounding jewelry (Müller-Scheessel 2013c); in any case, it demonstrates that these dead were not without at least some rights.

Conclusion We maintain that the reason for the different treatment of the dead buried in settlement pits was not due to some overarching motive like securing fertility by sacrifice, but because of certain characteristics of the individuals. The reasons What Is the Norm? Burial Practices of the Early Iron Age in Central Europe

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were not external, but intrinsic. The likelihood of being deposited in settlement pits was obviously very much dependent on age, less so on sex/gender. This is particularly true for the newborns, and also for the older adult individuals. The circumstances of death probably also played a role. The death of these individuals might have been regarded as premature in the case of the adolescents, or due to other bad death causes like dying from infectious diseases, lightning, drowning, or childbirth. This differential treatment was certainly not a clear-cut mechanism because we find all age groups, with the exception of the newborns, in both regular and irregular settings. It is possible that the decision of what to do with the dead was preceded by intense discussion by the burial communities (Müller-Scheessel 2009b); however, the social position of the individuals in question certainly also played an important role. Being of low social standing likely resulted in a higher probability of ending up in a settlement pit.

Acknowledgments Financial support by the German Research Council in the context of the project „Siedlungsbestattungen der Hallstatt- und Frühlatènezeit in Süddeutschland: zum ältereisenzeitlichen Umgang mit den Toten“ (MU 3053/1–2; PI: MüllerScheessel) is thankfully acknowledged. Anthropological material was kindly provided by the Heritage Management Service of Baden-Württemberg, the Osteological Sample Collection of the Eberhard-Karls-University Tübingen as well as the State collection for Anthropology and Paleoanatomy Munich. We further thank the editors and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments and Sarah Martini for brushing up our English.

Notes 1. In Central European anthropology, “juvenile” is precisely defined, usually 13–19 years of age. 2. Caries intensity is computed by adding the number of teeth affected by caries to the number of teeth lost antemortem and dividing the result by the number of all tooth positions that are observable (Caselitz 1998).

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Maurer, A.-F., S.J.G. Galer, C. Knipper, L. Beierlein, E. V. Nunn, D. Peters, Th. Tütken, K. W. Alt, and B. R. Schöne 2012 Bioavailable 87Sr/86Sr in Different Environmental Samples—Effects of Anthropogenic Contamination and Implications for Isoscapes in Past Migration Studies. Science of the Total Environment 433: 216–229. Meyer, Christian, Leif Hansen, Frauke Jacobi, Corina Knipper, Marc Fecher, Christina Roth, and Kurt W. Alt 2013 Irreguläre Bestattungen in der Eisenzeit? Bioarchäologische Ansätze zur Deutung am Beispiel der menschlichen Skelettfunde vom Glauberg. In “Irreguläre” Bestattungen in der Urgeschichte: Norm, Ritual, Strafe . . . ? Akten der Internationalen Tagung in Frankfurt a. M. vom 3. bis 5. Februar 2012, edited by Nils Müller-Scheessel, pp. 425–438. R. Habelt, Bonn. Müller-Scheessel, Nils 2009a Zum Gräberfeld von Schirndorf: ein Beitrag zur Chronologie der Hallstattzeit Nordostbayerns. Prähistorische Zeitschrift 84(2): 191–201. 2009b Variabilität und Wandel von Bestattungspraktiken am Beispiel des Hallstattzeitlichen Gräberfeldes von Schirndorf. Ethnographisch-Archäologische Zeitschrift 50: 519–537. 2011 Wirklich nur Jagen, Kämpfen, Saufen? Die Konstruktion von Männlichkeit in ur- und frühgeschichtlichtlichen Gesellschaften. Altertum 56: 205–222. Müller-Scheessel, Nils (editor) 2013a “Irreguläre” Bestattungen in der Urgeschichte: Norm, Ritual, Strafe . . . ? Akten der Internationalen Tagung in Frankfurt a. M. vom 3. bis 5. Februar 2012. R. Habelt, Bonn. Müller-Scheessel, Nils 2013b Untersuchungen zum Wandel hallstattzeitlicher Bestattungssitten in Süd- und Südwestdeutschland. R. Habelt, Bonn. 2013c Im Tode gleich? Eisenzeitliche Bestattungen von Frauen und Männern in Siedlungskontexten und in “Regulären” Gräbern im Vergleich. In Bilder—Räume— Rollen: Beiträge zur gemeinsamen Sitzung der AG Eisenzeit und der AG Geschlechterforschung während des 7. Deutschen Archäologenkongresses in Bremen 2011, edited by Stefanie Wefers, Jana Esther Fries, Janine Fries-Knoblach, Christiana Later, Ulrike Rambuscheck, Peter Trebsche, and Julian Wiethold, pp. 81–92. Beier & Beran, Langenweissbach. Müller-Scheessel, Nils, Carola Berszin, Gisela Grupe, Annette Schwentke, Anja Staskiewicz, and Joachim Wahl 2013 Ältereisenzeitliche Siedlungsbestattungen in Baden-Württemberg und Bayern. In “Irreguläre” Bestattungen in der Urgeschichte: Norm, Ritual, Strafe . . . ? Akten der Internationalen Tagung in Frankfurt a. M. vom 3. bis 5. Februar 2012, edited by Nils Müller-Scheessel, pp. 409–424. R. Habelt, Bonn. Müller-Scheessel, Nils, Gisela Grupe, and Thomas Tütken 2015 In der Obhut von Verwandten? Die Zirkulation von Kindern und Jugendlichen in der Eisenzeit Mitteleuropas. In Interpretierte Eisenzeiten: Fallstudien, Methoden, Theorie. Tagungsbeiträge der 6. Linzer Gespräche zur interpretativen Eisenzeitarchäologie, edited by Raimund Karl and Jutta Leskovar, pp. 9–23. Oberösterreichisches Landesmuseum, Linz. What Is the Norm? Burial Practices of the Early Iron Age in Central Europe

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Müller-Scheessel, Nils, Gisela Grupe, Doris Lettmann, Martina Munz, Thomas Tütken, and Joachim Wahl In press Insights into the Social Organisation of Iron Age societies by stable isotope (C, N, O, Sr) Analyses of Human Bones: The Case of the Cemeteries of Asperg, Dietfurt a d. Altmühl, Müllheim-Dattingen and Werneck-Zeuzleben. Pliny the Elder 1893 The Natural History. Translated by J. Bostock and H. T. Riley. London, New York. http://data.perseus.org/citations/urn:cts:latinLit:phi0978.phi001.perseus-eng1:1 Price, T. D., J. H. Burton, and R. A. Bentley 2002 The Characterization of Biologically Available Strontium Isotope Ratios for the Study of Prehistoric Migration. Archaeometry 44: 117–135. Rivera, F., and M. Mirazón Lahr 2017 New Evidence Suggesting a Dissociated Etiology for Cribra Orbitalia and Porotic Hyperostosis. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 164(1): 76–96. https:// doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.23258 Roksandic, Mirjana 2002 Position of Skeletal Remains as a Key to Understanding Mortuary Behavior. In Advances in Forensic Taphonomy: Method, Theory, and Archaeological Perspectives, edited by William D. Haglund, and Marcella H. Sorg, pp. 99–117. CRC Press, Boca Raton. Rosendahl, Wilfried, Klaus Wirth, Nicole Nicklisch, and Kurt W. Alt 2005 Ertrunken im Neckar? Über den Fund einer eisenzeitlichen Leiche in MannheimSeckenheim. Archäologische Ausgrabungen in Baden-Württemberg 2004: 79–82. Séguy, Isabelle, Henri Caussinus, Daniel Courgeau, and Luc Buchet 2013 Estimating the Age Structure of a Buried Adult Population: A New Statistical Approach Applied to Archaeological Digs in France. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 150: 170–182. Sell, Hans Joachim 1952 Der schlimme Tod bei den Völkern Indonesiens. Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie 46: 212–264. Sicherl, Bernhard 2012 Anmerkungen zu den Kegelstumpfgruben der Eisenzeit. In Römer und Germanen in Ostwestfalen Lippe, edited by Beate Herring, Elke Treude, and Michael Zelle, pp. 133–159. Isensee, Oldenburg. Steffen, Christoph 2012 Gesellschaftswandel während der älteren Eisenzeit: Soziale Strukturen der Hallstatt- und Frühlatènekultur in Baden-Württemberg. Theiss, Stuttgart. Trebsche, Peter 2012 Die frühlatènezeitlichen Säuglingsbestattungen aus Mitterretzbach. In Beiträge zum Tag der Niederösterreichischen Landesarchäologie 2012, edited by Ernst Lauermann and Peter Trebsche, pp. 25–30. Museum für Urgeschichte des Landes Niederösterreich, Asparn/Zaya. 2013 Die Regelhaftigkeit der “Irregulären” Bestattungen im österreichischen Donauraum während der Latènezeit. In “Irreguläre” Bestattungen in der Urgeschichte: Norm, Ritual, Strafe . . . ? Akten der Internationalen Tagung in Frankfurt a. M. 188

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10 Burial in a Kiln Transgression and Punishment in Late Antiquity

A na sta si a Tsa l i k i

Depending on the cultural group and period under study, the fragmentation of skeletonized human remains becomes attributed mainly to burial rites or to taphonomic processes. The present case investigates a burial in a kiln and its interpretations, including the probability of criminal punishment in Late Roman–Early Byzantine Attica. Human skeletal remains from the fourth century AD were found in a kiln at the site of Merenda, in Attica, Greece. The inhumation consisted of one “main” individual, a young adult 25–35 years of age at death, probably a female. The individual seemed cut in half and rearranged in such a way that her upper and lower halves were deposited next to each other. Portions of a second, male, individual were found in association. This burial can be called deviant in the sense that it is different from the usual manner of interment during Late Antiquity. Osteological and burial context analyses, together with historical sources, help to shed light on the cultural circumstances surrounding the burial.

The Archaeological and Burial Context The Department of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities of the Ephorate of East Attica in Greece conducted rescue excavations at the site of Merenda as part of the construction program for the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. As a result, settlements and cemeteries of different periods were unearthed bearing impor-

tant finds. In August 2002, human remains were discovered in an extraordinary context lacking any association with a contemporary burial ground: a lime-kiln 2.20 m deep and with maximum diameter of 3.80 m was located and excavated north of the new Olympic Hippodrome (Kakavogianni and Vlachodimitropoulou, pers. comm.). The soil deposits from the top of the kiln to a depth of approximately 2 m consisted of light brown earth, a few sherds, and many limestone boulders (many greater than 1 m). Under these, the excavators found a burnt layer 0.20 m deep deposited on the bedrock. The human skeletal remains were found on top of the burnt layer in the eastern part adjacent to the kiln wall, and were covered by a thin deposit of earth and a considerable number of large rocks (figs. 10.1, 10.2). According to the excavators, the lime-kiln was in disuse when the burial took place and subsequently the deep pit of the kiln was sealed with the large rocks, which were located predominantly over the human remains. Their study took place on site by the author in April 2003, based on standard osteological methodology (Bass 1995; Brothwell 1981; Buikstra and Ubelaker 1994; Mays et al. 2002; White 1991).

Figure 10.1. The skeletal remains at Merenda in situ (courtesy of B’ EPKA).

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Figure 10.2. Plan of the kiln and position of the skeletal remains (adapted after a drawing by A. Petrou, courtesy of B’ EPKA).

The limitations of the study were that the remains had already been photographed and illustrated in situ, consolidated with paraloid 5% in acetone, and then removed en bloc (Vlachodimitropoulou, pers. comm.).

Human Remains Preservation of the bones was poor. They were incomplete or fragmented, partly because of expansion and contraction of the surrounding matrix following temperature and humidity changes during storage; however, some damage was also due to taphonomic processes that led to fragmentation and to increased mineralization of the bones of mainly the skull and the torso. Taking into account the uniqueness of the burial, it was suggested that further and deeper removal of the bloc matrix required a well-equipped laboratory and a conservator with experience in fossilized remains. As these facilities were unavailable, the osteological observations took place before and after microexcavation conducted at the Merenda excavation camp. The presence of small charcoal fragments (4–5 mm) in the soil used to cover the corpse suggested that it came from around or inside the kiln. 192

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The inhumation consisted of one “main” individual, a young adult 25–35 years old according to Brothwell’s molar attrition system1 (1981: 72). One segment of the left mandible with three molars was observable and a smaller mandibular segment with the left canine. The left 3rd molar was horizontally erupted. The eruption of the 3rd molar is not a safe aging criterion, as it is influenced by the position of the other teeth and the available space, which is limited especially in small female jaws (Scheuer and Black 2000: 151–153). In the present case, it was difficult to distinguish taphonomic erosion from attrition, so the teeth were gently cleaned with a soft toothbrush and closely observed with a hand-magnifying lens. No other method of aging could be applied because of absence or damage to suitable bone. The poor skeletal preservation and the solid matrix obstructed paleopathological observations. The individual was probably a female based on the shape and size of the sciatic notch and the size and orientation of the acetabulum at the area of the pelvis (Bass 1995: 216; Roberts 1996: 107). Regarding the individual’s head, mainly the outline of the cranial vault and particularly of the frontal, left parietal, and occipital bones could be observed, because the matrix around and inside the vault had become mineralized, damaging and eroding the bones away. The body position was abnormal and the individual appears to have been cut in half: the head, torso and upper limbs with a part of the right pelvis were found deposited prone and they were in anatomical articulation (figs. 10.1, 10.3). The left arm was extended and the right

Figure 10.3. Drawing of the dismembered body parts, with different shading highlighting the three different groups (© Anastasia Tsaliki).

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forearm was slightly flexed under the part of the pelvis. The head rested on its left side and the orientation of the spine was from southeast to northwest. The lower part of the body, consisting of the rest of the pelvis and of the femora, tibiae, fibulae, and bones of the feet, rested parallel and next to the upper part, in a flexed articulated position. So, the pelvis was lying parallel to the head, and the flexed legs parallel to the torso. Although taphonomic deterioration at the edge of the os coxae prevented the identification of a clear cut-mark, the very specific and careful deposition of the two body halves in situ cannot be explained by taphonomy, natural body decay, or animal scavenging, but only by intentional cutting of the body in half, when the flesh was still on the corpse, judging by the articulated position of the remains (Hunter and Martin 1996; Janaway 1996). While cleaning the semifossilized area of the lower torso, between the arms, it was noticed that a segment of a third os coxae was present in articulation with the head and neck of an extra left femur. This indicates that parts of a second individual were deposited at the area of the lower back of the “main female” individual (fig. 10.3). These body parts probably belonged to an adult male, based on epiphyseal fusion and estimated femoral maximum head diameter (Bass 1995; Scheuer and Black 2000: 390). In conclusion, the minimum number of individuals is two, based on the evidence available. The excavators state clearly that no other skeletal remains were found in this kiln and no cemetery of that period was discovered in the area. This raises the question of what happened to the rest of the second body. The small possibility that more bone fragments could exist in the solidified matrix around and under these skeletal remains cannot be excluded, despite the lack of such evidence so far, but there is not enough space left unexplored for more complete bones. In the future, the safest way to confirm the number of individuals present in this burial context would be aDNA analysis of the different groups of bones, but aDNA may not be retrievable because of bone preservation and storage conditions. In addition, elemental and isotopic analyses of bone and/or teeth could provide information on the diet and origin of these individuals (Buikstra and Ubelaker 1994: 168–174).

Grave Goods The only grave goods, which are also the only indicators of dating and of the fact that the remains had received a burial—implying a ritualistic careful dis194

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posal—are a small plain “trefoil” Roman jar, which the excavators described as a usual offering for the period, and a coin from the reign of Constantine the Great (AD 307–337), most probably as an obol (the boat-fare) to Charon, which was normally placed inside the mouth or on the body but is easily displaced during decomposition (Ekdotiki Athinon 1989: 406). The described burial can be called deviant in the sense that it is different from the usual way of interment in Greece during Late Antiquity. Burial data mainly from ethnographic cases show that criteria for deviancy vary between societies. Deviant disposals may not reflect the status of the deceased during their entire lives, but the social identity they acquired by certain actions or death circumstances (Shay 1985; Ucko 1969). What could those be in the present case study?

Discussion Historical Context: A Transitional Phase In the Roman Empire, Attica was part of the province of “Achaia.” The Romans preferred to leave local administration to loyal Greeks, interfering only in case of serious problems. Roman law was harsher than that of the Hellenistic period. For instance, slaves were considered objects (res) and not human beings (Ekdotiki Athinon 1976: 112–137, 165, 478–482). Relations between the Greeks and the colonists from Italy were generally good, with the latter participating in social, political, and religious lives of the Greek cities. However, during the third and early fourth centuries AD, the empire was under crisis, which soon divided the society on a religious basis. On the one hand, Mithraism became popular and Roman emperors demanded a revival of their divine worship, but on the other, Christians had multiplied as well. As a result, strong Christian persecutions started in the middle of the third century (Ekdotiki Athinon 1976: 574–577, 598–614). The reign of Constantine the Great (AD 307–337) marks the beginning of a major transformation of the Roman Empire. In AD 324, Constantine became the only monarch to unify in his person the governing of the empire, which had suffered by the condominium of various augusti and caesars during and after the end of Diocletian’s reign (AD 305). Constantine also decided on the foundation of the “second Rome,” Constantinople, in the eastern part of the empire on 8th November AD 324. This breakthrough was followed in the same year by the official end of persecutions against Christians and the beginning of the gradual Burial in a Kiln: Transgression and Punishment in Late Antiquity

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establishment of Christianity as the official religion of the Empire. Based on these changes, many scholars regard the year AD 324 as the conventional start of the “eastern” Roman Empire, that is, the Byzantine Empire and its early history (Christophilopoulou 1993: 20–21). Despite these changes favoring the Empire’s stability, the same century was particularly troublesome on the religious front. Christians were divided into many sects, fighting each other but also the pagans, who now became the persecuted. Strong measures against the old religions during the fourth to seventh centuries led to the destruction of temples, the killing of philosophers, and mass pagan persecutions (Ekdotiki Athinon 1978: 16–26, 257–258).

Punishment, Burials, and Circular Features Dismemberment and mutilation are perceived by different cultures and in different periods as strong punishments and further humiliation of a wrongdoer. In his Histories (VII 38–39, 88), Herodotus narrates similar practices inflicted as punishments on humans and animals alike by the Persians (Spyropoulos 1998). According to tradition, decapitation both as a sacrificial ritual and as punishment for war soldiers and for anyone convicted of perjuring an oath by the royal hearth was common among the Scythians (Lincoln 1991: 201–205). Even much later, a late-Byzantine folk song mentions slaughtering, stabbing, and subsequent dismemberment as a curse on a man who repudiated a woman (Politis 1982: 275–276). Particularly in the Late Antiquity, there is textual and archaeological evidence of decapitation, defleshing, and other forms of mutilation and dismemberment often applied to the corpse postmortem. Some prone burials show evidence of violence and are associated with decapitation, hands tied behind the back, and large stones weighting down the dead (Taylor 2003). It has been suggested that such practices are associated with preventing the dead person’s revenge and with showing to the soul the right way toward the underworld (Merrifield 1987: 76; Wait 1995: 506–509). From the Romano-British cemetery at Kempston, Boylston et al. (2000) studied 12 prone and 12 decapitated individuals. They concluded that individuals who died in a conflict, suddenly, or in odd circumstances, were singled out for special mortuary treatment. Notably, four graves with decapitated individuals were situated within ditched ritual enclosures, maybe to emphasize their special status. This detail begs for attention, if one considers that kilns, such as that at Merenda, are by nature a form of circular enclosed space. There are good parallels to the deposition of a burial 196

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in circular features in ancient industrial sites; in her book, Dying for the Gods, Aldhouse-Green (2002) mentions many cases of dismembered, fragmented, crushed, mutilated, and defleshed individuals found particularly in pits and grain storage silos. Examples of human remains associated specifically with kilns come from a plethora of British sites, for example, Crambeck (Corder 1989), Norton, Colchester, and Leicester (Jones 2003: 87). The excavation at “the Parks” in Godmanchester revealed a Late Antiquity inhumation cemetery with six prone burials and eight decapitations, including one inserted in a kiln dated to Phase 4 (early to mid-fourth century AD). Skeleton HB 42 was of a child aged between 6 and 10 years old, and the cut that removed the head was made from the front and was probably postmortem (Jones 2003: 69). In Northern Greece, a case of disposal of human remains in a circular rubbish pit near a kiln comes from the site of Filotas. The body was found in a contorted position, and the pottery kiln was in continuous use from late Hellenistic times to the Roman period (Moschakis 1998). There are more examples from Greece of disposals in enclosed features, mainly pits and wells, dating from the Neolithic and from a plethora of sites: Argos, Mycenae, Nichoria, Corinth, Agora of ancient Athens, Eleusis, Pydna, and more (e.g., Barnes 2003; Bessios and Triantaphyllou 2002; Little and Papadopoulos 1998; Papadopoulos 2000; Rotroff et al. 1999; Tsaliki 2008; Wace 1954). However, the etiology of these interments and disposals varies significantly. In another example of ancient Greek punishment, Charlier (2008) reexamined two bodies in unusual positions, one of which was beheaded, from a cistern on Delos, an island that was sacred in antiquity, dating back to the end of the second century BC, or the beginning of the first century BC. Death was attributed to an ancient Athenian mode of execution, similar to crucifixion, called “apotympanismos”. Although there exists some confusion in ancient literature on how apotympanismos was actually performed, it is believed that the criminals were nailed on a wooden board, using also metal fetters, and left to die. More skeletons with such evidence have been discovered at Phaliron, in Attica (in 1916 and during more recent excavations in 2016), where at least one individual was found buried dismembered (Karali and Tsaliki 2011). One case from Greece bearing particular similarities to the one from Merenda comes from the site of Kouphovouno in the northeast, where an excavated skeleton also appears to have been cut in two parts, based on body position and orientation. The torso and upper extremities were reportedly found lying in an extended position, Burial in a Kiln: Transgression and Punishment in Late Antiquity

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while the lower extremities were severed at the proximal parts of the femora and were buried in reverse orientation parallel to the body (Anna Lagia, pers. comm. 2005) Although this case belongs to the Bronze Age period and is much older than the one at Merenda, the similarities in burial position are striking. In general, in Greece, archaeological data on decapitated and mutilated burials and disposals are poor. However, this may be due to lack of identification and recovery during burial excavations, lack of supervision by biological archaeologists or anthropologists, and the emphasis placed on material culture by traditional Greek archaeologists, for many decades.

The Route from Social Tensions to Body Fragmentation Transitional periods favor violence and extreme reactions due to territorial and dominance aggression (Brothwell 1999). In order to acquire some insight into this complex case study, it is useful to be aware of social parameters such as the legal system and the social status of women and the lower classes. If dismemberment was often a method of punishment and if the individuals at Merenda were a man and a woman, then what could have possibly been their crime? The study of the position of women in the Greco-Roman and Byzantine societies, in addition to Roman law and the Roman perception of ritualized punitive executions, could suggest adultery (Carey 1995; Smythe 1997). In 18 BC, Caesar Augustus enacted new laws that encouraged marriage and procreation, at the same time establishing adultery as a crime. The offence was punishable by exile and confiscation of property, but fathers and husbands were permitted to kill the women and their partners in adultery under certain circumstances. If a husband killed only the adulterer, he should at once divorce his wife. This legislation remained in force even after Justinian’s overhaul of Roman law in the sixth century AD (Thompson 2010). Even the emperor Constantine increased the list of capital crimes to more than 60 during his reign, commonly using torture and mutilation (Kyle 2001). Another even more serious crime was the relationship between a free woman and a slave. Roman law had never recognized monogamous sexual relationships between slaves or between free people and slaves. In the fourth century AD, Constantine enacted a number of laws against marriages between partners of different social status, and these laws were active until the reign of Justinian. If the relationship had begun before the law’s promulgation, the partners should be separated and exiled. If such unions were discovered in the future, the offenders were to be executed. Informers were encouraged, including the 198

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woman’s relatives—who would benefit from her condemnation by succeeding to her estate—and slaves giving information against their owners. Because of the severe penalties decreed for offenders, many scholars assume that the law particularly concerned: (a) respectably married women who had secret affairs with slaves, perhaps even having purchased the slaves for sexual purposes; (b) marital unions between free women and slaves belonging to someone else; or (c) the less frequent but more shocking overt relationship between a woman and her own slave or former slave (Evans-Grubbs 1993). Legal execution and punishment in the Roman Empire and Late Antiquity were often ritualized. This would explain the “multiple killings” of the bodies, which in the Merenda case constitute the actual kill and the subsequent dismemberment, and their disposal in a ready available circular pit: a kiln. Blood spectacles have been recorded in other similar occasions in the late Roman world, such as the death of prisoners, war captives, and slaves in the arena; the scourging, torturing with fire, decapitation, eating by beasts, drowning, and even burning alive of Christians during the persecutions; and the torture and body abuse of emperors who had displeased the people and the subsequent damnatio memoriae by dragging, dissecting, and mutilating their statues in the same way they treated their corpses (Kyle 2001; Stewart 1999). In many societies, including ancient Greece and Rome, death, and especially a violent one, was a terrible miasma. Death brought pollution, which could affect the whole city. In order to avoid that, burial sites were mainly outside the city and a proper burial of the dead would be permitted, usually even for executed slaves (Hope and Marshall 2000). Denial of burial, a grave, and funeral rites meant continual shame for the dead and the family (see Sophocles’ Antigone). Death ceremonies can be seen as rites of passage, which must be performed properly in order to achieve the disconnection of the dead from the living (Taylor 1997: 109–112; Taylor 2002; van Gennep 1960). Especially in case of murder or untimely death, if the funerary ceremonies failed, or if the dead received improper burial or no burial, they would be restless, lingering on earth to torment their murderers or urging their relatives to fulfill their duties of proper rites and even of blood-vengeance (Holland 2008; Kyle 2001: 128–129). Some of the traits observed in the case study, such as burial at an isolated deep place, the prone position of the torso of the main individual, the dismemberment, and the covering of all the human remains by a multitude of large rocks, should be viewed also from the perspective of necrophobia: fear of the dead returning to hurt the living (Tsaliki 2001, 2008). It can be suggested that Burial in a Kiln: Transgression and Punishment in Late Antiquity

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after the killing, abuse, and disposal in the kiln of the human remains, the relatives gained permission to perform a minimal proper burial. According to excavation data, they put a coin in the mouth of the woman or on her body and a small jar next to her, and then they must have covered the remains with earth from the kiln. Finally, they carefully covered the whole kiln and particularly the burial with large stones, probably in an attempt to assure the privacy and rest of the dead, to avoid further abuse by humans or scavenging animals, and to stop vengeance by the spirits.

Conclusion It has been shown that fragmentation of the human body for purposes of punishment is not as rare as one may initially assume. The burial context of a limekiln in Attica during the fourth century AD indicates the existence of two bodies: the main burial of an adult, possibly female, seemingly cut in two and a few bones from another adult, possibly male. It seems likely that the male whose bones were added to the burial of the female was in some sense related to the main burial, which was dismembered and therefore of some transgressive nature, but the exact nature of the relationship can only be speculated. In addition, the sealing of this double burial with limestone boulders may show a tendency toward necrophobia. Of course, beyond the facts provided by osteological examination, any interpretation in archaeology and anthropology always carries the risk of speculation; however, when practiced with acknowledgement of the limitations, it is vital to attempt to breathe life into skeletal remains and to gain insights into the material and cognitive cultures of the past.

Acknowledgments The author wishes to thank the Greek Ministry of Culture and the Ephorate of Antiquities of East Attica in Greece for the invitation and permission to study and publish the material from Merenda.

Note 1. Although Brothwell’s molar attrition system was developed for Anglo-Saxon populations, it was applied here tentatively because no such data exist for ancient Greek populations and no other method of aging could be applied.

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Bibliography Aldhouse-Green, M. 2002 Dying for the Gods: Human Sacrifice in Iron Age & Roman Europe. Tempus, Stroud. Barnes, E. 2003 The Dead Do Tell Tales. In Corinth: The Centenary, 1896–1996, edited by C. K. Williams and N. Bookidis, pp. 435–443. American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Princeton. Bass, W. M. 1995 Human Osteology: A Laboratory and Field Manual, fourth edition. Missouri Archaeological Society, Columbia. Bessios, M., and S. Triantaphyllou 2002 Ομαδικός Τάφος από το Βόρειο Νεκροταφείο της Αρχαίας Πύδνας. Το Αρχαιο­ λογικό Έργο στη Μακεδονία και Θράκη 14: 385–394. Boylston, A., C. J. Knusel, C. A. Roberts, and M. Dawson 2000 Investigation of a Romano-British Rural Ritual in Bedford, England. Journal of Archaeological Science 27: 241–254. Brothwell, D. R. 1981 Digging up Bones, third edition. Oxford University Press, Oxford. 1999 Biosocial and Bio-archaeological Aspects of Conflict and Warfare. In Ancient Warfare, edited by J. Carman and A. Harding, pp. 25–38. Sutton Publishing, Stroud. Buikstra, J. E., and H. D. Ubelaker (editors) 1994 Standards for Data Collection from Human Skeletal Remains. Arkansas Archaeological Survey Research Series 44, Fayetteville. Carey, C. 1995 Rape and Adultery in Athenian Law. Classical Quarterly 45(2): 407–417. Charlier, P. 2008 The Value of Palaeoteratology and Forensic Pathology for the Understanding of Atypical Burials: Two Mediterranean Examples from the Field. In Deviant Burial in the Archaeological Record, edited by E. Murphy, pp. 57–70. Oxbow Books, Oxford. Christophilopoulou, A. 1993 Βυζαντινή Ιστορία, τόμος A’ 324–610 (β’ έκδοση). Εκδόσεις Βάνιας, Thessaloniki. Corder, P. 1989 The Roman Pottery at Crambeck, Castle Howard. In The Crambeck Roman Pottery Industry, edited by P. R. Wilson, pp. 3–24. Roman Antiquities Section, Yorkshire Archaeological Society, Leeds. Ekdotiki Athinon (editors) 1976 Ιστορία του Ελληνικού Έθνους, τόμος ΣΤ’: Ελληνισμός και Ρώμη. Εκδοτική Αθηνών, Athens. 1978 Ιστορία του Ελληνικού Έθνους, τόμος Ζ’: Βυζαντινός Ελληνισμός—Πρωτο­βυζα­ ντινοί Χρόνοι. Εκδοτική Αθηνών, Athens. 1989 Παγκόσμια Μυθολογία. Θεματική και Αλφαβητική Εγκυκλοπαίδεια, τόμος 20. Εκδοτική Αθηνών, Athens.

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Evans-Grubbs, J. 1993 Marriage More Shameful than Adultery: Slave-Mistress Relationships, “Mixed Marriages,” and Late Roman Law. Phoenix 47(2): 125–154. Holland, L. 2008 Last Act in Corinth: The Burial of Medea’s Children (E. Med. 1378–83). The Classical Journal April–May: 407–430. Hope, V. M., and E. Marshall (editors) 2000 Death and Disease in the Ancient City. Routledge, London. Hunter, J. R., and A. L. Martin 1996 Locating Buried Remains. In Studies in Crime: An Introduction to Forensic Archaeology, edited by J. Hunter, C. Roberts, and A. Martin, pp. 86–100. B T Batsford, London. Janaway, R. C. 1996 The Decay of Buried Human Remains and Their Associated Materials. In Studies in Crime: An Introduction to Forensic Archaeology, edited by J. Hunter, C. Roberts, and A. Martin, pp. 58–85. B T Batsford, London. Jones, A. (editor) 2003 Settlement, Burial and Industry in Roman Godmanchester. Excavations in the Extra-Mural Area: The Parks 1998, London Road 1997–8, and Other Investigations. Birmingham University Field Archaeology Unit Monograph Series 6. BAR British Series 346, Oxford. Karali, L., and A. Tsaliki 2011 Les Suppliciés de Paléon Phaliron: Un Cas d’Exécution par Apotympanismos Dans L’Athènes Classique. In 3e Colloque International de Pathographie, edited by P. Charlier, pp. 175–187. de Boccard, Bourges. Kyle, D. G. 2001 Spectacles of Death in Ancient Rome. Routledge, London. Lincoln, B. 1991 Death, War, and Sacrifice; Studies in Ideology and Practice. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Little, L. M., and J. K. Papadopoulos 1998 A Social Outcast in Early Iron Age Athens. Hesperia 67: 375–404. Mays, S., M. Brickley, and N. Dodwell 2002 Human Bones from Archaeological Sites. Guidelines for Producing Assessment Documents and Analytical Reports. English Heritage, Swindon. Merrifield, R. 1987 The Archaeology of Ritual and Magic. B T Batsford, London. Moschakis, K. 1998 Ο Κεραμικός Κλίβανος Κ3 στον Φιλώτα Φλώρινας. Αρχαιολογικά Ανάλεκτα εξ Αθηνών 29–31: 189–199. Papadopoulos, J. K. 2000 Skeletons in Wells: Towards an Archaeology of Social Exclusion in the Ancient Greek World. In Madness, Disability and Social Exclusion. The Archaeology and Anthropology of Difference, edited by J. Hubert, pp. 96–118. Routledge, London.

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Politis, N. G. 1982 Το Ελληνικό δημοτικό τραγούδι. Εκδόσεις Κ. Τζεβελέκου, Athens. Roberts, C. A. 1996 Forensic Anthropology 1: The Contribution of Biological Anthropology to Forensic Contexts. In Studies in Crime: An Introduction to Forensic Archaeology, edited by J. Hunter, C. Roberts, and A. Martin, pp. 101–121. B T Batsford, London. Rotroff, S. I., L. M. Little, and L. M. Snyder 1999 The Re-analysis of a Well Deposit from the Second Century BC in the Athenian Agora: Animal Sacrifice and Infanticide in Late Hellenistic Athens? American Journal of Archaeology 103: 284–285. Scheuer, L., and S. Black 2000 Developmental Juvenile Osteology. Academic Press, London. Shay, T. 1985 Differentiated Treatment of Deviancy at Death as Revealed in Anthropological and Archaeological Material. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 4: 221–241. Smythe, D. C. 1997 Women as Outsiders. In Women, Men and Eunuchs. Gender in Byzantium, edited by E. James, pp. 149–167. Routledge, London. Spyropoulos, H. S. 1998 Τα ερωτικά και τα Αιμοσταγή του Ηροδότου. Εκδόσεις Πατάκη, Athens. Stewart, P. 1999 The destruction of Statues in Late Antiquity. In Constructing Identities in Late Antiquity, edited by R. Miles, pp. 159–189. Routledge, London. Taylor, A. 2003 Burial with the Romans. British Archaeology 69: 14–19. Taylor, T. 1997 The Prehistory of Sex. Four Million Years of Human Sexual Culture. Bantam Books, New York. 2002 The Buried Soul. How Humans invented Death. Fourth Estate, London. Thompson, J. C. 2010 Women in the Ancient World. The Status, Role and Daily Life of Women in the Ancient Civilisations of Egypt, Rome, Athens, Israel and Babylonia. Electronic document, http://www.womenintheancientworld.com/women_in_ancient_ rome.htm [accessed June 26, 2017]. Tsaliki, A. 2001 Vampires beyond Legend: A Bioarchaeological Approach. In Proceedings of the 13th European Meeting of the Paleopathology Association. Chieti, Italy: 18th–23rd September 2000, edited by M. La Verghetta and L. Capasso, pp. 295–300. Edigrafital S.p.A., Teramo. 2008 An Investigation of Extraordinary Human Body Disposals, with Special Reference to Necrophobia. A Multi-disciplinary Analysis with case Studies from Greece and Cross-Cultural Comparisons. PhD dissertation, University of Durham, Durham.

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Ucko, P. J. 1969 Ethnography and Archaeological Interpretation of Funerary Remains. World Archaeology 1(2): 262–280. van Gennep, A. 1960 The Rites of Passage. Routledge, London. Wace, E. B. 1954 Mycenae 1939–1953, Part VI: The Cyclopean Terrace Building and the Deposit of Pottery Beneath It. Annual of the British School at Athens 49: 267–291. Wait, G. A. 1995 Burial and the Otherworld. In The Celtic World, edited by M. J. Green, pp. 489–511. Routledge, London. White, T. D. 1991 Human Osteology. Academic Press, San Diego.

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11 Variation beyond the Grave Contextualizing Unusual Burials in Early Medieval Bohemia

L au r e n Ho sek

Social bioarchaeology offers an interdisciplinary perspective to confront the interpretive challenges presented by deviant burials. Such an approach incorporates osteological, archaeological, historical, and other types of evidence into the study of archaeological skeletal remains (Agarwal and Glencross 2011; Sofaer 2006; Zuckerman and Armelagos 2011). Importantly, social bioarchaeology contributes a detailed and contextualized reading of mortuary variation beyond straightforward typological classifications of deviance. While the efficacy of the terminology has been discussed elsewhere (Aspöck 2008; Knüsel 2014; Murphy 2008), collectively describing burials that deviate from the norm as “atypical” or “unusual” (or the more loaded term “deviant”) obscures the potential variation within these alternative mortuary practices. Additionally, the many idiosyncrasies in body position and other mortuary characteristics become further complicated in terms of who receives such unusual treatment. Variation in the age, sex, status, and life histories of individuals with unusual mortuary treatment is such that a single explanation for these practices is often insufficient (Murphy 2008; Reynolds 2009). One archaeological indicator of unusual mortuary treatment is the position of the body in the grave. As the individuals placed in atypical positions often do not fall into one subset of a population, subsequent analysis must be carefully contextualized to capture the nuances of these mortuary practices. Some of these individuals may exhibit bioarchaeological evidence of disability

or disease, particular social positions, or unusual life circumstances or deaths (Betsinger and Scott 2014; Murphy 2008; Weiss-Krejci 2008). This chapter presents a contextualized discussion of unusual burials at a tenth-century cemetery in Bohemia, in what is now the Czech Republic. Most burials in Central Europe during the latter half of the early medieval period (eighth–tenth centuries) are extended, supine inhumations (Barford 2008; Čulíková 2011; Navrátilová 2005). Among these normative burials, however, can be found interments in which the body is placed in an unusual position. These atypical forms include prone, flexed, crouched, disarticulated, decapitated, multiple interment, the inclusion of stones on the body, and other arrangements (Čulíková 2011; Hanuliak 2007; Reynolds 2009). Several examples of unusual mortuary treatment are examined here, along with osteological analyses of these individuals. Using a social bioarchaeology approach, I evaluate skeletal evidence to determine whether health, manner of death, or other life circumstances may have influenced a particular mortuary practice. Interpretations of each type of unusual burial highlight how age, sex, status, and other factors may contribute to the treatment of the deceased. These unusual burials do not conform to a single interpretive pattern, and it is in this diversity that we begin to see the many manifestations of ritual and ideological tensions accompanying the Christianization of Central Europe during the early medieval period.

Libice nad Cidlinou and Early Medieval Bohemia In the ninth and tenth centuries, Slavic-speaking Czech tribes in the Central European lowland region of Bohemia were coalescing around a political administration based in Prague. This centralization followed the collapse of the Great Moravian Empire to the east and conflicts within the Frankish Empire to the west (Curta 2009; Gojda 1991). The fortified settlement of Libice nad Cidlinou (Libice) was located about 50 km east of Prague on the floodplain of the Cidlina River, near its confluence with the larger Elbe River. Several regional trade routes intersected here, and the site had historical links to wider political transformation and emergent Christianity in Central Europe (Mařík 2009; Sláma 2000). Concerted efforts to develop Christian institutions in Bohemia and other parts of Central Europe began in the mid-ninth century. The process of Christianization was driven primarily by elites attempting to establish their sover206

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eignty on the periphery of Western Christendom (Font 2008). In this sense, conversion was part of a larger strategy of consolidating power, claiming legitimacy, and making connections to the wider Christian world (Urbańczyk 2008). Although medieval chroniclers describe the Christianization of Bohemia in terms of sweeping conversion events in the second half of the ninth century, archaeological and other historical evidence suggests that Christianization was a complex and ongoing negotiation of ritual, belief, and material culture throughout the tenth century and beyond (Sommer 2000; Urbańczyk 2008). For example, while cemeteries emerged around churchyards, burial also continued outside of settlement areas with no associated ecclesiastical structures. These grave-field cemeteries tended to adhere to Christian burial traditions but may have also been spaces for alternate rituals and distinctive mortuary variation (Barford 2001).

Figure 11.1. Libice nad Cidlinou archaeological site survey. Features of note: (A) Fortified enclosure with church and cemetery, (B) settlement area, (C) Kanín cemetery. Courtesy of Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague.

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Figure 11.2. Kanín II cemetery excavation at Libice nad Cidlinou. Adapted from Mařík (2009).

The site complex of Libice is composed of a fortified central enclosure with an adjacent settlement and a large agricultural hinterland (Křivánek and Mařík 2009; Mařík 2009; Princová 2000) (fig. 11.1). Around a dozen early medieval burial sites are part of this landscape (Mařík 2009; Turek 1971). One of these, designated the Kanín cemetery, is located on the opposite bank of the Cidlina from the main settlement area (Mařík 2009). While it is estimated to contain more than 2,700 graves, partial excavations conducted in three areas of the cemetery (Kanín I–III) have thus far yielded a total of 213 burials. Most of these burials are from the area of Kanín II (fig. 11.2), excavated by the Institute of Archaeology in Prague from 1961 to 1970 (Princová and Mařík 2006). 208

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Skeletal remains were not preserved in a number of these graves, while others were damaged by modern sand quarrying. Still other remains have been misplaced in archival confusion over the past few decades (Mařík 2009). A remaining total of 143 individuals were identified in the repository of the National Museum of Prague and analyzed for this work. Illustrations and photographs from the 1960s field seasons document that most burials (78%) were extended, supine inhumations with the head to the west, typical of Central European mortuary practices in the early medieval period (Mařík 2009). Many burials in the Kanín II area are skewed slightly on a northwest-southeast axis. Fewer than half the burials (45%) contain at least one artifact in the grave: often a ceramic vessel or an iron knife, but also jewelry, belt buckles, and other weapons and iron implements (Mařík 2009, 2014). The presence of certain artifacts, particularly ceramic vessels that may have contained offerings of food, indicates that some alternative mortuary traditions persisted alongside Christian burial rituals (Pokorný and Mařík 2006; Poláček 2008). However, the most striking feature of this cemetery is the variation in body position, suggesting significant diversity in mortuary practices.

Atypical Mortuary Practices at the Kanín Cemetery Of the 143 individuals analyzed from the Kanín II area, 32 individuals (22%) were buried in an atypical manner (table 11.1). This group includes three multiple interments with eight individuals among them. The observed atypical burial characteristics include flexed, crouched, lying on the side, prone, disarticulated, and multiple interment. These types of burials are found in cemeteries throughout early medieval Central Europe and the frequency of atypical burial at Kanín is not unusual for the region (Čulíková 2011; Hanuliak 2007; Mařík 2009). For example, at the contemporaneous early medieval Czech site of Budeč, close to a third of the burials were considered atypical (Štefan and Krutina 2009). At the same time, the Kanín cemetery is unique in some respects. While grave robbery or other disturbances after burial likely account for some cases of unusual body positions (Drozdová 2005; Štefan and Krutina 2009; Turek 1971), archaeological evidence of such practices is largely absent at Kanín (Mařík 2009). Likewise, the use of stones in burials is rare at Kanín. Stones are often found in other early medieval burial contexts as lining for graves as well as apotropaic measures (i.e., preventing the dead from moving) (Čulíková 2011; Drozdová 2005; Štefan and Krutina 2009). Contextualizing Unusual Burials in Early Medieval Bohemia

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Table 11.1. Normative and atypical burials at Kanín II Agea

Sex

62 88 100 81 76 139 99 126 52 67 48 59 123 20

SA SA SA SA YA MA MA MA OA OA OA OA OA OA

I I I I M F M M F F F M M I

M U LT I P L E 185c 92 91 185b 79 78 80 185a

INTERMENT SA I SA I SA I SA I YA F YA M MA M OA F

PRONE 57 98 75

MA MA OA

Burial

Artifacts and Other Data

FLEXED

F M F

SIDE OUTSTRE TCHED 112 YA F 102 YA F 86 MA I CROUCHED 120 YA 156 OA

M F

D I S A R T I C U L AT E D 125 YA 101 YA

M M

a

Oriented NE-SW Arm flexed Oriented NE-SW Arm flexed, on side, buckle, oriented SE-NW Arms flexed, on side, earring, oriented NE-SW Arms flexed Arm flexed, legs crossed, ceramic vessel, iron Arms flexed, oriented SE-NW Arm flexed, earrings Arms flexed, on side, oriented NE-SW Arms flexed, ceramic vessel

With 185a, 185b Flexed, with 91 With 92 Crouched, earrings, with 185a, 185c With 78, 80 With 79, 80 With 78, 79 Earrings, bead, knife, with 185b, 185c

Oriented SW-NE

Arms flexed Arms flexed, earrings, metal disks, amulet box, leather

Knife, spurs, wooden vessel, buckles, belt endpiece

SA = subadult, YA = young adult, MA = middle adult, OA = old adult.

Bioarchaeological attempts to identify osteological evidence for differential mortuary treatment have met with mixed results (Arcini 2009; Betsinger and Scott 2014; Gregoricka et al. 2014; Hadley 2010; Murphy 2008; Reynolds 2009); however, the analysis of skeletal remains can reveal demographic trends in mortuary practices and indicate some potential reasons for differential treatment. For example, age and sex profiles at Kanín indicate that females were more likely to receive unusual mortuary treatment than males. Nearly a third of females (10 out of 31) received atypical treatment, as opposed to about 1 in 5 males (9 out of 43). The age distributions among adults (young adult = 20–34 years, middle adult = 35–49, and old adult = 50+, after Buikstra and Ubelaker 1994) are roughly the same for both normative and atypical burials. Apart from one case involving multiple interment, subadults under the age of 9.5 years were accorded normal burial treatment throughout the cemetery; however, all seven individuals at Kanín between the ages of 9.5 and 15.5 years were found in atypical positions, suggesting that death in later childhood and adolescence may have required differential mortuary response in this community. Unusual burial treatment sometimes correlates with markers of physical difference such as trauma or perceived disabilities (Hadley 2010; Murphy 2008). For example, while the Kanín population overall has a comparatively low rate of trauma for early medieval sites (Šlaus et al. 2012), a higher proportion (29%) of the atypical adult individuals exhibit evidence of trauma than the rest of the adult burial population (13%). However, this difference in frequencies was not found to be statistically significant (χ2 = 2.93, ρ = 0.087). Likewise, strangers, foreigners, and others with an “outsider” status might receive different mortuary treatment (Charlier 2008; Lucy and Reynolds 2002). At the crossroads of several trade routes (Sláma 2000), some nonlocal individuals may have died at Libice. Future molecular analysis will determine whether individuals with unusual body positions at Kanín have nonlocal isotopic signatures. A binary burial typology of “normative” and “deviant” is insufficiently nuanced to account for the variation in early medieval Czech mortuary practices. While it is clear that a subset of the burial population deviates from the norm, these individuals do so in a wide variety of ways. It is important to explore the contingencies that might result in this spectrum of unusual mortuary treatment. The remainder of this chapter will profile several unusual burial forms with examples from the Kanín skeletal series (fig. 11.3). These cases demonstrate the variation present in burial categories and the utility of exploring multiple interpretations through a social bioarchaeological lens. Contextualizing Unusual Burials in Early Medieval Bohemia

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Figure 11.3. Kanín II atypical burial examples: (a) Burial 139: flexed, with earring 1 enlarged; (b) Burial 185(a–c): multiple interment; (c) Burial 98: prone. Courtesy of Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague.

Materials and Methods The 143 individuals from the Kanín skeletal series were examined macroscopically in the laboratory at the National Museum in Prague. Age and sex were assessed using standard techniques (Buikstra and Ubelaker 1994; Moorrees et al. 1963; Lovejoy et al. 1985; Schaeffer et al. 2009; Scheuer and Black 2004). Pathology and trauma were recorded based on the Smithsonian coding system (Owsley et al. 1995). Burial position was determined from descriptive site reports, burial illustrations, and excavation photographs (Mařík 2009).

Flexed Burial Flexed burial is the most common type of atypical burial at Kanín, with 14 flexed burials accounting for 43% of the atypical burials (table 11.1). Burials that involved the legs bent to a lesser degree at the hips and knees were included in this category (as opposed to the tightly flexed “crouched” position) (Lucy 2000); however, there was substantial variation within this designation. In some cases, the legs were also 212

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crossed over each other, or the arms were likewise bent or folded in some way. Most of the flexed burials were positioned supine, but several were positioned with the body lying on either the right or left side in addition to bent limbs. The variation within this one burial type draws attention to the nuances of mortuary treatment in this cemetery as well as to the fact that these different flexed positions may not represent a single ritual or mortuary behavior. A variety of factors, such as a diversity of ritual and beliefs, regional mortuary variation, status differences, unique death circumstances, or some combination therein may contribute to these different forms of flexed burial (Dunn 2009). A closer look at one flexed burial at Kanín will help to illustrate this interpretive complexity. Burial 139 was located in the southwest corner of the excavated area of Kanín II (fig. 11.2) and contained the flexed skeleton of a middle adult female (fig. 11.3a). The body was positioned with the head to the east, in opposition to most other graves at Libice. The body was placed on its left side with the left hand at the face and the right arm outstretched. The left leg was bent sharply at the knee beneath the flexed right leg. Skeletal pathology for this individual is limited to mild degenerative joint disease, particularly in the spine. The teeth, however, exhibit activity markers indicating engagement with particular materials. Small notches are present on the occlusal margins of the maxillary left incisors and canine. Chipping around these notches has resulted in the loss of small flakes of enamel (3 mm in length) on the labial surface of the incisors. These notches can be compared to seamstress or tailor notches, developed through habitually holding needles or pulling thread with the teeth (Scott 1997). This individual was using her teeth as tools, possibly working with fibers, needles, or some other material. Indeed, textiles played a significant role in early medieval Bohemia, one that went far beyond clothing the body. Fine, locally woven scarves could be used as common currency alongside metal coins (Bažant et al. 2010). A bronze earring located next to the left temple was the only artifact associated with this burial. The earring was made from thick wire coiled into a tight spiral. While many female burials and even some subadult burials at Kanín contained jewelry, the style of this particular earring is unique to this cemetery, and unusual to the region. Unlike the simple circlets with curled ends common to early medieval Czech contexts (often referred to as “temple rings”), this style of coiled earring was more typical of early medieval jewelry in Moravia, the Central European region to the east of Bohemia (Mařík 2009; Ungerman 2005). Burial practices in Moravia were similar to those in Bohemia (Drozdová 2005; Poláček 2008), and Contextualizing Unusual Burials in Early Medieval Bohemia

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so it cannot be assumed that this unusual treatment reflects a “foreign” mortuary tradition; however, this unusual piece of material culture does draw attention to other ways in which difference was made manifest in Burial 139. While it is not always the case that atypical burial positions correspond to osteological evidence of difference, the notching of Burial 139’s maxillary teeth suggests an uncommon and potentially gendered activity in this community. Only one other individual from the Kanín II area exhibits similar notching on the anterior dentition: an adult probable female buried in a normative extended position. The inclusion of an artifact with foreign origin or design suggests that this individual had social connections to another region. In this case, the flexed position and unusual orientation of Burial 139 may be related to an association with a distant community or a particular socioeconomic role.

Multiple Interment Multiple interment refers to the burial of more than one individual in a single grave. These burials may be contemporaneous, in which the bodies are interred at the same time, or consecutive, in which the grave is reopened for additional interments (Reynolds 2009; Stoodley 2002). This type of burial is the second most common form of atypical treatment at Kanín, in which eight individuals were interred among three graves (table 11.1). One grave contained three adult individuals buried together, while another contained two subadults. A third grave (Burial 185) contained an adult and two subadults. As with the flexed burials, the compositions of the multiple interments at Kanín were variable, defying a singular explanation for their presence. Burial 185(a–c) was excavated in 2004 during the construction of a roadway between the two excavated areas of Kanín II (fig. 11.2). This multiple interment contained three individuals: a supine old adult female, a crouched older subadult, and fragmentary perinatal remains (fig. 11.3b). The grave was irregularly shaped, but the heads were aligned to the west as with most other graves at Kanín. Burial 185(a), an old adult female, lay supine with the head to the west. The femora were outstretched, but the lower leg bones had been removed, likely during the deposition of Burial 185(b). Several artifacts were associated with this individual, including fragments of an iron knife lying next to the right arm. Two bronze rings were located on either side of the cranium, and beneath the mandible was an oval bead made of black and white glass. The skeletal remains are fragmentary with poor preservation and exhibit moderate degenerative 214

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joint disease on the present joint surfaces as well as severe dental attrition, typical of older individuals in this population. Burial 185(b), an older subadult (14.5–15.5 years of age) of indeterminate sex, was located in the southeast half of the grave. The remains were in a crouched position lying on the left side with the arms and legs tightly flexed and the hands at the face. The only artifact associated with this burial was an earring found on the left side of the skull: a bronze “temple ring” with a curled end common at Kanín and other early medieval Czech burial contexts (Mařík 2009; Ungerman 2005). Like Burial 185(a), the skeletal remains are incomplete and fragmentary. Pathology is limited to mild, healed periostitis on the fragmentary shafts of the leg bones. The final set of remains associated with this burial, Burial 185(c), consisted of the fragmentary cranial elements of a perinate (approximately 34–38 weeks) lying to the right of Burial 185(a) near the wall of the grave. No pathology is present. It is not clear that this was an intentional interment with the other individuals or whether the fragmentary remains represent a burial disturbed during the deposition of the other two; however, the perinatal remains were found on the floor of the grave pit at the same level as the other individuals. In the case of the two older individuals, the sequence of deposition is clearer. The subadult individual was most likely interred sometime after the adult female. The removal of the lower legs of Burial 185(a) suggests that the remains may have been at least partially decomposed when the second body was interred. Burial 185(a) may have been a normative interment, disturbed by the interment of Burial 185(b); however, such overlapping deposition is not seen in any other part of the cemetery and there was no recorded evidence of a secondary pit (Mařík 2009). All three sets of remains were found at the bottom of the burial pit, suggesting that this placement together was intentional.

Prone Burial Prone, or facedown, burial was less common at Kanín than flexed or multiple interment. Three prone burials represented 9% of the atypical burials (table 11.1). Two adult females were placed prone with heads to the west, and an adult male (Burial 98) was prone with the head to the southwest, on a different axis than most burials at Kanín. The graves of the male and one of the females were irregularly shaped and small relative to the size of the body. These two bodies were positioned both facedown and slightly flexed. In contrast, the grave of the other Contextualizing Unusual Burials in Early Medieval Bohemia

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female was of normal size and shape for the cemetery, with the body outstretched and prone. Once again, the variation within even these three burials suggests that a prone position may warrant several interpretations in this cemetery context. Burial 98 contained the prone body of a middle adult male (35–49 years). The grave was located near the northern margin of the excavated area of Kanín II, adjacent to another atypical burial, flexed Burial 99 (fig. 11.2). In fact, the northeastern edge of Burial 98 cut slightly into the southwestern edge of Burial 99. The grave of Burial 98 was roughly rectangular and faced north. At only 166 cm in length, the grave was relatively short compared with other adult burials, and at 99 cm deep, it was the deepest grave excavated in this cemetery. No artifacts were associated with this burial. The body was placed facedown with the legs slightly flexed and the feet leaning up on the northeast wall (fig. 11.3c). The skull was rotated superiorly and to the right, so that it was resting on the occiput and facing the northwest corner of the grave. It is unclear whether this positioning required the head to be separated from the body during the burial or if it occurred sometime after; however, there are no identifiable cut marks on the cranium or vertebral fragments. The mandible was still in anatomical position, so if the head was removed for such placement, it was likely before much decomposition had occurred. Observed pathological conditions include widespread healed periostitis on the leg bone shafts as well as severe attrition and advanced dental disease. Additionally, this individual exhibits diffuse, blunt force trauma to the left parietal and frontal at the coronal suture. The injury is well healed, with the suture obliterated around an oval ectocranial depression measuring 20 mm in length. Endocranial remodeling is present in the form of a smooth bony nodule immediately underlying the ectocranial depression. This individual may have been deliberately placed in association with another atypical burial (flexed Burial 99). It could also be significant that Burial 98 was the deepest grave in the excavated portion of this cemetery. Deeper graves required more resources to create and were often reserved for individuals of elite social status (Havelková et al. 2013). On the other hand, it is not uncommon for medieval atypical burials to be deeper than their normative counterparts, possibly as an apotropaic measure (Lucy and Reynolds 2002). The trauma suffered by this individual at some point in his life is a characteristic shared by more than one-quarter of all atypical individuals, suggesting that socioeconomic status or other life circumstance might have placed them at a greater risk of injury or interpersonal violence. 216

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Discussion The diverse manifestations of unusual burials at Kanín highlight the complexities of mortuary ritual and community reaction to particular circumstances or individuals. The burial record can reflect social identities, ideologies, personal relationships, and community inclusion and exclusion in a variety of ways (Murphy 2008; Reynolds 2009). A burial that deviates from the norm may not necessarily be due to misconduct on the part of the individual, but rather to extraneous circumstances such as disease, accidents, or extraordinary kinds of death (Weiss-Krejci 2008). Outsiders or the socially marginalized might receive different mortuary treatment reflecting their position within (or without) a community (Charlier 2008; Farrell 2011, Lucy and Reynolds 2002; Tsaliki 2008). Alternatively, unusual burials may represent mortuary traditions in competition with, or complementary to, more dominant practices (Cherryson 2008). Extended, supine inhumations emerged in Central Europe prior to the arrival of Christian institutions, replacing cremation as the primary form of burial during the eighth century (Poláček 2008); however, it appears that other mortuary traditions existed alongside Christian practices into the tenth century and beyond. Closely tied with regional politics, local responses to conversion forces could involve superficial compliance with new rituals and laws without necessarily a fundamental transformation in belief and value systems (Curta 2009; Gilchrist 2015; Paxton 1990). Offerings of food, amulets, and items of wealth and status are found in burials throughout early Christian cemeteries in Bohemia (Barford 2001; Sommer 2000). Indeed, 18 burials at Kanín contained ceramic vessels, including two of the atypical burials. Pollen analysis on the contents of one of the ceramic vessels from Kanín revealed the presence of oats and honey, possibly related to mortuary feasting or representing a food offering (Pokorný and Mařík 2006). The eleventh-century Czech chronicler, Cosmas of Prague, noted continuing conflict with “half-pagans” in Bohemia, whom he described as baptized Christians continuing to practice some older, non-Christian rituals (in Wolverton 2009). As a clergyman, Cosmas was particularly appalled by “the profane jests, which they performed over the dead, rousing useless ghosts, wearing masks on their faces, and reveling” (in Wolverton 2009: 184). Burial in Bohemia clearly continued to be influenced by local practices, despite tensions with Church orthodoxy. Burials in which the individual is flexed, crouched, or placed on one side are often interpreted as representing residual pagan traditions, particularly in Contextualizing Unusual Burials in Early Medieval Bohemia

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Anglo-Saxon cemeteries (Lucy 2000; Reynolds 2009); however, this explanation does not hold up in Central Europe, where cremation was the norm prior to extended inhumation (Poláček 2008; Sommer 2000). More robust interpretations for this region are that flexed burials could be an accepted alternative to extended supine burials, proscribed by family or community practices, or a means of denoting outsider status (Farrell 2011; Reynolds 2009). Despite the relatively high frequency of flexed burials at Kanín, it is worth cautioning against an assumption that flexed burials might be another “norm” in early medieval Bohemia; the other large, contemporaneous burial site in the Libice site agglomeration has no flexed burials at all (Turek 1971). The wide variation in flexed positions at Kanín suggests that more than one of the above interpretations may apply in this context. Interpretations of multiple interments include burial expediency, familial relationships between the decedents, and contemporaneous deaths (Reynolds 2009; Stoodley 2002). No single explanation can account for the variation seen in cases of multiple burial across Europe, particularly because many multiple interments exhibit other unusual practices such as different body positions or orientations (Stoodley 2002). The diversity present in the multiple interments at Kanín likewise engenders numerous interpretive possibilities. Multiple deaths within a short period of time may be indicative of contagious disease (Reynolds 2009; Stoodley 2002). Several important trade routes, including an overland road into Poland that crossed the Elbe River at Libice (Sláma 2000), may have facilitated the movement of people and pathogens at this site. Alternatively, the fact that two out of the three multiple interments at Kanín included the remains of subadults suggests that the burial of children together, or adults with children, had some kind of significance. Some children may have been perceived as particularly vulnerable in death, requiring companionship or protection (Gilchrist 2012). On the other hand, the deaths of the young may have added value or spiritual purity to the burial of adults (Crawford 2007; Gilchrist 2012; Hadley 2010). Several of the unusual burials at Kanín exhibit characteristics that have been interpreted as evidence of punishment or fear of the dead, including disarticulation and prone burial. Early medieval Central Europe was rife with anxiety toward the dangerous dead (Barford 2001; Navrátilová 2005). Deaths from disease, violence, and accidents, as well as the occurrence of misfortune such as a poor harvest were thought to result in certain dead returning to trouble the living (Aspöck 2011; Hanuliak 2007; Tsaliki 2008). In order to address these 218

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fears, some traditional practices of dealing with the dangerous dead were likely reinterpreted and performed alongside Christian rituals with an uneasy relationship to Church doctrine (Čulíková 2011; Dunn 2009; Gilchrist 2012). Revenants, or the returning dead, required apotropaic mortuary practices to ward off their evil influences (Caciola 2016; Navrátilová 2005). Potential revenants were often identified in the early medieval period as individuals on the margins of society, those with aggressive or transgressive behavior, or those who died an unusual death (Arcini 2009; Dunn 2009). Measures to prevent revenants included placing the body facedown or limiting the corpse’s perceived movements through decapitation, disarticulation, burning, or binding (Aspöck 2011; Caciola 2016; Farrell 2011; Tsaliki 2008). However, not all prone burials necessarily connote punishment or deviancy. In fact, some prone burials have been interpreted from a penitential standpoint or one of reverent humility (Betsinger and Scott 2014; Gilchrist and Sloane 2005; Hadley 2010). In this light, burial facedown may reflect the devout or penitent in a community rather than the transgressive. It is, of course, significant that while all the burials discussed here exhibit variation in body position, they have one thing in common: burial in a cemetery among other, normally interred individuals. The implication is thus one of differentiation, rather than exclusion (Hadley 2010). Cosmas of Prague complained about the continued practice of burial by crossroads or in forests (Wolverton 2009). Indeed, several clandestine burials have been found throughout the Libice site agglomeration (Mařík 2009). In contrast, the individuals described above were interred within this community space, albeit in unusual ways.

Conclusion The unusual burials from the Kanín cemetery are difficult both to categorize and to interpret. Binary burial typologies contrasting “deviant” and “normative” can oversimplify and limit our understanding of these diverse ways of dealing with the dead. Even within categories of body positions, we see enough diversity of forms to suggest many contingencies and interpretive possibilities. Investigating this mortuary variation requires integrating these typologies with contextualized descriptions that draw on multiple lines of evidence. The interdisciplinary perspective of social bioarchaeology allows for a more nuanced approach to mortuary variation. As seen in this cemetery case study, atypical treatment does not align with age, gender, or status categories. AddiContextualizing Unusual Burials in Early Medieval Bohemia

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tionally, while skeletal markers of certain activities or trauma may contribute to unusual treatment, this is not always the case. A bioarchaeological focus on the idiosyncrasies of these burials broadens our understanding of early medieval mortuary practices. The interpretive possibilities engendered by these burials have provided a window into intersections of local traditions, Christian ideologies and practices, and the social identity of the dead.

Acknowledgments This material is based on work supported by the NSF GRFP under Grant No. 2012142383. I would like to thank the editors for the invitation to participate in this volume. I would also like to express my gratitude to reviewers for their thoughtful commentary, as well as to Dr. Shannon Novak, Dr. Joan Coltrain, Dr. Jan Mařík, Dr. Petr Velemínský, and to the National Museum in Prague for access to research collections.

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Sommer, Petr 2000 Christian Burials. In Europe’s Centre around AD 1000, edited by Alfried Wieczore and Hans-Martin Hinz, pp 272–273. Theiss, Stuttgart. Štefan, Ivo, and Ivan Krutina 2009 Raně Středověké Sídliště, Hromadný Hrob a Pohřebiště na Budči (Poloha Na Týnici): Ke Vztahu Archeologie a “Událostní Historie” (The Early Medieval Settlement, Mass Grave and Burial Grounds at Budeč (Na Týnici Site): Archaeological and “Event History” Perspective). Památky Archeologické C: 119–212. Stoodley, Nick 2002 Multiple Burials, Multiple Meanings? Interpreting the Early Anglo-Saxon Multiple Interment. In Burial in Early England and Wales, edited by Sam Lucy and Andrew Reynolds, pp. 103–121. Society for Mediaeval Archaeology, London. Tsaliki, Anastasia 2008 Unusual Burials and Necrophobia: An Insight into the Burial Archaeology of Fear. In Deviant Burial in the Archaeological Record, edited by Eileen Murphy, pp. 1–18. Oxbow Books, Oxford. Turek, Rudolf 1971 Libice le Bourgwall Princier du X. Siècle. Národní Muzeum v Praze, Praha. Ungerman, Šimon 2005 Ženský Šperk Staršího Velkomoravského Horizontu. Archeologické Rozhledy 57: 707–749. Urbańczyk, Przemysław 2008 Early State Formation in East Central Europe. In East Central and Eastern Europe in the Early Middle Ages, edited by Florin Curta, pp. 139–151. Blackwell, London. Weiss-Krejci, Estella 2008 Unusual Life, Unusual Death and the Fate of the Corpse: A Case Study from Dynastic Europe. In Deviant Burial in the Archaeological Record, edited by Eileen Murphy, pp. 169–190. Oxbow Books, Oxford. Wolverton, Lisa 2009 The Chronicle of the Czechs by Cosmas of Prague, edited and translated by Lisa Wolverton. Catholic University of America Press, Washington, D.C. Zuckerman, Molly K., and George J. Armelagos 2011 The Origins of Biocultural Dimensions in Bioarchaeology. In Social Bioarchaeology, edited by Sabrina C. Agarwal and Bonnie A. Glencross, pp. 15–43. WileyBlackwell, West Sussex.

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12 Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to Non-Normative Burials in Finland in the Eleventh–Thirteenth Centuries AD U l l a Moi l a n e n

The burial traditions in Finland at the turn of the first millennium were generally very similar to the ones in the surrounding areas in Sweden, Estonia, and Russian Karelia until the end of the Viking Period (ca. eleventh century) (e.g., Hiekkanen 2010). The prevailing burial custom was cremation, and the cremated remains were scattered in large, collective cremation cemeteries, or burial cairns/mounds (Kivikoski 1966: 51). The first inhumation cemeteries in Finland appear in the region of Southern Satakunta (fig. 12.1) as early as the seventh century AD. These inhumation cemeteries have been interpreted as dominantly pagan (Cleve 1948: 71–72). In southwestern Finland (Finland Proper, fig. 12.1), inhumations increased in the eleventh century with the transition to Christianity (e.g., Hiekkanen 2010; Kivikoski 1966: 65). The first inhumations were made in coffins, either in the old cremation cemeteries or in locally established graveyards around villages or family chapels (Cleve 1948; Hiekkanen 2010; Kivikoski 1966: 65; Purhonen 1998; Ruohonen 2013). The east-west oriented graves and the complete lack of grave goods have been seen as a sign of fully adopted Christianity (Hiekkanen 2010; Purhonen 1998). In the inland regions, such as Häme (fig. 12.1), the adoption of Christianity was a slower process than in southwest Finland, and congregations were not established until the beginning of the thirteenth century (Hiekkanen 2010: 343–344). The latest burials with grave goods date to the turn of the thirteenth

Figure 12.1. Locations of the inhumation cemeteries and the regions mentioned in the text. (1) Hailuoto chapel. (2) Osmanmäki-Käräjämäki, Eura. (3) Luistari, Eura. (4) Köyliönsaari, Köyliö. (5) Kirkkomäki, Turku. (6) Rikala, Salo. (7) Mikkola, Ylöjärvi. (8) Nokia, Hakamäki. (9) Vilusenharju, Tampere. (10) Toppolanmäki, Valkeakoski. (11) Pahnainmäki, Hämeenlinna. (12) Makasiininmäki, Janakkala. (13) Santahaudanmäki, Hollola.

and fourteenth centuries (Purhonen 1998: 114), suggesting that religion alone cannot be used to explain the presence or absence of artifacts in the graves. Several studies on inhumation burials have concentrated on the identification of Christianization by looking at burial form (inhumation vs. cremation), the orientation of graves, and the decrease in the number of grave goods (Hiekkanen 2010; Hirviluoto 1987: 125; Kivikoski 1955; Purhonen 1998; Salonen 2014; Shepherd 1999). Usually, Pre-Christian and Christian burial practices have been seen as profoundly different from each other, and the research on Late Iron Age/Early Medieval (ca. tenth–thirteenth century) mortuary archaeology in Finland has long been focused on the study of the Christianization process, and the social changes the new religion brought (e.g., Kivikoski 1955; Purhonen 1998; Ruohonen 2013, 2016). Systematic research on non-normative burials in Finland has yet to be completed. It seems that Early Medieval (ca. eleventh–thirteenth century) burial practices in Finland were much more varied than previously thought, which might make it difficult to distinguish non-normative burials from the normal variation. Some references to “peculiar graves” have been made in previous archaeological literature (Cleve 1948; Sarkki-Isomaa 1986; Wessman 2010: 98–107), but they have often been described as curiosities, without adequate context. A few interpretations have been made, mostly with emphasis on religion (Christianity) as the reason for creating these distinct mortuary treatments (e.g., Purhonen 1998). Pre-Christian burial forms have been considered more varied than Christian burials, which have been assumed to be very similar in general. Non-normative burials have been explained as local variations within the pagan belief system, resulting in a lack of uniformity, an element seen in the widely accepted rituals of Christianity (Purhonen 1998: 164–165). The “peculiar” cases dating from the eleventh to thirteenth centuries have been explained as reactions deriving from the Christianization process, and religion-induced changes in the pagan belief system, which might have manifested as a fear of the dead (Keskitalo 1950; Lehtosalo-Hilander 1987: 3; Pälsi 1938: 32–35; Purhonen 1998: 163–165; Pälsi 1938: 32–35). This fear would have been related to the belief of the living dead. The Finnish Folklore Archives contain several accounts of both good and bad otherworldly entities. According to Juha Pentikäinen (1969: 96–97), the division between the “family dead” and “other dead” forms the foundation of ancient Finnish beliefs. “Other dead” were believed to be the ones who might disturb the living. The “family dead” refer to “home-wanderers,” people returning to their homes after death and continuing their “living” there. The reasons for revenants in folklore are dissatisfaction and vengeance (PenNon-Normative Burials in Finland, Eleventh–Thirteenth Centuries AD

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tikäinen 1969). The dead were believed to know how their bodies had been treated, and disrespectful or insufficient rituals might trigger their return (Leppälahti 2012: 83). Several stories also state that if a person dies a bad death—for example, accidental or abnormal, he or she will haunt the living. The notion of socially unacceptable ways of dying seems to correspond well with Scandinavian beliefs (Gardeła 2013a; Kanerva 2013). Most references to deviant burials in Finland focus on graves from the Häme region (fig. 12.1), where spearheads and other sharp objects were occasionally used as coffin nails (Purhonen 1998: 165; Wickholm 2006, 2009). Different interpretations have been proposed, ranging from a fear of the dead (e.g., LehtosaloHilander 1987: 3; Leppäaho 1936; Purhonen 1998: 165) to ancestor cult (Wessman 2010: 108; Wickholm 2006). However, the graves containing spearheads as coffin nails show evidence of different kinds of burial customs and rituals, e.g., individual burials and superimposed multiple burials, and furnished and unfurnished burials. The most recent references to deviant burials suggest that non-normative burials might contain peculiar artifacts, for example, typically male artifacts in female graves and vice versa (Kuokkanen 2008: 8). Mäntylä (2005) also mentions deviant graves when writing about double burials and unusual positioning of artifacts in the Early Medieval cemetery of Rikala in Salo. According to her, the comparative research on deviant burials may reveal information on symbolism at local levels (Mäntylä 2005: 134). Wessman (2010: 98–108) has considered graves containing older artifacts “peculiar,” as these graves contain artifacts possibly removed from older cemeteries. Additionally, there might be evidence that bones were removed from older cremation cemeteries and placed in the inhumation graves (Kuusela et al. 2013: 130, 132). Reanalysis of the burials and their stratigraphic information suggests that even many of the inhumation graves might have been opened already in prehistoric times (Moilanen 2015). Reopening of graves would explain certain stratigraphic features that have been interpreted as disturbance by grave robbers (Lehtosalo-Hilander 1982a: 15), as well as secondary bones and bone deposits in graves. These disturbances might have been more common than previously thought, which makes it unlikely that all the reopened graves or the ones with reused bone or artifact material, could be classified as deviant—that is, if “deviant” is defined as something rare or distinctive. The problem with several of these interpretations is that they focus on the grave goods, instead of considering the burial in its entirety, including the treatment of the corpse and the internal structures of the coffin and/or the burial 228

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pit. One of the most extensively studied non-normative burials in Finland is a single, medieval grave from Hailuoto in Northern Finland that has been analyzed from archaeological, bioarchaeological, and ethnohistorical perspectives (Núñez 2011, 2015; Paavola 1988). The burial was recovered from the churchyard of Hailuoto, on the northeast side of a late fourteenth- or early fifteenth-century Catholic chapel (Núñez 2011, 2015; Paavola 1988). The burial belonged to an adult male who had been decapitated and buried in a supine position without a coffin. The detached head had been buried with the body, beside the right humerus. An unusual detail—in addition to decapitation—was a wooden stake, positioned vertically through the man’s chest. Osteological analysis revealed that the individual had abnormal morphology of his right femur, and that he suffered from congenital craniosynostosis (premature cranial suture closure), which had led to facial deformation (Núñez 2011, 2015). Núñez (2011, 2015), relying on folk traditions, has suggested that this individual was executed for a crime, which in accordance with the person’s distinctive look, led to antirevenant practices. The research on this particular grave is the only research in Finland to date that has applied modern methods in the study of deviant burials. The grave is also a good example of how an individual’s distinctive physical appearance can affect attitudes toward them in both life and death. Similar methods and approaches can be applied to atypical burials in general.

Theory and Methods: Microarchaeology and Archaeothanatology In the past decade, mortuary studies have benefited from the rise of social microarchaeology, which seeks to recognize regular social practices behind diverse phenomena, and to identify social discourse in detail instead of making broad generalizations (Cornell and Fahlander 2002; Fahlander 2003; Fahlander and Oestigaard 2008). The theory discards the idea that burial practices are broad reflections of culture, identity, social status, or belief systems. Instead, a single burial equals a single event in a series of actions (e.g., Fahlander 2003: 80). According to the microarchaeological approach, a local perspective is required to identify social variability and strange phenomena that would otherwise disappear in a larger general analysis. The same generalization applies to Finnish mortuary archaeology. The lack of systematic study on deviant burials in Finland has led to an assumption that non-normative burials do not exist in the area. However, the concept of a “typical” inhumation burial—a body lying in a coffin in supine position, with or without a certain assemblage of artifacts— may be oversimplified and false. Non-Normative Burials in Finland, Eleventh–Thirteenth Centuries AD

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The reason most interpretations of Finnish burials are based on grave goods is the fact that organic material is poorly preserved in Finland’s acidic soil. On average, unburned bone decomposes almost completely in Finnish soil within 1,000 years (e.g., Taavitsainen 1997: 53), although local qualities of the soil, as well as grain size, microorganisms, and different chemical and physical factors also contribute to the rate of decomposition (Dent et al. 2004). The organic material in the grave is also affected by other taphonomical and biological processes during decomposition, which is why archaeothanatological analysis provides a useful tool for studying burials. Archaeothanatology focuses on the study of taphonomical processes, as well as human impact, for example, management and treatment of the corpse (Duday 2009; Duday et. al 2014; Knüsel 2014). With knowledge of the biological decomposition process, it is sometimes possible to reconstruct the original position in which the body was placed in the grave (Duday 2009; Duday et. al 2014; Knüsel 2014). Archaeothanatology also contributes to the identification of primary burials from secondary deposits and determines whether the decomposition happened in a void or in a filled space, and even whether the body was wrapped in a cloth (Duday 2009: 32–39, 45, 89–92). This method requires meticulous documentation and biological and osteological knowledge, which is why it is best applied in research that includes excavation. However, if sufficient excavation documentation is available, reconstruction of the decomposition process is possible even with material that was excavated decades ago (Tõrv 2015). The archaeothanatological method is even applicable to graves that contain only poorly preserved human remains (Geller 2014; Wright 2007), which is why the method may be crucial for studying Finnish inhumation burials. With the help of archaeothanatology it will be possible to recognize processes from the time of actual burial, and to gather maximum information on the burial itself. Next, I will present Finnish examples of Early Medieval burials that can be classified as deviant.

Example 1: Spearheads as Coffin Nails in Häme Region, Finland This group of burials is most often described as deviant in the Finnish archaeological record (i.e., Keskitalo 1950; Pälsi 1938; Sarkki-Isomaa 1986; Wessman 2010; Wickholm 2006, 2009). The graves contain spearheads, knives, harpoons, arrowheads, and other sharp objects, which have been struck through the coffin lid in the same manner as coffin nails (fig. 12.2a–b.). At least ten such graves are known today from six cemeteries: Tampere Vilusenharju, Hollola 230

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Figure 12.2. (A) Profile documentation of Tampere Vilusenharju grave 12 (after Sarasmo 1961). The vertically positioned spearheads are placed outside the coffin, meaning they cannot have been used as coffin nails. (B) Profile of Ylöjärvi Mikkola grave 1, showing the spearheads struck through the coffin lid (after Sarkki 1976).

Santahaudanmäki, Ylöjärvi Mikkola, Valkeakoski Toppolanmäki, Janakkala Makasiininmäki, Hämeenlinna (Kalvola) Pahnainmäki, and possibly Nokia Hakamäki (Moilanen 2017) (fig. 12.1). Most of the previous discussion of these burials has emphasized the artifacts used as coffin nails instead of focusing on how these burials relate either to other graves within the same cemeteries or to each other, how the buried individual was treated, and where the similarities and differences lie between these burials.

Vilusenharju Cemetery, Tampere Vilusenharju cemetery in Tampere (fig. 12.1) consists of a cremation cemetery and an inhumation cemetery dating to ca. AD 1000–1200 (Nallinmaa-Luoto 1978: 55, 240–241). Some of the artifacts with fire patina can be dated to the twelfth century, which suggests that cremations and inhumations coexisted in the cemetery for some time (Nallinmaa-Luoto 1978: 242). Of the approximately 50 inhumation graves excavated on the site, grave number 12 is among the most discussed (Nallinmaa-Luoto 1978: 12; Wessman 2010: 99; Wickholm 2006, 2009). The east-west oriented grave pit was fairly Non-Normative Burials in Finland, Eleventh–Thirteenth Centuries AD

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large (100 × 280 cm), with a 15–20 cm dark layer of soil indicating the decomposed coffin and body. According to Sarasmo (1961), the grave fill could not be observed very clearly because the upper parts of it had been destroyed by a bulldozer. Therefore, it is impossible to look for any signs of secondary disturbances, but the dark layer cutting through the grave and partly surrounding the grave pit might suggest that reopening took place at some point after the original inhumation (Aspöck 2011: 302). From the eastern part of the grave pit, a spot with soot and cremated bones was found. The bones were located in the grave fill above the coffin, in a fairly small circular area. It might be possible that the cremated bones were deliberately placed in the grave, perhaps on top of the coffin. The cremated bones belonged to two individuals, an adult of unknown sex and age, and a child under 14 years of age. Bones from a dog and a bear claw were also found in association with the inhumation in grave 12 (Lahtiperä 1977). Almost all the artifacts found in grave 12 (i.e., a silver-hilted sword, silver bracelet, silver penannular brooch, arrowheads, knives, bits (for horses), and a fragment of a scythe) originated from a cremation burial, as they bore fire patina and the silver in the sword hilt was partly melted. A knife, two arrowheads, two spearheads, and a fragment of the scythe were all placed in vertical positions in the burial. Sarasmo (1961) and several others (Nallinmaa-Luoto 1978: 12–13; Wessman 2010: 99; Wickholm 2006, 2009) have interpreted the vertically placed objects as coffin nails, but according to the excavation documentation and drawings made by Sarasmo (fig. 12.2a), they clearly cannot have been used for nailing the coffin lid shut as the majority were placed outside the coffin in a cluster. Of these burial inclusions, the spearheads and the scythe fragment were struck in a vertical position in the bottom of the grave pit along the eastern edge, most likely in the ground outside the coffin. The knife and the arrowhead, which were found in a vertical position along the western edge of the grave, had been struck in the bottom of the coffin rather than the lid.

Mikkola Cemetery, Ylöjärvi Grave 1 in Mikkola cemetery in Ylöjärvi (fig. 12.1) contained two spearheads struck vertically on both ends of the grave (fig. 12.2b). Both had remains of wood in their edges, suggesting that they had been almost fully struck through the coffin lid. In addition, a harpoon and two ordinary nails had been used as part of the coffin construction. A third spearhead was found resting on the skull, the tip on the ground (fig. 12.3a). According to Sarkki-Isomaa (1986: 148, 156), the purpose of the spearhead was to secure the individual’s head to the cof232

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fin. Based on the excavation documents, the individual was buried in a supine position with the head turned onto the right cheek. Although the bones have not been preserved well, it is possible to conclude that the decomposition of the body happened in a void, and that the bottom of the grave pit had been fairly flat. This means that the body was placed in a coffin, and the two spearheads were indeed struck through the coffin lid. The grave was dug in sandy soil which eventually filled the void of the coffin chamber as the body continued to decompose (Duday 2009; Duday et al. 2014; Knüsel 2014: 34). All this suggests that the body and the coffin were placed in a carefully dug pit. It can also be concluded that the third spearhead, which according to Sarkki-Isomaa (1986: 148, 156) “locked the individual’s head in the ground”, was in fact placed on top of the lid. As a result of decomposition of the coffin and the other organic remains in the grave, over time, the spearhead moved a few centimeters down in the grave pit to its final location. Similar movement of either bones or objects during decomposition have been observed by Duday (2009: 48–50) in his research on taphonomy and burials. Therefore, it can be said that only two of the spearheads in the grave were used as coffin nails, and the third may be interpreted as an ordinary grave gift. A sword found in Mikkola grave 1 had been placed on the lower limbs of the individual, the tip pointing toward his chest. This position has been considered unique in Finland (Sarkki-Isomaa 1986: 156; Wickholm 2006: 196), but in fact swords with similar orientation have possibly been found from Köyliö Köyliönsaari and Eura Osmanmäki-Käräjämäki cemeteries (Ailio 1912; Cleve 1978: 32–33; Tomanterä 1978) (figs. 12.1, 12.3b–c). Paula Purhonen (1998: 165) suggested that the Mikkola grave 1 sword symbolized the way the person had died, possibly a suicide. If this is true, the remainder of the grave goods can be seen as examples of anti-revenant measures used to counteract a bad death. Based on cranial suture closure, the Mikkola grave 1 individual lived to more than 60 years of age (Masset 1989), although the method is controversial and may be inaccurate as it often leads to overestimation of age (Uhl and Nawrocki 2010: 252). Skeletal preservation was poor, so determining the sex is impossible; however, the sword may indicate the individual was male (Sarkki-Isomaa 1986; Sarkki 1976), although this interpretation can be criticized, enabling more diverse interpretations of the burial. Major emphasis has been put on grave 1 in Mikkola cemetery, but previous studies have forgotten that at least one other grave from the same cemetery had sharp weapons used as nails on the lid of a coffin. This similar grave was found Non-Normative Burials in Finland, Eleventh–Thirteenth Centuries AD

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Figure 12.3. (A) Positioning of the sword and spearheads in Ylöjärvi Mikkola grave 1 (after Sarkki 1976). (B) Positioning of swords in Köyliö Köyliönsaari grave 17. The upper layers of the grave contained a sword pointing toward the individual’s head, leading to interpretation of a double burial (Cleve 1978: 32). However, only traces of one body were found, meaning both the swords may be connected to a single burial. (C) An unusual position of a sword in a grave in Osmanmäki-Käräjämäki, Eura (after Ailio 1912).

in 1959, and it was partly destroyed when a cable trench was dug. The surviving portion of the burial revealed an arrowhead and a knife, with wood remains on their edges, in a vertical position in the ground (Sarasmo 1959), quite similar to grave 1 at Mikkola. The use of sharp artifacts as coffin nails seems to have been more common than previously thought; therefore, the reasons behind the custom may not have been as dramatic as previously suggested.

Toppolanmäki Cemetery, Valkeakoski Toppolanmäki cemetery in Valkeakoski includes two graves with vertically placed spearheads. In addition to these, one grave had what was described as a vertically placed “coffin nail” that resembled the hilt of a sword (Leppäaho 1936). This grave contained four bodies, placed on top of each other in the same coffin. Wood was preserved around the bodies, forming the shape of a rectangular coffin. Leppäaho noted that the individuals were so close to each other, they must have been tied to one another, although no artifacts or organic remains were found to support the claim. Based on the photographic documentation, the two 234

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uppermost bodies were laid in the coffin facing opposite directions. Leppäaho (1936) also noted that the other two had been placed in the grave in a similar manner, but the skull of the fourth individual had been lost postmortem, when the other end of the grave was destroyed by gravel hauling. All four individuals had been buried at the same time. In superimposed multiple burials such as this, the bones of the upper individuals fall into the spaces left by the decomposed soft tissues of the individuals below (Duday 2009: 100). This may have made the skeletons appear as a tied “bunch.” In spite of the collapse of the thoracic and abdominal parts of the bodies, the limbs of the uppermost individuals had retained their anatomical organization, with only little rotation or collapse observed. It is likely that at least the two uppermost bodies were wrapped individually in shrouds, skins, or fabrics that had later decomposed. All the individuals must have died at approximately the same time, suggesting a period of elevated mortality because of violence, famine, accident, or an epidemic. The cemetery was probably used by a single farm or a very small village in which the simultaneous deaths of four people might have meant an abnormal situation. Placing the bodies in the coffin with heads in opposite directions was most likely a practical choice in order to accommodate four bodies in a single coffin, minimizing the need for space required by the upper bodies and shoulders.

Example 2: Prone Burial in Grave 62 at Luistari, Eura Pirkko-Liisa Lehtosalo-Hilander’s excavations in the cemetery of Luistari in Eura were extensive and resulted in the research and publication of the largest inhumation cemetery document in Finland with approximately 1,300 graves dating from the seventh century to thirteenth century AD. Lehtosalo-Hilander’s publications (1982a, 1982b) on the cemetery are among the most cited in Finnish mortuary studies, and while her work is important in studying Early Medieval funerary practices in Finland, the analysis of the cemetery falls within the framework of processual archaeology (e.g., Hodder and Hutson 2003: 20–43). The graves have been viewed as reflections of society in general, and the number of grave goods in each grave has been interpreted as a direct indication of the social status of the buried individual. Lehtosalo-Hilander’s research is characterized by lack of interest in actual treatment of the bodies and the seemingly non-normative cases within the cemetery, as the following example demonstrates. According to Lehtosalo-Hilander (1982a: 30, 37), the bodies in Luistari were Non-Normative Burials in Finland, Eleventh–Thirteenth Centuries AD

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buried mainly in coffins or other wooden structures, in a supine position with arms or hands crossed on the chest or abdomen. She also found three prone burials (graves 62, 325, and 400) but paid little attention to the possible meaning of their different body positioning. The bones were poorly preserved, but based on the jewelry, Lehtosalo-Hilander (1982a: 294) interpreted grave 62 as belonging to a female. The right upper limb was bent above the head of the individual, while the left upper limb was straight by the side (fig. 12.4). Three Viking Age round brooches belonging to the dress worn by the individual (LehtosaloHilander 1982a: 98) were found upside down, supporting the idea that the body was buried face down. The accessories also included a bronze bracelet, two rings on each hand, and a necklace of 90 glass beads. No traces of a coffin or other

Figure 12.4. Grave 62 in Luistari cemetery in Eura (after Lehtosalo-Hilander 1982). Although preservation of the bones was generally poor, the skull and the long bones of the arms had survived, making it possible to reconstruct the posture of the body in the grave at the time of burial.

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wooden structures were found. If the grave was filled immediately after burial, decomposition of the body occurred in a filled space, with the weight of the soil preventing displacement of the bones, which have stayed in situ (Duday 2009: 40). Age estimation based on dental eruption suggests the individual in grave 62 was an older adolescent between 15 and 21 years of age at the time of death (Salo 2005: 28–29). Prone burials have also been explained as methods of punishment and humiliation, as expressions of disrespect, and possibly as indications of a belief that the deceased person was involved in witchcraft and thus dangerous to the community (Arcini 2009; Gardeła 2013a; Reynolds 2009: 74, 198). However, prone burials do not necessarily have to be associated with negative connotations (see Gardeła 2017; Moilanen 2018; Toplak 2018). Although the previously mentioned ancient Finnish “home-wanderers” were not necessarily malevolent, funerary rituals—such as turning the body facedown—would have been a measure to control the body (Krohn 1915: 43; Leppälahti 2012: 80–81). Based on this, grave 62 in Luistari may be a manifestation of similar control, representing an effort to force the dead person to act in desirable way.

Discussion In these examples, different types of burials in Finland have been presented that may be considered deviant. The examples included three graves with sharp objects used as coffin nails (Ylöjärvi Mikkola grave 1, Tampere Vilusenharju grave 12, and a quadruple burial in Valkeakoski Toppolanmäki) and a prone burial (no. 62) from Eura, Luistari. Interpretations of the reasons spearheads, arrowheads, and knives have occasionally been used as coffin nails include anti-revenant practice (Cleve 1978: 86–87; Leppäaho 1936; Pälsi 1938), or burials of powerful people or shamans (Wessman 2010; Wickholm 2006). The burials are located in a fairly small area in Häme (fig. 12.1); thus the use of spearheads as coffin nails has sometimes been seen as a local burial custom (Sarkki-Isomaa 1986: 155). However, there might be some examples from outside Häme. Nils Cleve (1978) wrote that the singular iron spikes found in five inhumation graves in Köyliö, Köliönsaari South Satakunta (fig. 12.1), were possibly struck on the coffin lids as anti-revenant measures (Cleve 1978: 87). Vertically thrusted spearheads have also been found from inhumation graves in Turku Kirkkomäki in southwest Finland (Asplund and Riikonen 2007), and from graves in Birka and Klinta in central Sweden, where they have been interpreted as ritual objects preventing the deceased from rising Non-Normative Burials in Finland, Eleventh–Thirteenth Centuries AD

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(Gardeła 2013b). Both Old Norse sagas and traditional Finnish folklore contain stories about people returning from the dead either as ghosts or as physical beings who can actively affect the lives of the living (Gansum 2008; Gardeła 2013a; Kanerva 2013; Leppälahti 2012: 85). Although we cannot know how accurately these stories represent the views of the Early Medieval inhabitants of Finland, they may still provide clues to the beliefs present during this period. Describing “spearhead graves” as a burial custom is somewhat misleading, as we see from the examples that several different kinds of burial customs and funerary treatments are present within the phenomenon of using sharp objects as coffin nails. Archaeothanatological analysis suggests that some of these burials may hold a practical explanation and that some have been over-interpreted, as in the cases of Mikkola grave 1, where the third spearhead was used as a normal grave gift instead of securing the skull to the ground, and Vilusenharju grave 12, where the spearheads originated from a cremation burial and were placed outside the coffin instead of being used as coffin nails. In a similar manner, the reasons behind these burials may be varied, and the same explanation may not be applicable to all seemingly similar graves. As previously described, the folklore on “bad death” includes sudden and abnormal deaths. It may also be possible that uncontrollable incidents and events, such as accidents and epidemics, resulted in distinctive treatment of the dead. The quadruple burial in Toppolanmäki may well be an example of the latter, but this may not necessarily be a suitable explanation for the other cases. These deviant burials in the Häme region existed at a time when social structures were becoming more complex, and individual farming communities were transforming into larger tribal affiliations (Wickholm 2006, 2009). At the same time, influences from both East and West were flowing to the area, seen on a smaller scale in the artifact forms and, further, in the gradual consolidation of sociopolitical and religious positions, specifically, in the establishment of Catholic congregations and transition to Swedish rule (Hiekkanen 2010). In a larger context, these deviant burials can be seen as the interaction between different local social groups, families, individuals, and the dead, which were seen as active agents, capable of mingling with the lives of the living (Gansum 2008; Kanerva 2013; Leppälahti 2012: 85). Although folk beliefs give possible explanations for some of these graves, the burials should not be seen simply as manifestations of good or bad death; nor should they be interpreted simply as reflections of religious beliefs. The interpretations are not necessarily straightforward, but rather assemblies of complex sociohistorical themes. 238

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The lack of systematic research on deviant burials in Finland means that there is still a need for a theoretical and methodological approach to the subject. The burials have been discussed mostly as curiosities, and they have been viewed primarily from a theological perspective, with the exception of Wickholm’s (2006, 2009) and Núñez’s (2011, 2015) articles, which have discussed some of the graves in an interpretational way. I suggest that the combination of microarchaeological theory (Cornell and Fahlander 2002; Fahlander 2003; Fahlander and Oestigaard 2008), archaeothanatology (Duday 2009), and scientific methods will make the most usable framework for the research of deviant burials. Systematic research on various mortuary details will increase information not only about burial customs, but also about how the dead were incorporated into complex networks of social communication as active participants. As such, the deviant graves tell more about large-scale diversity of human agency in prehistory. These deviant burials, which do not fit into synthetic categories, may reveal detailed information about the past that cannot be seen in wide categorizations. This information could include times of epidemics or violence, as in the case of the Valkeakoski Toppolanmäki quadruple burial, although this burial still requires biomolecular studies to identify possible presence of pathogens in order to confirm that the people died of contagious disease. Deviant burials may also represent the need to control the dead person, such as burial 62 in Eura Luistari. They may also reveal general attitudes toward the physically or mentally impaired, as in the case of Hailuoto.

Conclusion Quite often, large-scale, regional analysis of cemeteries, as well as archaeologists’ need to establish strict categories of burial forms and practices, have neglected the variety in burial customs and funerary treatments. The seemingly non-normative burials have been dubbed as deviant, without considering them as individual entities within the context of wider, varied historical events. In Finland, the Early Medieval inhumation burials with spearheads or other sharp objects as coffin nails have most often been described as deviant. At least ten such graves are known today in six cemeteries: Tampere Vilusenharju, Hollola Santahaudanmäki, Ylöjärvi Mikkola, Valkeakoski Toppolanmäki, Janakkala Makasiininmäki, Hämeenlinna (Kalvola) Pahnainmäki and possibly Nokia Hakamäki. Here I present Ylöjärvi Mikkola grave 1, Tampere Vilusenharju grave 12, and a quadruple burial of Valkeakoski Toppolanmäki as examples of such burials. ArchaeoNon-Normative Burials in Finland, Eleventh–Thirteenth Centuries AD

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thanatological analysis of these burials reveal that not all the vertically placed spearheads in the graves were used as coffin nails, as was previously assumed. The burials have usually been interpreted as anti-revenant practice, but the reasons behind the burials might have been much more diverse. I suggest that a microarchaeological framework that pays attention to details instead of making broad generalizations, helps identify variations in funerary customs, also revealing possible cases of deviant burials. As such, I have presented an example of a prone burial (grave 62) in Luistari cemetery in Eura, where the burials have been thought to be very similar to each other, although the cemetery also contains several other examples of varied burial customs, which have not been discussed in this chapter. In general, it seems that Early Medieval inhumation burial customs and rituals in Finland were much more varied than previously thought, and the burials require new, systematic analysis. In future research, the best results will be achieved with a combination of sociohistorical research and modern scientific methods.

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13 Atypical Burials in Early Medieval Poland A Critical Overview

L e sz ek Ga r de ł a

The idea that the dead might on occasion leave their graves and interact with the living is common in many societies around the world and dates to prehistoric times (e.g., Barber 2010; Gardeła 2015a, 2017a; Gardeła and Kajkowski 2013a, 2015; Lecouteux 2009, 2010; Murphy 2008; Reynolds 2009). It seems that the early medieval Western Slavs, who populated much of the territory of today’s Poland, also believed that some of their dead could continue their postmortem existence in the form of reanimated corpses. In numerous academic publications, it has often been argued that Slavic graves from the period between the late tenth and thirteenth centuries AD, which display unusual characteristics (e.g., with the bodies buried prone, covered with stones, decapitated, or mutilated in various ways), may have belonged to people whom past societies feared and against whom preventive measures had to be taken. Over the years, a range of labels have been offered for such burials, including the problematic term “anti-vampire burials” or more neutral ones, such as “atypical” or “deviant burials” (e.g., Brather 2009; Hanuliak 1995, 1999; Krumphanzlová 1961; Stanaszek 2016; Zoll-Adamikowa 1966, 1971; Żydok 2004). Until recently, in Polish archaeology the sensationalist “vampiric” interpretation has overshadowed other possibilities for explaining the reasons behind unusual mortuary practices (e.g., Porzeziński 2008; Stanaszek 1998, 1999, 2001; Żydok 2004). However, over the last several years, new studies on atypical burials have shown that graves which deviate from the norm may have

belonged not only to alleged revenants, but also to different kinds of criminals, victims of suicide, or other social deviants (Duma 2010, 2015; Gardeła 2015a, 2015b, 2017a; Gardeła and Duma 2013; Gardeła and Kajkowski 2013b; Skóra and Kurasiński 2010). In some instances, it is even possible to suggest that an act of burial which today seems violent or negative, may have in the past reflected postmortem penance or special care and affection for the dead (Koperkiewicz 2010; Toplak 2015). This chapter will provide an overview of atypical burials among the Western Slavs who inhabited the Polish lands between the tenth and thirteenth centuries AD. By examining various expressions of non-normative funerary behavior in an interdisciplinary context, it will be demonstrated that they may have been performed not only with apotropaic anti-revenant intentions in mind. But before we examine “atypical” burials in more detail, it is essential to begin with some general remarks on Slavic societies and “typical” funerary practices among these people.

Funerary Practices in Early Medieval Poland (Tenth–Thirteenth Centuries AD) The early medieval Slavs who populated the area of what is now Poland were predominantly agricultural societies (Buko 2008; Kostrzewski 1949). They initially lived in open settlements, often located on the banks of rivers or lakes, but over the course of time, and as the power of local elites began to grow, they started constructing large strongholds to protect their land, people, and property (Chrzan et al. 2014). Today, the high ramparts of these medieval strongholds still dot the Polish landscape, while other traces of Slavic settlements and cemeteries usually remain hidden deep beneath the soil. Like many other pre-Christian societies, the early Slavs believed that their world was filled with numerous supernatural beings that inhabited forests, fields, rivers, lakes, mountains, and other features of the landscape (Brückner 1980; Gieysztor 2006; Urbańczyk 1991). These male and female beings often had ambivalent characteristics, and to win their favor, it was necessary to treat them with respect, otherwise they could bring misfortune or even death. In addition, the Slavs had a pantheon of gods responsible for natural phenomena, prosperity, fertility, and luck in battle (Gieysztor 2006). Some of these gods were represented in figural form (as small figurines or large statues) and worshipped in special cult buildings and sanctuaries (e.g., Słupecki 1993, 1994). Atypical Burials in Early Medieval Poland: A Critical Overview

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Because the early Slavs left behind no textual accounts written in their vernacular language, all that we know about their beliefs comes from considerably late sources, usually put to parchment by foreign travelers and Christians. These sources are often biased, and the information they contain about pagan practices must always be approached in a critical way. It is vital to note in this context that the textual accounts, which describe the worldviews of early medieval Slavs from the area of Poland, do not mention anything about the living dead. A strong possibility that a belief in revenants had indeed existed among these people in pre-Christian times is inferred mainly on the basis of late medieval sources and folklore (e.g., Dekowski 1987; Gardeła 2017a; Sala 2016; Simonides 1984; Stanaszek 2016). Before the formal adoption of Christianity by the Polish duke Mieszko I and his court in AD 966, the dominant burial practices in this part of Europe involved cremation (for overviews, see Kostrzewski 1960; Zoll-Adamikowa 1975, 1979). The dead were laid on wooden pyres and burned with their personal belongings and with various gifts deposited during the funeral by the mourners. The offerings likely included food, drink, and objects made of organic and nonorganic materials, but perhaps also animals and, occasionally, human sacrifices (Gardeła et al. in press; Gardeła and Kajkowski 2014; see also Kajkowski 2016; Kajkowski and Kuczkowski 2009–2010). After cremation, the ashes were gathered, placed in ceramic vessels or other containers, and buried in cemeteries located in forests, fields, or hills. It is noteworthy that early medieval Slavic cremation graves rarely contain grave goods made of metal, and objects made of organic material (textiles, leather, wood, etc.) usually do not survive in the archaeological record (but see Gardeła et al. in press). As such, Slavic cremation graves differ considerably from the lavishly equipped cremation graves known from Anglo-Saxon England and Viking Age Scandinavia which often contain well-preserved items made of iron, silver, and copper-alloys (Petersen 1928). The process of Christianization led to significant ideological transformations that affected many spheres of life and had a considerable impact on the conceptions of the Otherworld and treatment of the dead among the Slavs (Gardeła 2017a, in press; Kajkowski 2015). Most importantly, in the context of this discussion, conversion led to abandoning cremation and accepting inhumation as the dominant burial practice (Rębkowski 2007). From the late tenth century onward, the vast majority of cemeteries in Poland have mainly inhumation graves (for overviews, see Dzik 2015; Gardeła 2017a; Janowski 2015; Kordala 2006; Kufel-Dzierzgowska 1975; Miśkiewicz 1969; 248

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Rajewski 1937; Rębkowski 2007; Wachowski 1975; Zoll-Adamikowa 1966, 1971, 1988, 1995, 1997). The number of individuals buried in a particular cemetery may range from fewer than 50 to more than 1,000. Until at least the thirteenth century, different provinces of Poland were characterized by local variations in inhumation practices, which could be expressed through differences in internal and external constructions of graves, ways of treating the corpses, and types of furnishings. Due to restrictions of space, it is not possible to discuss this funerary diversity in great detail, so instead of enumerating regional differences, table 13.1 lists basic features of inhumation graves that are rather consistently repeated in numerous cemeteries across the area of Poland.

Table 13.1. Basic features of early medieval inhumation graves (eleventh–thirteenth centuries) in Poland Features of inhumation graves in early medieval Poland

Major references and overviews

Dead typically buried in supine position and aligned E-W (with heads to the east or west).

Dzik 2015; Gardeła 2017a; Janowski 2015; Kordala 2006; Kufel-Dzierzgowska 1975; Miśkiewicz 1969; Rajewski 1937; Rębkowski 2007; Zoll-Adamikowa 1966, 1971, 1997; Wachowski 1975

Dead buried with or without coffins. Occasionally bodies wrapped in shrouds.

On coffined burials, see Sawicki 2015

Some dead buried in chamber graves (with or without coffins). Graves of this kind probably belonged to social elites.

Janowski 2015 with further references

Most graves single, but examples of double or even triple graves. Mass graves extremely rare.

Gardeła and Kajkowski 2014 with further references

Graves usually modestly furbished and many contain iron knives as the only artifacts that accompany the dead.

On knives in early medieval graves, see Wrzesiński 2000

Weapon graves relatively rare; dead rarely buried with more than one type of weapon.

Sikora 2014 with further references

Jewelry usually occurs in graves of women and children.

Kóčka-Krenz 1993 with further references

External structures of inhumation graves usually flat. Traces of mounds exceptionally rare. Some graves, however, were probably marked on the surface with wooden posts or stones.

Sikora 2010 with further references

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Although we may see a lot of similarities in funerary behavior, and there exist patterns that are repeated in various cemeteries across a vast geographical area, contrary to the arguments of other scholars, it is rather problematic to use the term “typical” with regard to burial practices in Poland in the period that spans the late tenth to thirteenth centuries AD. The term “typical” implies a sense of orthodoxy that was nonexistent in the early days of state formation and in the time when the old faith met the new. Despite the adoption of Christianity by the ruling elites, and consequently the formal (yet in many cases somewhat superficial) Christianization of their domain (see Rębkowski 2007), it is clear that many years must have passed before the Slavs abandoned their previous worldviews, which were deeply embedded in their everyday behavior. A more pronounced orthodoxy or consistency in the treatment of the dead and the performance of funerals in a markedly Christian manner might have occurred in cemeteries located close to local power centers and churches (so-called churchyard cemeteries). But in the case of cemeteries more distant from important towns or strongholds or from developed power and Church structures (so-called non-churchyard cemeteries), it is very likely that funerals were conducted by people who had a rather limited knowledge of Christian religion. Since the network of parishes remained at a nascent stage for a considerably long time, it is possible to argue that many early medieval funerals that took place in the countryside were performed without the presence of a priest or any other official familiar with Christian customs, and therefore there was much more freedom to continue performing traditional mortuary practices (e.g., Zoll-Adamikowa 1988, 1995). All this surely has important implications for how we define and understand “atypical burials” during that period. We must be aware that in some instances, what was “typical” in one area may have been “atypical” somewhere else. Likewise, we should also embrace the possibility that in the minds of past societies, types of graves that to us look very similar may have in fact held a broad range of different meanings.

Atypical Burials Early medieval graves often regarded as “atypical” by contemporary scholars had already been found by Polish archaeologists at the beginning of the twentieth century. Among the earliest discoveries is grave number 2 from Gwiazdowo in Greater Poland (Rajewski 1937: 33, 54, 68–69). It held the remains of a young woman buried in a prone position. The woman had three temple rings 250

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(a kind of head ornament typical for the Slavs; see Kóčka-Krenz 1993), a bronze finger-ring and a ring made of silver. Her grave also contained an iron knife in a leather scabbard decorated with bronze foil. This grave is exceptional not only because the deceased was buried prone, but also because prone burials of females are extremely rare in early medieval Poland (see Gardeła 2011, 2012, 2015b, 2017a with further references). Archaeological excavations conducted during the years following the discovery of the prone burial in Gwiazdowo have brought to light numerous other cemeteries and hundreds of early medieval graves. Among them were further examples of inhumations that continue to puzzle scholars to this day. Among the first attempts to study atypical burials in early medieval Poland in a systematic way were the works of Łukasz Maurycy Stanaszek (1998, 1999, 2001) and Przemysław Żydok (2004). In his paper, Żydok provides a list of graves he considers as displaying deviant/atypical characteristics and which, in his view, could be associated with the fear of revenants. These features are listed below (in alphabetical order): • Burials in marginal areas • Burials lacking grave goods • Burials of individuals with cut-off or broken limbs • Burials with an unusual orientation • Decapitations • Flexed burials • Knives, stakes, or other sharp objects stuck in the body • Partly cremated burials • Pierced skulls (with a sharp instrument, perhaps an iron nail) • Prone burials • Reopened burials • Stoned burials (i.e., graves with stones on the cadavers) • Stones, clay, or coins in the mouth of the deceased Although some of these categories can certainly be regarded as differing from what is usually the norm in early medieval cemeteries in Poland, there are several that should not be seen as “atypical” at all. As mentioned above, burials lacking grave goods are not in any way atypical, and the vast majority of inhumation graves in Poland are devoid of objects. The lack of furnishings in graves may result from customs that prevented the mourners from burying objects with the dead or from natural processes resulting in complete decomposition of Atypical Burials in Early Medieval Poland: A Critical Overview

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grave goods made of organic materials (i.e., objects made of wood, bone, or antler, but also textiles). Flexed burials, although sometimes regarded as belonging to potential “vampires,” can hardly be seen as “atypical,” as discussed recently by Arkadiusz Koperkiewicz (2010). Koperkiewicz has also shown that flexed burials occur at many more sites than were known at the time when Stanaszek (1998, 1999, 2001) and Żydok (2004) wrote their works. Partial cremation of skeletal remains may occasionally relate to anti-revenant practices, but it could also signal that the person died in a fire (see discussion in Sikorski 2008). In his list of atypical burial practices, Żydok (2004) focuses only on graves that in his view could be associated with the fear of revenants. There are, however, several other categories of graves that due to their exceptional nature could be regarded as “atypical.” Among them are, for example, graves of infants in ceramic vessels (Duma 2010; Gardeła and Duma 2013) and graves of women and children buried with weapons (Kurasiński 2004, 2009). Such instances, however, probably had nothing in common with the fear of revenants—burials of infants in ceramic vessels are usually interpreted as belonging to unbaptized children who could not be interred in Christian cemeteries. The presence of weapons in female graves can also be explained in myriad ways, for example as manifesting social status or signaling the women’s role as warriors or religious specialists (e.g., Gardeła 2017b, 2018)—there is nothing to suggest that weapons in these graves served an apotropaic function against the living dead.

Discussion Although it is often argued that atypical burial practices were performed in early medieval Poland to hold, maim, and/or annihilate malevolent revenants (by some scholars regarded as “vampires”), a more careful and contextual approach to such practices allows us to broaden the range of our interpretations. Let us examine them in more detail below (fig. 13.1).

Burials in Marginal Areas Late medieval and early modern sources inform us that alcoholics, atheists, or other social deviants were buried in marginal areas of cemeteries (Duma 2015: 12). Even in contemporary Poland, bodies of people whose identity is unclear tend to be interred in separate or marginal parts of graveyards, often along their walls or fences (Duma 2015: 154, 204). Some early medieval cemeteries in Poland also have graves located in marginal areas, but these do not always 252

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Figure 13.1. Map of Poland showing sites with atypical burials mentioned in the text. By Leszek Gardeła.

possess unusual characteristics, and osteological analyses usually do not imply that the dead may have deviated in their physical appearance or behavior from the rest of the society (e.g., Matczak 2014). We must remember, however, that the dead buried in marginal locations may have had some physical condition that did not impact bone. Every cemetery will have graves along its margins—this is a natural result of their gradual development and may have nothing to do with the idea of social exclusion. In order to substantiate an interpretation that an individual buried in a marginal location was a social deviant, it is necessary to find additional signals of “otherness” in the bone material or in the overall composition of the grave. One interesting example of an early medieval grave in a marginal part of a cemetery that combines several deviant features was found at Wzgórze Świętojakubskie in Sandomierz (Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship, Poland). It belonged to a man buried in a prone position in a deep pit with an unusual N-S orientation (Stanaszek 1998: 24; Żydok 2004: 48). It is not known whether this Atypical Burials in Early Medieval Poland: A Critical Overview

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individual had been regarded as a revenant, criminal, or other social deviant, but the peculiar treatment of his body indeed supports such interpretations.

Burials with Missing Limbs and the Problem of Reopened Graves Early medieval graves that include individuals whose limbs are missing or which appear to have been cut off or broken are relatively rare in Poland (e.g., Kaszewscy 1971). In past scholarship, similarly to other atypical burials, such cases have often been somewhat haphazardly interpreted as signaling practices intended to immobilize or annihilate a potential revenant (Żydok 2004: 44). The reasons for missing limbs, however, may have been manifold. People may have lost their arms or legs in battle or as the result of all sorts of unfortunate accidents. Even if evident cut marks are recorded on the remaining bone material, these are usually not enough to suggest that such an individual was feared of becoming a revenant. In this context, it is noteworthy that the lack of certain parts of the skeleton might also result from intentional grave disturbance. The practice of removing bones of the dead for the purpose of curation, display, or ritual practices is known from different cultural milieus and variously motivated (e.g., Fitzsimmons and Shimada 2015; Gardeła and Kajkowski 2015; Kümmel 2009). On occasion, grave disturbances were also conducted to maim or annihilate the dead (e.g., Klevnäs 2015 with further references); however, based on recent studies of grave reopening in Poland, it seems that in the majority of cases such acts were conducted not due to fear of revenants, but with the intention of adding new bodies to preexisting graves (Gardeła et al. 2015). In this process, bones of the primary individual were often carefully collected and moved to the foot-end of the pit or to the side (fig. 13.2). Although this has yet to be confirmed through specialist analyses, it is quite possible that some graves were reopened with the intention of adding bodies of close relatives of the initially buried dead. Reopening graves with the intention of removing bones seems to have been extremely rare in early medieval Poland and it is difficult to associate it with the fear of revenants (but see Gardeła 2017a; Sikorski 2008 for some possible examples); however, there is good evidence to suggest that in the late Middle Ages and early modern times in Poland, people reopened graves in search of body parts that could be used to produce special amulets or remedies (Wenska 2015). Another reason for reopening them—especially after the religious conversion—was to obtain relics believed to possess miraculous powers. 254

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Figure 13.2. Reconstruction of grave 107 from Złota Pińczowska, Poland. A young girl added to the preexisting grave of an adult man. In the process of reopening the grave, and to make space for the second body, the man’s bones were moved to the foot-end of the coffin. Illustration by Mirosław Kuźma. © Leszek Gardeła and Mirosław Kuźma.

Burials with an Unusual Orientation As we have seen above, in most inhumation cemeteries in early medieval Poland, the dead were aligned W-E with the heads to the west or east. There are a number of sites, however, where certain graves have an orientation that deviates from the norm and where the dead are buried with their heads to the north or south (e.g., Buko 2015). Graves with N-S orientation in a cemetery that has predominantly W-E oriented graves are certainly different, but this feature alone does not seem to be enough to regard them as belonging to potential revenants. The reasons for orienting graves in an unusual way may have resulted from various circumstances, some of which may have been rather banal—for example, the presence of trees or other natural features that would preclude aligning the grave-pit in a “typical” way. Another possibility, suggested by some past scholars, is that graves with N-S orientation, in a cemetery with mostly W-E oriented graves, belonged to foreigners (Kostrzewski 1949). While interesting, this idea usually finds no support in the furnishings of such graves, and there is often nothing particular within them that could suggest a different, non-Slavic ethnicity of the dead (but see Buko 2015 for plausible examples). In order to substantiate such an interpretation, one would have to conduct aDNA or stable isotope analyses of human remains, which unfortunately is not always possible. It is noteworthy, however, that in some cemeteries, unusual orientation of graves is combined with other “atypical” features. The most illustrative examples include the following: • Grave 186 from Cedynia (site 2). Adult male, decapitated, covered with stones, oriented N-S (Malinowska-Łazarczyk 1982: 47) • Grave 2 from Gwiazdowo. Adult female, buried prone, oriented N-S (Rajewski 1937: 33, 54, 68–69) • Grave 90 from Sandomierz (Wzgórze Świętojakubskie). Adult man, buried prone, grave at a periphery of the cemetery, deep grave-pit (Stanaszek 1998: 24) • Grave 15(29) from Wolin Młynówka. Adult man, decapitated, buried prone and with tied legs, oriented N-S (Wojtasik 1968: 206–207) (fig. 13.3) It is possible that some of these graves belonged to people whose postmortem activity was feared, as implied by burying them in a prone position, decapitating, or binding their limbs; however, it is also likely that some of these individuals 256

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Figure 13.3. Reconstruction of grave 15(29) from Wolin Młynówka, Poland. A decapitated adult man, buried prone and with tied legs. Illustration by Mirosław Kuźma. © Leszek Gardeła and Mirosław Kuźma.

may not have been revenants but criminals, buried in a shameful and visually dramatic manner and in a less worthy part of the cemetery (for further details and discussion, see Gardeła 2017a). This treatment may have formed part of a funerary spectacle intended to deter other members of the society from conducting mischief. As in other instances of atypical graves, it is often easier to say what graves with unusual orientation are not, than what exactly they represent. Atypical Burials in Early Medieval Poland: A Critical Overview

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Damage to the Skull and Decapitation Some graves from early medieval Poland contain individuals with damage to the skull (e.g., Wrzesińska 1998). Various interpretations can be offered to explain such instances—the injury may have been inflicted in combat, but it may also have resulted from some unfortunate accident. Given the fact that most such graves date from the eleventh century onward, it would be rather controversial to consider them as representing human sacrifices, but perhaps such a possibility should not be ruled out completely (Gardeła and Kajkowski 2014: 110–113). Contrary to the opinion of scholars like Żydok (2004), it is difficult to regard such cases as reflecting practices intended to prevent the dead from rising, because—if we trust Slavic ethnographic accounts about dealing with revenants—to make sure they would not return, it was often necessary to sever their head, not just wound it (e.g., Stanaszek 2016). However, some decapitation graves (i.e., where the head is completely detached from the body) could indeed relate to a fear of revenants. In an earlier study, we isolated several variants of possible decapitation graves in early medieval Poland (Gardeła and Kajkowski 2013b: 787–788), as follows: • Graves without skulls, but where the rest of the postcranial skeleton is present • Graves containing only skulls, with no traces of postcranial skeleton • Graves from which skulls were intentionally removed and reburied elsewhere To this list, it is possible to add cases where the (missing) heads were substituted with stones; a number of such peculiar examples are known from the cemetery at Cedynia in Western Pomerania (Malinowska-Łazarczyk 1982) (fig. 13.4). The practice of depositing stones in place of missing heads is unique in the area of Pomerania and Poland generally, and seems to be a very local custom at Cedynia. Given the prominent location of this cemetery, on a hill dominating the nearby fields, it is possible to argue that the heads may have been exposed (attached to posts?) on its surface, perhaps serving as a warning against committing crimes (for further details, see Gardeła 2015a, 2017a). The site at Cedynia contains far too many decapitation graves to substantiate the interpretation that they all belonged to revenants, and therefore we must try to find other, more plausible explanations. According to textual sources that describe pre-Christian practices of the Slavs, the head appears to have played an important role in their beliefs, and decapita258

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Figure 13.4. Reconstruction of grave 146 from Cedynia, Poland. A decapitated man with his head between his feet and with stones in the head area. Illustration by Mirosław Kuźma. © Leszek Gardeła and Mirosław Kuźma.

tion was a punishment for violating rules among pagan societies and for acts of sacrilege (Kajkowski 2013). It seems, however, that executions by decapitation were conducted only in exceptional circumstances and often in judicial context (Grajewski 1956: 193–197). Of course, we cannot completely exclude a possibility that some individuals were beheaded because people feared they would become revenants (and such instances are well attested among other early medieval societies—see Gardeła 2013), but this is certainly not the only possible reason for Atypical Burials in Early Medieval Poland: A Critical Overview

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conducting such acts. According to Polish folkloristic accounts, in early modern times, the anti-revenant act of decapitation was always conducted postmortem and after the grave of an alleged living dead had been reopened (e.g., Stanaszek 2016; Zielonka 1957). Because none of the early medieval decapitation graves from Poland bear traces of reopening, it seems equally plausible to view the beheaded people as executed criminals or victims of some unfortunate events.

Knives, Stakes, and Other Sharp Objects Stuck in the Bodies Knives, stakes, and other sharp objects stuck in the bodies are very rarely found in early medieval cemeteries in Poland, and they constitute less than 1% of all graves from this area. Although they have sometimes been interpreted as reflecting an attempt to protect the society against revenants (e.g., Kowalczyk 1968: 81; Żydok 2004: 46–48), a range of other interpretations can be offered. Sharp objects (especially arrows or other small projectiles) may have been stuck in the body in the course of battle. The occurrence of knives in the chest area may suggest that someone stuck them in the body intentionally, but it is also possible that these knives were simply placed on the chest at the funeral and as the decomposition of the body progressed, they collapsed inside it. As with other atypical burials, caution is advised in interpreting such instances as only representing fear of revenants; many alternatives can be provided.

Prone Burials Prone burials occupy a special place among all types of unusual funerary practices in Poland. They have been found in different parts of the country, mainly in Greater Poland, but also in Central Poland, Silesia, and Pomerania. The majority of prone burials discovered to date belong to adult men, but on occasion women were also buried in this way. Below is a summary of the characteristics of such practices (for further details, see Gardeła 2011, 2012, 2015b, 2017a): • Prone burials are found in different types of inhumation cemeteries—both those in close vicinity to churches or places associated with Christian worship (churchyard cemeteries) and those situated away from such structures (non-churchyard cemeteries) • In most instances the dead buried prone are not accompanied by any objects. The grave from Gwiazdowo, with its rich furnishings, is an exception to this rule. Other prone burials with objects include grave 5 from Świelubie (unidentified iron objects), grave 90 from Sandomierz (unidentified iron objects), and grave 31(96) from Wolin 260

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• •

•

• •

Młynówka (fragments of an early medieval clay vessel) (Łosiński 1972: 270; Rajewski 1937: 33, 54, 68–69; Stanaszek 1998: 24) In all cases of prone burials, the dead were interred in pits with no other internal constructions such as coffins or chambers Apart from being buried prone, some bodies were oriented in a way that deviated from the norms in a particular cemetery. This is seen in the cases of prone burials from Gwiazdowo (grave 2), Sandomierz (grave 90) and Wolin Młynówka (15(29)) (Rajewski 1937: 33, 54, 68–69; Stanaszek 1998: 24; Wojtasik 1968: 206–207) New discoveries from Ciepłe and Poznań-Śródka imply that some individuals buried prone may have had their bodies tied or perhaps tightly wrapped in shrouds (Gardeła 2012; Pawlak and Pawlak 2015: 53–54; Ratajczyk 2011: 557). In some instances, the legs of the deceased may have also been bound, as indicated by graves 15(29) and 31(96) from Wolin Młynówka (Wojtasik 1968) Prone burials usually do not coincide with other “special” practices, such as covering the corpses with stones or decapitation Prone burials are rarely located in the peripheries of cemeteries

It is worth adding that prone burials did not cease in the thirteenth century and were also practiced in the late Middle Ages and in early modern times in Poland (i.e., between the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries). They are also known from a range of execution sites in Silesia. Interestingly, both men and women could be interred in this way (Duma 2015: 25–26, 151; Furmanek and Kulpa 2004: 260–263; Pytlak 2009: 35). Prone burials are not easy to interpret and, apart from reflecting fear of and protection against revenants, they can signal many other meanings (see Arcini 2009 for a valuable overview). Among the earliest written accounts that describe such practices is a passage that mentions the death of Pepin the Short (Reynolds 2009: 69). Pepin wanted his body to be buried prone so that he could repent the sins of his father postmortem. The motif of a prone burial (or at least a mention of a person lying prone) is also known from Dante’s Divine Comedy—through this act a certain man lying face-down was trying to hide his greed and unsophisticated ambitions. Another idea that might perhaps explain motivations behind prone burials is the fear of the so-called evil eye—the malevolent gaze of the dying or the dead which could bring misfortune or even death to the living (Dundes 1991). Apart from all these diverse beliefs associated with the concept Atypical Burials in Early Medieval Poland: A Critical Overview

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of prone burial, it is also possible that some people were interred in this way as a result of sloppy or rushed burial procedures (e.g., accidentally burying a shrouded or coffined body facedown) or due to quick funerals that occurred at a time of disease outbreak (Gardeła and Kajkowski 2013b). Although prone burials are not mentioned in any medieval textual sources pertaining to the area of Poland, some hints about their possible meanings can be found in later accounts that date from the seventeenth century onward. Of particular interest is a passage discovered by a Polish scholar, Bonifacy Zielonka (1957), on the last page of a Latin book titled Summa angelica de Casibus. This passage, known as Casus de Strigis, describes an event that took place in 1674 in Trzeszawa, where the body of a malevolent revenant (referred to as strzyga) that drank human blood was exhumed by a priest, turned facedown (in a prone position), and decapitated with a spade. A very similar procedure was noted by Paweł Szymański (2008), who described a story told to him by his grandmother—the event had taken place in 1914 and involved exhuming a man who had died a sudden death and had turned into a living dead. As in the previously mentioned account, a priest told his people to exhume the body and found the revenant lying prone in his coffin, with his fingers all bitten as if he had been “eating himself.” While the priest uttered his prayer, the head of the revenant was cut off with a spade. Another case of a prone burial was noted by Oskar Kolberg (1967: 270)—a famous Polish ethnographer—in southeast Poland. Kolberg described a belief in people who had two souls, a good one and a bad one. It was believed that such people would rise from their graves and haunt the living. The best remedy to this problem was to dig up their coffin and turn it upside down. In this way, the dead would lose their sense of orientation and dig their way deeper and deeper into the ground. Additionally, in some instances, their heads were also cut off.

Stones on the Dead Throwing or laying stones directly on the dead is a practice observed in a range of early medieval cemeteries in Poland (e.g., Gardeła 2017a; Gąssowski 1950: 321–322; Malinowska-Łazarczyk 1982). This practice was associated mainly with adult males, but stones on bodies of women and children have also been noted in the archaeological record (fig. 13.5). They may lie on different parts of cadavers (chest, limbs and/or head) and can have different shapes and sizes. Similar to prone burials, placing stones on the dead can hold many meanings and does not have to be associated only with fear of revenants. While stones may have been used to hold the body down in the grave and prevent the dead 262

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Figure 13.5. Reconstruction of grave 104 from Niemcza, Poland. An adult female with a large stone on her chest. Illustration by Mirosław Kuźma. © Leszek Gardeła and Mirosław Kuźma.

from walking, it is also possible that in some instances, they helped to position the cadaver in an aesthetic way (for example, ensuring the head faced the desired direction, or to prevent the jaw from dropping) or to cover parts of the body whose appearance might be unpleasant for funeral participants (e.g., because of physical damage or disfigurement) (e.g., Barber 2010: 36, 47, 75). Atypical Burials in Early Medieval Poland: A Critical Overview

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Additionally, stones may have prevented animals or robbers from accessing the grave (Gardeła and Kajkowski 2013b: 789). Medieval written accounts that refer to Polish lands offer little information about the meaning of stones in the worldviews and funerary practices of early medieval Slavs (Grajewski 1956: 204–207). We do know, however, that stones may have been employed in executions of people who committed crimes and that they were used by pagans against Christian clergy (Gołdyn 2006; Grabarczyk 2008: 104–105). In other cultural milieus, most notably Viking Age Scandinavia, stones appear to have been used in executions of people dealing in sorcery, and there are several Old Norse sources that mention such practices (e.g., Laxdœla saga, Gísla saga Súrssonar—see Gardeła 2013; Ström 1942: 102–115 for detailed discussions). According to these accounts, stoning was often conducted in marginal locations, such as beaches or mountain ridges, and the bodies of the executed sorcerers were also heaped with stones. Archaeological excavations in Scandinavia have also revealed a range of graves where large boulders lay directly on the dead. Coupled with other unusual features of such graves, it is possible to argue that they indeed belonged to people whom the communities regarded as magic workers and feared would return from their graves (Gardeła 2016: 78–88). We have insufficient evidence to argue that stoned burials in early medieval Poland belonged to magic workers, but such a possibility, in the light of comparative evidence from other contemporary cultures, should not be ruled out completely.

Objects in the Mouths of the Deceased In some societies, placing stones, clay, or other objects in the mouths of the deceased is a practice intended to prevent the dead from biting and, in effect, hurting the living (Barber 2010: 36, 47, 75). From early medieval Poland, only one instance has been interpreted in this light—grave 27 from Brześć Kujawski, with an individual that had missing body parts (left hand and forearm) and was buried with a knife on the chest and an openwork pendant made of tin and lead (Kaszewscy 1971: 403, 428). The mouth of this person was widely open, leading Przemysław Żydok (2004: 49) to conclude that something may have been put inside it, although no traces of anything have been found. There is no comparative evidence for placing objects (other than coins, which probably served the role of Charon’s obol) in the mouths of the deceased in early medieval Poland (Suchodolski 2015); therefore, the open mouth of the individual from Brześć Kujawski likely had nothing to do with anti-revenant practices and its unusual appearance probably resulted from natural postdepositional processes. 264

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Naming the Living Dead: Terminological Concerns Concluding this overview, it is essential to provide some remarks on terminology connected with the idea of the living dead. In past scholarship in Poland, most atypical graves were regarded as belonging to so-called vampires, and graves with deviant characteristics were automatically labeled as evidence of “anti-vampire practices.” In recent years, however, these views have been subject to major revisions, which were sought to demonstrate the fallacy of such impressionistic interpretations (Duma 2015: 12, 116–121; Gardeła 2015a, 2017a). Although the term “vampire” is frequently used in regard to atypical burials, we must be wary of the fact that it was unknown among the early medieval Slavs. The term “vampire” appeared in this part of Europe in the seventeenth or eighteenth century; we have no written accounts from the early Middle Ages (especially from the period between the tenth and thirteenth centuries AD), which would inform us how the Slavs from the area of Poland referred to the living dead (Keyworth 2007: 51; Summers 2005[1929]: 27). This does not mean that they were not familiar with the idea of revenants, but it is unknown by which term (if any at all) they called them. However, a number of special terms for living dead are recorded from late medieval and early modern Silesia, and they have recently been discussed in detail by Paweł Duma (2015: 116–121). Among these living dead, we may list beings such as Nachzehrer, Neuntöter, and Wiedergänger, each of which had its own special characteristics. The Nachzehrers were living dead who had a tendency to eat parts of their own bodies or clothing (Duma 2015: 117–118). The Neuntöters were children born with teeth or with two rows of teeth and who died an untimely death. The name Neuntöter refers to a belief that after their deaths, such children would cause the demise of nine other members of their families (Duma 2015: 118). The term Wiedergänger appears to be more neutral, referring to people who “walk” after death and visit their relatives without causing them harm, and while doing so, they repent their sins (Duma 2015: 118). These three names, Nachzehrer, Neuntöter, and Wiedergänger, were known particularly in Silesia, a region with very strong Germanic influences. In parts of Poland dominated by Slavic populations, or at least the Polish language, a term commonly used to refer to living dead was strzyga (e.g., Dekowski 1987), defined as human being with two souls, only one of which died with the person. Because of having two souls, strzyga would leave its grave in search of food and human blood to drink (Duma 2015: 118). In Silesia, it was believed that strzyga would suck its own clothing or body (Duma 2015: Atypical Burials in Early Medieval Poland: A Critical Overview

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119; Simonides 1984: 71), which made it conceptually similar to the aforementioned Nachzehrer. Because the extant textual sources contain no information about specific names used by the native Slavic population to refer to the living dead in the early Middle Ages, it seems best to avoid using foreign terminology to refer to such beings. Given the fact that the word “vampire” seems to have been unknown among the Slavs at least until the seventeenth or eighteenth century, consequently the term “anti-vampire burial”—so commonly employed in past scholarship—should be abandoned. It is strongly advised to use more neutral terminology (e.g., “revenant,” “living dead”) for describing atypical burial practices. By doing so, we will be able to better acknowledge the multiplicity of their forms and meanings.

Conclusion The evidence reviewed above demonstrates that atypical burials in early medieval Poland acquired a wide plethora of forms and may have resulted from various circumstances. Among them may have been peculiar biography, profession or appearance of the deceased person, but they could have also been performed when a certain individual died what may be regarded as “bad death”—i.e., a death that occurred as a result of some dire circumstances and which evoked fear in the society (on the concept of bad death, see Gardeła 2017a; Lecouteux 2010: 25–27). Due to the nature of archaeological materials and often insufficient preservation of human remains, it is difficult to unravel the identities of the dead buried in an atypical way. Therefore, in many cases, we must remain open for various hypotheses and interpretations. However, based on the examined evidence and comparative materials, especially from late medieval and early modern Poland, it is possible to argue that among individuals who were treated in atypical manner upon death may have been predominantly: • • • •

criminals and convicts people feared of being revenants various social deviants people dealing with magic

In order to move beyond the sphere of speculations about the meanings of atypical burials from early medieval Poland, it is necessary to examine them not

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only in a cross-cultural perspective and in the context of textual and folkloristic materials, but also to employ a broad range of other methods (e.g., paleopathology, but also stable isotopes, aDNA). So far, such scientific analyses have not been extensively applied in examinations of atypical burials from this part of Europe, but it is to be expected that in the near future, they will become an integral part of research procedures employed while studying these phenomena.

Acknowledgments This study was funded by the Polish National Science Centre (NCN) and conducted within the framework of a research project entitled “Bad Death in the Early Middle Ages: Atypical Burials from Poland in a Comparative Perspective” (DEC-2013/09/D/HS3/04452).

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14 Does Health Define Deviancy? Non-Normative Burials in Post-Medieval Poland

T r ac y K . Betsi nge r a n d A m y B. S c ot t

Post-medieval Poland during the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries AD experienced a number of sociopolitical shifts that greatly impacted the country, including the growing Reformation of the Catholic Church that began at the end of the sixteenth century (Kloczowski 2000). The Reformation resulted in greater oversight and training of parish priests, including in remote areas. The job of local parish priests was not only to conduct important rituals, such as baptisms, marriages, and funerals, but also to ensure the local populace was following Church doctrine (Kloczowski 2000). This duty was likely a reaction to the continuation of pagan beliefs and rituals well after the conversion of Poland to Christianity in the tenth century (Betsinger and Scott 2014; Portal 1969), although the extent to which pagan traditions were maintained is subject to much debate (Urbańczyk 1997). It has been suggested, however, that pagan burial customs would be allowed to occur in conjunction with Christian rites as long as the Catholic rituals were conducted properly (Janowski and Garas 2010). In some areas, the assimilation of specific pagan customs into Catholic burial rites resulted in atypical burial practices for certain individuals, reflecting fear of the undead (Betsinger and Scott 2014; Tsaliki 2001, 2008). During this post-medieval period, Christian burial practices predominated. At the cemetery site of Drawsko 1, located near the town of the same name in northwestern Poland, the deceased were typically interred individually in an extended, supine position. The graves were oriented east-west, the traditional

Christian alignment, and fewer than half were buried in coffins (Betsinger and Scott 2014). This cemetery is not typical for this period or for Christian cemetery custom, because it is not situated in conjunction with a church or other structure; however, excavations are ongoing (Blair 2006; Koperkiewicz 2010).

Vampire Mythology in Post-Medieval Poland Pagan burials included treatments to prevent the dead from rising from the grave and causing problems for the living. In Slavic folklore, the undead were known as vampires or revenants, which are terms for reanimated corpses1 (Perkowski 1989). This folklore, dating back to the eleventh century, however, is not unique to Slavic populations; comparable mythology existed among ancient populations of Greece, Rome, and Egypt (Beresford 2008). In Poland, vampires were thought to be unclean spirits that occupied the corpses of the dead, causing harm to the living. It was believed that revenants would cause crop failure as well as illness and death among humans and animals (Koperkiewicz 2010; Máchal 1976). According to Slavic beliefs at the time, the body and soul separated upon death, and the soul remained among the living for 40 days. Most of these souls were benign and caused no issues for the living; those “unclean,” however, were viewed as a threat (Máchal 1976; Tsaliki 2001). According to the mythology and folklore surrounding vampires or revenants, there were generally four categories of factors leading to reanimation of a deceased individual: predisposition, predestination, events, and nonevents (Barber 1988: 29). Those predisposed to becoming revenants were considered “others,” as were those who behaved in what was deemed an unacceptable manner, including “great sinners.” Other potential revenants were alcoholics, those who committed suicide, and sorcerers or witches (Barber 1988: 29–30). On the other hand, those predestined to become revenants, unlike the predisposed, were at risk “through no fault of their own” (Barber 1988: 29). These risk factors included being born out of wedlock, being conceived during a holy period, having a birth defect (e.g., born with teeth or an extra nipple, missing nasal cartilage or a split lower lip, or beastlike traits of a vestigial tail or hair down the back), and being born with a red amniotic membrane (instead of the more common clear or gray color) (Barber 1988: 30–31). Events that put someone at risk of becoming a revenant could occur in life or after death, such as being bitten by a vampire, having an animal such as a cat or bat jump or fly over the corpse, committing suicide, being the victim of murder, drowning, having a stroke, beDoes Health Define Deviancy? Non-Normative Burials in Post-Medieval Poland

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ing the first to die in an epidemic, or not being baptized (Barber 1988: 32–37). Finally, individuals were potentially revenants as a result of things that had not been completed, or nonevents. Many of these nonevents revolved around burial practices, such as a corpse left unattended or being left unburied. Additionally, those who died too soon or at a young age were thought to be at risk because they did not live out their expected life span (Barber 1988: 37–38). Collectively, the various factors that made someone a potential revenant are quite extensive and varied from region to region and from culture to culture. In the case of Slavic vampire mythology, it is important to note that many of the risk factors that potentially applied to post-medieval Poland included things related to Catholic Church doctrine. As we have discussed elsewhere (Betsinger and Scott 2014), the Catholic Church did not refute the mythology surrounding revenants, nor did it confirm the existence of vampires. Instead, the Church may have opted to allow the belief in vampires as it was a stark contrast to the idealized goodness of the Church’s beliefs (Beresford 2008; Betsinger and Scott 2014; Koperkiewicz 2010). The Church was able to encourage people to adhere to their doctrine, because failure to do so through such things as being born out of wedlock, not being baptized, being conceived during a holy period, committing suicide, or being a great sinner would put a person at risk of becoming a most evil entity (Betsinger and Scott 2014). This, we have argued, was a very effective method of social control, using revenants as “the scapegoat of all things evil” (Betsinger and Scott 2014: 472). The Reformation of the Catholic Church, beginning at the end of the sixteenth century, included a push to ensure that people were adhering to the rules of the Church, even if they lived in more remote, rural areas (Betsinger and Scott 2014; Kloczowski 2000). It is entirely likely, then, that the inhabitants of rural post-medieval Poland would have known about Church doctrine and which unacceptable behaviors were putting them at risk of becoming a revenant. In order to prevent someone from becoming a vampire, a number of mortuary treatments could be utilized, many of which can be seen in the archaeological record. Apotropaics were protective grave accompaniments that could keep the deceased from wanting to return, that could physically prevent the deceased from being able to return, or that could protect the deceased from evil spirits wanting to inhabit the body (Barber 1988: 47). The last is the likely reason individuals were interred with coins, which were believed to have protective properties. Placement of the coin in the mouth, which was thought at one time to be used for payment to cross the River Styx, may instead have been used to prevent an evil spirit or soul from entering through the mouth (Lawson 1910: 405–406 as quoted in Bar278

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ber 1988: 47). Other preventive items that could be used in the graves of potential revenants included sharp objects, such as sickles and knives to prevent the corpse from “walking” again, and thorns in the tongue to prevent the deceased from chewing. Alternatively, the deceased could be staked or bound to keep the corpse in the grave (Barber 1988). Mutilation of the corpse, such as beheading the body, was also viewed as an effective method against potential vampires. The Slavic vampire mythology is especially important to consider in this study, as several anti-vampiristic burials have been identified at the Polish site of Drawsko 1. In our study, we test the hypothesis that individuals were selected for atypical burial because of some aspect of their biology or health. As many of the factors influencing these distinct mortuary treatments are associated with individual health, an exploration of disease, biological stress, and other underlying biological factors may help to identify why these specific individuals received these anti-vampiristic burials.

Materials and Methods Archaeological Site The cemetery site of Drawsko 1, dating to the seventeenth–eighteenth centuries, has been systematically excavated since 2008 (Wyrwa 2004, 2005). Approximately 300 well-preserved human skeletal remains were recovered during excavations conducted by the Slavia Foundation (Poland) between 2008 and 2012. Of these remains, six have been identified as atypical burials (see figs. 14.1–14.5). Each of these burials includes anti-vampiristic grave accompaniments, such as a sickle or stone, within the grave. The atypical burials are primary inhumations with no evidence of secondary disturbance, indicating these treatments were conducted at the time of interment, likely in order to prevent the deceased from becoming a revenant. So, rather than viewing these atypical burials as vampires or revenants per se, it is more accurate to consider them as individuals at risk of becoming reanimated and, thus, requiring specialized treatment to prevent this from happening. These atypical burials are located within the cemetery boundaries and are not segregated by any visible means (Betsinger and Scott 2014; Gregoricka et al. 2014, 2017). Three of the six atypical burials also have a copper coin interred with them, a higher rate (50%) than in the general cemetery population (~30%). Three of the six burials (50%) were interred in a coffin, which is only a slightly higher rate than in the rest of the cemetery (~40%) (Betsinger and Scott 2014). Does Health Define Deviancy? Non-Normative Burials in Post-Medieval Poland

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Atypical Burials Six atypical burials were recovered from the Drawsko 1 cemetery. Burial 28/2008 is a 35–44-year-old male who was interred in a coffin with a sickle around his neck. The location of the sickle suggests that its location was chosen to prevent a revenant from physically rising out of the grave. In other words, if the deceased attempted to sit up, the sickle would cut off his head (Barber 1988; Janowski and Kurasiński 2010). This is the only male atypical burial and does not include a copper coin. Burial 29/2008 is a 12–15-year-old subadult of undetermined sex. This individual was buried with two stones placed beneath the chin, which may have served to keep the mouth shut so the revenant could not chew through its burial cloths or would break teeth when attempting to bite (Barber 1988). This is the youngest atypical burial and, like the adult male, does not include a copper coin. Burial 24/2009 is a 35–39-year-old female buried with a sickle around her neck. She was interred with a copper coin, located on her left side, next to her head. Burial 49/2012 (fig. 14.1) is a 30–39-year-old female buried in a coffin

Figure 14.1. Burial of a 30–39-year-old female with a sickle around her neck. (Burial 49/2012. Photo courtesy of Amy B. Scott and the Slavia Foundation.)

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Figure 14.2. Burial of a 45–49-year-old female with a sickle across her abdomen and pelvis. (Burial 60/2010. Photo courtesy of Amy B. Scott and the Slavia Foundation.)

with a sickle around her neck. She also had a coin on her left side, next to her head. Burial 60/2010 (figs. 14.2, 14.3) is a 45–49-year-old edentulous female, buried with a rock beneath her chin and a sickle across her abdomen. The location of the sickle in this burial was likely based on Slavic tradition in which sickles were laid on individuals to prevent them from swelling or from becoming reanimated (Barber 1988; Betsinger and Scott 2014; Janowski and Kurasiński 2010). This tradition has continued to modern times, as demonstrated by Janowski and Kurasiński (2010), who include a modern photograph of a deceased Polish woman with a sickle placed across her abdomen (86). Burial 6/2012 (figs. 14.4, 14.5) is a 16–19-year-old female buried with a sickle around her neck and a copper coin on her left next to her head. She was buried in a coffin and had a fabric headband with copper staining, although no copper pieces were recovered from it. Beneath the headband was a well-preserved braid of hair, oriented on the sagittal plane across the top of the skull. Does Health Define Deviancy? Non-Normative Burials in Post-Medieval Poland

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Figure 14.3. Burial of a 45–49-year-old female with a stone beneath her chin. (Burial 60/2010. Photo courtesy of Amy B. Scott and the Slavia Foundation.)

Figure 14.4. Burial of a 16–19-year-old female with a sickle around her neck and a fabric headband on the top of her skull. (Burial 6/2012. Photo courtesy of Amy B. Scott and the Slavia Foundation.)

Figure 14.5. Burial of a 16–19-year-old female with a sickle around her neck. Note the coin on her left side. (Burial 6/2012. Photo courtesy of Amy B. Scott and the Slavia Foundation.)

Methods A sample of 86 adults (~18+ years; 36 males, 47 females, 3 indeterminate sex) from the Drawsko 1 site, including the five adult atypical burials, were assessed by both authors for the presence of various skeletal indicators, including evidence of biological stress (i.e., linear enamel hypoplasias [LEH], cribra orbitalia, porotic hyperostosis, periosteal reaction), nutritional deficiency (i.e., scurvy, rickets), infectious disease (i.e., tuberculosis, treponemal disease), and traumatic injuries. Adult age-at-death estimates and sex determination were made based on standard anthropological protocol, including pubic symphysis and auricular surface aging (Brooks and Suchey 1990; Buikstra and Ubelaker 1994; Lovejoy et al. 1985) and pelvic and cranial morphology (Buikstra and Ubelaker 1994). Pathological conditions were scored based on Global History of Health Project coding standards (Steckel et al. 2006). The skeletal remains were scored for the presence/absence of each condition as well as for the severity of cribra orbitalia, porotic hyperostosis, LEH, and periosteal reaction. Although it has been documented that differentiating between healed and active lesions of cribra orbitalia and porotic hyperostosis is important (DeDoes Health Define Deviancy? Non-Normative Burials in Post-Medieval Poland

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Witte 2014), healed and active lesions were not identified in this sample, as the distinction was not part of the coding protocol at the time data were collected. Cribra orbitalia was scored when at least one observable orbit was present. Mild cases were identified by a clustering of fine holes, and severe cases were classified based on the presence of smaller or larger foramina affecting a larger area (>1 cm2) (Steckel et al. 2006). Porotic hyperostosis was scored when at least one parietal was observable and was identified as mild when slight to substantial porosity was observed. The more severe form involved not only porosity, but also enlargement/expansion of the cranial bone (Steckel et al. 2006). Linear enamel hypoplasias were scored for the maxillary and mandibular incisors and canines, as they are the teeth most likely to display the defect (Goodman and Armelagos 1985). The linear defects were scored macroscopically for at least one observable tooth that had a minimum of 50% of the crown intact. “Mild” LEH was defined by those with only one linear defect per tooth, while “severe” were those with two or more defects per tooth (Steckel et al. 2006). Periosteal reactions were assessed for the tibiae only, as this is the bone most often affected (Larsen 2015). This indicator was evaluated only when at least 50% of the diaphysis was present. Periosteal reactions were scored for severity according to the following criteria: mild: longitudinal striations, moderate: discrete patches of reactive bone, severe: extensive reaction with cortical expansion (Steckel et al. 2006). The skeletal sample was also assessed for rickets (vitamin D deficiency) and scurvy (vitamin C deficiency). Scurvy was distinguished from cribra orbitalia not only by changes to the eye orbits, but also by alterations to the sphenoid, mandible, maxilla, and scapula (Brickley and Ives 2008; Ortner and Ericksen 1997). Rickets was distinguishable by orbital changes as well as by alterations to the bones of the arms and legs, ribs, and mandible (Ortner and Mays 1998). The presence of tuberculosis was assessed in this sample, as the disease increased in frequency until the middle of the nineteenth century (Ortner 2003). Tuberculosis was assessed when there was at least one observable thoracic or lumbar vertebra, at least one pleural rib surface, and at least one bone surface of the hip and knee joints. The presence of treponemal disease was also assessed, since the disease, including the venereal form, was definitely in the Old World by the late fifteenth century (Hackett 1976). Treponemal disease was evaluated when bones of the cranial vault, especially the frontal, were observable. 284

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Traumatic injuries were assessed for the cranial vault, nasal bones, non-nasal facial bones, long bones, and other postcranial skeletal elements. Data recorded for the injuries included element involved, side, location on element, type of injury/fracture, state of healing, evidence of complications, and size of affected area (Steckel et al. 2006). Statistical comparisons were conducted between atypical and normative burials for each of the skeletal indicators, using a Fisher’s Exact test with a 95% confidence interval.

Results The five atypical burials exhibited none of the skeletal indicators examined in this study. While not included in this study, it is important to note that the subadult atypical burial likewise had no evidence of disease, biological stress, or trauma. Additionally, no evidence of tuberculosis, treponemal disease, scurvy, or rickets was found on any remains (atypical or normative) in this sample. Statistical comparisons yielded no statistically significant results. For this skeletal indicator, no atypical burials had LEH (0/5), while 46% (21/46) of normative burials had LEH (p = 0.0693). When severity of LEH was taken into account, no significant results emerged for mild or severe cases. All cases of cribra orbitalia and porotic hyperostosis in the normative burials were mild. Approximately 7.6% of normative burials (5/66) exhibited cribra orbitalia and 10.3% had porotic hyperostosis (7/68), while none of the atypical burials had these markers. Traumatic injuries were found in ten individuals (10/85, 11.8%). None of these traumas were found on the remains from atypical burials. The types of injuries observed include healed fractures of the ribs, radius, ulna, toe and finger phalanges, and ilium, as well as a healed sharp force trauma of the femur. Periosteal reactions were observed on 34.7% of the remains (26/75) from normative burials, while no atypical burial displayed periosteal changes (p = 0.1679). When severity of periosteal reactions was considered, there were no statistically significant results for the mild, moderate, or severe forms (p = 1.0000 for all levels).

Discussion These results indicate that no health problem, as evidenced by these skeletal markers, was the likely reason someone was identified as needing an atypical, anti-vampiristic burial treatment. In fact, none of the skeletal remains from Does Health Define Deviancy? Non-Normative Burials in Post-Medieval Poland

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atypical burials had any of the skeletal indicators examined in this study. Even with the elimination of these skeletal markers as causes of atypical burial, there are other possible biological explanations. For example, an acute disease that does not affect the skeletal tissues, such as cholera, could have been a factor leading to the need for atypical burial rites. Cholera epidemics were known to have occurred in this area during the period represented by this skeletal sample (Wyrwa 2004). Cholera is an acute, waterborne infection, caused by Vibrio cholera. Its most common symptom is diarrhea, leading to severe dehydration. Untreated cholera can cause death within hours of symptom onset (World Health Organization 2016). Such a fast-acting pathogen typically does not leave markers on the skeleton, making it archaeologically invisible to researchers. One of the potential risk factors for becoming a vampire is being the first person to die in a disease outbreak (Barber 1988), which makes cholera (or another acute disease) a possible factor in the atypical burial rites observed at Drawsko. Another possible explanation for vampirism is committing suicide or dying a violent death (Barber 1988); however, traumatic injuries indicative of violence, including suicide and homicide, are also lacking in this sample. Moreover, all injuries documented were found in normative, not atypical, burials, and the injuries were all well healed, antemortem injuries and not part of trauma that occurred around the time of death. Of course, it is possible for someone to sustain a lethal traumatic injury without the skeleton being affected, which, once again, makes it invisible to archaeologists. While we have no evidence of violent trauma that might explain why some of the individuals received an atypical burial treatment, it cannot be completely excluded. Likewise, death by drowning has also been identified as a possible risk factor for vampirism (Barber 1988), but drowning would leave no discernible or identifiable changes on the skeleton. Other biologically based explanations for vampirism include being born with the “signs of the beast” (Barber 1988). These include those born with a vestigial tail, erupted teeth, or hair down their backs (Barber 1988). In all these cases, researchers would be unable to identify what was present at birth or in life. Vestigial tails, which are quite rare, are usually associated with spinal dysraphism, a spinal cord malformation (Mukhopadhyay et al. 2012). These structures do not contain bone; instead, they contain adipose and connective tissue, blood vessels, nerves, and some muscle bundles and are covered with skin (Mukhopadhyay et al. 2012). The lack of skeletal involvement means bio286

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archaeologists would not know whether a person had this rare structure in life. Similarly, while researchers would be able to identify a newborn or neonate with an erupted dentition, all atypical burials from Drawsko are older children and adults with dentitions expected for their age. It is possible that one or more of these individuals were born with erupted teeth; however, it is not identifiable in this situation. Hair on the back is another soft tissue anomaly that leaves no record on the skeleton and, therefore, cannot be determined from the remains examined here. Hair tufts have been associated with spina bifida, especially spina bifida occulta, the mildest form of this neural tube defect affecting the sacrum and lumbar vertebrae (Mayo Clinic 2014); however, no malformations of the sacrum or lumbar vertebrae were found in any individuals in this study. As with the other biological explanations discussed above, we cannot exclude that one of these birth anomalies may be the reason someone was given an atypical burial. It is just as likely that other, sociocultural explanations account for why some individuals were selected for a non-normative mode of burial. For example, outsiders to the community, including those who had migrated into the settlement, have also been identified as potentially at risk for vampirism (Barber 1988). Previous research on strontium and oxygen stable isotopes at Drawsko 1 excluded migration into the community as a possible explanation for the atypical burials (Gregoricka et al. 2014, 2017). These studies demonstrated that all atypical burials represent individuals local to the community. These results, in conjunction with the current study, have eliminated several possible explanations for these atypical burials. Nevertheless, there are many other potential reasons that, unfortunately, cannot be directly tested with archaeological data. As discussed above, sociocultural explanations for vampirism include practicing witchcraft or sorcery, being born out of wedlock, being conceived during a holy period, not being baptized, being “sinners,” not following religious doctrine, and behaving unusually or suspiciously (Barber 1988; Falis 2013; Máchal 1976; Perkowski 1976; Weiss-Krejci 2013). Any of these behaviors (or lack of behavior) could explain why individuals at Drawsko 1 required atypical burial practices. Equally important is the idea that there may not be a universal explanation for all six atypical Drawsko 1 burials. It is possible that each person was buried in a non-normative fashion for a unique reason, including both biological (but not observable in the archaeological record) and sociocultural explanations. Does Health Define Deviancy? Non-Normative Burials in Post-Medieval Poland

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Conclusion This study has demonstrated the utility of using bioarchaeological data to investigate a cultural phenomenon, including burial practices and variations within them. The skeletal indicators examined here yielded no statistically significant results, suggesting that these particular markers do not explain why some individuals were buried in an atypical fashion. Other biologically based explanations are possible, and cannot be excluded on the basis of skeletal analysis. Equally plausible are a variety of sociocultural factors that may explain why six individuals at Drawsko 1 were buried in such a unique way. One of the most important conclusions is that it is very possible that individuals given a non-normative burial were selected for very different reasons. It seems unlikely that all of them, of varying ages and both sexes, would have been considered at risk of vampirism for the same reason. Rather, it is more plausible that this community recognized different types of risk factors and identified those individuals who met at least one of them as needing an atypical burial. For example, the first person to die in a disease outbreak may have necessitated a nonnormative burial. Another person may have been thought to practice witchcraft, and thus, anti-vampiristic burial objects had to be included in the burial, while someone else was born out of wedlock, needing the same burial treatment. It is also possible that people were selected for atypical burial for more than one reason. Despite the fact that we cannot specifically identify the reason for the atypical burials at Drawsko 1, we have been able to eliminate some of the potential explanations. Unfortunately, unless Drawsko 1-specific documentation comes to light, we are unlikely to ever know the exact reason(s) for these unusual burials.

Acknowledgments The authors would like to thank Dr. Marek Polcyn (Slavia Foundation) and Elżbieta Gajda for access to the skeletal collections. We also thank Darius Błaszczyk, Marta Gwizdała, Arek Klimowicz, Ewa Lobo-Bronowicka, Michał Rozwadowski, and Marta Słominska for their assistance. A special thank you to Marta Gwizdała for her translation of Polish articles.

Note 1. The term “vampire” is an Anglicized word that probably originated from the Slavic terms vampir, upir, upyr, and upiór (Barber 1988; Beresford 2008; Koperkiewicz 2010). 288

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The term became commonly used in the southern Slavic region as early as the fifteenth century (Perkowski 1989). It is likely the latter terms were derived from the Turkish word uber, which meant “witch” (Beresford 2008). This chapter uses the terms “vampire” and “revenant” interchangeably to refer to the Polish mythological beings that fed on human and animal blood to sustain their life-force (Tsaliki 2001).

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15 The “Vampires” of Lesbos Detecting and Interpreting Anti-Revenant Ritual in Greece

Sa n dr a Ga rv i e-L ok a n d A na sta si a Tsa l i k i

The vampire of early modern Greek folklore is part of a wider southeastern European tradition that peaked in the late seventeenth through nineteenth centuries with a “vampire mania” that inspired the modern literary motif of the vampire (Frost 1989; Summers 1968). Belief in vampires appears to have been common in Early Modern Greece and extended well into the twentieth century to be documented in ethnographic studies. Because the rituals intended to dispel vampires were centered around the grave, they should be archaeologically visible in at least some cases; however, published archaeological cases of suspected vampire-related ritual in Greece are rare (Tsaliki 2008a). This chapter discusses two likely “vampire” burials from the late Ottomanera island of Lesbos (ca. eighteenth–nineteenth century AD), considering them in the context of normative burial customs, vampire lore, and the symbolism of death and difference. From this we draw insights into why vampire ritual is rare in Greece’s archaeological record, how we can better detect it, and how the study of such burials can enrich our understanding of death and deviance in the past.

Normative Mortuary Ritual in Post-Byzantine Greece The vampire folklore of Early Modern Greece centered around the physical realities of death, decay, and the grave. To fully understand this tradition, its impact on burials, and the potential for recovering archaeological evidence of

vampire-related rituals, we must work in the broader context of normative mortuary practices in the period, with emphasis on the material aspects of these practices, focusing on the expected archaeological traits of normative burials.

Christian Mortuary Ritual Although Early Modern Greece included Christian communities of other denominations with their own mortuary practices (Garvie-Lok 2013), here we focus on Greek Orthodox customs, which applied to the vast majority of the Greek population. These represent a long heritage extending to the Byzantine era and beyond. Normative burial rites were of paramount importance to the Greeks, as has been testified since the time of Homer (Tsaliki 2008b). There is little direct written evidence regarding funerals for the Post-Byzantine and Early Modern periods (mainly under Ottoman rule), so we draw instead on evidence from written sources of the preceding Byzantine era, and from ethnohistorical accounts of traditional practices of twentieth-century communities, in addition to archaeological evidence. Although many centuries separate the Byzantine era from the twentieth century, numerous common points in mortuary practices can be found, suggesting that Byzantine traditions continued through the Early Modern era (see Tsaliki 2008a) and are relevant to this discussion. As outlined in reviews of the Byzantine written evidence (Kyriakakis 1974; Rautman 2006; Talbot 2009; Tritsaroli and Valentin 2008), and supported by documented early twentieth-century practices (Alexiou 2002; Blum and Blum 1970; Danforth and Tsiaras 1982; du Boulay 1982), Christian mortuary ritual called for the eyes and mouth of the deceased to be closed immediately after death; this is sometimes ascribed to the fear that an evil spirit might enter the body through the open mouth while the soul abandoned the corpse through the last breath (Spyridakes 1950). The jaw was tied shut to preserve a natural posture and the body was washed with water and wine, perfumed, and wound in linen bands, with the ankles tied together and the hands crossed over the torso or pelvis and tied into position. Although these bands were the essential clothing of death, a white robe or garments and jewelry worn by the deceased in life were often placed over them. The corpse was then put in a coffin or onto a bier in or in front of the home, with its head to the west, for a vigil before the funeral and burial. The dead were usually buried the day after death, which is still the case in Greece (Alexiou 2002; Kazhdan 1991; Koukoules 1940). The corpse’s limbs were untied just before burial, so that the dead would not enter Last Judgment tied up. Interment might be in a single grave or in a famDetecting and Interpreting Anti-Revenant Ritual in Greece

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ily tomb, with the body placed so that the dead faced east and could sit up and witness the Day of Judgment (i.e., on an east-west orientation with the head at the west end; see Talbot 2009). In fact, in Byzantium, it was customary to bury bishops and priests in a sitting position (Kazhdan 1991; Koukoules 1940). The priest poured oil on the grave, psalms and prayers were said at the graveside, and food or drink might be shared by the mourners; if this was done it was important to break any vessels used and leave them at the graveside (Koukoules 1951; Politis 1921). No funeral service was conducted for non-Christians, sectarians, unbaptized infants, the excommunicated, and those who had committed suicide (Koukoules 1940; Kyriakakis 1974). Although the body might remain in this initial grave, secondary burial was common practice in the twentieth century (Danforth and Tsiaras 1982; du Boulay 1982; Håland 2014; O’Rourke 2007) and is documented in some Byzantine records (Rife 2012: 199–202). In recent times, and still today, the grave was reopened about three to five years after burial (Danforth and Tsiaras 1982; Dubisch 1989; O’Rourke 2007). After ensuring that the soft tissues had decomposed, the bones of the deceased were removed, washed in water, oil, and wine, and deposited in an ossuary. The exhumation was an important event, with a priest and loved ones of the deceased present and the deceased mourned and remembered anew (Danforth and Tsiaras 1982). Recent ossuaries vary in form, including freestanding buildings, individual aboveground stone boxes, and communal pits (Danforth and Tsiaras 1982; Dubisch 1989; O’Rourke 2007). Some might contain commingled bone from dozens or hundreds of individuals. Although commingling could function as an expression of community (Dubisch 1989; O’Rourke 2007), it could also reflect a more prosaic need for communal graves for those who could not afford individual burial plots or had no relatives to collect their bones after exhumation (Politis 1931). Excavations of Christian burials dating to the Byzantine through Early Modern periods show clear reflections of these customs (Garvie-Lok 2013; Laskaris 2000; Makropoulou 2006; Rife 2012; Talbot, 2009). Grave construction ranges from large masonry tombs to individual pits (Agelarakis and Agelarakis 2015; Laskaris 2000; Rife 2012; Talbot 2009; Tritsaroli and Gini-Tsophopoulou 2006). The latter may be lined or roofed with flat stones or tiles, often reused from earlier structures near the cemetery (e.g., Agelarakis and Agelarakis 2015; Barnes 2003; Gerstel et al. 2003; Kontogiannis 2008; Makropoulou 2006; Rife 2012). Flat stones or slabs of tile may be placed as head rests, at the sides of the head, or under the chin, perhaps reflecting the concern with a lifelike position and 294

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closed mouth seen in the written sources (Barnes 2003; Gerstel et al. 2003; Kontogiannis 2008; Talbot 2009). Graves are normally oriented on an east-west axis with the head at the west end (Gerstel et al. 2003; Laskaris 2000; Rife 2012; Rohn et al. 2009). Burials that deviate from this orientation are also encountered; in at least some cases the deviation is due to the constraints of church foundations or of earlier structures beneath the cemetery (Laskaris 2000). While many undisturbed single graves are found, evidence for secondary and communal burial is also seen (Fox and Marklein 2014; Rife 2012: 199–202). This evidence most often takes the form of individual graves reused for sequential burials. Placement of intact and disturbed skeletons shows that the grave was opened and the bones of the prior occupant removed or pushed to the side to admit a new corpse. After this the disturbed bones were placed back in the grave, sometimes over the legs of the corpse, and the grave was resealed (Agelarakis and Agelarakis 2015; Gerstel et al. 2003; Laskaris 2000; Makropoulou 2006; Rohn et al. 2009). This might be done several times, producing multiple burials in a single small grave. Bone-filled pits under church floors or near cemeteries more similar to recent ossuaries are also sometimes documented (e.g., Rife 2012; Tritsaroli and Gini-Tsophopoulou 2006).

Islamic Mortuary Ritual There is much less information available on Islamic mortuary ritual in Ottoman Greece, a topic yet to see much attention from archaeologists (Bintliff 2014). Based on common practices in Islamic mortuary traditions (Petersen 2013) and documentary and ethnographic evidence specific to Ottoman-era and recent Turkish communities (e.g., Biçer 2009; Ginio 2001), Islamic funerary rites in Ottoman Greece should have proceeded as follows. After death, the corpse’s face would be turned toward Mecca and the body would be washed several times in water (Ginio 2001; Petersen 2013). The eyes would be closed, the nose and mouth sealed and the jaw tied shut (Biçer 2009; Petersen 2013). In some recent traditional Turkish communities, a knife is laid over the torso of the corpse with the intent of keeping it from swelling (Biçer 2009). The body would then be clothed in a shroud, which was usually simple and should be the only clothing worn by the deceased (Biçer 2009; Ginio 2001; Petersen 2013), although jewelry recovered in archaeological excavations show that this precept was not always followed (Petersen 2013). The funeral and interment would take place as soon as possible, and definitely within a day of death (Biçer 2009; Petersen 2013). The grave would normally be an earthen pit oriented to allow the face Detecting and Interpreting Anti-Revenant Ritual in Greece

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to be turned toward Mecca (Petersen 2013). The body was buried in its shroud only, on its right side or with its face turned to the right, with a layer of reeds or other material placed over the upper body or head to protect it from direct contact with the soil and allow the deceased to sit up for judgment within the grave (Biçer 2009; Petersen 2013). Given the importance of the tomb as a site for individual punishment or bliss lasting to the Day of Judgment, normally only one body would be placed in a grave and it would remain there without being disturbed; exceptions tend to be associated with absolute necessity, as in mass graves of plague victims (Petersen 2013). Based on evidence from cemetery excavations (Rohn et al. 2009; Williams and Williams 1989), Islamic burials in Ottoman Greece adhered to these basic strictures and clearly differed from Christian burials in several ways. Corpses tend to be positioned with the arms extended by the sides rather than crossed over the body (Rohn et al. 2009; Williams and Williams 1989); this along with preserved signs of shroud pins (Williams and Williams 1989) agrees with the general Islamic tradition of burial in a simple shroud. As with Christian burials, there is a general tradition of grave orientation in Islamic burials in Greece. In this case, though, orientation is roughly northwest-southeast, consistent with the direction to Mecca (Rohn et al. 2009; Williams and Williams 1989). The corpse may be lying on its right side or have its head turned to the right (Rohn et al. 2009). Secondary burial is not seen, and this creates a clear distinction in early modern Greece between the reused graves common in Christian communities and the single intact graves typical of Muslim cemeteries (Rohn et al. 2009).

The Journey of Death Given the emphasis on the proper preparation and positioning of the body and the orientation of the grave seen in Christian rites, the tradition of exhumation and secondary burial of its bones may seem incongruous at first glance. However, studies of traditional twentieth-century rural communities indicate that this was a key stage of the journey of death. Mortuary rites reflect and facilitate the journey of the deceased from one mode of existence to another (van Gennep 1960), a perspective useful for understanding secondary burial in Greece (Danforth and Tsiaras 1982; Dubisch 1989; du Boulay 1982; Håland 2014; O’Rourke 2007). Stories and traditions recorded in recent times (Blum and Blum 1970; Danforth and Tsiaras 1982; du Boulay 1982) draw parallels between the decay and disappearance of the flesh and the freeing of the soul from the sins of its life. As du Boulay (1982: 226) puts it, 296

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the rupture between the body and the person who inhabited it is not made absolute on death, but is only finally completed when the flesh, as villagers say, “has dissolved” (échei liósei) from the bones—a process also indicating the dissolution of sins—and when the bones are exhumed and brought up into the air (stón aéra). If the bones were clean of flesh when disinterred it was taken as a sign that the soul had passed on properly, the “clean white bones” (Danforth and Tsiaras 1982: 18) reflecting a pure soul. The presence of soft tissue, on the other hand, raised the fear that something had gone wrong. As du Boulay (1982) and Dubisch (1989) point out, this agrees with the idea of death as a final passage from the world of the living to the dead that is completed only when the body is reduced to bones. This journey required the proper ceremonies. If these were disturbed or not performed properly, the journey could be interrupted or suspended, leaving the dead in a liminal state uncanny and dangerous to the living (also see Tsaliki 2008a; van Gennep 1960).

The Greek Vampire The Greek vampire (vrykolakas, vourvoulakas) is commonly described as a reanimated corpse that did not decay properly after death. Du Boulay (1982) reported that in Greek folklore, a distinction was drawn between relatively harmless revenants whose bodies remained undecayed because of their past sins (tympanaioi or alytoi), and vampires (vrykolakes or vrykolakoi), more malignant demon-impelled corpses created through breaches in the mortuary ceremony. However, accounts in other sources such as Argenti and Rose (1949) and Blum and Blum (1970) suggest that these two classes of creature were not clearly separate, and would have been seen and dealt with in similar ways. Here they will be dealt with as a single entity. Since antiquity, Greece has had a long tradition of the dead who return to haunt the living (Tsaliki 2008a, 2008b). Belief in the vrykolakas probably goes back to the Byzantine period, under Slavic influence in conjunction with the precepts of the Greek Orthodox Church (Davias 1995: 44, Oinas 1998). Related superstitions have been recorded in Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Christian texts, Orthodox canon laws, novels, folk songs, and manuscripts, written by both Greeks and Western travelers in Greece (Summers 1968). A characteristic example from the seventeenth century was documented in Chios (Argenti and Rose 1949). It is one variant of a much wider folkloric tradition extending Detecting and Interpreting Anti-Revenant Ritual in Greece

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through eastern and southeastern Europe (Summers 1968). There is excellent documentation of a late seventeenth- to early eighteenth-century “vampire mania” in southeastern Europe that extended into Ottoman-controlled regions (Calmet 1976; Summers 1960). Sightings of vampires peaked, especially in rural areas, where tales of a rash of sightings in one village might spark a similar series of sightings in surrounding areas. Vampire-related rituals were witnessed by travelers to various parts of Greece including Lesbos in the nineteenth century (Summers 1968: 208), and similar traditions were also present in Ottoman era Turkey (Köhbach 1979; Summers 1960), which is relevant given the location and date of the two cases we describe below. Vrykolakas folklore remained alive well into the twentieth century in many regions of Greece (Argenti and Rose 1949; Blum and Blum 1970; du Boulay 1982).

Becoming a Vampire A corpse might become a vrykolakas for several reasons. These included committing sins such as murder (Blum and Blum, 1970) or suicide (Blum and Blum 1970; du Boulay 1982) and having been excommunicated or cursed by a priest (Argenti and Rose 1949; Blum and Blum 1970; du Boulay 1982); however, it could also result from events beyond an individual’s control, such as conception or birth on a holy day or birth on a Saturday, and if the individual was born with certain physical characteristics, such as red hair, blue eyes, congenital defects, some physical disability, or being born with teeth (du Boulay 1982; Menardos 1921; Oinas 1998). A corpse could also be transformed into a vrykolakas through circumstances surrounding the individual’s death, such as death without baptism, by drowning, in childbirth, and generally any violent, premature, or sudden death (Blum and Blum 1970), as well as by eating food touched by a vrykolakas or being killed by one, following the “infectious” traditions of Slavic vampirism (Oinas 1998). Most importantly, the turning could be caused by irregularities in the funeral rites. If the dead remained unburied, if the grave was too deep or too shallow, if the corpse was left unattended, or if an animal or person passed over the corpse during the vigil, it would become a vampire (Argenti and Rose 1949; Blum and Blum 1970; du Boulay 1982; Menardos 1921; Oinas 1998). Errors in the priest’s prayers (Blum and Blum, 1970) or failure to place the correct holy images with the body (Argenti and Rose 1949) could also lead to vampirism. Thus the vrykolakas might be a person whose life or death was irregular, but it could also simply be a corpse whose journey through the funeral rites was disrupted. 298

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The actions of the vrykolakas also varied. Vampires could be dangerous, killing people by sucking their blood (du Boulay 1982) or simply by knocking at their door and summoning them by name (Argenti and Rose 1949). At the other extreme, many recorded traditions portray the vrykolakas as a trickster or nuisance. It might return to its own house, making noise and scaring its relatives, shaking beds and banging on walls, spoiling the food, and frightening the livestock (Blum and Blum 1970; Summers 1968). Groups of vampires could congregate at night, singing and generally disturbing the peace (Argenti and Rose 1949). Another aspect of Greek vampire folklore focuses on the vrykolakas as a sexual demon. A male vampire might return to its wife to continue sexual relations, go to another village to marry a woman who did not know its true nature, or return to its female relatives and rape them (Blum and Blum 1970; Summers 1968). A female vampire might entice men and then disappear, returning to its grave (Blum and Blum 1970). Whether deadly or merely unnerving, the vampire often focused its attacks on those to whom it was closest in life (Blum and Blum 1970; du Boulay 1982) and might even attempt to continue its obligations from life, as in the case of the female vampire who returned home each night to nurse her child (Blum and Blum 1970).

Dispelling a Vampire When the presence of a vampire in a community was suspected, the grave in question was examined. This might reveal a small hole through which the vampire could magically pass in and out (Blum and Blum 1970; du Boulay 1982). If a suspect grave was identified, initial attempts to dispel the vampire could include having a priest say a blessing over the grave or expose it to holy relics (Argenti and Rose 1949; Blum and Blum 1970; Sanders 1962; Summers 1968) or placing boiling water, boiling vinegar, hot oil, or fire into the hole in the grave (Blum and Blum 1970; du Boulay 1982). If this did not succeed, the corpse might be disinterred to see whether it had the characteristic appearance of a vampire. Although some Greek traditions (e.g., Blum and Blum 1970) depict vampires as close enough in appearance to living people to pass undetected among them, most describe a much less normal appearance. The vrykolakas was often described as swollen up like a drum (Argenti and Rose 1949; du Boulay 1982) or filled with blood like a leech (Summers 1968) with blackened or deep red skin (Argenti and Rose 1949; Summers 1968). In a broader discussion of Balkan and Slavic vampire traditions, Barber (1988) has pointed out the parallels between these physical traits and various normal changes of early decomposition. As Detecting and Interpreting Anti-Revenant Ritual in Greece

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he observes, a vampire disinterred and identified by these traits is essentially a normal corpse being blamed for actions taken during its life, ritual errors made during its funeral, or perceived supernatural events occurring after its death. A vrykolakas, once dug up, could be impaled, but in contrast to the wooden stake through the heart typical of Slavic traditions (Máchal 1976), an iron stake or long iron nail through the navel is referenced in the Greek and Turkish traditions (Köhbach 1979; Summers 1960). Alternatively, the chest could be opened and the heart torn out, or the body could be completely dismembered and reinterred (Summers 1968). Instead of or in addition to these measures, the body might be entirely burned, and this was considered the most effective method to destroy a vampire (Argenti and Rose 1949; Blum and Blum 1970; Summers 1960, 1968). As an added precaution the body or the ashes might be removed to another locale separated by salt water from its home region (Lawson 1910: 363–364), preferably a deserted island, and reinterred there, a solution documented for one case in nineteenth-century Lesbos, as according to tradition, vampires could not cross salt water (Politis 1901; Summers 1960: 208). A variety of measures could also be taken on a new burial seen as being at risk of becoming a vrykolakas, in an attempt to prevent the corpse from rising. These included laying a large rock or pile of rocks over the grave (Argenti and Rose 1949), or (in Turkish traditions) cutting off the head and placing it between the legs or at the feet (Köhbach 1979).

Vampires and Necrophobia Burials with elements of “anti-vampiric” rituals can be understood in the wider context of “necrophobia.” Necrophobia is defined as an irrational or excessive fear of death and the dead (Youngson 1992). It is originally a medical term of Greek origin deriving from “necros” (νεκρός), which means “dead,” and “phobos” (φόβος), which means “fear.” Its characterization as a phobia implies extreme and morbid reactions, such as intense anxiety, obsession, or even a panic attack associated with acute distress and mental confusion (Youngson 1992), and this agrees with the description of “vampire hysteria” mentioned above. Since the fear of death and the dead is a phenomenon observed by anthropologists and archaeologists in various cultures worldwide, Tsaliki (2008a, 2008b) introduced the use of the term in mortuary analysis. Many scientists have worked on the relation between death, disease/deformity, deviancy, and social exclusion (see volume introduction). As mentioned above, in Greek traditions the socially marginalized were often considered at 300

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higher risk of becoming revenants. This marginalization might take place during life or after death and had many causes, including disease and physical deformity. Many of the features relating to destruction of a vampire, prevention of the vampiric transformation, and telltale signs at the grave, though they can be found in historical accounts, do not survive time and therefore cannot be visible in the archaeological record and in skeletonized remains. Many others, however, can be detected and recorded, such as evidence of disease or deformity in the human remains, an unusual body position, the grave type, and certain artifacts found in association with the burial. Below we discuss two burials with unusual characteristics that could be interpreted within the necrophobic framework of vampire lore.

The “Vampires” of Lesbos Nikomedia Street Cemetery The first of the burials we discuss was recovered by the Canadian Universities Mytilene Project in 1988 (Williams 1994; Williams and Williams 1989). It was one of many uncovered in Mytilene, the modern capital of the island of Lesbos, from an area used as a Muslim cemetery in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Most of the burials at the site are consistent with Islamic practice, interred in shrouds in simple pits, with the head oriented toward Mecca; however, one was distinctive. This body was placed in a coffin in a rough cist created by hollowing out a late Classical fortification wall underlying the cemetery. The positioning of the skeleton is best described as splayed, supine with legs somewhat adducted at the hips, arms adducted at the shoulders and elbows bent (fig. 15.1). The orientation and splayed body posture are inconsistent with the other burials in the cemetery, nor do they match the norms of Greek Orthodox burial. When found the skeleton had three iron spikes lying over its neck, pelvis, and ankles. These are about 20 cm long and curved, suggesting that they were pulled from some wooden structure and reused (fig. 15.2). They are too large to be associated with a decorative feature on the coffin lid, and there is no sign that they are intrusive. The recovery position of the spikes did not allow excavators to determine whether they had been driven through the body or laid on top of it. As detailed below, no signs of perimortem damage were found on the preserved elements of the skeleton; this could indicate that the spikes were driven through soft tissues only, or laid over the corpse rather than penetrating it. As excavation of the area proceeded, another burial was Detecting and Interpreting Anti-Revenant Ritual in Greece

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Figure 15.1. Excavation photograph of the first burial described, from Nikomedia Street, Mytilene, Lesbos (courtesy of © Prof. Hector Williams).

Figure 15.2. Nail from Mytilene, similar to those found with the described burials. (© Anastasia Tsaliki).

recovered from a second hollowed wall nearby, but this shared none of the other unusual features of the first burial. The remains, although poorly preserved and chalky, are largely complete. For this individual and for the second described below, age and stature were reconstructed following the standard methods outlined in Buikstra and Ubelaker (1994). Sex is likely male based on morphology of the cranium, mandible, sacrum, and os coxae, and age at death was estimated at 40 to 50 years based on assessment of the left pubic symphysis and right and left auricular surfaces. Stature was estimated at 173.0 ± 3.9 cm based on the right fibula; this is close to the average estimated stature for other males from the Nikomedia Street cemetery. The skeleton has an unremarkable osteological profile. It shows no significant lesions apart from poor dental health and moderate osteoarthritis, neither of which is unexpected given its age and era. The remains were thoroughly examined for signs of perimortem trauma. Breakage and weathering of several elements prevented full examination, but no indications of trauma were found on the areas that could be examined.

Taxiarchis Myrintzou The second burial was excavated in 1999 by the Ephorate of Antiquities in a salvage excavation at the small rural church of Taxiarchis Myrintzou, near Mytilene. It was one of five Christian burials, probably dating to the eighteenth or nineteenth century. The graves conform to the norms of Christian burial described above; however, in one stone-lined grave, three bent spikes, each approximately 10–16 cm long with square sections and large heads, were reported in close association with the remains (fig. 15.2). Because the precise position of the spikes on the body was not noted, it is not clear how likely it is that they were intrusive; they do not pertain to a coffin as no other potential coffin hardware was recovered. Like the individual in the Nikomedia Street grave, this skeleton is an elderly (60+) male with signs of osteoarthritis; however, it also shows a suite of craniofacial problems that would have created an unusual appearance (fig. 15.3). The frontal shows severe sinusitis, draining through a large cloaca to the right of the bridge of the nose. This resulted in asymmetry of the brow ridges. The draining infection also likely created noticeable deformity in the soft tissues. The nasal aperture, maxilla, and mandible show lytic and remodeling lesions extensive enough to deform the bones. Although many differential diagnoses were considered, including a traumatic etiology, hemifacial microsomia, and Detecting and Interpreting Anti-Revenant Ritual in Greece

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Figure 15.3. Unusual facial features of the individual from Taxiarchis Myrin­ tzou. (© Anastasia Tsaliki).

syphilis, a fungal infection was decided the most likely diagnosis based on the clinical findings and bibliography (for a full discussion of the pathologies see Tsaliki 2009). A healed linear fracture approximately 16 mm long is present over the left eye orbit. This appears to have been induced by a sharp instrument. Finally, all the maxillary teeth and most of the mandibular teeth were lost prior to death. Although the extensive tooth loss is not unusual in older individuals of the period, it would have combined with the other problems seen to produce an unusual appearance. Beyond this, it is possible that the combination of these pathologies resulted in facial paralysis, caused by trigeminal and facial nerve damage, or in frontal lobe damage, or both, which could have produced unusual behavior and aggression (e.g., Borges 2005; Chow 2000). 304

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Vampire Ritual in the Nikomedia Street and Taxiarchis Myrintzou Burials The possibility that the unusual traits of these two burials reflect vampire-related ritual was first raised some time ago (Tsaliki 2008a, 2008b; Williams 1994). A comparison of each burial’s traits to the physical traces we would expect given Greek vampire lore makes the case clear. At Nikomedia Street, the clearest indication is the iron spikes. These are reminiscent of the iron spikes or nails mentioned in some descriptions of Greek or Turkish vampire dispelling rituals (Köhbach 1979; Summers 1960). Their location is also a good match, with the spike over the pelvis matching the preferred target of the navel in Greek tradition and those on the neck and between the feet recalling vampire-dispelling rituals in the Balkans that involve placing objects across the throat or between the feet (Moszyński 1976). The body position is unusual, and although it has a number of potential explanations, it could reflect opening of the grave and unshrouding of the body while it was fairly fresh. The effort made to dig the burial into the wall is also unusual for the site, suggesting an attempt to hold down or contain the remains; however, the presence of another burial dug into the ruins but without the other unusual features makes this of less certain significance. In the case of Taxiarchis Myrintzou we see an unremarkable grave type and body position, but the presence of three spikes similar to those from the other grave suggests a link. No damage from the spikes is visible on the bones of either individual, although assessment of the Nikomedia Street burial is complicated by poor preservation. It is possible that the spikes passed through soft tissue only, where they may have been used to pierce the body and reduce the swelling seen as a vampiric trait, or that they were simply placed over the body. The practice of placing sharp metal objects on top of the corpse is not documented in Greece but is seen in vampire-prevention rituals practiced by Slavic cultures further to the north (Moszyński 1976). There is also a potential parallel in the concern with swelling of the corpse in traditional Turkish Muslim communities and the idea that a knife laid over the corpse can prevent this (Biçer 2009). Finally, both burials were found in an area confirmed to have seen vampire-related mortuary activities, as there is at least one surviving firsthand account of vampire ritual taking place on Lesbos in this era. Thus all in all, both are good candidates for suspected “vampire burials.” If these are cases of vampire ritual, the osteological comparison of the re-

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mains becomes very interesting. The Taxiarchis Myrintzou skeleton shows clear facial deformities and had survived at least one episode of interpersonal violence. This observation is in line with expectations that marginalized individuals would more likely be seen as vampires. Marginalization impacts lives on many levels, and here we may see an example of its impact after death. In contrast, the Nikomedia Street remains show no detectable anomalies. While there is of course no way to state conclusively that no health problems existed, the available evidence suggests that the man in the grave was a physically unremarkable person seen as a vampire for one of many possible reasons ranging from a sinful past to blundered funeral rites.

The Greek Vampire and the Archaeological Record In closing, we return to the question of why vampire ritual has been so seldom reported in archaeological investigations of Greek cemeteries despite its frequency in the historical and ethnographic records. One possible interpretation is that it was actually more rare than we think. The spectacular has an appeal that can cause it to be overreported in sources such as travelers’ tales; however, the consistent appearance of vampire beliefs and descriptions of vampiredispelling rituals in early professional ethnographies suggests that they were indeed reasonably common. Another possibility is excavators’ failure to notice the physical signs left by the rituals involved. Unfortunately, many early modern burials are encountered in salvage excavations or during the clearing of overburden from ancient ruins being excavated by scholars with little or no background in modern Greek folklore. These conditions are not optimal for noting the subtler signs of vampire-related grave rituals. Indeed, a comparison of vampire lore to normative burial practices shows that even careful attention could miss much vampire-dispelling ritual. Some practices, such as treating the surface of the grave with boiling water or oil, would obviously leave no identifying marks. Dismemberment and reburial are often obscured by tomb reuse and secondary burial, although they might sometimes be detectable through cut marks. In this part of Europe the most distinctive archaeologically visible signs of vampire ritual should actually be large nails or iron spikes found in association with the remains, as is seen in the two cases we discuss here. We encourage colleagues excavating Post-Byzantine or even earlier Greek cemeteries to remain alert to these and other potential signs of vampire-related ritual. The signs are detailed above; to review, key potential indicators are as follows 306

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(for a full list see Tsaliki 2008a and 2008b): the presence of large nails or spikes anywhere in a grave should be documented and their positions noted and photographed; all observations needed to confirm that these are not intrusions or parts of normative grave furnishings should be made. Although disturbance of remains due to secondary burial is common, excavators should still be alert to some arrangements more likely to reflect unusual ritual activity: decapitation, focused disturbance of the ribcage (which could reflect removal of the heart), and splaying of the limbs (which would suggest that they were not confined by the normative bands or shroud during decay). Graves featuring unusually constraining architecture for the site in question (for instance, stones placed over a grave at a site where graves are typically not covered) should be given especially careful attention. In the osteology lab, careful attention should be paid to potential signs of perimortem cuts or penetrations, especially in the ribcage, neck, wrists, and ankles. This is an area of great interest, a window into necrophobia and the impact of difference on social identities after death, and a key to exploring it further in Greece will be closer examination of burials in light of both vampire ritual and normative burial practices of the time.

Acknowledgments We are grateful to Professor Hector Williams (Classical, Near Eastern, and Religious Studies, University of British Columbia) and to the Ephorate of Antiquities of Lesbos for kindly allowing us access to and study of the material. Special thanks are owed to Dr. Williams for his initial recognition of the Nikomedia Street burial’s distinctive traits and his support and encouragement over the years of our work on it.

Bibliography Agelarakis, Anagnostis, and Argiro Agelarakis 2015 Αbdera/Polystylon: A Byzantine Town in Western Thrace in the Context of Historical Developments during the 6th–14th Centuries as Depicted by its ArchaeoAnthropological Record. Byzantina Symmeikta 25: 11–56. Alexiou, Margaret 2002 The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition, 2nd ed. Revised by Dimitrios Yatromanolakis and Panagiotis Roilos. Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham. Argenti, Philip, and H. J. Rose 1949 The Folk-Lore of Chios. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

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Barber, Paul 1988 Vampires, Burial and Death: Folklore and Reality. Yale University Press, New Haven. Barnes, Ethne 2003 The Dead Do Tell Tales. In Corinth Vol. XX: Corinth, the Centenary: 1896–1996, edited by Charles K. Williams II and Nancy Bookidis, pp. 435–443. American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Athens. Biçer, Ramazan 2009 The Physical and Spiritual Anatomy of Death in Muslim Turkish Culture. Kelam Araştirmalari 7(2): 19–38. Bintliff, John 2014 The Archaeology of Ottoman to Early Modern Greece. Pharos 20(1): 347–369. Blum, Richard, and Eva Blum 1970 The Dangerous Hour: The Lore of Crisis and Mystery in Rural Greece. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York. Borges, A. 2005 Trigeminal Neuralgia and Facial Nerve Paralysis. European Radiology 15(3): 511– 533. Buikstra, Jane E., and Douglas H. Ubelaker 1994 Standards for Data Collection from Human Skeletal Remains. Arkansas Archeological Survey, Fayetteville. Calmet, Dom Augustin 1976 Vampires of Hungary, Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia. In Vampires of the Slavs, edited by Jan Perkowski, pp. 76–108. Slavica, Cambridge. Chow, Tiffany W. 2000 Personality in Frontal Lobe Disorders. Current Psychiatry Reports 2(5): 446–451. Danforth, Loring M., and Alexander Tsiaras 1982 The Death Rituals of Rural Greece. Princeton University Press, Princeton. Davias, Ο. (editor) 1995 Μόνταγκ Σάμμερς: Ο Ελλην Βρυκόλαξ. Εκδόσεις Δελφίνι, Athens. Dubisch, Jill 1989 Death and Social Change in Greece. Anthropological Quarterly 62(4): 189–200. du Boulay, Juliet 1982 The Greek Vampire: A Study of Cyclic Symbolism in Marriage and Death. Man 17(2): 219–238. Fox, Sherry C., and Katheryn Marklein 2014 Primary and Secondary Burials with Commingled Remains from Archaeological Contexts in Cyprus, Greece, and Turkey. In Commingled and Disarticulated Human Remains: Working Toward Improved Theory, Method, and Data, edited by Anna J. Osterholtz, Kathryn M. Baustian, and Debra L. Martin, pp. 193–211. Springer, New York. Frost, Brian J. 1989 The Monster with a Thousand Faces: Guises of the Vampire in Myth and Literature. Bowling Green State University Popular Press, Bowling Green. Garvie-Lok, Sandra J. 2013 Greek, Frank, Other: Differentiating Cultural and Ancestral Groups in the Frank308

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ish Morea Using Human Remains Analysis. In Viewing the Morea: Land and People in the Late Medieval Peloponnese, edited by Sharon E. J. Gerstel, pp. 309–333. Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington, DC. Gerstel, Sharon E. J., Mark Munn, Heather E. Grossman, Ethne Barnes, Arthur H. Rohn, and Machiel Kiel 2003 A Late Medieval Settlement at Panakton. Hesperia 72(2): 147–234. Ginio, Eyal 2001 “Every Soul Shall Taste Death”: Dealing with Death and the Afterlife in Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Salonica. Studia Islamica 93: 113–132. Håland, Evy Johanne 2014 Rituals of Death and Dying in Modern and Ancient Greece: Writing History from a Female Perspective. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Kazhdan, Alexander P. (editor) 1991 The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Köhbach, M. 1979 Ein Fall von Vampirismus bei den Osmanen. Balkan Studies 20: 83–90. Kontogiannis, Nikos D. 2008 Excavation of a 13th-Century Church Near Vasilitsi, Southern Messenia. Hesperia 77: 497–537. Koukoules, Phaidon 1940 Βυζαντινών Νεκρικά Έθιμα. Επετηρίς Εταιρείας Βυζαντινών Σπουδών 16: 3–80. 1951 Βυζαντινών Βίος και Πολιτισμός Δ’. Παπαζήση, Athens. Kyriakakis, James 1974 Byzantine Burial Customs: Care of the Deceased from Death to Prothesis. Greek Orthodox Theological Review 19: 37–72. Laskaris, Nikolaos G. 2000 Monuments Funéraires Paléochrétiens (et Byzantins) de Grèce. Les Editions Historiques Stéfanos D. Basilopoulos, Athens. Lawson, J. Cuthbert 1910 Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion: A Study in Survivals. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Máchal, J. 1976 Slavic Mythology. In Vampires of the Slavs, edited by Jan C. Perkowski, pp. 19–75. Slavica, Cambridge. Makropoulou, Despina 2006 Grave Finds and Burial Practices in Thessaloniki (4th–15th cents.). Paper presented at the 21st International Congress of Byzantine Studies, London. Menardos, S. 1921 Βουρβούλακας. Λαογραφία 8: 297–301. Moszyński, Kazimierz 1976 Slavic Folk Culture. In Vampires of the Slavs, edited by Jan C. Perkowski, pp. 180– 187. Slavica, Cambridge. Oinas, Felix 1998 East European Vampires. In The Vampire: A Casebook, edited by Alan Dundes, pp. 47–56. The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison. Detecting and Interpreting Anti-Revenant Ritual in Greece

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O’Rourke, Diane 2007 Mourning Becomes Eclectic: Death of Communal Practice in a Greek Cemetery. American Ethnologist 34(2): 387–402. Petersen, Andrew 2013 The Archaeology of Death and Burial in the Islamic World. In The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Death and Burial, edited by Sarah Tarlow and Liv Nilsson Stutz, pp. 241–258. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Politis, Νikolaos 1901 Μελέται περί του Βίου και της Γλώσσης του Ελληνικού Λαού: Παραδόσεις. Π. Δ. Σακελλαρίου, Athens. 1921 Λαογραφικά Σύμμεικτα Β’. Παρασκευάς Λεώνης, Athens. 1931 Λαογραφικά Σύμμεικτα Γ’. Παρασκευάς Λεώνης, Athens. Rautman, Marcus 2006 Daily Life in the Byzantine Empire. Greenwood Press, Westport. Rife, Joseph L. 2012 Isthmia IX: The Roman and Byzantine Graves and Human Remains. The American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Princeton. Rohn, Arthur H., Ethne Barnes, and Guy D. R. Sanders 2009 An Early Ottoman Cemetery at Ancient Corinth. Hesperia 78(4): 501–615. Sanders, I. T. 1962 Rainbow in the Rock: The People of Rural Greece. Harvard University Press, Cambridge. Spyridakes, G. K. 1950 Τα Κατά την Τελευτήν Έθιμα των Βυζαντινών εκ των Αγιολογικών Πηγών. Επετηρίς Εταιρείας Βυζαντινών Σπουδών 20: 75–171. Summers, Montague 1960 The Vampire: His Kith and Kin. University Books, New York. 1968 The Vampire in Europe. University Books, New York. Talbot, Alice-Mary 2009 The Death and Commemoration of Byzantine Children. In Becoming Byzantine: Children and Childhood in Byzantium, edited by Arietta Papaconstantinou and Alice-Mary Talbot, pp. 283–308. Dumbarton Oaks research Library and Collection, Washington DC. Tritsaroli, Paraskevi, and Eleni Gini-Tsophopoulou 2006 Who, Where and How Dead were Buried in Byzantine Times? Bioarchaeological Analysis of Two Cemeteries of Middle Byzantine Period from Attica and Boeotia, Greece (XIth–XIVth centuries AD). Paper presented at the 21st International Congress of Byzantine Studies, London. Tritsaroli, Paraskevi, and Frédérique Valentin 2008 Byzantine Burials Practices for Children: Case Studies based on a Bioarchaeological Approach to Cemeteries from Greece. In Nasciturus, Infans, Puerulus Vobis Mater Terra: La Muerte en La Infancia, edited by F. Gusi Jener, S. Muriel, and C. Olària, pp. 93–113. Diputació de Castrelló, Servei d’Investigacions Arqueologiques/Prehistoriques, Castellón.

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Tsaliki, Anastasia 2008a An Investigation of Extraordinary Human Body Disposals, with Special Reference to Necrophobia. A Multi-Disciplinary Analysis with Case Studies from Greece and Cross-Cultural Comparisons. PhD dissertation, Durham University, Durham. 2008b Unusual Burials and Necrophobia: An Insight into the Burial Archaeology of Fear. In Deviant Burial in the Archaeological Record, edited by E. M. Murphy, pp. 1–16. Oxbow Books, Oxford. 2009 Les Figures des Legendes: Exemples et Pathographie. In 2e Colloque International de Pathographie, Loches Avril 2007, edited by Ph. Charlier, pp. 377–402. De Boccard, Paris. van Gennep, Arnold 1960 The Rites of Passage. Routledge, London. Williams, Caroline, and E. Hector Williams 1989 Excavations at Mytilene, 1988. Classical Views 33: 167–182. Williams, Hector 1994 The Vampire of Lesbos. Archaeology March/April 1994: 22. Youngson, Robert M. 1992 Collins Dictionary of Medicine. HarperCollins Publishers, Glasgow.

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16 Natural Mummification as a Non-Normative Mortuary Custom of Modern Period Sicily (1600–1800)

Da r io Piom bi no -M a s c a l i a n d K e n n et h C. N yst rom

Human mummification—the preservation of soft tissues such as the skin, muscles, and even internal organs—is a widespread phenomenon and can be achieved through natural or anthropogenic processes (Aufderheide 2003). Natural, or spontaneous, mummification occurs when environmental conditions slow or halt decomposition without human intervention. Alternatively, anthropogenic mummification occurs when cultures take deliberate steps to halt the decomposition process, such as the removal of internal organs and the use of preservative substances (Aufderheide 2003). While, fundamentally, the motivation for mummification will be culturally specific, one of the reasons is undoubtedly related to burial practices that may have determined an intentional manipulation of the cadavers or the placement of the bodies in environments conducive to a more or less complete desiccation of the tissues (Piombino-Mascali et al. 2017a). An example of this lies in the churches and crypts of the island of Sicily, where at least part of the population underwent a mortuary treatment that resulted in the natural mummification and subsequent public display of the bodies, in which the mummies (after the desiccation process and being clothed) were exhibited in the crypts where family members and other visitors could see them (Piombino-Mascali et al. 2012). While these unique assemblages of preserved human remains are scattered throughout the region, it is still dif-

ficult to consider this type of burial as normative, mainly because only a limited number of the population was in fact mummified through this natural process (Piombino-Mascali et al. 2012). This chapter is therefore focused on providing an outline of the normative burial customs of Sicily, but also the atypical phenomenon of mummification, as well as its causes and significance. Normative mortuary behavior in Sicily is generally consistent with practices associated with the diffusion of Christianity in Europe, Africa, and the East. During the first centuries of the common era, one aspect of this funerary tradition focused on establishing close proximity with the tombs of saints, known as ad sanctos burials (near the saints) (Ariès 2006; Chioffi 1998). The proximity to sacred remains was considered essential in guaranteeing privileged access to the afterworld and resurrection (Ariès 2006). This custom spread with the expansion of Christianity and the subsequent occurrence of burial monumentalization, as well as the worship and trade of relics (Favole 2003). During the Middle Ages (fifth to fifteenth centuries AD), burial began to be carried out within religious buildings. Known as apud ecclesiam burials, literally “by the church,” the term refers not only to physical proximity to the building itself, but also to the entire sacred space represented by the church (Ariès 2006). Generally, the most desired locations for burials were adjacent to altars or relics and were reserved for only the wealthiest and highest ranking members of society. The poorest and humblest individuals were usually confined to the outer areas of the church or in communal graves (Ariès 2006; Piombino-Mascali 2014a). In the eighteenth century, however, a number of laws were issued that prevented burial inside urban churches and promoted the use of modern cemeteries. This practice became widely accepted only at the end of the nineteenth century (Farella 1982; Piombino-Mascali 2014b). In Sicily and the rest of Italy, postmortem treatment or manipulation of the body was limited; the most common forms of corpse disposal included inhumation inside a sarcophagus, burial in a simple pit (with or without coffin), as well as simple deposition of shroud-wrapped corpses in mass graves (Ariès 2006). Within this framework, a novel treatment of the dead developed during the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries AD in Sicilian crypts and chapels (fig. 16.1). A synergy between favorable environmental conditions and mortuary behavior resulted in the natural mummification of soft tissue. In time, intentional steps, including evisceration, injection, or immersion in preservatives, were taken to encourage soft tissue preservation in a subset of individuals (Panzer et al. 2010, 2013). These mummies represent deviations from normative mortuary behavior at the time as preservation of the Natural Mummification as a Non-Normative Mortuary Custom of Modern Period Sicily

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Figure 16.1. Map of Sicily and of the mummy collections.

body became paramount and was equated with the preservation of the soul. Further, only a specific few of the population were afforded such treatment.

Non-Normative Burials Several collections of these “catacomb mummies” have been documented in the south of Italy, but it is in Sicily where the largest number of such remains have been studied (Aufderheide 2003). The most important collections are in the city of Palermo, with its famous Capuchin Catacombs (figs. 16.2–16.3), and the crypt of the Cappuccinelle. Other sites in western Sicily where mummified remains have been documented include the Church of the Holy Souls of the Purgatory in Caccamo, the Mother Church of Gangi, the Capuchin Church of Burgio, and the Hermitage of Santa Rosalia at Santo Stefano Quisquina, in the province of Agrigento (Piombino-Mascali, original data 2016). In the northeastern province of Messina, natural mummies have been documented at the Capuchin Church of Savoca, the Mother Church of Novara di Sicilia, the Capu314

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chin Church of Santa Lucia del Mela, the Mother Church of Piraino, the Mother Church of Militello Rosmarino, the Aracoeli Church of San Marco d’Alunzio, and the Capuchin Church of Pettineo, while the southeastern province of Ragusa is represented by the Capuchin Church of Comiso (Piombino-Mascali, original data 2016). Although the number of sites mentioned above would seem to suggest that mummification was quite common, in truth it represents a small, selected sample of the dead, as mummification was reserved for only some social classes, including the clergy and aristocracy. It was only by the eighteenth century that the practice was adopted and available to the middle class (Farella 1982). The main advocates of this practice were religious orders, particularly the Capuchin friars, who were historically involved in the worship of death (Di Cristina et al. 2007; Farella 1982). In 2007, this rich historical and bioanthropological heritage became the focus of the “Sicily Mummy Project,” a multidisciplinary investigation promoting the knowledge and valorization of these mummies via noninvasive or minimally invasive techniques (Piombino-Mascali et al. 2012, 2013a, 2015, 2017b).

Figure 16.2. The Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo.

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Figure 16.3. The mummies of Palermo depicted on an old postcard.

Specifically, the study of these remains has underlined the fact that in most instances, mummification was achieved through desiccation stemming from the interplay between conducive environmental conditions and particular architectural features associated with mortuary behavior. The tombs in the above sites were often constructed of limestone and were generally dry, cool, and fairly well ventilated. Funerary behavior involved placing the dead in the so-called colatoi (singular: colatoio, derived from the Latin colum = drain) (Farella 1982). These colatoi facilitated the draining of body decomposition fluids and promoted the dehydration process. Based on the position in which the cadavers were placed on them, these constructions can be broadly categorized as horizontal or vertical. In the former, the body was laid on top of a wooden grid or series of terracotta pipes, while in the latter, the body was placed in a sitting position on a masonry seat with a central hole for drainage of the decomposition fluids, sometimes located within a wall niche. Both types of colatoi have been documented at other sites of southern Italy, suggesting a homogeneous geographical pattern (Fornaciari et al. 2010). It is interesting to note that in some of these sites, such as Palermo, Piraino, and Savoca, bodies were stuffed and remodeled with animal or vegetal materials, both to mitigate the odor and 316

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to give a more natural appearance to the body (Piombino-Mascali et al. 2013b). The manipulation of the corpse was carried out after the dehydration process, hence the mechanism behind the preservation of these mummies should be considered natural, although enhanced by some human activity. According to historical sources, the process of natural dehydration could last as little as two months or more than a year and could be accompanied by a drying-out phase in which the corpse was stored in a drying room. Additionally, there was usually a general cleaning of the body with vinegar, and a clothing and entombment phase, when the body was placed within a niche, on a shelf, or in a wooden coffin (Farella 1982). The great popularity of these treatments, at least among a welldefined segment of the population, appears to have been initially connected to the phenomenon of bodily incorruptibility of subjects that, in a religious vision, challenged the laws of nature and remained preserved after death by means of God’s will (Piombino-Mascali 2014a). The earliest findings of such preserved bodies, in the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, were considered the outcome of such a miracle (Castellammare 1938); however, this may not be the case.

Discussion This biphasic treatment of the dead, which includes a process of desiccation and a subsequent exhibition of the remains, seems consistent with the rituals of secondary disposal described by Robert Hertz in his study on the collective representation of death (1978 [1907]). A sociologist by training, he demonstrated that, by studying geographically remote cases from the Western world, it was possible to identify some general mortuary patterns that could be applied to Europe’s populations. Using the framework of the rites of passage, later published by Arnold Van Gennep (1981 [1909]), Hertz was convinced that funerary rituals rise as a challenge aimed at transforming the negative side of death into something positive and transcendental. Death is therefore seen as a simple change of status necessary to place the deceased in their correct supernatural dimension. In order to allow this transition, bodies would temporarily be buried after death and enter a liminal state, to find a later, definitive burial, at a culturally sanctioned time (Hertz 1978). In this process of secondary disposal, the journey of the soul to the hereafter would be represented by the biological phenomenon of cadaver transformation, at the end of which, in the majority of cases, durable and clean bones remain. This practice is associated with a final ceremony involving the mourners, who are reintegrated into society at the end Natural Mummification as a Non-Normative Mortuary Custom of Modern Period Sicily

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of the process (Hertz 1978). For the geographical areas investigated by Hertz, such treatment is evidence of death as a slow, prolonged, and transitional event, a journey toward a different and conclusive stage of existence. It is interesting to note that the transformations articulated by each phase underline the analogy between the metamorphosis of the body and the journey of the soul, an intuition that Hertz emphasized. Notwithstanding the fact that his theories have been criticized (Parker-Pearson 1999; Rakita and Buikstra 2005), it is undeniable that some aspects of his model are applicable to the Sicilian mortuary customs described above (Piombino-Mascali and Mallegni 2006). As a matter of fact, examples of this form of treatment, which included secondary burial, have also been identified among other traditional societies, including contemporary Catholic Naples and Orthodox, rural Greece (Davies 2000; Pardo 1989). A definite cultural explanation for the draining of cadavers in the south of Italy has not yet been provided, although attempts at interpretation have been made recently (Fornaciari et al. 2010; PiombinoMascali and Mallegni 2006). A possibility already suggested by Hertz seems to connect this tradition to the concept of Purgatory, which for the Roman Catholic Church represents an intermediate state in which souls undergo purification before reaching Heaven. Formalized during the councils of Florence and Trent (Le Goff 2006; Tarlow 2011), the concept of Purgatory was elaborated in the twelfth century in order to justify business development and allow integration of figures such as bankers and merchants into society, upon whom collective prosperity was depending. During the Modern Period, Purgatory was often represented by a group of praying human figures, surrounded by fire, a very popular depiction seen in many of south Italy’s churches (Niola 2003). These subjects, named “purging souls” or “souls of the Purgatory” included not only each believer’s dead next of kin, but also the plurality of suffering spirits, anonymous souls in need of the living’s prayers, the lack of which would have confined them in a marginal state. These souls were granted a “refrigerio” (refreshment) via prayers or via monetary donations to the Church. Accordingly, the inhabitants of the Purgatory would initiate a close relationship with the living, a mechanism of negotiation that would grant them a role as intercessors and mediums between this world and the supernatural (Pardo 1989). It may not be the case that depictions of purging souls are often associated with burial places where mummies were displayed, such as the Capuchin Catacombs, the Churches of San Matteo and Sant’Orsola, or the Chiesa dei Cocchieri, in Palermo, or the Capuchin Church of Santa Lucia del Mela, all of which also possessed facilities for bodily preparation. 318

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The process of cadaveric draining, documented in the south of Italy and in Sicily, seems to represent “physical evidence” of the Purgatory, according to which a selected portion of the society received a postmortem treatment symbolizing the journey of the soul through a purification process (Fornaciari et al. 2010; Piombino-Mascali and Mallegni 2006). This may suggest a close relationship between body and soul in these Sicilian mortuary practices. The use of this custom that appears to be, at least initially, reserved for the clergy was soon adopted by the most affluent members of the society, and eventually even by the middle class. Nevertheless, it should still be considered atypical, as only a part of the whole population underwent the process of enhanced dehydration of the bodies. It was only at the end of the nineteenth century that the practice of draining human cadavers reached an end, as a consequence of political and social changes that led to the rise of a new nation in 1861. Stronger hygiene measures and the establishment of new cemeteries became the norm, factors that were crucial in determining the concept of death as a punctual event (Piombino-Mascali 2014b, 2018). In truth, it should be noted that the original scope of these facilities—whether related to a rapid dissolution of soft tissues or to a preservation of them—remains to be understood. However, evidence from the data collected for this chapter suggests that preservation of the bodies had acquired a considerable, symbolic meaning as a way to counter the devastating effects of death. Evidence of this may also be seen in the efforts to over-model the heads with wax in order to preserve facial features, observed in the Sicilian mummies of Gangi (Piombino-Mascali and Zink 2012). A recent survey (Piombino-Mascali et al. 2012) led to the conclusion that although the two types of colatoi (i.e., vertical and horizontal) result in differing degrees of soft tissue preservation, fundamentally they reflect a common endpoint. According to some scholars, the former would lead to a complete skeletonization of the body, while the latter results in preservation of the soft tissues (Fornaciari et al. 2010). However, this appears as an oversimplification of treatments that could have been influenced by local traditions and practical needs. Furthermore, the coexistence of the two types of draining facilities in the same environment, such as in the crypt of the Ree Pentite, at Palermo, would seem to indicate their functional analogy. Additional evidence is represented by taphonomic data, which indicate that the sitting position actually promotes mummification of the tissues, sparing especially the upper part of the bodies (Aufderheide and Aufderheide 1991). After all, some of the best preserved Sicilian natural mummies, such as those at Savoca, resulted from placing the bodies in a seated position (Piombino-Mascali et al. 2015). These considerations Natural Mummification as a Non-Normative Mortuary Custom of Modern Period Sicily

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suggest that these draining structures were simply built to determine a change in the status of the deceased, through a process of biological transformation, regardless of results. Therefore, it is possible that the initial aim of the process was not preservation of the bodies. Finally, it should also be noted that the phenomenon of natural mummification itself was not fully understood at the time these facilities were in use because of insufficient knowledge regarding the process of decomposition.

Conclusion Careful review of the data considered in this chapter has enabled us to ascertain that in Modern Period Sicily, a non-normative system of bodily treatment allowed part of the community to keep a close relationship with their dead. Although there were methodological differences, likely based on local traditions, the majority of the bodies considered here were naturally mummified via a simple process of dehydration. A number of architectural structures conceived to drain cadaveric fluids favoring corpse transformation, and therefore a secondary disposal, was widespread in Sicily and the south of Italy. We can speculate that the locations with the most appropriate environmental conditions led to a remarkable natural preservation of the bodies. The religious aspect of this conservation, once considered a direct sign of the Divine, may have influenced the treatment of the dead, as well as their enshrinement to family members and the society. Through time, this mortuary behavior, initially a form of natural mummification, was appropriated by the aristocracy as a means of signaling their social status. It was not until the eighteenth century that it became popularized among the middle class, leading to a relatively large adoption. Despite the unknown origins of this custom, the body of evidence gathered allows us to speculate on these atypical burials in the context of Catholic funerary rites. Only further historical research will definitively clarify the complexity of this phenomenon, deeply rooted in the heart of Catholic Italy.

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Aufderheide, Arthur C., and Mary L. Aufderheide 1991 Taphonomy of Spontaneous (“Natural”) Mummification with Applications to the Mummies of Venzone, Italy. In Human Paleopathology: Current Syntheses and Future Options, edited by Donald J. Ortner and Arthur C. Aufderheide, pp. 79–86. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Castellammare, Antonino (da) 1938 Le Catacombe ossia la grande Sepoltura dei Cappuccini in Palermo. Fiamma Serafica, Palermo. Chioffi, Laura 1998 Mummificazione e Imbalsamazione a Roma e in altri Luoghi del Mondo Romano. Quasar, Roma. Davies, Douglas J. 2000 Morte, Riti, Credenze. La Retorica dei Riti Funebri. Paravia, Torino. Di Cristina, Umberto, Antonio Gaziano, and Rosanna Magrì 2007 La Dimora delle Anime. Officina di Studi Medievali, Palermo. Farella, Flaviano D. 1982 Cenni storici della Chiesa e delle Catacombe dei Cappuccini di Palermo. Fiamma Serafica, Palermo. Favole, Adriano 2003 Resti di Umanità. Vita sociale del Corpo dopo la Morte. Laterza, Roma-Bari. Fornaciari, Antonio, Valentina Giuffra, and Francesco Pezzini 2010 Secondary Burial and Mummification Practices in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Mortality 15(3): 223–249. Hertz, Robert 1978 [1907] Sulla Rappresentazione collettiva della Morte. Savelli, Roma. Le Goff, Jacques 2006 La Nascita del Purgatorio. Einaudi, Torino. Niola, Marino 2003 Il Purgatorio a Napoli. Meltemi, Roma. Panzer, Stephanie, Albert R. Zink, and Dario Piombino-Mascali 2010 Radiologic Evidence of Anthropogenic Mummification in the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, Italy. RadioGraphics 30: 1123–1132. Panzer, Stephanie, Heather Gill-Frerking, Wilfried Rosendahl, Albert R. Zink, and Dario Piombino-Mascali 2013 Multidetector CT Investigation of the Mummy of Rosalia Lombardo (1918–1920). Annals of Anatomy 195: 401–408. Pardo, Italo 1989 Life, Death, and Ambiguity in the Social Dynamics of Inner Naples. Man 24(1): 103–123. Parker-Pearson, Michael 1999 The Archaeology of Death and Burial. Sutton, Stroud. Piombino-Mascali, Dario 2014a Incorruptibles. In Mummies around the World: An Encyclopedia of Mummies in History, Religion, and Popular Culture, edited by Matt Cardin, pp. 179–182. ABC Clio, Santa Barbara. Natural Mummification as a Non-Normative Mortuary Custom of Modern Period Sicily

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2014b Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo. In Mummies around the World: An Encyclopedia of Mummies in History, Religion, and Popular Culture, edited by Matt Cardin, pp. 51–53. ABC Clio, Santa Barbara. 2018 Le catacombe dei Cappuccini. Guida storico-scientifica. Kalós, Palermo. Piombino-Mascali, Dario, and Francesco Mallegni 2006 Trasformare i Corpi. Mummificazione e Scolatura dei Cadaveri nella Sicilia nordorientale. Agogé 3: 207–233. Piombino-Mascali, Dario, and Albert R. Zink 2012 Überlegungen zu den Mumien von Gangi und ihren Wachsmasken. Mannheimer Geschichtsblätter 5: 65–69. Piombino-Mascali, Dario, Frank Maixner, Albert R. Zink, Silvia Marvelli, Stephanie Panzer, and Arthur C. Aufderheide 2012 The Catacomb Mummies of Sicily: A State-of-the-Art Report. Antrocom 8(2): 341–352. Piombino-Mascali, Dario, Albert R. Zink, Karl J. Reinhard, Melissa Lein, Stephanie Panzer, Arthur C. Aufderheide, Rachel Rachid, Wanderley De Souza, Adauto Araújo, Sergio A. M. Chaves, Sara LeRoy-Toren, Isabel Teixeira-Santos, and Juliana M. F. Dutra 2013a Dietary Analysis of Piraino 1, Sicily, Italy: The Role of Archaeopalynology in Forensic Science. Journal of Archaeological Science 40: 1935–1945. Piombino-Mascali, Dario, Silvia Marvelli, and Albert R. Zink 2013b Un Approccio paleobotanico alla Storia della Conservazione dei Corpi nella Sicilia di Età Moderna. Rivista di Storia della Medicina 23(2): 125–143. Piombino-Mascali, Dario, Rimantas Jankauskas, Albert R. Zink, M. Sergio Todesco, Arthur C. Aufderheide, and Stephanie Panzer 2015 Paleoradiology of the Savoca Mummies, Sicily, Italy (18th–19th centuries AD). Anatomical Record 298: 988–1000. Piombino-Mascali, Dario, Heather Gill-Frerking, and Ronald G. Beckett 2017a The Taphonomy of Natural Mummies. In Taphonomy of Human Remains. Forensic Analysis of the Dead and the Depositional Environment, edited by Eline M. J. Schotsmans, Nicholas Márquez-Grant, and Shari L. Forbes, pp. 101–109. Wiley, Chichester. Piombino-Mascali, Dario, Albert R. Zink, and Stephanie Panzer 2017b Paleopathology in the Piraino Mummies as Illustrated by X-Rays. Anthropological Science 125(1): 25–33. Rakita, Gordon F. M., and Jane E. Buikstra 2005 Corrupting Flesh: Reexamining Hertz’s Perspective on Mummification and Cremation. In Interacting with the Dead: Perspectives on Mortuary Archaeology for the New Millennium, edited by Gordon F. M. Rakita, Jane E. Buikstra, Lane A. Beck, and Sloan R. Williams, pp. 97–106. University Press of Florida, Gainesville. Tarlow, Sarah 2011 Ritual, Belief, and the Dead in Early Modern Britain and Ireland. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Van Gennep, Arnold 1981 [1909] I Riti di Passaggio. Bollati Boringhieri, Torino.

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17 Out of Range? Non-Normative Funerary Practices from the Neolithic to the Early Twentieth Century at Çatalhöyük, Turkey

S c ot t D. H a dd ow, Josh ua W. Sa dva r i, Ch r istoph e r J. K n üse l , S oph i e V. Mo or e , Se l i n E . N uge n t, a n d Cl a r k Spe nce r L a r se n

Located in south-central Turkey, Çatalhöyük is a world-renowned archaeological site best known for its large-scale Neolithic settlement dating from approximately 7100 to 6000 cal BC (Bayliss et al. 2015). The main mound (referred to here as the East Mound) encompasses an area of nearly 14 hectares and rises 21 meters above the surrounding Konya Plain, its entire mass the result of successive layers of anthropogenic accumulation (Farid 2014a: 91) (fig. 17.1). The Neolithic occupation levels at Çatalhöyük have been the primary focus of archaeological research since the site’s initial discovery in 1958 by James Mellaart. After the gradual abandonment of the East Mound during the Late Neolithic (ca. 6000 cal BC), a Chalcolithic settlement was established a short distance west of the main mound and separated by a channel of the Çarşamba River. The West Mound, as it is referred to today, was occupied from around the beginning of the sixth millennium until ca. 5500 cal BC when that settlement was abandoned as well (Farid 2014a: 91; Orton et al. 2018). Apart from three burials tentatively dated to the Bronze Age, it is not until the Hellenistic (334–133 BC) and Roman (133 BC–AD 324) periods that evidence occurs of renewed human activity on the East and West Mounds (Cottica et al. 2012; Kwiatkowska 2009; Marciniak et al. 2012; Moore and Jackson 2014). After a brief

Figure 17.1. Map of the site showing major excavation areas (courtesy of Çatalhöyük Research Project).

period of Hellenistic occupational activity on the summit of the East Mound, both mounds at Çatalhöyük were used exclusively as burial grounds from the Roman Period into the Byzantine (fourth–eleventh centuries AD), Seljuk, Karamanid, and up to the Middle Ottoman Period (thirteenth–seventeenth centuries AD). These cemeteries appear to have served an as-yet unidentified settlement or settlements (Kwiatkowska 2009; Moore and Jackson 2014). As in other regions and time periods, mortuary behaviors during each occu324

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pation period of the East Mound at Çatalhöyük—Neolithic, Roman/Byzantine, and Seljuk/Ottoman—tend to follow an internally consistent, or normative, pattern in body treatment, orientation, spatial location, grave goods, and grave architecture. However, there are also examples of interments found for each period that do not strictly conform to the standard burial practices of their chronological context. Here, we prefer to use the neutral term “non-normative” or “irregular” to describe such burials, rather than the more connotative term “deviant” (Aspöck 2007; Milella et al. 2015; see chapter 1, this volume). In this chapter, we present four especially striking examples of non-normative burials excavated at Çatalhöyük, including the following: two from the Neolithic, one from the Roman Period, and one that dates from the first half of the twentieth century. With the exception of the last burial (which has not been excavated), osteobiographical information and sociocultural context are juxtaposed in order to interpret the significance of each case. In addition, we highlight the potential factors, both social and biological, that influence the decision to exclude an individual from orthodox burial treatment(s). Finally, we question how we as researchers define normative versus non-normative burials in the archaeological record.

Normative Burial Practices through Time at Çatalhöyük Neolithic Burial Practices During the Neolithic occupation of the East Mound at Çatalhöyük, distinctions between spaces for the living and spaces for the dead were blurred. Although “normal” mortuary practices encompassed a broad spectrum of behaviors, including both primary and secondary burials, the majority of individuals were interred in a tightly flexed articulated position underneath the plastered platforms of the central room of houses (fig. 17.2). Successive inhumations under the same platform often caused considerable disturbance, disarticulation, and commingling of remains, some of which appear to have been intentional (Boz and Hager 2014; Haddow et al. 2016). Variation considered within the realm of normative practice includes the presence/absence of grave goods, treatment and positioning of the body (or bodies), removal and redeposition of skeletal elements, burial location, or some combination thereof (Andrews et al. 2005; Boz and Hager 2013; Haddow and Knüsel 2017; Nakamura and Meskell 2013). Grave goods, while generally rare in Neolithic burials at Çatalhöyük, are found in the highest frequencies with infants and children. These are typically generic items, including but not limited to beads, pendants, Out of Range? Non-Normative Funerary Practices at Çatalhöyük, Turkey

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Figure 17.2. Typical Neolithic intramural primary burials at Çatalhöyük (photographs by Jason Quinlan).

and shells with red pigment (Nakamura and Meskell 2013). Grave goods found with adults, especially older adults (both male and female), are more variable and appear biographical in nature, perhaps relating to specific life histories (Nakamura and Meskell 2013). While the location of the grave and the orientation of the body may vary from building to building, and even within a single building, there is no discernible patterning based on sex. That is, adult males and females are most often found beneath the northern and eastern platforms of the central room in equal proportions. Prenatal individuals, neonates, and young infants are more spatially variable, however, and may be found in side rooms, floors, and near hearths (Andrews et al. 2005; Boz and Hager 2013; Tibbetts 2017). Most intramural burials occurred during the occupation phase of houses (Andrews et al. 2005); however, the skeletons of prenates, neonates, and young infants are occasionally recovered in the construction layers of houses. These interments have been interpreted as “foundation deposits” (Carter et al. 2015). Additionally, loose and partially articulated skeletal elements, as well as complete skeletons, are sometimes found in the fill of abandoned houses (e.g., Haddow et al. 2015: 92–94; Haddow and Knüsel 2017; Tung 2012: 20–21). While the majority of burials at Neolithic Çatalhöyük took place intramurally, there are occasional occurrences of subadult burials—primarily prenates, neonates, and infants—in external spaces such as yards or middens (Boz and Hager 2013).

Roman/Byzantine Burial Practices By the Roman Period, some 6,000 years later, most societies of the Mediterranean and Near East had developed clear spatial distinctions between the living and the dead, typically in the form of burial grounds located outside settlements. Following a phenomenon seen elsewhere in the ancient world (e.g., Meneghini and Santangeli Valenzani 2000; Meurkens 2010; Roodenberg 2009; Williams 1997, 2006), the Neolithic and Chalcolithic mounds at Çatalhöyük became a location used exclusively for burials during the Roman and subsequent periods, perhaps as a way for the contemporary population to declare a long-standing territorial association with the region (e.g., Morris 1991). To date, the settlement or settlements associated with these cemeteries have not been definitively located, although a recent field survey has identified a potential site just east of the East Mound in the surrounding fields (Jackson et al. 2013; Moore and Jackson 2018). Early and Late Roman burial practices at Çatalhöyük are characterized by a preference for extended, supine primary inhumations of single individuals, following practices seen elsewhere in Roman Anatolia (Toynbee 1996). Although Out of Range? Non-Normative Funerary Practices at Çatalhöyük, Turkey

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Figure 17.3. (A) and (B) Roman Period burials with grave goods at Çatalhöyük (photographs by Jason Quinlan); (C) Byzantine Period Christian burial at Çatalhöyük (photograph by Scott Haddow).

cremation burials—commonly associated with the Early Imperial Roman Period (Morris 1992, but see Ahrens 2014)—have been found at other Roman Period sites in Anatolia, no evidence for first millennium AD cremation (neither cremated remains nor cremation urns) has yet been found at Çatalhöyük or elsewhere on the Konya Plain (Ahrens 2014: 198–205). The body is typically oriented east-west, with the head to the west. Graves are rectilinear, and traces of wood and iron nails indicate the use of coffins in some cases. A few graves dated to the Roman Period were lined with terracotta bricks and/or roof tiles (Moore and Jackson 2014). This practice has also been observed at the Central Anatolian site of Pessinus (see Devreker et al. 2003; Krsmanovic and Anderson 2012). No grave markers or other superstructures have been found in association with burials from this period, although it is likely that they were originally marked in some way, as there is no evidence for intercutting of graves within this phase. Only a small number of neonates and infants have been excavated at Çatalhöyük for the Roman and Byzantine Periods, which likely reflects the custom of reserving spatially discrete burial areas for these age groups. Many of the Roman-era graves contain artifact assemblages typical of the period, including glass and ceramic unguentaria (small vessels used to contain oil or other liquids), carved bone and copper-alloy toiletry items, and personal adornments (e.g., rings, earrings, bracelets) (figs. 17.3a, 17.3b). By the mid-fourth century AD, Christianity had become the dominant religion in Anatolia (Mitchell 1993: 54–64). Burials from this time onward at Çatalhöyük rarely contained grave goods (fig. 17.3c).

Islamic Burial Practices Prior to 2007, the post-Chalcolithic burials at Çatalhöyük were presumed to date primarily to the Roman and Byzantine Periods based on the standard eastwest extended orientation of the skeletons (with the head to the west), grave construction, and burial goods (or lack thereof). This changed, however, after radiocarbon dates obtained for a series of burials from across the East Mound showed that some dated from the Late Seljuk Period and into the Karamanid and Ottoman periods (thirteenth–seventeenth century AD) (Kwiatkowska 2009). During this time, the Christian population of the region gradually converted to Islam with the arrival of the Seljuk Turks in the eleventh century AD (Beihammer 2015; Vryonis 1971: 170–194). The reason these burials had not been previously identified as Islamic is that Christian and Muslim burial practices at Çatalhöyük are in some cases nearly identical. These similarities are due in large Out of Range? Non-Normative Funerary Practices at Çatalhöyük, Turkey

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part to geography: in the Islamic burial tradition, the shrouded body is placed directly in the ground with the face oriented toward Mecca (Petersen 2013). At different times and places in the Muslim world, the body itself is placed on its right side, while sometimes only the head is turned. Only the head was rotated to the right to face Mecca in some Islamic burials at Çatalhöyük, while in others the entire body was placed on its right side, often propped up against the side of the grave. Because of these positional considerations, the orientation of the grave varies depending on its geographical relationship to the Arabian Peninsula (Petersen 2013). For example, an Islamic burial in Egypt will be aligned north-south with the head to the south (facing east). Three Early Islamic burials recently excavated in the south of France were found with skeletons placed on

Figure 17.4. Islamic burials at Çatalhöyük: (A) pit grave; (B) niche grave (photographs by Scott Haddow).

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their right sides and facing southeast (Gleize et al. 2016). In Anatolia, the body is oriented east-west with the head to the west (thus typically facing south)—an alignment that mirrors burial practices from the preceding Roman and Byzantine periods. In addition, grave goods are not typically included in Christian or Muslim interments, making it difficult to date burials based on artifact typologies. As such, distinguishing between Christian and Islamic burials in this region often hinges on the direction in which the facial skeleton is oriented. Two main types of Islamic grave construction are now recognized at Çatalhöyük: a narrow rectangular pit, sometimes lined with mudbrick, but without further elaboration (fig. 17.4a), and a more complex grave with a secondary burial niche dug into the south wall of a larger primary pit (fig. 17.4b); the burial niche is sealed with mudbricks, and the primary pit is then backfilled (Kwiatkowska 2009; Moore 2014). Based on the radiocarbon dates currently available (Kwiatkowska 2009), the niche graves appear to be later in date than the simple pit graves. As with the Roman/Byzantine burials, no traces of grave superstructures have survived. Similarly, the graves of neonates and infants are seldom recovered, and it is likely they were interred elsewhere.

Irregular/Non-Normative Burials at Çatalhöyük Neolithic Period Sk.10840 is an adult male aged 35–50 years at death buried in the north-central platform of Building 50, which is stratigraphically associated with Level South M (6700–6500 cal BC). The body of Sk.10840 was placed on its right side in a tightly flexed position and oriented east-west with the head to the west (Farid 2014b). Several unique artifacts were interred with this individual, including a large, tear-shaped flint blade and a worked heron ulna, interpreted as a possible flutelike musical instrument (fig. 17.5). Most significant, however, is the fact that this individual was interred in association with a complete lamb, making it the first and only example of a human/animal inhumation found at Çatalhöyük to date (Farid 2014b; Russell and Düring 2006). The adult male was put into the large grave pit first, partially covered with a mat as indicated by phytolith deposits, and then the lamb was placed upon this mat. In this way, the human and the lamb were interred together, but a careful separation between the bodies was afforded by the matting. A succession of later burials within the same platform seems to hearken back to the memory of this earlier interment, as this burial is not disturbed by the later inhumations of an adult male and female, both of Out of Range? Non-Normative Funerary Practices at Çatalhöyük, Turkey

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Figure 17.5. Neolithic burial of middle adult male Sk.10840 with sheep from Building 50: (A) digitized plan view; (B) skeleton Sk.10840; (C) skeleton of sheep (digitized plan by Camilla Mazzucato; photographs by Jason Quinlan).

whom were interred just above the earlier interment in the same position and orientation as Sk.10840 (Farid 2014b). The inclusion of complete domestic animals (rather than parts) with human burials is extremely rare in the Near Eastern Neolithic and preceding periods. The two best-known cases are the Natufian dog burials at Ein Mallaha and 332

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Hayonim Terrace (Davis and Valla 1978; Tchernov and Valla 1997) and the cat burial at Shillourokambos in Cyprus (Vigne et al. 2004). Examples of intact wild animals buried with humans are also rare. These include the fox burials from Pre-Pottery Neolithic B site Kfar HaHoresh in Israel (Goring-Morris 2005) and the pre-Natufian site of ’Uyun al-Hammam in Jordan (Maher et al. 2011). Additionally, the so-called shaman burial from the Natufian cave site of Hilazon Tatchtit contained 50 tortoise shells along with the incomplete remains of a wild boar, an eagle, an aurochs, a leopard, and two martens in association with the skeleton of an elderly female (Grosman et al. 2008). Because sheep form the most abundant part of the faunal assemblage and represent one of the most important dietary resources at Çatalhöyük (Russell and Martin 2005; Russell et al. 2013), Russell and Düring (2006) speculate that this individual may represent a particularly skilled shepherd or one especially wealthy in livestock, an identity or status accrued in life and reflected in mortuary behaviors following his death. However, given that sheep herding would have been a common occupation at Çatalhöyük, one might expect to find similar burials (Russell and Düring 2006). The care taken to separate the human and animal remains and the replication of burial location, position, and orientation of later interments suggests a deep respect for this individual’s remains and memory, especially with regard to avoiding disturbance. Thus, while the placement of an animal in the grave of this individual is highly unusual, the overall burial treatment does not appear exclusionary in nature. The second example from the Neolithic phase of Çatalhöyük’s occupation, a young adult male (Sk.3368), represents one of the extraordinarily rare midden burials (Farid 2007). To date, only 1% (four individuals) of primary burials at Neolithic Çatalhöyük have been recovered from active midden contexts (Milella et al. 2016). Of these, Sk.3368 is the only adult. There are also two neonates (0–2 months) and one child (3±1 years) within this spatial category. This young adult male, about 20 years of age at death, was recovered from a midden located in the external space between several buildings stratigraphically associated with Level South L (6700–6500 cal BC). The body was placed in a standard hyperflexed position on its left side, with the hands and feet in close proximity (fig. 17.6). The upper torso was folded onto the abdomen and the head was face down with the forehead touching the knees. This individual has low cortical bone for age (Hillson et al. 2013: 391), which is indicative of chronic metabolic stress and associated with a heightened risk of fragility fracture (e.g., Haara et al. 2006; Ma and Jones 2003; Mays 1996; Melton et al. 2005). He also appears to have suffered Out of Range? Non-Normative Funerary Practices at Çatalhöyük, Turkey

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Figure 17.6. Neolithic burial of young adult male Sk.3368 in external midden space: (A) photograph of Sk.3368; (B) plan view of Sk.3368; (C) location of Sk.3368 within an external midden space (photograph and plans by Çatalhöyük Research Project).

from kyphoscoliosis, an abnormal curvature of the spine that may have contributed to the folding of the upper torso of the skeleton in the grave. His condition is most likely due to a gross systemic bone disease, perhaps fibrous dysplasia, that left him physically impaired and perhaps facially disfigured (Milella et al. 2016). Healed fractures are present throughout much of the postcranial skeleton, including the ribs, left scapula and clavicle, right and left ulnae, metacarpals, and hand phalanges (Molleson et al. 2005: 295). In addition, a close examination of the cranial vault has revealed evidence of three well-healed depressed fractures, two on the right parietal and another on the occipital (Milella et al. 2016; Knüsel and Glencross 2016). The location of these traumatic injuries suggests that this 334

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individual may have been subjected to repeated episodes of nonlethal interpersonal violence during his lifetime, perhaps as a consequence of his illness and perceived physical disabilities. As such, the extramural placement of this individual’s grave—an active midden space—suggests an overt, symbolically charged act designed to exclude him from the community for reasons most likely associated with his physical condition in life.

Roman/Byzantine Periods One Roman Period inhumation, likely dating to sometime between the late first century and early third century AD based on the glass and ceramic vessels (see Cottica et al. 2012: 334–336 for comparable material), differs substantially from normative Roman/Byzantine mortuary practice. This burial (Feature 3687) contains the double inhumation of an older adult female (50+ years of age) and a young adult male (20–29 years of age), interred together within the same woodlined grave cut or coffin. Both individuals were placed in extended supine positions, with the female placed directly on top of the male (fig. 17.7). To date, this is the first and only post-Chalcolithic double inhumation found at Çatalhöyük. In addition, this grave was oriented on a north-south rather than an east-west axis, with the heads of both individuals aligned to the south. Despite its unusual characteristics, however, this grave was not spatially segregated from other Roman Period burials on the East Mound.

Figure 17.7. Roman Period double burial containing young adult male and old adult female within the same coffin (photograph by Scott Haddow).

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Three unguentaria were found in this feature, including two glass vessels near the heads of both individuals and one ceramic vessel at the foot-end of the burial. Additionally, the female wore a copper alloy ring inlaid with a glass paste intaglio on the right hand. Finally, fragments of copper-alloy toiletry items were found near the feet. Osteological analysis revealed evidence of compression in the lower thoracic and lumbar region of the older adult female (Knüsel et al. 2012: 145). In conjunction with the presence of ossified lung tissue, it is thought that these lesions may be indicative of advanced-stage tuberculosis. The figure on the ring appears to be a representation of Artemis of Ephesus (Moore 2014). In combination with the indicators of ill health seen via osteological analysis of the older female in this burial, the representation of Artemis (or Diana in Roman mythology) on the ring is an interesting one, given her association with protection and nurturing.

Early Twentieth Century The final example of non-normative burial practices at Çatalhöyük discussed here is also the last known burial to have taken place on the East Mound, less than 100 years ago. On the eastern slope of the mound, a solitary grave marker stands among the tall grass. It belongs to a woman named Güllü Ayşa who, according to the inscription on the marker, died on the 22nd of February 1933. In terms of style and orientation, the marker itself is similar to Turkish Islamic grave markers of the same period; the inscription itself: Hu Merhume / Huseyin kızı / Güllü Ayşa / Ruhuna Fatiha “The late Güllü Ayşa / Daughter of Huseyin / A prayer for her soul,” is also a standard formulation. The irregularity in this case lies in the location of the grave itself—outside the contemporary village cemetery (fig. 17.8). The story of Güllü Ayşa is well known among the townspeople from Küçükköy, the nearest modern settlement to Çatalhöyük. Based on his ethnoarchaeological work with local workmen, David Shankland (2000: 171) relays one account of this woman’s story: In Küçükköy, there used to be a custom known as kadın oynatma, where­by a danseuse would be paid to perform a dance for a number of males. One man, who was too powerful to be opposed by the other villagers, moved one of these, Güllü, to the village, where she is said to have lived separately, organizing such evenings for him. After her death, she was buried at Çatalhöyük, where her grave lies still. After some time had passed, one 336

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Figure 17.8. Grave marker of Güllü Ayşa on the East Mound at Çatalhöyük (photograph by Scott Haddow).

night two men decided to steal her gold teeth. As they were doing so, her skeleton began to rattle, and terrified, they ran back to the village. The next day, they replaced those things that they had taken, and reburied her remains. In other spoken and written accounts (e.g., Bilgen-Reinart 2007: 40), this woman has been variously described as a “prostitute” and a kötü yola düşmüş kadın, or “fallen woman,” perhaps an adulterer.

Discussion and Conclusion Within any culture, numerous factors determine the funerary treatments of particular individuals. In many discussions of deviant burials, the circumstances surrounding an individual’s death are often the focal point for explanations of non-normative burial practices, while an individual’s conduct or attributes in life may play an equally influential role (Shay 1985; Ucko 1969). In Europe, for example, we know from historical as well as archaeological sources that murder victims, suicides, drownings, and victims of particular diseases, as well as crimiOut of Range? Non-Normative Funerary Practices at Çatalhöyük, Turkey

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nals, the unbaptized, mentally ill, and physically disabled were often excluded from burial with other members of their community or marked in some other way (Formicola 2007; Formicola et al. 2001; Hubert 2000; Murphy 2008). For each of the individuals described in this chapter, manner of death does not appear to play an obvious role in determining burial treatment. Instead, their comportment in life, whether voluntary or involuntary, seems to have influenced the manner in which they were treated in death. While its intramural location, grave goods, and the orientation of the body conforms to standard burial practices for the period, the inclusion of a complete sheep marks the grave of Sk.10840 as distinctive from other Neolithic burials at Çatalhöyük. However, the occurrence and orientation of subsequent normative burials in the same location suggests a remembrance and respect for this earlier interment that argues against a denigratory or exclusionary motive for this curious mortuary treatment. If we accept the argument of Russell and Düring (2006) that sheep, in general, if not this particular sheep, played a major role in the life of Sk.10840, then this case can best be viewed as an idiosyncratic form of “biographical burial,” a term coined by Nakamura and Meskell (2013) to describe interments in which grave goods appear to have been selected to reflect the personal histories of mature adults. Seen from this perspective, the burial treatment of Sk.10840 falls within the range of normative burial practices at Neolithic Çatalhöyük, albeit on the margins. The second example from Neolithic Çatalhöyük—that of the chronically ill male buried in the midden—appears to be a clearer example of exclusionary mortuary practices, in this case by way of grave location. In all other respects, including the placement and orientation of the body within the grave, the burial follows standard practices. However, by interring the body in an external space typically reserved for the disposal of waste, the people involved seem to be drawing a clear distinction between this individual and the rest of the community. A potential explanation for this extremely rare action is that, despite this individual surviving into adulthood, presumably with the support of at least some of the community, fear of his illness or physical condition meant he could not be buried intramurally with other members of the community. However, we must be cautious about projecting more recent conceptions of disability onto other societies, both past and present (see Last 2000). In the case of the Roman Period double burial, it seems likely that the two individuals were related, biologically or otherwise, and died at the same time or in relatively rapid succession. Unlike the Neolithic individual who was interred 338

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in the midden—a highly atypical location perhaps with negative associations— these two individuals were not excluded from burial with other community members in this cemetery. While this is the only such case at Çatalhöyük to date, double inhumations are not uncommon in the Roman world and are most often associated with husbands and wives, but they may also include other familial pairings such as parent and child, brother and sister, or grandmother and granddaughter. They may even include pairs of slaves, or even master and slave (Williams 2012: 340). The odd orientation of the grave itself is much harder to interpret, however, and marks these individuals as out of harmony with the rest of the community in some way, despite retaining their place within the cemetery. Perhaps they were minority members of the community that did not share the same beliefs, or they were nonlocal in origin. The graves of such individuals have been identified elsewhere in the Roman world (e.g., Eckardt et al. 2009; Evans et al. 2006; Leach et al. 2009). Alternatively, the circumstances of their deaths may have necessitated this marking (e.g., Montgomery et al. 2011). Prospective ancient DNA and isotopic analyses will hopefully clarify the relationship between these two individuals and the contemporary community at Çatalhöyük. During the Seljuk, Karamanid, and Early Ottoman periods it was evidently not an issue for Muslims to be buried on the mound at Çatalhöyük, perhaps as a way for newcomers to associate themselves with the long history of the region. Eventually, however, the practice became taboo, and subsequent burials took place in an exclusively Muslim cemetery in the nearby village of Küçükköy. For the locals, Çatalhöyük has since become associated with stories of ghosts and other strange occurrences that further establish the site as a place to be avoided and especially not disturbed (Dural 2007). Whatever the true circumstances of Güllü Ayşa’s life and death, it is clear that because of her perceived conduct she was considered an outcast not worthy of burial with other members of her community in the village cemetery. In this sense, her burial might be considered “deviant” in that she was socially excluded in death because of her “immoral” behavior in life, in much the same way as suicides, criminals, and prostitutes are often excluded in certain cultures. Nevertheless, she was still buried as a Muslim, with an Islamic grave marker bearing standard funerary inscriptions; only the location of her grave is unusual. Because her grave has not been excavated, however, we cannot know for certain whether the disposition of the body itself adhered to standard Islamic mortuary practices. Out of Range? Non-Normative Funerary Practices at Çatalhöyük, Turkey

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As we have shown with the examples presented here, most burials considered non-normative or irregular still occur within the range of standard funerary practices for their particular cultural context. As such, it is inaccurate to characterize these burials as “deviant,” with or without the negative associations of the word. In every society, the living consciously select from a culturally sanctioned array of options a particular subset of funerary practices deemed appropriate for the circumstances of a deceased individual’s life or death, or both. Age, sex, or status is often the most important factor in determining an individual’s funerary treatment. In the aggregate, the range of options associated with these social distinctions thus defines the parameters of a society’s “normative” funerary practices. Non-normative burials typically challenge these parameters but rarely do they completely defy them. For example, while spatial segregation of burials is often used to mark differences between individuals in death, other aspects of mortuary practice may also be emphasized, or inverted, such as grave orientation and inclusions. It is rare, however, that archaeologists come across burials that bear no relationship to the standards of their particular time and location—there is usually some recognizable trait. Burials lacking such identifiable cultural associations might be considered genuinely “deviant,” but they are also likely to be archaeologically undetectable, in that they were probably located far from settlement areas or orthodox locations for burial. In this sense, they would truly be “out of range.”

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pp. 33–98. McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge; British Institute for Archaeology at Ankara, London. Russell, Nerissa, Kathryn C. Twiss, David C. Orton, and G. Arzu Demirergi 2013 More on the Çatalhöyük Mammal Remains. In Humans and Landscapes of Çatalhöyük: Reports from the 2000–2008 Seasons (Çatalhöyük Research Project Volume 8), edited by Ian Hodder, pp. 213–258. British Institute at Ankara, London; Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press, Los Angeles. Shankland, David 2000 Villagers and the Distant Past: Three Seasons’ Work at Küçükköy, Çatalhöyük. In Towards Reflexive Method in Archaeology: The Example at Çatalhöyük (Çatalhöyük Research Project Volume 2), edited by Ian Hodder, pp. 167–176. McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge; British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, London. Shay, Talia 1985 Differentiated Treatment of Deviancy at Death as Revealed in Anthropological and Archeological Material. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 4(3): 221–241. Tchernov, Eitan, and François F. Valla 1997 Two New Dogs, and Other Natufian Dogs from the Southern Levant. Journal of Archaeological Science 24: 65–95. Tibbetts, Belinda 2017 Perinatal Death and Cultural Buffering in a Neolithic Community. In Children, Death and Burial: Archaeological Discourses, edited by E. Murphy and M. Le Roy, pp. 35–42. Oxbow Books, Oxford. Toynbee, Jocelyn M. C. 1996 Death and Burial in the Roman World. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore. Tung, Burcu 2012 Excavations in the North Area 2012. In Çatalhöyük 2012 Archive Report, http:// www.catalhoyuk.com/archive_reports/2012 Ucko, Peter J. 1969 Ethnographic and Archaeological Interpretations of Funerary Remains. World Archaeology 1: 262–280. Vigne, Jean-Denis, Jean Guilaine, Karyne Debue, Laurent Haye, and Patrice Gérard 2004 Early Taming of the Cat in Cyprus. Science 304: 259. Vryonis, Speros, Jr. 1971 The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor and the Process of Islamization from the Eleventh through the Fifteenth Century. University of California Press, Berkeley. Williams, Craig A. 2012 Reading Roman Friendship. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Williams, Howard M. R. 1997 Ancient Landscapes and the Dead: The Reuse of Prehistoric and Roman Monuments as Early Anglo-Saxon Burial Sites. Medieval Archaeology 41: 1–32. 2006 Death and Memory in Early Medieval Britain. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

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18 Deviant Treatment of the Body as a Mortuary Ritual A Case from the Middle Jomon Period in Eastern Japan

Ta k e sh i Ish i k awa

The Jomon era lasted for more than 10,000 years (ca. 13,600–600 BC). The beginning of the Jomon era is defined by the emergence of pottery in the Japanese archipelago and can be divided into the following six periods in terms of typochronology: the Incipient (13,600–9200 BC), the Initial (9200–5300 BC), the Early (5300–3500 BC), the Middle (3500–2500 BC), the Late (2500–1200 BC), and the Final (1200–600 BC) (Kobayashi 2004; Tanaka 2011; Tanaka et al. 2004). Gathering, hunting, and fishing were the main sources of subsistence during the Jomon era, with horticulture serving as a supplementary activity (Kobayashi 1996, 2004). A sedentary lifestyle gradually became more prevalent from the beginning of the Jomon era (Hayashi 1996), and as a consequence, functional divides within settlements began to emerge as early as the Early Jomon Period. This type of settlement eventually evolved into the typical Jomon settlement, in which the pit dwellings with upper structures for residence, storage facilities, and cemeteries were configured with concentric circular spatial plans (Hayashi 1997a, 1997b; Kobayashi 1996, 2004). This chapter focuses on the Middle Jomon Period of the Boso Peninsula in Kanto area, the eastern part of the archipelago. The Boso Peninsula was a prominent area from which a large number of skeletal remains were excavated beginning in the early twentieth century (Yamada 2008), primarily from sites with shell middens. Despite the abundance of human bones excavated from the area, the unusual treatment of disarticulating the dead has not been intensively

studied. Atypical treatment of the dead in the western part of the archipelago has been studied since the 1990s based on a limited number of skeletal remains (Tanaka 2008a, 2008c; Tanaka and Murakami 1994), and more recently, nonnormative burials in the eastern part of the archipelago from the Middle Jomon Period have also been examined (Ishikawa 2014a); however, most of these burials have yet to be examined in terms of the funerary context within each cemetery. The aim of this chapter is to explore and interpret deviant burial practices, with a specific focus on particular human remains found at the Kusakari site, a prominent shell mound located on the Boso Peninsula. The individual was treated in an unusual manner during the mortuary process. This investigation is aimed at interpreting the social and religious factors underlying the deviant treatment of the dead by placing them within the context of the variable mortuary practices found at the Kusakari site. The typical burial treatment of the Boso Peninsula during the Middle Jomon Period was individual primary burial (Suzuki 2010; Yamada 2008). A grave dug in the ground was seen as a popular style (Suzuki 2010). In addition to this type of grave, pit dwellings for ordinary residential usage were also reused as a kind of mortuary facility (Sakazume 1961). This type of grave reused deserted pit dwellings as burial sites, as suggested by findings involving five human bones on the floor of a house at the Ubayama site in the Boso Peninsula (Sakazume 1961). Similar cases have since been found (e.g., Goto 1977, 1986; Suzuki 2010), indicating that inhumations within a house had variable timing, as skeletal remains have been recovered from various post-depositional stages such as on the dwelling floor but also mixed within the soil fill. Although the definitions of this type of funerary facility have become diversified in response to the postdepositional phases of these inhumations, the dead are thought to have a specific type of relationship with the pit dwellings in which they were buried (Horikoshi 2013). One typical burial position in general of this period and region was supine with the lower limbs flexed (Yamada 2008). Body orientation is an important attribute regarding the treatment of the dead body according to previous studies (Hayashi 1977; Yamada 2008). This feature, however, must be examined separately for each cemetery, because it is likely affected by contextual factors such as the landscape and spatial organization of the burial ground (Ishikawa 2014b; Tanaka 2008a). The inclusion of grave goods is not seen as a typical mortuary practice for the cultures of this time and place, and body or348

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naments have rarely been found (Suzuki 2010); however, pots and potsherds have been found covering specific body parts in some burial sites. The Kusakari site is a typical settlement with graves configured in a concentric circular pattern with residential and funerary facilities organized with inner and outer pit dwelling areas (fig. 18.1) (Foundation of Archaeological Heritage

Figure 18.1. Spatial organization of the eastern part of the Kusakari site (Foundation of Archaeological Heritage Management Center of Chiba Prefecture 1986). Reprinted by kind permission of the Foundation of Archaeological Heritage Management Center of Chiba Prefecture.

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Figure 18.2. Mortuary attributes of the burials in the eastern part of the Kusakari site (Foundation of Archaeological Heritage Management Center of Chiba Prefecture 1986). Reprinted by kind permission of the Foundation of Archaeological Heritage Management Center of Chiba Prefecture.

Management Center of Chiba Prefecture 1986; Ishikawa 2011; Takahashi 1991, 2003, 2004). The eastern half of the site is laid out in five sequential phases, each having two or three subphases with residential structures (Foundation of Archaeological Heritage Management Center of Chiba Prefecture 1986). These sequential phases have a concentric spatial configuration (Takahashi 1991, 2003, 2004), suggesting the existence of radial division of space in addition to concentric organization (Ishikawa 2011). 350

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At the Kusakari site, most skeletal remains have been found in pit dwellings. A total of 43 individuals have been excavated from the eastern half of the site, among which, body position could be identified for 13, including two children. The majority of individuals were buried in a supine position with their legs bent, an ordinary position in this region during the Middle Jomon Period (fig. 18.2) (Yamada 2008). Body orientation could also be determined for 18 individuals. Primary body orientations were either north to northeast or east (fig. 18.2). Variations in these burial directions are associated with sex differences; most females were buried in supine position with their heads toward the north to northeast, while most males being buried in the supine position were laid with their heads toward the east (fig. 18.2). Pots and potsherds were more often used for covering female than male body parts. From these observations, body orientation and the presence of pots/potsherds are thought to be associated with differences in sex. Burial in the supine position is considered to have been normal for both males and females.

Atypical Burials In addition to these typical patterns, unusual variations in both body direction and body position have been observed (fig. 18.2). All these non-normative body directions, with the exception of one child (No. 516-D), have been found in male burials; these involve atypical head directions, including west (No. 516-B), southwest (No. 216, No. 516-A) and south (No. 585). Furthermore, the north direction seen in an adult male (No. 516-C) was also considered unusual as this body placement is typical for females but not for males. In addition to body orientation, placing the corpse in the prone position is also a deviant body treatment and was observed in four individuals (table 18.1). Interestingly, these four individuals (No. 216, No. 516-A, No. 516-C, No. 585) also had atypical head placement as discussed above. The No. 516 pit dwelling included skeletal remains treated in an atypical manner (fig. 18.3). Four individuals, three adult males and one child, were found in a relatively well-preserved condition. One adult male (No. 516-A) was found in an anatomically unnatural position, with the right os coxa and the right lower limb (i.e., femur, tibia, and fibula) found separated from the rest of the body by about 52.5 cm, despite the articulation of the majority of the skeleton. In addition to the separation of the right pelvic bone and lower limb, this individual may have also been laid in the prone position. The posterior surDeviant Treatment of the Body as a Ritual, Middle Jomon Period, Eastern Japan

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Table 18.1. Deviant treatment of the body in the eastern part of the Kusakari site Burial number

Sex

Body Body Covering Disarticulated orientation posture pot Disarticulation body parts

Place of burial

516-D

Subadult

Xa

Residential area

516-B

Male

X

Residential area

216

Male

X

X

Residential area

516-C

Male

X

X

Residential area

585

Male

X

X

Inner pit area

516-A

Male

X

X

207

Male

X

509

Male

X

a

X

Right lower limb Residential area

X

Patella

Residential area Residential area

X = Deviant variation.

Figure 18.3. No. 516 pit dwelling and 516-A skeletal remains (Foundation of Archaeological Heritage Management Center of Chiba Prefecture 1986). Reprinted by kind permission of the Foundation of Archaeological Heritage Management Center of Chiba Prefecture.

face of the right humerus faced upward, and the right scapula was on top of the humerus (fig. 18.3). The vertebral column was facing posterior, although this was not clear from the reported figure. The anatomical position of the right arm and spinal column support the conclusion of a prone burial. Additionally, the head was laid on its left side facing downward, and the left lower limb was in a flexed position. Although the location of the right os coxa and right lower limb was in an unexpected anatomical position, the main joints, the hip and knee joints, were articulated (fig. 18.3). In addition to this unusual location of the right pelvic bone and leg, different bone modifications, including animal gnawing and cut marks, were observed on these skeletal remains. Rodent gnawing marks were found on the humerus, radius, ulna, femur, tibia, and fibula. Several slight cut marks were also observed on the posterior surface of the right and left ischia. Furthermore, additional cut marks were found on the lateral side of the left femur.

Discussion A variety of factors, from natural to human origin, can cause the disturbance of a dead body (Henderson 1987; Nawrocki 1995; Weiss-Krejci 2011). Examples of natural factors intervening during the postmortem decay process are carnivore scavenging and other animal activities (Haglund 1997; Pilloud et al 2016). Possible geologic factors can also disturb remains, including various environmental and postdepositional contexts surrounding the corpse (Henderson 1987). Human intervention can disturb burials through unintentional and intentional means. Unintentional disturbances include accidental digging and additional inhumations during succeeding generations (Ishikawa 2011). To differentiate intentional human practices from other depositional and postdepositional agents, it is important to estimate the time period during which the disturbance occurred (e.g., Ishikawa 2014a; Tanaka 2008a, 2008c). Articulation of the bones can partially contribute to the estimation of time if the disturbance occurred before the body was skeletonized, as certain connected/ articulated body parts may remain connected or in their original articulation. By contrast however, a skeletonized corpse can become disarticulated much more easily, with visible changes present, particularly around the joints of the body as the bones shift (Tanaka 2008c). The modification of skeletal remains can also provide clues regarding the agents responsible for the disturbance of a body. Scavenging or gnawing tooth Deviant Treatment of the Body as a Ritual, Middle Jomon Period, Eastern Japan

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marks can suggest animal intervention, while cut marks on the skeletal remains can indicate intentional human activity. As discussed above, one individual (No. 516-A) was buried prone with irregular position of the right pelvis and lower limb. The position of bones indicated that the right os coxa, femur, tibia, and fibula were moved secondarily from the original burial position while preserving the articulated hip and knee joints. This observation suggests that the disturbance of this limb occurred when the soft tissue was still intact. The cut marks on the os coxae, accompanied by lack of observed healing, imply that human intervention occurred after death. Both the position of the bones and the cut marks indicate that this individual was disarticulated relatively shortly after death; however, the reason cut marks were made in the same place on the left os coxa remains unclear. As already observed, the left lower limb was found in an anatomically natural position. As seen on the right side of this individual, attempts might have been made to disarticulate some part of the left lower limb as well. Based on the above identification of atypical burial behavior, it is necessary to argue the potential motivations behind this type of treatment. Deviant mortuary treatment is thought to be the result of a variety of factors based on the context of death and the social persona of the individual during their lifetime (Aspöck 2008; Murphy 2008). The meanings attached to atypical practices range from positive to negative according to each specific context (Aspöck 2008). The reason this particular male individual (No. 516-A) was treated in an unusual manner after death can be inferred, in part, from examining the nature of the inhumed population at the Kusakari site. Most of the remains were found in pit dwellings configured in a circular spatial pattern with a radial division of segmental units (Ishikawa 2011; Takahashi 1991). These distributional segments are thought to correspond with certain kinds of social units, such as lineages or kin groups (Keesing 1975; Tanaka 1998; Takahashi 2003, 2004). The inhumed individuals might be part of kin groups that cooperated within the spatial division of the settlement. Therefore, only selected populations of the living might have been buried in abandoned pit dwellings over the long term (Takahashi 2003). The inhumed population includes both typical and atypical mortuary treatments regarding body position, direction, and covering body parts with pottery, with most of the atypical practices observed in the male population. This suggests the possibility that males who died in extraordinary contexts were treated in a deviant manner. While the spatial distribution of the deviant burials within the site can possibly contribute to this analysis (Reynolds 354

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2009), the atypical male burials were neither located in specific areas nor concentrated in specific pit dwellings. In addition, none of these sites showed any obvious evidence suggesting unusual circumstances surrounding their deaths such as conflict. Although cut marks were found on several skeletal remains, these were thought to be associated with mortuary treatments, as seen in the No. 516-A individual (Ishikawa 2016). Based on these circumstantial findings, unusual deaths may not have been the primary cause of deviant burial treatments, especially for No. 516-A. Another possible factor in the atypical practices seen in burial No. 516-A is the social persona of the individual. Mortuary practices seen in this Kusakari site suggesting unusual mortuary treatments of the corpse might be associated with sex or gender differences. Because gender is one basic social persona and identity for social membership, the disarticulation of a body part as an atypical treatment might relate to other aspects of this individual’s social persona (Binford 1968; Chapman 2013). Looking at similar cases of skeletal remains from the Jomon era, the disarticulation of a body tends to be concentrated in the legs or lower limbs (Ishikawa 2014a; Tanaka 2008a, 2008b, 2008c). Cut marks observed in another male individual (No. 207B) at the Kusakari site might have been caused by disarticulation of the right patella (Ishikawa 2016). Similar deviant mortuary practices continued in later prehistory until the Kofun era, which occurred from the middle of the third century AD to the seventh century AD (Tanaka and Ishikawa 2004; Tanaka and Murakami 1994). These practices, particularly carried out on the lower limbs, seem to have been the embodiment of the fear of resurrection of the dead, to be stopped by disarticulation, which prevents the dead from walking again (Tanaka 2008a, 2008c). The atypical burial of individual 516-A found at the Kusakari site possibly reflects this fear of resurrection and subsequent walking of the dead. By incapacitating the lower limbs, specifically the right leg in this example, this individual would have been unable to “walk again” after life. However, cases of deviant burials examined in terms of the context of mortuary variability as a whole are limited; therefore, more studies using similar approaches are needed. Deviant burials are studied in various regions and periods of time in the world; however, criteria for distinguishing unusual burials from normative ones and interpretations of the reason or causes of those atypical burials are common theoretical interest, other than the problem of how to define the “deviant burial” (Aspöck 2008; Murphy 2008; Tsaliki 2008).
 The above arguments suggest that it Deviant Treatment of the Body as a Ritual, Middle Jomon Period, Eastern Japan

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is appropriate to use various kinds of mortuary attributes to distinguish non-normative burial practices from usual ones. This chapter examined the postmortem disarticulation of body parts as an unusual treatment of the dead. This practice in funerary context is a remarkable and outstanding ritual activity in relation to other normative burial practices in the region and period. However, in addition to this disconnection of the corpse, body direction and posture also had variations that deviated from normal differences, and the disarticulated human body was also buried in an unusual body direction and posture. In this sense, this study indicates that multiple kinds of mortuary practices might contribute to distinguishing deviant burials more effectively. Integrating the arrangement of human bones in situ and artificial bone modifications might suggest an important contribution of the osteoarchaeological/ bioarchaeological approach by revealing deviant mortuary practices. Detailed observation and analysis of the location of human bones in a grave makes clear not only body disarticulation but also the timing of such an extraordinary practice on the corpse during the postmortem decay process. Modification of human bones associated with disconnected remains can be used to verify a suspected disarticulation based on arrangement of skeletal remains in situ. Further, anthropogenic modification can give concrete information beneficial for uncovering deviant mortuary practices that could not be understood solely through examination of the location of human bones. This kind of multilateral approach using human skeletons reflects a uniqueness in osteoarchaeological/ bioarchaeological inquiry. The other problem surrounding unusual burials relates to interpretation of the causes or background context of those extraordinary funerary activities. In order to bridge the archaeological and bioarchaeological evidence of non-normative burials and specific interpretation of them, various resources other than material evidence from archaeological sites, such as ethnographic information and folklore, might be used; however, the material reported in this chapter pertains to the Jomon Period, for which ethnographic resources and folklore are scarce or lack appropriate uses. An alternative way to examine the background of deviant practices is to set the non-normative modes of funerary in the cemetery context as a whole, including the usual burial variations and spatial location of each burial in a cemetery. In the Kusakari site, most of the graves were configured in reused pit houses and both usual and atypical burials were not discriminated in the burial place within the site. Further, most of the unusual treatments were seen among adult male individuals. From this infor356

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mation, deviant funerary practices might be motivated not by unusual contexts of death but by social persona during life. As already argued by Aspöck (2008), integration of deviant burials into usual mortuary practice is important for appropriate evaluation of non-normative burials.

Conclusion This chapter examined the atypical treatment of an adult male involving body orientation, body positioning, and the inclusion of pottery. This individual was buried in an atypical manner based on the prone body position and irregular body direction. In addition to the treatment of the body, this individual’s right pelvic and lower limb bones were found in an unusual location, separate from the rest of the body but with the hip and knee joints in articulation. Additionally, there was evidence of cut marks with no signs of healing on both the left and right os coxae. The position and articulation of the right leg suggests that its intentional removal from the rest of the body occurred when the soft tissue was still intact, possibly as part of the funerary or mortuary process. The reason for this deviant mortuary treatment may be explained in part through the typical and atypical mortuary practices and variability seen at the Kusakari site. The population buried at this site was selected mainly from residential groups, and the deviant treatment tended to be seen only in male burials. These findings suggest that deviant treatment at Kusakari was at least partially associated with sex and/or gender. The disarticulation seen in the human remains of No. 516-A were interpreted as being associated with this individual’s specific social persona and the need to incapacitate his body after death so he could no longer walk among the living.

Acknowledgments I would like to thank the late Professor Yoshiyuki Tanaka for his kind advice. I would also like to thank Tracy K. Betsinger, Amy B. Scott, and Anastasia Tsaliki for providing me the opportunity to write this chapter, and for their kind reading and advice regarding the draft. I also wish to thank Takahisa Yamada, Hiroyuki Otani, and Masanobu Kato for their kind help in my research on the skeletal remains at the Kusakari site. In addition, I wish to thank the Foundation of Archaeological Heritage Management Center of Chiba Prefecture for their kind permission to reproduce the figures. This work was supported by JSPS KAKEN Grant Number 15K02983. Deviant Treatment of the Body as a Ritual, Middle Jomon Period, Eastern Japan

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Bibliography Aspöck, Edeltraud 2008 What Actually Is a “Deviant Burial”?: Comparing German-Language and Anglophone Research on “Deviant Burial.” In Deviant Burial in the Archaeological Record, edited by Eileen M. Murphy, pp. 17–34. Oxbow Books, Oxford. Binford, Lewis 1968 Archaeological Perspectives. In New Perspectives in Archaeology, edited by Lewis R. Binford and Sally R. Binford, pp. 5–32. Aldine, New York. Chapman, Robert 2013 Death, Burial, and Social Representation. In The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Death and Burial, edited by Sarah Tarlow and Liv Nilsson Stutz, pp. 47–57. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Foundation of Archaeological Heritage Management Center of Chiba Prefecture 1986 Excavation Report of the Chiharadai New Town 3: The Kusakari Site B Area. Foundation of Archaeological Heritage Management Center of Chiba Prefecture, Chiba City. Goto, Kazutami 1977 The Shell Mounds of Northern Kasori. ChuoKoron Bijyutsu, Tokyo. 1986 Customs and Religious Thought of the Jomon People. In Ancient Japan Volume 4: Lives of the Jomon and Yayoi, edited by Kouichi Mori, pp. 157–194. Chuokouronsha, Tokyo. Haglund, William 1997 Dogs and Coyotes: Postmortem Involvement with Human Remains. In Forensic Taphonomy: The Postmortem Fate of Human Remains, edited by William Haglund and Marcella H. Sorg, pp. 367–381. CRC Press, Boca Raton. Hayashi, Kensaku 1977 Burial Customs of the Jomon Era: The Placements of the Dead and Body Directions. Journal of Archaeology 63(3): 211–246. 1996 History of the Jomon Era: Formation and Spread of Sedentary Settlements 1. Archaeology Quarterly 57: 93–100. 1997a History of the Jomon Era: Formation and Spread of Sedentary Settlements 3. Archaeology Quarterly 61: 83–91. 1997b Utilization of Resource and Land by Jomon Society: Critique of the Arguments on the Jomon Civilization of the Jomon. Quarterly of Archaeological Studies 44(3): 35–50. Henderson, Janet 1987 Factors Determining the State of Preservation of Human Remains. In Death, Decay and Reconstruction: Approaches to Archaeology and Forensic Science, edited by Andrew Boddington, Andrew Neil Garland, and Robert C. Janaway, pp. 43–54. Manchester University Press, Manchester. Horikoshi, Masayuki 2013 Discarded House Grave. In Encyclopedia of Archaeology of Graves, edited by Yoshiyuki Habuta, pp. 52–53. Yoshikawa Kobunkan, Tokyo.

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Ishikawa, Takeshi 2011 Basic Study of the Reconstruction of Prehistoric Societies in Japanese Archipelago. PhD dissertation, Graduate School of Social and Cultural Studies, Kyushu University, Fukuoka. 2014a Cases of Mutilation of the Dead in the Boso Peninsula in the Jomon Period. In Studies in East Asian Archaeology and History Volume 2, edited by Hiroaki Takakura, pp. 9–27. Chugoku Shoten, Fukuoka. 2014b Social Complexity in the Late Jomon Period: The Constitution of the Shimo’ota Shell Mound Cemetery of the Boso Peninsula, Eastern Kanto, Japan. Japanese Journal of Archaeology 2(1): 3–33. 2016 Visualised Denial of Rebirth of the Dead in the Mortuary Process: Ritual Disarticulation during the Middle Jomon Period in Japan. Conference Programme of TAG 2016 Southampton, Southampton. Keesing, Roger 1975 Kin Groups and Social Structure. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York. Kobayashi, Tatsuo 1996 The World of Jomon People. Asahi Shinbunsha, Tokyo. 2004 Jomon Reflections: Forager Life and Culture in the Prehistoric Japanese Archipelago. Oxbow Books, Oxford. Murphy, Eileen M. (editor) 2008 Deviant Burial in the Archaeological Record. Oxbow Books, Oxford. Nawrocki, Stephen P. 1995 Taphonomic Processes in Historic Cemeteries. In Bodies of Evidence: Reconstructing History through Skeletal Analysis, edited by Anne L. Grauer, pp. 49–66. WilleyLiss, New York. Pilloud, Marin A., Scott D. Haddow, Christopher J, Knüsel, and Clark S. Larsen 2016 A Bioarchaeological and Forensic Re-Assessment of Vulture Defleshing and Mortuary Practices at Neolithic Çatalhöyük. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 10: 735–743. Reynolds, Andrew 2009 Anglo-Saxon Deviant Burial Customs. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Sakazume, Hideichi 1961 Typological Study of Burials during the Stone Age of Japan. Studies of the Japanese Archaeology, edited by Nakao, Sakazume, pp. 17–67. Kyowwa Syuppan, Tokyo. Suzuki, Yasuhiro 2010 Mortuary Customs in Settlements of Kanto Area during the Jomon Era. Variability of the Jomon Settlements Volume 2, edited by Katsuhiko Suzuki, pp. 149–200. Yuzankaku, Tokyo. Takahashi, Ryuzaburo 1991 Mortuary Customs of the Jomon Period. In Mortuary Customs of Prehistoric and Ancient Japan, edited by Ryoichi Yamagishi, pp. 48–84. Dosei-sha, Tokyo. 2003 Characteristics of the Society during the Late Jomon Period. In Researching the Jomon Society, edited by Committee of the Archaeological Symposium of Joint Universities, pp. 101–137. Gakusei-sha, Tokyo. 2004 Forefront of the Studies on the Jomon Culture. Waseda University, Tokyo. Deviant Treatment of the Body as a Ritual, Middle Jomon Period, Eastern Japan

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Tanaka, Yoshiyuki 1998 Critics of Arguments on the Reflection of Descent. Journal of Japanese Archaeology 5: 1–18. 2008a Re-examination of Cemetery of the Yamaga Shell Mound. In Archaeology of Region and Culture, edited by Department of Archaeology of Ehime University, pp. 47–60. Ehime University, Ehime. 2008b Ancient Family as Seen from Skeletal Remains: Kinship and Society. Yoshikawa Kobunkan, Tokyo. 2008c Examination of Ritual Disarticulation of the Dead. In Archaeology of Kyushu and East Asia, edited by Department of Archaeology, Graduate School of Humanities, Kyushu University, pp. 275–294. Kyushu University, Fukuoka. 2011 Problems for the Application of AMS Dating to Archaeology. In AMS Dating and Archaeology, edited by Hiroaki Takakura and Yoshiyuki Tanaka, pp. 131–161. Gakuseisya, Tokyo. Tanaka, Yoshiyuki, and Takeshi Ishikawa 2004 Skeletal Remains Excavated from the Tadayama Tombs. Excavation Report of Tadayama Tombs, pp. 592–604. Foundation of Archaeological Heritage Management Center of Gunma Prefecture, Gunma. Tanaka, Yoshiyuki, Mizoguchi Koji, Shozo Iwanaga, and Tom Higham 2004 A Preliminary Report on the AMS Dating of Yayoi Skeletal Remains. In Proceedings of the 6th Joint Conference of the Kyushu and Yong-nam Archaeological Societies, 245–258. Organizing Committee for the 6th Joint Conference of the Kyushu and Yong-nam Archaeological Societies, Busan. Tanaka, Yoshiyuki, and Hisakazu Murakami 1994 Offerings within Grave and Social Recognition of Death. Bulletin of Cultural History Research Center of Kyushu 39: 91–109. Tsaliki, Anastasia 2008 Unusual Burials and Necrophobia: An Insight into the Burial Archaeology of Fear. In Deviant Burial in the Archaeological Record, edited by Eileen M. Murphy, pp. 1–16. Oxbow Books, Oxford. Weiss-Krejci, Estella 2011 The Formation of Mortuary Deposits: Implications for Understanding Mortuary Behaviour of Past Population. In Social Bioarchaeology, edited by Sabrina C. Agarwal and Bonnie A. Glencross, pp. 68–106. Blackwell, West Sussex. Yamada, Yasuhiro 2008 Mortuary Customs and Society during the Jomon as Seen from Skeletal Remains. Doseisha, Tokyo.

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19 Ancestors, Conflict, and Criminality in Ancient China and Mongolia

Ch r ist i n e L e e

The history and cultures of East Asia are complicated and diverse. Researchers of East Asian archaeology often specialize in one time period or archaeological culture. There are very few mortuary or bioarchaeological studies of this region with a broad geographic and temporal scope. The following study will introduce the typical and some atypical burials from six archaeological sites within modern-day China and Mongolia (fig. 19.1). The earliest site is from the Neolithic Period (3500–3000 BCE) and the latest site ends during the Period of Disunion (744–840 CE). The specific archaeological cultures represent populations ancestral to modern-day Chinese, Tibetans, Uighur, Koreans, and Southeast Asians. The majority of burials within this study region, beginning in the Neolithic Period, are single extended interments within a defined cemetery, separate from living areas. Burials are usually arranged systematically in family clusters and larger overall kin groups based on patrilineal descent (Jiao 2001; Liu 2004). Multiple burials are recorded from the Middle to late Neolithic (5000–3500 BCE) in the Yellow River valley and Eastern Coastal China; however, multiple burials disappeared in these regions after the Yangshao (5000–3000 BCE) and Dawenkou (4300–2400 BCE) archaeological cultures ended (Jiao 2001). Single burials predominate in most of the study area. Multiple burials continued only in northwestern China, in the Qijia cultural region, represented mainly by burials containing a central male and female together. Around 3500 BCE second-

Figure 19.1. Map of the archaeological sites mentioned with unusual burials.

ary burials appear sporadically within the archaeological record (Jiao 2001; Liu 2004). By 3000 BCE, some evidence for widespread interpersonal violence and locally sanctioned sacrificial burials are present, with the emergence of social complexity and long-distance migration (Jiao 2001; Liu 2004; Pearson 1988).

Atypical Burials Mianchi Duzhong Site, Yangshao Culture (3500–3000 BCE), Henan Province, China. The Yangshao is one of several archaeological cultures of the Neolithic period found within modern-day China. Settlement sites are concentrated along the Yellow River in Shanxi, Shaanxi, and Henan provinces. This region, called the Central Plains, is considered the homeland of the ethnic Chinese (Barnes 1993; Liu 2004; Liu and Chen 2012; Murowchick 1994). The Yangshao practiced millet 362

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agriculture. There is faunal evidence of some animal husbandry, mainly pigs, chickens, and dogs for consumption. The presence of wild animals and fish in refuse pits shows a continuing heavy reliance on hunting and fishing (Barnes 1993; Liu 2004; Zhu 2013). Based on mortuary studies, there is little evidence of social stratification at this time (Liu 2004). The majority of Yangshao individuals are interred in cemeteries located outside of settlement areas. Cemeteries often had sacrificial pits surrounding them where offerings were left. These pits contained ash, ceramics, seeds, and lithics. The most common type of interment was the single extended burial; however, there were some cases of multiple burials and secondary burials. Burials appear to be grouped based on kin relationships. Most cemeteries contain defined burial clusters of related individuals with caches of ritual objects interpreted as evidence of ancestor worship (Liu 2009). Grave goods are predominantly ceramics, objects associated with food and drink and daily activities, such as hunting and weaving. A few graves contain musical instruments or ritual/religious objects (Liu 2004; Liu and Chen 2012). In the late Yangshao to early Longshan period (3500–3000 BCE), the population density increased dramatically. There appears to have been long-distance movement of people from coastal China westward into the Yangshao region. Settlements began to be heavily fortified with earthen walls and moats (Barnes 1993; Liu and Chen 2012). Several burial pits dating from this period have been excavated containing dismembered human skeletons (Henan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology 2007; Liu 2004; Underhill 2006). These pits often include adults and children who show evidence of traumatic deaths and dismemberment before being thrown into wells or hastily dug pits. Many archaeologists have interpreted these pits as some of the first evidence of widespread interpersonal conflict within China (Liu and Chen 2012). The Mianchi Duzhong site is located in Sanmenxia county in Henan Province, near the city of Luoyang. Four burial pits completely outside any established cemetery were excavated. The first pit contained a male aged 30–35 years. The second pit contained four individuals. There were two males (15–28 years, 25–30 years) and two females both 40–45 years old. The third pit contained four males (20–25 years, 25–30 years, 30–35 years, and 35–40 years). The fourth pit also contained four males (two aged 20–25 years and two aged 25–30 years). The bodies appear to have been flung hastily into the pits with no accompanying grave goods. The overall preservation of the bones was poor and no postcranial remains were recovered. Therefore, a violent cause Ancestors, Conflict, and Criminality in Ancient China and Mongolia

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of death was assumed based on burial context and similar previously excavated burials from the same time period and area (Liu 2004). The eight males from the third and fourth pits may have been closely related based on the pattern of congenital dental traits, dental ablation pattern, and evidence of cranial deformation (Lee 2017). Dental ablation and cranial deformation are not typical for the Yangshao population. These two practices are found in the Dawenkou culture, which was located to the east in neighboring Shandong province (Luan 2013). These individuals were possibly victims of small-scale violence as they migrated westward from the coastal regions of China. What caused their movement into the Yangshao region and why there was a violent reaction still needs to be further explored.

Mogou Site, Qijia Culture (2300–1800 BCE), Gansu Province, China The Qijia archaeological sites are located along the Upper Yellow River valley in Gansu, Shaanxi, Ningxia, Qinghai, and Inner Mongolia. The Qijia were agriculturalists growing millet, wheat, and barley. They raised pigs, sheep, goats, and cattle. The populations are considered ancestral to modern-day Tibetans (Chen 2013). Qijia burials are predominantly in cemeteries located outside of settlements. The majority of burials are extended or slightly flexed on one side. Burials may be single, a male and female, or a male and two females. Burial goods include pottery, jewelry, bone tools, lithics, and sheep, cattle, and dog bones. There is evidence for social stratification and long-distance trade (Jiao 2001; Liu and Chen 2012). Qijia burials are clustered into family or larger kin groups. Many tombs appear to have been reopened several times to place new burials inside, and resealed (Chen 2013; Liu 2004; Millaire 2004). The Mogou site is located in Lintan county, Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Gansu Province. Three hundred forty-six tombs were excavated with more than 1,000 individual skeletons. Familial tombs were constructed to house extended family and were reused over long periods of time. The typical tomb structure was composed of a central room with one or two side chambers. Tombs contained males, females, and children. Many tombs showed evidence of reopening and moving of previously interred skeletons to make room for a new burial. Rarely, there were single burials or cremations (Gansu Archaeological Institute and Northwest University 2009a, 2009b; Qian et al. 2009b). Some unusual body positions were noted during field excavation. Several 364

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individuals may have been buried under violent circumstances, based on their unusual body positions. One individual appeared to be sitting up against the tomb wall, with hands and feet bound. Two individuals had their hands and feet bound and appeared to have been placed haphazardly facedown in the tomb. There has been some speculation that these are sacrificial burials (Gansu Archaeological Institute and Northwest University 2009a); however, since these individuals are still buried within their familial tombs, it appears more likely to be some form of capital punishment instead. Later historical documents note that some crimes were punished by burial alive or drowning (Leung 2009). One final dramatic individual was placed in the tomb in a kneeling position, arms folded to the chest, head between the knees, facedown. Three large stones were placed on top of the body. While these types of burial treatment suggest a violation of some sort of societal rules (criminal or religious), it should be noted that they have still been buried within their familial tombs. Whatever the original reason these individuals were placed in atypical burial poses, it did not delete them from their familial lineage (Bloch and Parry 1982; Duncan 2005; Fowler 1984; Gansu Archaeological Institute 2009a, 2009b; Qian et al. 2009a; Weglian 2001).

Longhu Xingtian Site, Han State, Warring States (475–221 BCE), Henan Province, China The first emperor of China, Shi Huangdi, is known for his terracotta army, which surrounds his tomb. He conquered and united the eight warring states to form the first unified China. He was originally from the state of Qin, so his dynasty is called the Qin Dynasty (221–206 BCE). The Qin army defeated the state of Han in 230 BCE; however, the Qin Dynasty lasted only 14 years. The Han army defeated them in 206 BCE to establish the Han Dynasty, which lasted more than 400 years (206 BCE–220 CE)(Chang 2007; Jiao 2001; Lewis 1999; Teng 2003). The Longhu Xingtian site is located in Xinzheng county, near Zhengzhou city, in Henan Province. Fifty individuals were excavated from a mass burial. All 50 individuals were males who had been decapitated. These were soldiers from the Han army who were defeated by the Qin in 230 BCE (Lewis 1999). They had been retreating back toward the city walls when they were shot through with arrows and died on the battlefield. They were then decapitated and buried together in a mass grave. One of the soldiers from the battle was excavated in a block (fig. 19.2). He is sprawled out and face down. Multiple iron and bronze arAncestors, Conflict, and Criminality in Ancient China and Mongolia

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Figure 19.2. Longhu Xingtian. Han Dynasty soldier.

rows and spears are visible in his trunk and leg. All the arrows were in the back, so he was probably retreating when he fell in battle (Shelach and Pines 2006). Multiple burials of only males have been excavated in China beginning from the Neolithic period in Yangshao and Dawenkou cultural sites; however, this is one of the earliest sites to reveal soldiers from a historically recorded battle in China (Jiao 2001; von Falkenhausen 2006).

Jinlianshan Site, Dian Culture (206 BCE–220 CE), Yunnan Province, China The Dian archaeological culture is centered in eastern Yunnan Province around Lake Dian and is culturally tied to archaeological regions to the west and south. The Dian practiced rice agriculture. Domesticated animals included cattle, sheep, goats, and horses (Chiou-Peng 2004; Yao 2005). They were defeated and incorporated into the Chinese empire in 209 BCE (Allard 2006; Higham 2002). The populations from this region are related to modernday Southeast Asians. 366

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Dian burials are predominantly single interments. The majority of the burials have no discernible coffins or grave goods. Grave goods, which have been recovered from a few Dian burials, include bronze daggers, bronze swords, jewelry, pottery, and cowrie shells (Chiou-Peng 2004; Yao 2005). The Jinlianshan site is located near Fuxian Lake in Chengjiang county, Yunnan Province. Skeletal preservation in southern China is poor, so this is one of the few cemeteries with enough well-preserved individuals for osteological analysis. While 268 burials were excavated, only 81 burials had sufficiently preserved human remains. A total of 374 individuals were recovered. Thirty-eight percent of the burials excavated were single interments, and 51% contained two to eight individuals. These were all primary burials. This site has several large secondary burials that have not been previously recorded within this region. Eleven percent of the burials are secondary interments. Adults and subadults are present within the burials, but infants aged 0–1 year are missing. Each secondary burial contained a minimum number of 11–43 individuals. The majority of the bones recovered were skulls, long bones, and the pelves. The smaller bones of the hands and feet, ribs, and vertebrae were mostly missing. The bodies appeared to have been buried previously, completely decomposed, and then collected and deposited together for burial a second time. The secondary burials were deeper then subsequent primary burials so they are assumed to be older. The missing elements, communal burial, and no overt signs of exposure or animal gnawing point to the practice of secondary burial (Schroeder 2001). In many places around the world, these types of communal secondary burials may represent a form of collective ancestral worship or memorial (Duncan 2005; Sissel 2001). The Jinlianshan site may be a southern extension of the Dian people, where they brought their ancestors with them and reburied them at the new cemetery, as opposed to leaving them behind. All the primary burials at Jinlianshan were prepared by tying the hands in front of the body, tying the feet together, and then burying them within a shroud. One double burial was unusual in having one individual buried in a prone position with the head and feet facing the opposite direction from the norm. The burial pit was unusually narrow. The two male bodies appeared to have been buried in haste, with the bodies thrown in haphazardly. There have been a few cases of prone burials detailed in Chinese burials of the Shang Dynasty (1600–1046 BCE) (Heizer 1948). Prone burials are usually considered different from the other burials within the cemetery. It is possible that facAncestors, Conflict, and Criminality in Ancient China and Mongolia

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Figure 19.3. Jinlianshan. Burial with rocks on top.

ing the body down instead of up is to confuse the soul so it cannot return to the living or reach the afterlife (Boylston et al. 2000; Fowler 1984). Another male individual was buried in an extended position; however, his hands and feet were not tied together, and there does not appear to have been a shroud as the body position is haphazard (fig. 19.3). There were several large stones placed on top of the body as if to weigh it down. Based on similar burials from around the world, this individual may have had stones placed on top of the body to keep his soul from returning after death (Weglian 2001).

Shitaizi Site, Koguryo Culture (37 BCE–668 CE), Liaoning Province, China The Koguryo state along with Paekche and Silla are considered the three original founding kingdoms of modern-day Korea. Koguryo archaeological sites are located in the northeastern region of China, historically known as Manchuria, 368

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and North Korea. There is evidence of several social classes, including nobility, commoners, and slaves. Settlements included towns and military fortifications (Barnes 1993; Li 2016; Nelson 1993). There is evidence of long-distance trade with other countries. Recorded exports included gold, silver, pearls, and ginseng. Imported goods included weapons, silk, and books (Li 2016; Nelson 1993). Koguryo (668 CE) and Paekche (638 CE) were eventually conquered and incorporated into Silla (Nelson 1993). The Shitaizi site is 35 km northeast of Shenyang city in Liaoning Province. The burials were excavated from a cemetery associated with a mountaintop defensive fortress. The more than 40 tombs had been looted in antiquity. The tombs date to the middle to late Koguryo period (300–688 CE), based on their earthen mound construction topped with stones and stone lined chamber (Li 2016; Shenyang Institute of Archaeology 2008). Preservation of the skeletons was extremely poor. Twenty-five individuals were recovered from 12 tombs. Eight burials were single burials and four were multiple burials. One multiple burial consisted of a woman aged 40–45 years and a child aged 1–3 years. A second multiple burial contained one woman (25–30 years old) and five children ranging from two to seven years old. The last two multiple burials included males, females, and children. This pattern of close family buried together in tombs is common in Koguryo cemeteries (Li 2016; Nelson 1993). One unusual burial included within the cemetery was a decapitation. This was a poorly preserved triple burial. The first skeleton was of a male aged 20– 25 years old. Skeletal preservation was poor, with only the skull and hands recovered archaeologically. No bones were recoverable from the second burial. Only the pelvis was recovered from the third burial (Shenyang Institute of Archaeology 2008). The unusual feature of the first skeleton was that the head had been cut from the neck by multiple blows from a sharp metal object, possibly a sword. The left occipital condyle, left mandible, and chin had sharp force trauma (fig. 19.4). Based on the angle of the cuts, he was probably kneeling, and the sword blows came from someone standing behind him. There is nothing on the skeleton or dentition to suggest he was unrelated to the rest of the burials. There is no evidence of the Koguryo practicing human sacrifice in burials, but there are written documents stating that they decapitated war captives and anyone who survived a military defeat (Simons 1995). Decapitation as a form of execution or corporal punishment was common in many places around the world (Boylston et al. 2000; Duncan 2005; Nelson 1993). Considering the age and sex of the individual, the time period of the burials, Ancestors, Conflict, and Criminality in Ancient China and Mongolia

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Figure 19.4. Shitaizi. Decapitation.

and the association with a defensive fortress, a death associated with defending Koguryo’s frontier with China is possible.

Hulin Am Site, Uighur Culture (744–840 CE), Ovorkhangai Aimag, Mongolia The Uighur were one of several foreign dynasties that ruled Mongolia between the Xiongnu Empire (209 BCE–93 CE) and the Mongol Empire (1206–1368 CE). It was the shortest dynasty in Mongolian history, lasting only about 80 years. Their religion, language, and culture had ties to Central Asia (Atwood 2004). The Uighur practiced some agriculture and built at least two urban centers in Mongolia. With the adoption of the Manichaean religion, the ruling elite may have tried to shift their diet from a traditional nomadic one of meat and dairy to a vegetarian diet (Mackerras 1990). Multiple years of famine, epidemics, and war severely weakened the Uighur empire, and they were finally defeated by the Kirgiz in 840 CE. The remaining Uighur fled to the southeast to Inner Mongolia and southwest to Gansu Province in China (Atwood 2004; Mackerras 1990). The Hulin Am site is located near the city of Karakorum in Ovorkhangai Aimag, Mongolia. The site is not the local cemetery but thought to be a Manichaean temple. It is unusual for human burials to be associated with a temple. 370

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The original Uighur city is located within a few kilometers from the temple. Where the main cemetery is located is currently unknown. A total of 16 individuals were excavated from the temple. Some individuals were buried within tombs or crypts and were naturally partially mummified. There were five adults and 11 children and infants. The adults were two females aged 25–30 years and three males aged 25–30, 40–50, and 50+. The five children were aged from nine months to 14 years old. The six perinates aged from seven months in utero to birth, with one possible set of twins. This is not a normal population distribution. A quarter of the individuals had suffered from periods of severe infection or starvation, which disrupted their growth. Extremely severe enamel defects were recorded in the ten-year-old, one adult female, and the nine-month-old. All these defects dated to the ages of six months to one year. This could coincide with childhood diseases and weaning practices. It is possible these burials within the temple complex date to the later years of the Uighur Empire. These deaths could coincide with the final years of epidemic, famine, and zud (unusually cold winters with massive livestock deaths) recorded before the collapse of the dynasty (Mackerras 1990). In this time of unrest, it appears certain individuals were buried within the temple instead of in the community cemetery.

Discussion and Conclusion This is only a small sample of the diversity of archaeological cultures within this region. Within the six archaeological sites sampled, five ethnicities, three language families, and multiple different religions are represented. The atypical burials summarized possibly represent interpersonal violence triggered by migrants, crimes against society, religious violations, large-scale warfare, military defeat, possible epidemics, and the collapse of an empire. All of these circumstances are found in many time periods around the globe. How and why each of these individuals came to be buried under unusual circumstances still needs to be investigated further. What about their personal identities singled them out for these burial treatments? How did these practices evolve over space and time? What caused the longevity of some mortuary practices, and the emergence of secondary/deviant mortuary rituals? Bioarchaeological research is rare in this region. The biocultural approach is a new concept in East Asia. Another barrier to the exchange of information is that few researchers are fluent in English, limiting interactions and collaboAncestors, Conflict, and Criminality in Ancient China and Mongolia

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rations with outsiders. While these are all serious limitations, it is hoped the broad scope of this study will help to stimulate more interest in East Asia and the surrounding regions.

Acknowledgments I would like to thank the following individuals and institutions for their support: Gansu Province Archaeological Institute, Henan Province Archaeological Institute, Yunnan Province Archaeological Institute, Mongolian National Museum, and Jilin University Center for Frontier Archaeological Research. Professors Zhang Linhu, Gao Xing, Zhu Hong, Liu Wu, Jiang Jilong, Wang Hui, Sun Lei, Ma Xiaoling, and Odbaatar Tserendorj.

Bibliography Allard, Francis 2006 Frontiers and Boundaries: The Han Empire from its Southern Periphery. In Archaeology of Asia, edited by Miriam T. Stark, pp. 233–254. Blackwell, Malden. Atwood, Christopher P. 2004 Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire. Facts on File, New York. Barnes, Gina 1993 The Rise of Civilization in East Asia: The Archaeology of China, Korea, and Japan. Thames and Hudson, London. Bloch, Maurice, and Jonathan Parry 1982 Introduction: Death and the Regeneration of Life. In Death and the Regeneration of Life, edited by Maurice Bloch and Jonathan Parry, pp. 1–44. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Boylston, Anthea, Christopher Knusel, and Charlotte Roberts 2000 Investigation of a Romano-British Rural Ritual in Bedford, England. Journal of Archaeological Science 27: 241–254. Chang, Chun-Shu 2007 The Rise of the Chinese Empire. Vol. 1. Nation, State, and Imperialism in Early China, ca. 1600 B.C.–A.D. 800. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor. Chen, Honglai 2013 The Qijia Culture of the Upper Yellow River Valley. In A Companion to Chinese Archaeology, edited by Anne P. Underhill, pp. 106–124. Wiley-Blackwell, Malden. Chiou-Peng, Tze-huey 2004 Horsemen in the Dian Culture of Yunnan. In Gender and Chinese Archaeology, edited by Katheryn M. Linduff and Yan Sun, pp. 289–314. Altamira Press, Walnut Creek. Duncan, William N. 2005 Understanding Veneration and Violation in the Archaeological Record. In Inter372

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acting with the Dead: Perspectives on Mortuary Archaeology for the New Millennium, edited by Gordon F. M. Rakita, Jane E. Buikstra, Lane A. Beck, and Sloan R. Williams, pp. 207–227. University Press of Florida, Gainesville. Fowler, William, Jr. 1984 Late Preclassic Mortuary Patterns and Evidence for Human Sacrifice at Chalchuapa, El Salvador. American Antiquity 49: 603–618. Gansu Archaeological Institute and Northwest University 2009a A Preliminary Report on the Mogou Cemetery, Qijia Culture, Lintan County, Gansu Province. Kaogu 7: 10–17. 2009b Excavation Report on the Mogou Cemetery, Qijia Culture, Lintan County, Gansu Province. Gansu Provincial Archaeological Institute Mogou Site Archaeology Report 10: 4–14. Heizer, Robert 1948 Remarks on the Prone Burial Position in China and North America. American Antiquity 13: 249–250. Henan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology 2007 Archaeological Discovery and Research at the Wangchenggang Site in Dengfeng (2002–2005). Zhengzhou: Elephant Press. Higham, Charles 2002 Early Cultures of Mainland Southeast Asia. Arts Media Resources, Chicago. Jiao, Tianlong 2001 Gender Studies in Chinese Neolithic Archaeology. In Gender and the Archaeology of Death, edited by Bettina Arnold and Nancy Wicker, pp. 51–62. Altamira Press, Lanham. Lee, Christine 2017 The Relationship between Intentional Dental Ablation and Hereditary Agenesis in Late Neolithic–Early Bronze Age China. In A World View of Bioculturally Modified Teeth: Past and Present, edited by Scott E. Burnett and Joel D. Irish, pp. 93–101. University Press of Florida, Gainesville. Leung, Angela Ki Che 2009 Leprosy in China. Columbia University Press, New York. Lewis, Mark Edward 1999 Warring States: Political History. In Cambridge History of Ancient China: From the Origins of Civilization to 221 B.C., edited by Michael Loewe and Edward L. Shaughnessy, pp. 587–650. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Li, Xinquan 2016 Recent Archaeological Discoveries and Studies on Koguryo in Liaoning Province. In The History and Archaeology of the Koguryo Kingdom, edited by Mark E. Byington, pp. 119–157. Early Korea Project, Korea Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. Liu, Li 2004 The Chinese Neolithic: Trajectories to Early States. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 2009 Who Were the Ancestors? The Origins of Chinese Ancestral Cult and Racial Myths. Antiquity 73: 603–613. Ancestors, Conflict, and Criminality in Ancient China and Mongolia

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Liu, Li, and Xingcan Chen 2012 The Archaeology of China: From the Late Paleolithic to the Early Bronze Age. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Luan, Fengshi 2013 The Dawenkou Culture in the Lower Yellow River and Huai River Basin Areas. In A Companion to Chinese Archaeology, edited by Anne P. Underhill, pp. 411–434. Wiley-Blackwell, Malden. Mackerras, Colin 1990 The Uighurs. In The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia, edited by Denis Sinor, pp. 317–342. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Millaire, Jean-Francois 2004 The Manipulation of Human Remains in Moche Society: Delayed Burials, Grave Reopening, and Secondary Offering of Human Bones on the Peruvian North Coast. Latin American Antiquity 15: 371–388. Murowchick, Robert 1994 Cradles of Civilization: China. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman. Nelson, Sarah M. 1993 The Archaeology of Korea. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Pearson, Robert 1988 Chinese Neolithic Burial Patterns: Problems of Method and Interpretation. Early China 13: 1–45. Qian, Yaopeng, Jing Zhou, Ruilin Mao, and Yan Xie 2009a The Excavations Results and Meanings from the Cemetery Excavations at the Mogou Site, Qijia Culture, Lintan county, Gansu Province. Journal of Northwest University 39: 5–10. Qian, Yaopeng, Yunyun Zhu, Ruilin Mao, and Yan Xie 2009b A Brief Discussion of a Double Burial in the Mogou Site, Qijia Culture. Cultural Relics 10: 62–69. Schroeder, Sissel 2001 Secondary Disposal of the Dead: Cross-Cultural Codes. World Cultures 12: 77–93. Shelach, Gideon, and Yuri Pines 2006 Secondary State Formation and the Development of Local Identity: Change and Continuity in the State of Qin (770–221 B.C.). In Archaeology of Asia, edited by Miriam T. Stark, pp. 202–230. Blackwell, Malden. Shenyang Institute of Archaeology 2008 Shitaizi Mountain Koguryo Tombs Excavation. In Sixty Years of Archaeological Discoveries in the Area of Shenyang, edited by Shenyang Institute of Archaeology, pp. 315–320. Liaohai Press, Shenyang. Simons, Geoff 1995 Korea: The Search for Sovereignty. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. Teng, Mingyu 2003 Qin Culture on Archaeological Perspective: From a Feudal State to Great Empire. Academic Press, Beijing. Underhill, Anne P. 2006 Warfare and the Development of States in China. In The Archaeology of Warfare, 374

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edited by Elizabeth N. Arkush and Mark W. Allen, pp. 253–285. University Press of Florida, Gainesville. von Falkenhausen, Lothar 2006 Chinese Society in the Age of Confucius: 1000–250 B.C. the Archaeological Evidence. Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, University of California, Los Angeles. Weglian, Emily 2001 Grave Goods Do Not a Gender Make: A Case Study from Singen am Hohentwiel, Germany. In Gender and the Archaeology of Death, edited by Bettina Arnold and Nancy Wicker, pp. 137–155. Altamira Press, Lanham. Yao, Alice 2005 Scratching Beneath Iconographic and Textual Clues: A Reconsideration of the Social Hierarchy in the Dian Culture of Southwestern China. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 24: 378–405. Zhu, Yanping 2013 The Early Neolithic in the Central Yellow River Valley c. 7000–4000 BC. In A Companion to Chinese Archaeology, edited by Anne P. Underhill, pp. 171–193. Wiley-Blackwell, Malden.

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20 Dependent Deviance Castration and Deviant Burial

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Archaeologically, the handling of the corpse through mortuary practices is understood to have deliberate, intrinsic meaning, conveying familial, social, and cultural information about the deceased and those around them (Gramsch 2013; Kus 2013). This assumption feeds directly into the interpretation of archaeological mortuary contexts, especially those of deviant, abnormal, or unusual burials. Once the standard methods of mortuary disposal for a temporalcultural context are thought to be understood, archaeologists begin to examine those deposits that do not align with the dominant sociocultural mode, in the hope that it will provide additional information about both those individuals buried unusually and their society as a whole (Gramsch 2013). In these cases, the supposition is that socially deviant or unusual individuals may be given a final cultural sign of disapproval or approbation through their manner of burial (Kus 2013; Murphy 2008). One thing not usually contemplated, however, is whether individuals considered socially deviant during life are always interred in an atypical manner. While it is generally understood that the dead cannot control the disposal of their remains, the use of wills and the formation of burial clubs are ways in which people can attempt to control or direct their funerals and the disposition of their corpses before their deaths (Fahlander and Oestigaard 2008). Additionally, there are or may be some instances in which socially unusual or deviant individuals are not differentiated through the mortuary practices applied to them.

What implications might this have for our understanding of unusual burials and for the ways in which cultural disapproval of social deviance is expressed? Many different cultures across Afro-Eurasia employed castrates1 in a multitude of capacities through time2 (fig. 20.1) (Reusch 2013a, 2016; Scholz 2001; Tougher 2008). As many of these cultures had a disproportionate effect on the course of global history, and as castrates were normally situated near the rulers of these cultures, they had more opportunity than most to shape the world as we know it, making their study essential to understanding world history (Reusch 2013a, 2013b, 2016; Scholz 2001; Tougher 2008). However, most contemporary historical accounts, which paint them in a negative light, stem from likely biased, elite intact males (Reusch 2016; Tougher 2008; Tsai 1996). Few castrate autobiographies exist, meaning that the majority of our knowledge about castrates must rely on either the historical documents or what can be discovered from castrates’ archaeological footprint (Reusch 2013a, 2016). Culturally, geographically, and temporally, castrates remained isolated socially and physically, making them prime candidates for unusual mortuary practices. That is, because castrates were regarded as (in some cases extremely) socially deviant, one would expect that they would be buried in a deviant manner. However, the frequent lack of direct heirs often meant that castrates had to prepare for their funerals and burials themselves and often attempted to ensure that their postmortem wishes would be carried out by either adopted heirs or executors. This would influence whether castrate burials adhered to or differed from the norm, affecting our archaeological interpretations of castrate burials and therefore our interpretations of the cultures in which castrates lived. Although slight, the evidence for both normative and castrate funerals and burials is most extensive for imperial China (ca. 200 BC–AD 1912) and early modern-to-modern Europe (ca. AD 1600–1950), making these cultures the best for analyzing whether castrate burials can be considered deviant for their time and place. This chapter will consist of an examination of the normative burial methods for Europe and China and whether there were prescribed burial rituals for castrates and what they might have been. Some case studies from both Europe and China will be examined to see whether these prescriptions were actually followed, and the question of whether a violation of the prescribed rituals might be considered deviant will be discussed. Archaeologically, there has been a conflation of the intertwined but separate concepts of “burial” and “funeral,” affecting the manner in which unusual burials are considered by archaeologists (Fahlander and Oestigaard 2008; WeissDependent Deviance: Castration and Deviant Burial

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Figure 20.1. Greatest distribution of castration through time. The geographical locations of both the Castrati/Skoptzy and Chinese eunuchs are highlighted. Source: Reusch, Caitlin. March 31, 2016. Greatest Extent of Castrate Presence: Twelfth Century BC to Late Twentieth Century AD [map], first ed. 1: 69,510,943; Base world map citation: Erle, S. July 30, 2008. TM_WORLD_BORDERS-0.1 [GIS shapefile], third ed. http://www.mappinghacks.com/data/ (accessed 01/10/15).

Krejci 2013). While a funeral may contain a burial (Fahlander and Oestigaard 2008), a burial does not necessarily indicate that a funeral has taken place. Additionally, both a funeral and a burial can either adhere to or differ from social norms. One of the ways that societies may choose to exercise social disapproval of an individual may be through the alteration or denial of funerary rites. This may or may not affect the manner in which the individual’s body is disposed of, but it may affect the sociocultural perception of that individual’s mortuary state (Weiss-Krejci 2013). Unfortunately, any unusual predepositional treatment of the remains may never enter the archaeological record if it leaves no impressions in the burial context or if the corpse is not buried (Fahlander and Oestigaard 2008; Gramsch 2013; Weiss-Krejci 2013). Therefore, unusual funerary or predepositional treatment may never be apparent for some individuals, masking a subset of the population that would have been considered socially or politically deviant. Typical disposal of the dead in predominantly Christian Europe during the early modern-to-modern period (AD 1600–1950) consisted of extended supine burial, often facing Jerusalem/the East, normally within a religious burial area (Cohen 2003; Hanson 2003; O’Sullivan 2013; Petersen 2013). At the beginning of the early modern period, burial in only a shroud was common, but over time, with the rise in elaborate funerary trappings, burial in coffins or caskets became standard. In the middle of the nineteenth century, cremation began to be used again, but in a different manner and for different reasons than before the advent of Christianity, and it was still banned by several Christian denominations until well into the twentieth century because it destroyed the corpse (Cohen 2003; Davies 2003; Hanson 2003; Levine 1997; Petersen 2013). Wealthier members of society had more elaborate funerals and burial places, including the inside of churches and chapels or tombs set aside for their families (O’Sullivan 2013; Paxton 2003). In China, typical elite tombs took the form of a burial chamber holding an extended supine body in a coffin and a few other funerary goods, surmounted by a mound of earth, with a tablet proclaiming the name and accomplishments of the deceased and guardian statues on a small paved area reserved for postfunerary rites, such as making offerings to the deceased (fig. 20.2) (Jay 1993). For those unable to afford the elaborate tombs of the wealthy, stone markers might indicate simple extended supine graves, or possibly no marker would exist at all. Many individuals were buried within cemeteries associated with Buddhist monasteries or temples (Jay 1993). Cremation was generally unpopular despite the spread of Buddhism, as the body was seen as a gift from the ancestors which should be buried as whole as possible under the soil of an individual’s home village (Jochim Dependent Deviance: Castration and Deviant Burial

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Figure 20.2. Tomb marker, altar, and tomb mound of Tian Yi (center) with the four eunuch guard tombs on either side. Photo by author.

2003). Corpses were seen as holding power that lasted beyond death and could affect descendants, so the most important aspect of a burial was consulting an expert in feng-shui (geomancy), who would determine the time, place, and orientation of the burial for the most harmonious results (Jochim 2003). Normative and non-normative modes of burial will vary widely across the geographical and temporal range of castrate history. In many places and times, even the normative mode or modes of burial are not clearly understood. Within the two areas used as case studies in this chapter, Europe and China, archaeological and historical evidence of the mortuary rites for both castrates and the general public is fairly abundant, allowing the investigation of whether castrates had atypical burials to be more readily undertaken.

Castrate Burials In all mortuary rituals, there are a number of different tensions. There are culturally prescribed rites, personal preferences, and the reality of what rites can or cannot be performed by the survivors (Weiss-Krejci 2013). In many cases for castrates, traditional rituals are marred by the physical and/or social status of the castrate, affecting what rituals are recommended, what the individual’s personal preferences might be, and who might be required to carry out or oversee the rituals. Some castrate burials could be considered to fall into the category of people who were denied funerals, especially in those cases where the individuals were too poor to arrange their own funerals and/or had no family or friends to bury them (Weiss-Krejci 2013). 380

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Europe In the early modern-to-modern periods in Europe, castrati singers3 associated with the Catholic Church and opera (Rosselli 1988; Scholz 2001) came to prominence. Not much is known about the deaths and mortuary rituals of the castrati, as there were no known prescribed rites for castrati other than those regularly applied to Catholic burials (Paxton 2003). As far as is known, there were no castrati-only cemeteries or burial chapels. Castrati seem to have been buried with regular Catholic rites within public cemeteries and churchyards. Several became priests or monks and likely were buried following the customs of their orders (Rosselli 1988). Castrati often left wills naming close relatives (usually nieces and nephews) or other castrati as heirs and executors, presumably charging them with their proper burial. In Domenico Pistocchi’s will dating to AD 1725–1726, he left most of his possessions to his servant, Angelo Sarti, with the stipulation that Sarti’s descendants use both surnames (continuing the life of Pistocchi’s surname even though he had no descendants) and that Sarti hold 24 masses a year for Pistocchi, a typical wealthy Catholic memorial (Paxton 2003; Rosselli 1988; Ter Blanche and Parkes 1997). Carlo Broschi, known as Farinelli (AD 1705–1782), one of the most famous castrati singers, died of a fever on September 16, 1782, at 77 years old (Belcastro et al. 2011). He was buried in a typical wealthy Catholic manner in the Church of the Capuchins monastery in Bologna, which was destroyed in AD 1810 after damage caused by the AD 1796 Napoleonic invasion. At that point, Farinelli’s great-niece Maria Carlotta Pisani requested that his remains be exhumed and transferred to Certosa, the main cemetery of Bologna. His remains were removed from that burial and reinterred in Maria Carlotta’s tomb in AD 1842 and moved to rest at her feet after her death in AD 1850. In AD 2006, his remains were exhumed by an Italian team for scientific study of the effects of castration4 (Belcastro et al. 2011, 2014). Giusto Ferdinando Tenducci (AD 1736–1790), a castrato possibly most famous for his (later annulled) marriage to Dorothea Maunsell, died of an “apoplectic fit” on January 25, 1790, at age 54 in Genoa, Italy (Berry 2011). He was interred in San Salvatore, a parochial church, on January 27, 1790. In another typical wealthy Catholic funerary rite, a requiem mass, accompanied by Giuseppe Carri, a celebrated tenor, and an orchestra were given at the funeral. In AD 1800, Napoleon’s army invaded Genoa and razed San Salvatore to the ground, leaving no trace of the church (Berry 2011). Dependent Deviance: Castration and Deviant Burial

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Gaetano Guadagni (AD 1728–1792), wrote his will on September 27, 1792, asking for his body to be interred at the church of St. Anthony (the Santo), Padua (Howard 2014). He asked his executor (Giovanni Sografi) and heir (Vincenzo Guadagni, his nephew) to arrange for 100 masses worth two lire each to be said for him and for one mass to be sung in the presence of his body (Paxton 2003; Ter Blanche and Parkes 1997). Guadagni died on November 11, 1792, at age 64, and the funeral took place the next day. He was buried in the north aisle of the Santo, though the exact location of his grave was not recorded (Howard 2014). Gaspare Pacchierotti died in his private villa in the countryside near Padua, Italy, in AD 1821 (Zanatta et al. 2016). He was buried in a tomb under the floor of the small chapel next to the villa (Zanatta et al. 2016). He was exhumed for scientific study of the effects of castration in AD 2013 (Zanatta et al. 2016). The funeral and requiem mass for Alessandro Moreschi, the last castrato singer employed by the Vatican, took place on April 23, 1922, at the church of San Lorenzo in Damase, Rome. The choirmaster of the Sistine Chapel directed the funeral mass, performed by the best singers in Rome, an unusual arrangement, but possibly due to his long service to and status as the last castrato in the Vatican choir. Moreschi, from a poor, rural family, was then buried in a fairly large tomb in the prestigious, expensive Cimitero del Verano, near the Termini train station, an indication of the wealth he had garnered during life (Clapton 2008). Moreschi was one of two named licensees for the plot, listed as having space for eight burials, and which holds the remains of Moreschi, Pietro Rinaldi (the co-licensee), three Moreschi relatives, Domenico Salvatori (likely another castrato), and three other individuals. Salvatori and Moreschi had sung together since they were teenagers and were close friends. As Salvatore predeceased Moreschi, presumably without family, Moreschi ensured he was buried in his family’s tomb, using his wealth to ensure that his friend received a “proper” burial (Clapton 2008).

China Even in those cases in which parents castrated their child for the family’s financial or social benefit,5 Chinese castrates were considered extremely unfilial because they had damaged their bodies. As discussed above, the body was considered a gift from one’s parents (and ancestors), and harming it was therefore rejecting that gift (Jochim 2003). In addition, castrates were unable to provide descendants to continue familial ancestor worship, endangering the entire family (Jay 1993; Jochim 2003). While many of the Ming and Qing castrates were not ethnically Han Chinese, the cultures from which they came were within 382

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the Chinese sphere of influence and often under at least Chinese tributary rule (Kutcher 2010; Min et al. 2012; Tsai 1996), meaning that Confucian values often still applied to their traditional social lives. The Chinese had a prescribed funerary rite for castrates directly related to the perceived lack of Confucian filial piety (Jay 1993). Set out by the Confucian philosopher Xunzi, the ritual was a form of baozang, or frugal burial, and recommended that castrate funerals be conducted with shame (Hsun-tžu 1988; Jay 1993). The coffin was not to be more than three inches thick and lacked an inner coffin or decorations (Hsun-tžu 1988; Jay 1993). The funeral procession was meant to be at night and attended only by the eunuch’s wife and children,6 who were not to wear mourning clothes or wail in public. Neither the eunuch’s birth family nor his landsmen were to be notified of the burial, and he was not to be buried with his biological parents (Hsun-tžu 1988; Jay 1993). Many Chinese castrates likely had quiet, frugal burials, rejected by their kin, both biological and adopted (Jay 1993). In anticipation of this familial rejection, many endowed monasteries while still in service, expecting to spend the end of their lives and subsequently be buried there (Jay 1993). Some were buried with their families, and others were interred in one of the cemeteries in Beijing’s western hills designed for palace eunuchs (Hultengren 2015).7 Those few castrates who had gained immense wealth or favor during their years of service in the palace were able to overcome the traditional Confucian objections to elaborate castrate funerals (Hultengren 2015; Jay 1993). Yang Xixu (d. AD 740), a eunuch of the Tang Dynasty who had engaged in military exploits and was a high official with many meritorious awards, was, unusually, buried with his parents in what are now the suburbs of Xi’an. The tomb, which has been looted over the centuries, was excavated in AD 1958 and its size and structure indicated Yang Xixu’s political power at the time of his death (Jay 1993). A second Tang Dynasty eunuch, Xu Suizhong’s tomb, which was also in the Xi’an suburbs and excavated in AD 1982, contained unusual styles of animal figurines, indicating some wealth and status (Jay 1993). Zheng He (AD 1371–1433 or 1435) served as a court eunuch, warrior, mariner, explorer, and diplomat for the Ming Dynasty’s (AD 1368–1644) Yongle emperor (r. AD 1402–1424) (Levathes 1994; Zhu 1956). The exact manner of his death is unclear, but it is believed that he died during his last voyage and was buried at sea (crienglish.com 2010; Levathes 1994; van Roon 2010). As a Muslim, he was likely given a traditional Islamic funeral, with his body washed and wrapped in white cloth, the head pointed toward Mecca, chants and prayers performed Dependent Deviance: Castration and Deviant Burial

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by the Muslims on board, and the deposition of the body overboard (Levathes 1994). A ghaib service (a funeral for the dead where the body is missing) was performed in Semarang, Java, shortly after Zheng He’s death (Levathes 1994). It is thought that his shoes and a braid of his hair were taken back to Nanjing and buried in a Muslim grave constructed near some of the Buddhist caves outside the city (Levathes 1994). However, an empty tomb excavated in 2010 near Zutang Mountain in Nanjing (the location of several other Ming Dynasty castrate tombs) was stated to belong to Zheng He (crienglish.com 2010; van Roon 2010). The tomb was 8.5 m long by 4 m wide and was built using blue bricks, which were used only for structures belonging to dignitaries during that period (crienglish. com 2010; van Roon 2010). It is unclear whether this tomb is the same as the one in which the hair and shoes were interred or if it is a different tomb, but the style clearly indicates the importance and wealth of the individual interred there. Tian Yi (AD 1534–1605) was a castrate who served the Ming Jiajing (r. AD 1521–1567), Longqing (r. AD 1567–1572), and Wanli (r. AD 1572–1620) emperors. He was the Wanli emperor’s favorite castrate, and upon his death, the emperor insisted on three days of mourning and his burial in a state-funded tomb reminiscent of an imperial mausoleum 15 km to the west of Beijing (Hultengren 2015; King 2009; Moore 2012). This was a highly unusual form of burial for a commoner, but a sign of great status and honor. Today it serves as housing for the Beijing Eunuch Museum (Hultengren 2015; King 2009; Moore 2012). Tian Yi’s tomb was looted in the past, but it was not heavily damaged because it was incorporated into the grounds of Cixiang nunnery when the nunnery was founded (Hultengren 2015; King 2009). During the Qing Dynasty (AD 1644–1912), eunuchs dismissed from the palace for being too old or frail moved to the nunnery and served as guards and caretakers for the tomb (Hultengren 2015). The tombs of four of these castrates are positioned to the left and right of Tian Yi’s tomb mound (fig. 20.2), forming a small eunuch cemetery on the tomb grounds (Hultengren 2015; King 2009). Another high-status castrate’s tomb has been moved to the site from the Western Hills (King 2009). The museum houses the mummy of another castrate, whose seventeenth-century AD burial was found in West Shijingshan in AD 2006 and whose body was subsequently removed to the museum (fig. 20.3) (King 2009; Moore 2012). During the Ming Dynasty, there was a crematorium specifically for castrates, run by the imperial palace. The transport coffin would be supplied by the Construction Office (Nei Kuan Chien) and the firewood for cremation by the Firewood Office (Hsi Hsin Ssu) (Mitamura 1970). It is unclear how many of the numerous 384

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Figure 20.3. Head and upper torso of the mummified castrate displayed at the Eunuch Museum, Beijing. Photo by author.

palace castrates’ remains were handled by this crematorium. Some castrates during this dynasty compared becoming a eunuch to entering the priesthood and therefore opted not to be buried with their families. Other castrates pooled their resources and formed fraternities in order to ensure they were buried in style, accompanied by a chorus of sutras being chanted (Mitamura 1970). The Qing court made a posthumous donation toward the burial expenses of Li Lianying (AD 1848–1911), the favorite eunuch of the Dowager Empress Cixi (AD 1835–1908). He was buried in a large tomb (destroyed in AD 1966) in a eunuch cemetery8 on the western side of Beijing after a series of elaborate rituals. The funerary inscription accompanying the burial contains praises for Li Lianying and the statement (considered false, as not even his father’s name is given) that he came from generations of Confucians and officials (Jay 1993), tying him to an elite heritage that might have justified the elaborate funerary rituals and tomb. Sun Yaoting (AD 1902–1996), the last imperial eunuch of China, died on December 17, 1996, at Guanghua Temple near Shichahai Lake, Beijing, at 94 years old (Jia 2008). His funeral took place on December 20, 1996, at Babaoshan Mortuary House, where his remains were afterward cremated. His Dependent Deviance: Castration and Deviant Burial

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remains were collected by his oldest adopted son and Jia Yinghua, his biographer, who wrapped them in red silk, then Sun Yaoting’s friends, relatives, and Jin Yinghua escorted the ashes to Sun Yaoting’s birth village, Xishuangtang, in Jinghai County, Tianjin Municipality. On December 21, 1996, Sun Yaoting’s ashes were buried in a cypress coffin in a graveyard to the northwest of Xishuangtang (Jia 2008), following traditional Chinese mortuary rituals (Jochim 2003). Sun Yaoting had asked for a tombstone to be erected at his gravesite, and Jia had arranged for a piece of stone to be quarried from Fangshan, a designated stone supplier for the Imperial Palace, and therefore the most appropriate source for a palace eunuch’s gravestone, but the local government would not allow Jia to place the stone at the grave. Jia finally succeeded in placing the gravestone during the Qingming Festival in AD 1999. It is a 2 meter high stone inscribed with “The Last Palace Eunuch” at the top and “The Tomb of Sun Yaoting” in the middle. Sun Yaoting’s epitaph is carved on the back of the tombstone and details the history of eunuch service in Imperial China and Sun Yaoting’s life (Jia 2008). This follows wealthy Chinese mortuary traditions of memorializing an individual’s life and accomplishments on their tombstones (Jochim 2003), but it is unusual for the relatively modest manner in which Sun Yaoting was buried and for the fact that it highlights his status as the last of China’s eunuchs.

Discussion Funerary and burial rituals must be considered as separate though intertwined events within mortuary practices. While an individual might have had both a deviant funeral and deviant burial, it is also possible that an individual had a funeral with deviant rituals but a normal burial, or vice versa. Archaeologically, only the burials would be visible as deviant, but an individual who was given either or both options would have been considered socially deviant in their time. Unfortunately, due to the ephemeral nature of funerary rituals, some of these socially deviant individuals have been lost to the archaeological record. From the case studies presented above, it is clear that, even where there were prescribed mortuary rituals for castrates, they were often buried in what would, at least initially, be considered a normative, and sometimes quite elite, manner. This affects archaeological interpretation of castrate burials and may even affect whether individuals can be identified as castrates. It is possible that castrati, while viewed as both socially and physically devi386

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ant, were not considered deviant enough to require separate burial in Europe. In death, castrati may have regained some form of social normality in relation to the living (Ashmore and Geller 2005). For example, Farinelli’s multiple burials and exhumations might be considered unusual by modern standards, but they were not that uncommon for the time. Churchyards across Europe were regularly cleared of burials, with the gathered remains placed in charnel houses (Weiss-Krejci 2013). What makes Farinelli’s reburials so unique is the specificity that he was reinterred by a family member, then exhumed and reinterred again with that family member. While perhaps not that unusual in itself, this shows the relative wealth and prosperity enjoyed by the Broschi family, as well as the availability of family members, first to control the initial deposition of Farinelli’s remains, and then to control the reinterments. The power of wealth and executors to avoid or mitigate postmortem social opprobrium is seen throughout the castrati case studies. Almost all the castrati discussed above left wills, a sign that they had both wealth and people to whom they could leave it. The request for funerary and requiem masses was both an adherence to Catholic mortuary rituals and a possible attempt at gaining postmortem approval, as money had to be left to pay for the masses, and this was usually seen as a charitable donation to a church or chapel (Paxton 2003). As far as can be gleaned from wills and burial records, the castrati named above were buried in the typical Catholic manner, presumably extended supine in east-west oriented graves or tombs, with some variation depending on their financial status at time of death. Thus, it seems that the social stigma surrounding castrati’s physical status may have been softened by their association with churches and religious orders or their operatic celebrity (Rosselli 1988), lessening the need for postmortem judgment. The prescribed rites for Chinese castrates were extremely socially anomalous in that they required that castrates be buried without the extravagance and public mourning normally required by Confucian funerals as a tribute to the deceased (Jay 1993). In this way, the denial of typical Chinese funerary rituals, even though a rite had been created especially for castrates, was a method of punishing and continuing to punish castrates for their physical and social status, especially their filial impiety, as discussed above (Jochim 2003; Reusch 2013b, 2016; Weiss-Krejci 2013). Despite this, it has been argued that castrates continued to aspire to a normal masculine Confucian life, with heirs to carry on the family name and ancestor worship (Jay 1993), and they certainly often sought to be buried in a normal Chinese manner, with those most favored by Dependent Deviance: Castration and Deviant Burial

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members of the Imperial family frequently succeeding at being buried in a wealthy manner, if not in their home villages or with their families. According to Ashmore and Geller (2005: 91), “The deliberation that lay behind the interment of the dead encodes social meaning in spatial order.” The removal of most Chinese castrates from their own hereditary cemeteries was a reflection of the rejection castrates faced from their biological families as well as a reflection of the Confucian-based social disapproval of castrates’ unfilial state (Jay 1993; Jochim 2003; Mitamura 1970; Reusch 2013b). This denial of burial with their kin could be considered a violation of the remains of these castrates, an act usually reserved for those who have behaved in culturally inappropriate or taboo ways (Duncan 2005). As castrates’ very existence was a violation of Confucian ancestor worship–based cultural norms, burial with truncated rites away from the familial burial plot may have been a final social snub, punishing castrates in death for their physical state in life. Therefore, what makes Chinese castrate burials unusual and even deviant is their potential geographic isolation from their kin, frequent confinement to a cemetery specifically for eunuchs, and the type of funerary rituals performed. These are factors that either will not make it into the archaeological record (funerary rituals) or may not be enough to differentiate castrates from others in the cemetery (geographic isolation). For example, when the Wutasi cemetery in Beijing was being excavated, the excavators knew to expect castrate skeletons only because several of the tombs were marked as belonging specifically to eunuchs (Eng et al. 2010). By comparing European and Chinese mortuary rites for castrates, we can see that in the early modern-to-modern period in Europe, castration does not appear to have affected either the funerary rituals or burials of individuals as much as individual wealth did. Most castrati seem to have been buried following the normative Catholic mode. What did set castrati apart was the need for premortem funeral planning and the possession of heirs or a potential joining of forces with other castrati in order to ensure their proper burial. In contrast, one could argue that Chinese castrates not buried according to the Confucian rituals designed explicitly for eunuchs by Xunzi, the Confucian scholar, were buried in a socially deviant manner. Those Chinese castrates who could afford to pay for their own mortuary rites or those who were given a state or imperial-funded funeral and burial, such as Tian Yi and Li Lianying, appear to have had typical wealthy Confucian rituals and burial, avoiding burial according to the prescribed ritual for castrates. 388

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Conversely, many castrates aspired to normative Confucian mortuary rituals, but were denied, either by their kin or by their financial status, such as those whose bodies were cremated by the palace during the Ming dynasty. These poorer individuals, many buried in eunuch cemeteries, likely could not afford to ensure that their burials followed a traditional Confucian rite and probably received the rites designed by Xunzi for eunuchs. To an archaeologist, these individuals would appear to have been buried in a manner that reflected ordinary Chinese burial practices, but because of the familial and geographical isolation and likely use of Xunzi’s ritual rather than the typical Confucian funerary rituals, these individuals’ mortuary practices deviated from the Chinese Confucian norm, making their mortuary rituals socially normal but traditionally deviant. For Chinese castrates, it seems, there existed a deviant burial catch-22: socially deviant burial with Confucian norms or traditionally deviant burial with socially prescribed adherence. One other point is raised by the case studies above. For both European and Chinese castrates, wealth and status were a way to ensure burial according to the dominant cultural norms. Many castrati were able to arrange to be buried in quite elite spaces (within the grounds of a monastery, inside a church, or within a prestigious cemetery, to name a few), and several Chinese eunuchs were buried in wealthy, elaborate tombs outside of eunuch cemeteries. In both cases, money and status allowed castrates to transcend not only the social constraints put on castrates as a group, but also the typical social constraints applied to the majority of the population.

Conclusion Mortuary rituals, especially funerals, fall under the category of liminal events, which include birth and marriage. They often include rites of passage, and can mediate the final fate of the decedent and the emotions of their survivors (WeissKrejci 2013). For castrates, who existed in a liminal social state due to their physical liminality, mortuary rituals may have been one of the few social rites of passage still available. The desire to be “normal,” at least in death if not in life, seems to be indicated by castrates’ pursuit of normative modes of burial, despite, in some cases, mortuary rituals designed specifically for them. It appears that, similar to the majority of the population, as long as an individual could afford to pay the necessary amounts (or possibly pay more because it was ostensibly transgressive), castrates could be buried in a “normative” manner for their society. Dependent Deviance: Castration and Deviant Burial

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In the end, what may be so remarkable about castrate burial (within Europe, at least, and to a certain extent China) may be its very ordinariness. With enough wealth, luxurious and expensive funerals and burial places could be purchased, but even for those who barely possessed anything, “standard” burials of extended inhumations within wider cemeteries appear to have been the norm. Currently, castrati burials can only be identified by their grave markers. The location and accompanying rituals for Chinese burials may have indicated social or traditional deviancy, but the basic form of burial continued to follow the dominant cultural norm. Without the cultural clues provided by written texts and history, Chinese castrate burials would appear almost identical to the rest of the population, with only their grouping together in eunuch cemeteries to differentiate them. What does this mean for our understanding of unusual burial? Funerary researchers must keep in mind when interpreting burial sites that while unusual burial may indicate some individuals who were socially abnormal in some way, it cannot indicate all individuals who are socially atypical. In many cases, the funerary rituals associated with burial are more important markers of social deviance than the form of deposition itself. Additionally, whether the unusual burial indicates disapproval or approbation should be taken into consideration. Close attention must be paid not only to the burial itself, but also to any traces of the more ephemeral funerary rituals that may have taken place around the burial site. It should also be understood that the burial as discovered might not have been the socially prescribed form of final deposition for that individual. Finally, wealth and status can be used to mask all manner of perceived social ills, and many socially deviant people likely took advantage of this fact. European castrates were buried completely normally, as far as we can tell from existent historical and archaeological data. Many Chinese castrates were buried in what would be considered a deviant manner, but without the accompanying social and historical information or grave markers, this would not be obvious to an archaeologist. In both cases, social deviance was implicitly culturally understood. It was ritually inscribed in one case, and either only incidentally inscribed or not inscribed at all archaeologically. From only the archaeological evidence, it would appear that castrates in China and Europe did not undergo deviant burial at all, highlighting the importance of sociocultural knowledge in our understanding of unusual burials. That castrate burials in both cultures appear so normal affects our ability to interpret these graves within their correct social context and hinders our ability to identify castrate remains. Given the large numbers of castrates said 390

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to exist in the past, it is extremely unlikely that castrates are not disinterred in many archaeological excavations in the Mediterranean Basin, the Near East, and China. However, because we do not recognize what castrate burials look like or necessarily recognize castrate skeletons, we are losing valuable historical and archaeological information. By thinking about the many nuanced ways in which social deviance can make its way into the burial record, we may improve our recognition of not only castrate but also other “deviant” individuals in the archaeological record.

Acknowledgments I would like to thank Tracy Betsinger, Amy Scott, and Anastasia Tsaliki for organizing this volume. Tracy Betsinger provided fruitful discussion on the form this chapter should take. My family and friends provided stimulating and useful commentary on this chapter, improving its quality. I would also like to thank Caitlin Reusch-Zerr for the creation of the map in this chapter.

Notes 1. Castration is defined here as the removal of either the testicles or the testicles and penis. Both forms of castration have been practiced for at least ten millennia, as far as can be traced (Reusch 2013a, 2016). The removal of only the testicles was most popular in Europe and part of the Fertile Crescent, while removal of both the testicles and penis was favored in Africa, part of the Fertile Crescent, and Asia (Reusch 2013a, 2016) 2. The most familiar popular terms for castrated males are eunuch and castrato (s.)/ castrati (pl.). Both these terms have loaded cultural meaning, with castrato/i usually referring to the early modern European singers, and eunuch deriving from a Greek term meaning “guardian of the bedchamber” and referring to their significant employment in the domestic sphere of households (Reusch 2013a). The term castrate refers to the physical (cut) state of these individuals. For this reason, castrate will be used throughout the chapter, except in those places where castrati or eunuch is culturally appropriate. 3. The castrati arose mainly as a response to the Pauline edict that women were not to speak in church. This was interpreted to mean that they were not to join the choir either, but antiphony (songs with multiple vocal parts using sopranos, altos, tenors, and baritones) required high voices (Rosselli 1988). Antiphony was originally developed in Byzantium, which had numerous castrates (Ringrose 2003; Tougher 2008), and there is some evidence that prepubertally castrated members of Byzantine choirs might have created a desire for higher voiced parts in Catholic rituals when the Normans captured lands that had previously belonged to Byzantium (Moran 2002). Documents from the Sistine Chapel state that Spanish falsetto singers were employed in the sixteenth century (though there are suspicions that these singers might actually have been castrated rather than only singing in falsetto), and in AD 1589, Pope Sixtus V issued a papal bull that offi-

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cially included four individuals explicitly described as castrates in the Sistine choir, while Italian-born castrates (castrati) were allowed to join in AD 1594 (Gerbino 2004; Jenkins 2000; Milner 1973). Once the Papal choir used castrati, most of the Catholic churches in Italy and the Holy Roman Empire began to employ castrati. These singers were normally castrated between six and ten years of age and underwent intensive musical training until about seventeen years of age, making even poor singers extremely technically trained and excellent music teachers. When opera was developed as a form of theater, castrati so dominated musical life in Italy and the demand for high voices was so intense, that several parts of the first operas were written specifically for castrati. Because of this secular and sacred demand, the most accomplished and talented castrati could command extraordinary fees and often performed for royalty all over Europe (Rosselli 1988). 4. The effects of castration may vary slightly from individual to individual, but in individuals castrated before puberty, they seem to consist mainly of a delay in epiphyseal fusion due to a lack of androgenic (and some estrogenic) hormones, leading to unusually tall stature, reduced craniofacial growth, an unusual false pelvis configuration, and increased bone gracility leading to an increased chance of developing osteopenia or osteoporosis. Soft tissue changes included a smaller larynx leading to a higher voice, female fat patterns including gynocomastia, and a failure to produce body hair in male patterns (beard, chest, etc.), instead following female patterns of body hair growth. Those castrated during or after puberty might show some of these effects, especially the increased tendency to osteopenia and osteoporosis and most of the soft tissue changes, but generally did not show as extreme effects as those castrated prepubertally (Reusch 2013a, 2013b, 2016; Tougher 2008;). 5. It is unclear why or how castration started in China, but there are oracle bones from at least 1300 BC which use the characters for eunuch, implying that castration has a long history in China (Jay 1993). Once we have clear historical documents, we see that Chinese eunuchs were often employed by the imperial household in various forms of domestic service, from guards to personal servants to running the entire domestic sphere of the imperial palace (Jay 1993; Tsai 1996). One reason given for this is that because all the females of childbearing age within the palace could potentially bear the emperor’s heir, no intact adult male other than the emperor should be left inside the palace walls overnight, to prevent illegitimate claimants to the throne. Because female servants could not fulfill all the tasks required within the palace overnight, eunuchs were used, as they posed no threat to the emperor’s dynastic ambitions, and as their penises had been removed, it was assumed they could not consort with the palace women at all (Mitamura 1970; Tougher 2008). Imperial use of eunuchs waxed and waned over time, but by the last two imperial dynasties, the Ming (AD 1368–1644) and the Qing (AD 1644–1912), eunuchs controlled how the palace was run, including who was able to access the emperor, either in person or in writing. This made them the imperial gatekeepers, giving them extraordinary power, which they sometimes used to run the country from behind the throne (Jay 1993; Mitamura 1970; Tsai 1996). 6. Chinese (and many other) castrates often adopted teens and sometimes younger children as heirs. These heirs often came from within their own paternal families, but could come from maternal families or (rarely) from completely outside the castrate’s own familial lineages (Jay 1993). China was fairly unique in that it allowed palace eu392

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nuchs and old palace maids to marry in what were essentially companionship arrangements (Jay 1993). Most other cultures that had castrates would not let them marry because they regarded marriage as being expressly for the purpose of creating children, which castrates could not do (Berry 2012; Freitas 2003; Ringrose 2003; Tougher 2008). 7. These tombs were mostly looted shortly after burial. One of the cemeteries in Beijing’s suburbs (Biyunsi) was destroyed on the orders of the Qing Dynasty (AD 1644– 1912) emperor Qianlong (r. AD 1735–1796), and the second, the West Mountain Eunuch Tombs, were repeatedly damaged and eventually demolished (Hultengren 2015). 8. This cemetery no longer exists. It is unclear exactly what happened to it or to the 2,700 burials reported to be in the cemetery (Jay 1993), but it is likely they were either quickly reburied or destroyed.

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2013 Death and the Cultural Entanglements of the Experienced, the Learned, the Expressed, the Contested, and the Imagined. In The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Death and Burial, edited by Sarah Tarlow and Liv Nilsson Stutz, pp. 59–75. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Kutcher, Norman A. 2010 Unspoken Collusions: The Empowerment of Yuanming yuan Eunuchs in the Qianlong Period. Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 70(2): 449–495. Levathes, Louise 1994 When China Ruled the Seas: The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne, 1405–33. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Levine, Ellen 1997 Jewish Views and Customs on Death. In Death and Bereavement Across Cultures, edited by Colin Murray Parkes, Pittu Laungani, and Bill Young, pp. 98–130. Routledge, London. Milner, Anthony 1973 The Sacred Capons. Musical Times 114(1561): 250–252. Min, Kyung Jin, Cheol Koo Lee, and Han Nam Park 2012 The Lifespan of Korean Eunuchs. Current Biology 22(18): R792–R793. Mitamura, Taisuke 1970 Chinese Eunuchs: The Structure of Intimate Politics. C. E. Tuttle, Rutland, Vermont. Moore, Malcom 2012 Away from the Desk: The World’s Only Eunuch Museum. Telegraph, October 18, 2012. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/asia/china/articles/Awayfrom-the-desk-the-worlds-only-eunuch-museum/# Moran, Neil 2002 Byzantine Castrati. Plainsong and Medieval Music 11(2): 99–112. Murphy, Eileen M. 2008 Introduction. In Deviant Burial in the Archaeological Record, edited by Eileen M. Murphy, pp. xii–xviii. Oxbow Books, Oxford. O’Sullivan, D. 2013 Burial of the Christian Dead in the Later Middle Ages. In The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Death and Burial, edited by Sarah Tarlow and Liv Nilsson Stultz, pp. 260–280. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Paxton, Frederick S. 2003 Christian Death Rites, History of. Macmillan Encyclopedia of Death and Dying, Volume 1, A–K. Macmillan Reference, New York. Petersen, Andrew 2013 The Archaeology of Death and Burial in the Islamic World. In The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Death and Burial, edited by Sarah Tarlow and Liv Nilsson Stultz, pp. 1–22. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Reusch, Kathryn 2013a Raised Voices: The Archaeology of Castration. In Castration and Culture in the Middle Ages, edited by Larissa Tracy, pp. 29–47. D. S. Brewer, Cambridge. 2013b That Which Was Missing: The Archaeology of Castration. PhD dissertation, ReDependent Deviance: Castration and Deviant Burial

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Afterword

A n dr ew R ey nol ds

It is both a pleasure and a privilege to be asked to write an afterword to a collection of essays concerning a topic that for many years has lain at the core of my interests in the behavior of past societies. When, in the early 1990s, I first embarked on the study of deviant burials—and more on that particular turn of phrase in a moment—mortuary archaeology writ large had shifted in its emphasis from the descriptive and typological approaches that had typified its early development, through concerns about hierarchy and ranking, and had turned increasingly to nuanced social considerations. Life cycle and gender, illness and care, among other topics, steadily grew in importance as worthy of study. Twenty-five or so years ago, however, descriptions of people at the fringes of their respective societies were hard to find in the archaeological literature: “otherness” as a concept materialized in the burial record was largely unexplored beyond a few graphically spectacular and deeply intriguing finds, such as the northern European bog-bodies or the Andean mummified children. Over the last 25 years, a body of literature has steadily developed that has brought a focus to the sheer variety of “deviance” in the burial record of human societies around the world and across time. One factor that has emerged in the study of unusual burial—as happens with the maturation of any field of academic study—is that of the critiquing of notions of deviancy. Concerns center around several key issues: the interpretation of archaeological remains; ideas of what constitutes deviancy from a behavioral perspective; and the tendency to view deviancy in a negative light. The present collection of essays, therefore,

appears at a key moment in the study of deviant burial customs, when new paradigms are emerging and when the actualities of belonging or otherness in society have an intensified significance in a world where in certain societies diversity is actively celebrated and in others murderously oppressed. All the authors in this volume address the idea of “deviance” in their papers. The most important distinction is surely that between archaeologically observable deviance (something that is unusual in its character) and the interpretation of the human remains in question as those of deviant persons. In some regions and in certain societies deviance can be clear in the archaeological record if the “norm” has well-defined parameters and can be shown to be the prevalent custom. Such is the case, for example, in northwestern Europe in the Christian Middle Ages, where nonchurchyard burial clearly deviates from an established norm in a society with a deeply pervasive religious culture. In medieval Europe, however, a huge variety of burial customs can be observed that differ from the norm, but which can be suggested—and in some cases proven—to have a range of motivations. In some instances, burial away from a churchyard might be a function of the (written) will of an individual, in other cases a suicide might be set aside from a community cemetery because of perceived deviancy in the eyes of the local community, the corpse of an unknown person might be buried away from a cemetery because of fear surrounding the “bad death” of the individual, a murderer or an innocent lynched by a local population might be buried in a similar fashion and in a similar place. Therein lie the terminological and interpretive difficulties that present themselves to the archaeologist and which necessitate careful definition in any discussions of such material. Elsewhere, variety and idiosyncrasy might define the norm, in which case different modes of analysis are required. In this sense, deviant burials should be viewed as a reflection of the complexion and constitution of society, as an important marker of social complexity and social organization. The practice and mode of deviant burial lies in many societies at crucially significant interfaces: between family and local community, between custom and religion, between local societies and higher order (“state”-like) ones. Thus, degrees of patterning within the range of deviant burial rites applied by a given society may be a sensitive measure of custom and conformity on one hand, and innovation and socio-ideological change on the other. In my own work, I found taking a geographical and topographical approach to burial evidence highly profitable. Indeed, location and context can be the prime—and in many cases the only—indicator of the non-normative status of 398

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a burial or cemetery. Geographical approaches, however, apply not only to the study of burials found in different situations but also to “normal” cemetery populations. A much understudied aspect of “normal” cemetery populations is the microgeography and microtopography of burial placement. These approaches are particularly useful when additional indicators suggesting deviancy from a norm are observable in the treatment of individuals—for example, divergence in orientation, body positioning, unusual grave furnishing or structures, interference with the corpse, and so on. Here, we then encounter further issues of interpretation. Are we to treat high-status burials as deviant? Perhaps yes, in view of the very many situations around the world where elites separate themselves spatially and in material expression from others in their funerary rites. My inclination is to apply the term “deviant” with its simplest meaning as something “different from normal” and to use the term to denote burials of individuals or groups that do not conform to customs that are observably widespread. This definition makes no value judgment about the people who ended up in the archaeological record as deviant burials, but says far more about the people who placed them there. Peter Ucko arrives at a broadly similar conclusion about the interpretation of human remains in his classic 1969 paper, quoted by the editors of this volume in their most useful survey in chapter 1. In fact, Ucko’s overall discussion of the complexity of burial in the past is as relevant now as it was nearly 50 years ago. Terminology is always problematic in the humanities, where theoretical, political, and ideological perspectives together condition the application of labels to various phenomena. Here, we might usefully consider a notion all too rarely brought to bear in archaeology: that of multivocality, a theoretical perspective developed notably by the twentieth-century Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin. In essence, such an approach demands that a range of perspectives be considered in interpretive discourse. Much academic writing, it must be said, tends to be particularistic. There are few settings where multivocality applies more acutely than in the sphere of deviant burial interpretation. I shall give an example—if an obvious one—from my own region and period of interest. To most civilized people, the application of capital punishment is abhorrent, the experience of witnessing such an act mentally scarring, and the exhibition of executed individuals an unnecessary and intimidating act on the part of the perpetrators. In the context of state-organized judicial killing, supporters of the state—whether by free will or by means of ideological subjugation—may consider such killings to be positive actions in their interests. Those killed may have committed wrongs that any sane person might consider appalling or they Afterword

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may have crossed an ideological threshold untenable by a totalitarian regime. In the context of a massacre in a lawless environment, those killed may be entirely innocent, they may be enemy combatants, or they may belong to the side of the perpetrators having been used to terrify other “followers” into alignment. The point here is that victims, perpetrators, and observers will have very different perspectives on the concept of deviancy despite the fact that similar archaeological outcomes will result in each case. Such breadth of reactions by past populations will surely have been found, whatever the motivations and circumstances of a particular “deviant” burial. One final example that I would like to cite is that of the so-called Miller of Highdown from Sussex, England. One can always cherry-pick examples to suit, but here is a burial that took place despite its oddity and contravention of social norms in a society deeply conditioned by religious prescriptions. In 1793 at the age of 84, John Olliver, a miller, was buried in a tomb that he had had built for himself 25 or 30 years before his death. The brick and stone construction lay a short distance from his mill and was sited next to a prominent local landmark, an Iron Age hill fort, the site also of a pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon cemetery. He was apparently carried to his predetermined resting place by girls dressed in white, a funeral custom normally reserved for the burial of children as a reflection of their sinless lives. All in all, Olliver’s burial was deviant by anyone’s measure but entirely predetermined by the eventual occupant of the grave: its monumentalized aspect would surely be read by any archaeologist as a socially sanctioned burial, but taking a multivocal view, in many people’s eyes it was surely viewed as an act of social contravention, while others might have quietly—or loudly—celebrated its bold transgression of tradition. The complexities of deviant burial are revealed in so many fascinating ways in this collection, and one of its great strengths lies in the value of a comparative approach from which to build cross-cultural and cross-chronological models for the archaeological manifestation of “otherness” in past societies. These can then be related to wider characterizations of societies with different configurations of social organization. This topical area has finally received the attention it deserves from a wide range of perspectives, and it remains to be seen what the impacts of this volume will be. It cannot be doubted that they will be widely felt, and this book must be regarded as a milestone in anthropological archaeology.

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Contributors

Carola Berszin is a freelance osteo-anthropologist in Konstanz. She recently published the book chapter, “Indirect Evidence of Hanging—Lesions of Corporal Punishment in 18th-century: Execution Victims from Southwest Germany” in The Routledge Handbook of the Bioarchaeology of Human Conflict. Tracy K. Betsinger is associate professor of anthropology at SUNY Oneonta. She is coeditor of the volume Anthropology of the Fetus: Biology, Culture, and Society. Jessica I. Cerezo-Román is assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Oklahoma. One of her books is Cremation and the Archaeology of Death, with coauthors Anna Wessman and Howard Williams. Della Collins Cook is professor of anthropology at Indiana University, Bloomington. She is coauthor with Mary Lucas Powell of The Myth of Syphilis: A Natural History of North American Treponematosis. Olga U. Gabelmann is research associate in the Department for Anthropology of the Americas at Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms University, Bonn, and director of the archaeological PATT-Project (Transculturality in the Formative Period, Tarata, Cochabamba Valley, Bolivia). She published the article “A Changing Society? Craft Specialization and Complementarity Systems during the Formative Period in the Cochabamba Valley, Bolivia” in the journal Andean Past.

Laura Gano is research analyst at Indiana University School of Medicine and adjunct faculty at the Indiana University School of Health and Human Sciences. She recently coauthored “Opiod Overdose Prevention in Family Medicine Clerkships: A CERA Study” in the journal Family Medicine. Leszek Gardeła is a DAAD P.R.I.M.E Fellow at the Department of Scandinavian Languages and Literatures, University of Bonn, Germany. He is the author of Bad Death in the Early Middle Ages: Atypical Burials from Poland in a Comparative Perspective. Sandra Garvie-Lok is associate professor at the Department of Anthropology, University of Alberta. Her publications include “Greek, Frank, Other: Differentiating Cultural and Ancestral Groups in the Frankish Morea Using Human Remains Analysis,” in Viewing the Morea: Land and People in the Late Medieval Peloponnese, edited by S. Gerstel. Miłosz Giersz is associate professor of Andean archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology, University of Warsaw, Poland, and director of the Castillo de Huarmey Archaeological Project. He recently published the monograph Castillo de Huarmey: Un centro del imperio Wari en la costa norte del Perú. Gisela Grupe is professor of physical anthropology and environmental history at Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich. Her most recent publication, titled “Modelling Strontium Isotopes in Past Biospheres—Assessment of Bioavailable 87Sr/86Sr Ratios in Local Archaeological Vertebrates Based on Environmental Signatures,” appears in the journal Science of the Total Environment. Scott D. Haddow is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Archaeology and History of Art at Koç University in Istanbul. His most recent publication, coauthored with Christopher J. Knüsel, is “Skull Retrieval and Secondary Burial Practices in the Neolithic Near East: Recent Insights from Çatalhöyük, Turkey” in the journal Bioarchaeology International. Kristin M. Hedman is assistant director of bioarchaeology for the Illinois State Archaeological Survey, Prairie Research Institute, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is coauthor of “Expanding the Strontium Isoscape for the American Midcontinent: Identifying Potential Places of Ori402

Contributors

gin For Cahokian and Pre-Columbian Migrants” in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports. Susan Spencer Helfrich is faculty at the University of Southern Indiana and assists the Vanderburgh County Coroner’s Office. She coauthored the chapter “The ‘African Queen’: A Portuguese Mystery” in The Bioarchaeology of Individuals. Menno L. P. Hoogland is associate professor in Caribbean archaeology at Leiden University. Lauren Hosek is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology at Syracuse University. She recently coauthored the article “The Body Politic and the Citizen’s Mouth: Oral Health and Dental Care in Nineteenth-Century Manhattan” in the journal Historical Archaeology. Takeshi Ishikawa is a postdoctoral fellow of the Graduate School of Social and Cultural Studies, Kyushu University, Japan. He published “Social Complexity in the Late Jomon Period: The Constitution of the Shimo’ota Shell Mound Cemetery of the Boso Peninsula, Eastern Kanto, Japan” in the Japanese Journal of Archaeology. Christopher J. Knüsel is professor of biological anthropology at the University of Bordeaux, France. He is coeditor, with Martin J. Smith, of The Routledge Handbook of the Bioarchaeology of Human Conflict. Jason E. Laffoon is assistant professor in the Department of World Archaeology at Leiden University. Patricia M. Lambert is professor of biological anthropology (bioarchaeology) at Utah State University. Her recent publications include “Agricultural Transitions and Traumatic Injury Risk: A View from the American Southeast and Beyond” (with M. Welker) in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. Clark Spencer Larsen is Distinguished University Professor at The Ohio State University. He is the author of Bioarchaeology: Interpreting Behavior from the Human Skeleton, Second Edition. Contributors

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Christine Lee is assistant professor of anthropology at California State University, Los Angeles. Her most recent publication is “The Relationship between Intentional Dental Ablation and Hereditary Agenesis In Late Neolithic-Early Bronze Age China” in A World View of Bioculturally Modified Teeth: Past and Present. Hayley L. Mickleburgh is visiting researcher at Texas State University. She recently coauthored the article “Precolonial/Early Colonial Human Burials from the Site of White Marl, Jamaica: New Findings from Recent Rescue Excavations” in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology (early view). Ulla Moilanen is a PhD candidate at University of Turku, Department of Archaeology, Finland. She recently published the article “Facing the Earth for Eternity? Prone Burials in Early Medieval and Medieval Finland (c. AD 900– 1300)” in the Archaeological Review from Cambridge. Angus A. A. Mol is assistant professor at the Leiden University Centre for Digital Humanities. Sophie V. Moore is lecturer at Cardiff University (UK) in the School of History, Archaeology and Religion. She recently coauthored with M.P.C. Jackson “Taphonomies of Landscape: Investigating the Immediate Environs of Çatalhöyük from Prehistory to the Present” in the journal Anatolian Studies. Nils Müller-Scheessel is a research fellow in CRC 1266 “Scales of Transformation—Human-Environmental Interaction in Prehistoric and Archaic Societies,” Institute for Pre- and Protohistory, Christian-Albrechts-University Kiel. He recently published Untersuchungen zum Wandel hallstattzeitlicher Bestattungssitten in Süd-und Südwestdeutschland. Eileen M. Murphy is professor of archaeology in the School of Natural and Built Environment, Queen’s University Belfast. She is the editor of the journal Childhood in the Past, and recent publications include Across the Generations: The Old and the Young in Past Societies with G. Lillehammer. Selin E. Nugent is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Anthropology and Mind at the University of Oxford and a research affiliate at the Institute 404

Contributors

for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University. Her doctoral thesis investigates “Pastoral Mobility and the Formation of Complex Settlement in the Middle Bronze Age Şərur Valley, Azerbaijan.” Kenneth C. Nystrom is associate professor of anthropology at the State University of New York, New Paltz. His publications include The Bioarchaeology of Mummies. Lawrence S. Owens lectures in bioarchaeology at the University of London (Birkbeck) and is also a research associate at the University of South Africa (UNISA). He is coauthor of Funerary Practices and Models in the Ancient Andes: The Return of the Living Dead. Dario Piombino-Mascali is senior researcher in biological anthropology at Vilnius University and adjunct professor in forensic anthropology at the University of Messina. He authored The Capuchin Catacombs. A Historical and Scientific Guide. Roberto Pimentel Nita is a PhD candidate at the University of Warsaw, Poland, and codirector of Castillo de Huarmey Archaeological Project. Kathryn Reusch is affiliate faculty member at Metropolitan State University of Denver and a conservation technician at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. She recently authored the article “Defining the Other: Castration, Social Difference, and Archaeology” in the journal Archaeological Review from Cambridge. Andrew Reynolds is professor of medieval archaeology at the University College London, Institute of Archaeology. His research centers on interdisciplinary approaches to the study of social complexity in early medieval societies, including territoriality, governance, and social organization. His most recent book is Power and Place in Europe in the First Millennium (coedited with Jayne Carroll and Barbara Yorke). Joshua W. Sadvari is geospatial information librarian at The Ohio State University. His previous work includes several contributions to the edited volume Assembling Çatalhöyük. Contributors

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Annette Schwentke is a freelance osteo-anthropologist in Renningen. She is coauthor of “Ältereisenzeitliche Siedlungsbestattungen in Baden-Württemberg und Bayern” in ‚Irreguläre‘ Bestattungen in der Urgeschichte: Norm, Ritual, Strafe . . . ? (edited by N. Müller-Scheessel). Amy B. Scott is assistant professor of anthropology at the University of New Brunswick. She is coeditor of the volume Anthropology of the Fetus: Biology, Culture, and Society. Anja Staskiewicz is a freelance osteo-anthropologist in Munich. She recently published “Anthropologische Untersuchung der schnurkeramischen Skelettreste von Hopferstadt, Geißlingen, Enheim und Possenheim” in Neue Gräber der schnurkeramischen Kultur zwischen Taubertal und Steigerwald. Ann L. W. Stodder is a bioarchaeologist at the Office of Archaeological Studies, Museum of New Mexico, and adjunct associate professor of archaeology at the University of New Mexico. Andrew R. Thompson is assistant professor in the Department of Medical Education, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. He is coauthor with K. M. Hedman and P. A. Slater of “New Dental and Isotope Evidence of Biological Distance and Place of Origin for Mass Burial Groups at Cahokia’s Mound 72” in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. Anastasia Tsaliki earned her PhD in Biological and Funerary Archaeology and Anthropology at Durham University, UK, with an expertise in unusual burials and social exclusion. Her publications include “Unusual Burials and Necrophobia: An Insight into the Burial Archaeology of Fear” in Deviant Burial in the Archaeological Record. Thomas Tütken is academic senior councillor and apl. professor at Johannes Gutenberg-University of Mainz, Germany. He recently published “Isotope Compositions (C, O, Sr, Nd) of Vertebrate Fossils from the Middle Eocene Oil Shale of Messel, Germany: Implications for Their Taphonomy and Paleoenvironment” in the journal Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology.

406

Contributors

Roberto Valcárcel Rojas is assistant researcher at the Oriental Center of Archeology Department (CISAT) of the CITMA. Anne van Duijvenbode is coordinator publieksbegeleiding at the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, the Netherlands. Joachim Wahl is physical anthropologist at Regierungspräsidium Stuttgart— Landesamt für Denkmalpflege, Arbeitsstelle Konstanz, and lecturer for paleoanthropology at Eberhard-Karls-University Tübingen. He is the author of “The Neolithic Massacre at Talheim: A Pivotal Find in Conflict Archaeology” in Sticks, Stones & Broken Bones: Neolithic Violence in a European Perspective. Darlene A. Weston is faculty in the department of anthropology at the University of British Columbia. She is coeditor of The Routledge Handbook of Bioarchaeology of the Caribbean. Wiesław Więckowski is associate professor at the Institute of Archaeology, University of Warsaw, Poland, and serves as Castillo de Huarmey Archaeological Project bioarchaeologist. He recently published the article “A Case of Foot Amputation from the Wari Imperial Tomb at Castillo de Huarmey, Peru” in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology.

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Index

Page numbers in italics indicate illustrations. ADNA, 96, 194, 256, 267 Adulterous couple, Merenda site as possible burial of, 198 African ancestry at Seccombe Lake Park, 92, 98 Age: Aranjuez-Santa Lucia burial E2, 142–43; Çatalhöyük, Turkey, burials at, 325–27, 331; in Early Iron Age Central European burials, 171–72, 177, 177–78, 179, 180, 181–83, 184; Huarmey Valley burials, Peru, 156; at Kanín, Bohemia, 211; of Schild site SA117 individual, 70, 83n1; social age, 21, 23, 24, 36n1; Tucson Basin Hohokam, cremations versus inhumations among, 25–30, 27–29, 31–32, 35; Weasel Pueblo pit house multiple burial, narrow age range in, 51 Aldhouse-Green, M, Dying for the Gods, 197 Amputation in native North America, 74–75 Ancestor worship: at Aranjuez-Santa Lucia, 144; in Caribbean Ceramic Age, 117, 124, 125; castrate burial and, 379–80, 382, 387, 388; in China and Mongolia, 363, 367, 379–80; in medieval Finland, 228; Weasel Pueblo pit house burial and, 56 Andean burials. See Aranjuez-Santa Lucia Andean mummified children, 397 Anemia, 163 Angel Site, Indiana, 77 Animals, Neolithic burials with, 331–33, 332, 338 Anti-vampire/anti-revenant burials. See Vampire/revenant burials

Anus/vagina, burial with finger inserted in, 133, 137–39, 138, 139, 142–46 Apotympanismos, 197 Aranjuez-Santa Lucia, South Central Andes (1300 BC–AD 200), 10, 133–46; age and social status/marginality of E2 burial, 142–43; anus/vagina, burial with finger inserted in (burial E2), 133, 137–39, 138, 139, 142–46; burial E3, 139; burial E6, 143; burial E7, 139; burial E10, 136, 140; burial E11, 136; climate, influence of, 143–44, 146n6; concept of atypical/deviant burial, 140–42; dating, 140, 146n2, 146n5; flute in vagina, Moche/Lambayeque female buried with, 142; Formative period burial patterns in, 133–35, 134; grave goods from Aranjuez-Santa Lucia, 139; grave goods in Bolivian Formative period burials, 134, 135; location of burials, 139, 145; necrophobia and E2 burial, 144; positive interpretation of E2 burial, 145; sex/gender, burial E2, 137; site description, 135–40, 136, 137, 140; social stresses and E2 burial, 143–44 Archaeothanatology, 57, 117, 125, 137, 141, 230, 238, 239 Argenti, Philip, 297 Argos, Greece, kiln burial, 197 Ashanti, 141 Ashmore, Wendy, 388 Asperg “Grafenbühl” site, 179–80 Aspöck, Edeltraud, 3, 5, 22, 357 Athens, Greece, kiln burial, 197

Atypical burials, xv–xix, 1–14, 397–400; academic study of, 1–2, 3–5, 8; concept of, 140–42, 205; contextual approaches to, 5–6; defining, 3, 13–14; deviance, concept of, xviii, 4, 5, 6, 21, 66, 114, 133, 397–400; funerals versus burials, 377–79, 386; geographic and temporal range of, 6–8, 7; identity/agency issues and, 2–3, 4–6; liminal events, mortuary rituals as, 389; sociocultural practices for dealing with death and, xvi–xviii, xxi, xxii, 1–2; as Sonderbestattung, 146n4. See also specific sites, locations, and specific types of burial, e.g., Castrate burials, Prone burials Augustus (Roman emperor), 198 Australian Aborigines, 75 “Bad death,” concept of, 11, 182, 183, 184, 228, 233, 238, 266, 398 Baden-Wurttemberg. See Central Europe in Early Iron Age Badger House, Mesa Verde burials at, 51 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 399 Baozang rite for castrate burials in China, 383, 387 Barber, Paul, 299–300 Bavaria. See Central Europe in Early Iron Age Beehive/settlement pit burials, Early Iron Age Central Europe, 173–74, 175–78, 176, 177, 181–84 Berszin, Carola, 170, 401 Betsinger, Tracy K., xv–xvi, 1, 11–12, 276, 401 Binford, Lewis, 2, 4 Birka, Sweden, 237 Blum, Eva, 297 Blum, Richard, 297 Body orientation. See Orientation of bodies Body positions: Aranjuez-Santa Lucia, burial E2, 137–39, 138; in atypical burials, 141, 205–6; in Caribbean Ceramic Age burials, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 122; in China and Mongolia, 364–65, 367–68; in Early Iron Age Central Europe, 175–76, 180, 183; Huarmey Valley burials, Peru, 156, 157–58, 159; in Kanín, Bohemia, 206, 209, 212, 212–14, 215–16, 217–18, 219; Kusakari site, Japan, 348, 350, 351, 353, 354, 357; Lesbos, vampire/revenant burials in, 301; Luistari, Eura, Finland, 235–37, 236, 239, 240; in medieval Poland, 250–51,

410

Index

252, 256, 260–62; Merenda, Greece, Late Antique kiln burial, 193, 193–94; Schild site, 68, 69; at Seccombe Lake cemetery, 93; Weasel Pueblo pit house multiple burial, 45, 49, 50, 54, 58. See also Flexed burials; Prone burials Bog burials, Iron Age Europe, 142, 143, 397 Bohemia. See Central Europe in Early Iron Age; Kanín, Bohemia Bolivia. See Aranjuez-Santa Lucia Bone dice (gaming pieces), 50 Boylston, A., 196 British Early Neolithic cave burials, 141 Brodie’s abscess, 49 Broschi, Carlo (Farinelli), 381, 387 Brothwell, D. R., 193, 200n1 Brunson-Hadley, Judy L., 25 Brześć Kujawski (grave 27), Poland, 264 Buddhism, 141, 379, 384 Budeč, Czech Republic, 209 Buikstra, Jane E., 2, 23, 24, 303 Bundle burials, 74, 77, 156, 157–58 Burial objects. See Grave goods Burials, atypical. See Atypical burials Cade, David, 106 Caesar Augustus (Roman emperor), 198 Cahokia, 66, 68–69, 83 Cahuilla, 100, 102, 107, 108 Cannibalism, 55, 58, 141, 178 Cannon, Aubrey, 34 Capacocha interments (Inka), 142 Captives, 82, 199, 369 Capuchin Catacombs, Palermo, 314, 315, 317, 318. See also Sicily, mummification in Carabelli’s cusp, 98 Caribbean Ceramic Age burials (500 BC– AD 1500), 9–10, 114–28; atypicality, defining, 119–21, 127–28; body positions, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 122; composite/multiple individuals, 119, 120, 123–25; co-occurring forms of burial, 120–21, 121, 124, 127–28; cremations, 119, 120–21, 121, 123–25; cultural, geographical, and funerary history of, 115, 115–17; El Chorro de Maíta burial 72B, Cuba, 121–23, 127; grave goods, 118, 119, 120, 128n1; Kelbey’s Ridge 2, Saba, burial FO68, 123–25; locations of, 117, 118, 119, 120; methodologies used, 117–19; orientation of, 118, 119, 120; secondary burials, 117, 119, 120, 121, 125–26, 126; skull

burials, secondary, 125–26, 126; SNA (social network analysis), use of, 115, 118, 121; violence, evidence of, 125 Carri, Giuseppe, 381 Castillo de Huarmey. See Huarmey Valley, Peru Castrate burials, 13, 376–91; ancestor worship in China and, 379–80, 382, 387, 388; baozang rite for, 383, 387; China, castrates in, 380, 381–86, 385, 387–89, 390, 392n5; Confucianism and, 383, 385, 387–89; crematorium specially for castrates in China, 384–86, 389; definition of castration, 391n1; Europe/Italy, castrati singers in, 381–82, 386–87, 388, 390, 391–92n3; families of castrates, 377, 380–83, 385–89, 392–93n6; geographic distribution of castration practices, 377, 378; marriage by castrates, 381, 393n6; mummified castrate (China), 384, 385; normative burial practices in Europe and China, 379–80; physical effects of castration, 392n4; relative normality of, 390–91; social status and marginality of castrates, 377, 380, 382–83, 386–91; terminology for castrates, 391n2 Çatalhöyük, Turkey (Neolithic to early twentieth century), 12, 323–40; age differentiations, 325–27; atypical burial practices at, 331–40; Christianity/Christianization at, 329, 330–31; description of site, 323–25, 324; grave goods, 325–27, 329, 336, 338; Güllü Ayşa burial (Islamic early twentieth century), 336–37, 337, 339; intramural burials, 327; Islamic normative practices, 329–31, 330, 339; Neolithic atypical burials, 331–35, 332, 334, 338; Neolithic normative practices, 325–27, 326; normative burial practices at, 325–31; orientation of bodies at, 330–31, 338, 339; Roman/ Byzantine atypical burial (Feature 3687, double inhumation), 335, 335–36, 338–39; Roman/Byzantine normative practices, 327–29, 328; Sk.3368 (Neolithic disabled young adult male midden burial), 333–35, 334, 338; Sk.10840 (Neolithic male with lamb), 331–33, 332, 338 Catholicism. See Christianity/Christianization Cedynia (graves 146 and 186), Poland, 256, 258, 259

Central Europe in Early Iron Age (800–250 BC), 10, 170–84; age differentiations, 171–72, 177, 177–78, 179, 180, 181–83, 184; atypical burials in beehive/settlement pits, 173–74, 175–78, 176, 177, 181–84; body positions, 175–76, 180, 183; composite/multiple burials, 172–73, 175–76, 176, 182–83; grave goods, 172–73, 174, 178, 180, 183; map of sites, 171; methodologies used, 174–75; normative burial practices in, 172, 172–73; orientation of bodies, 172–73, 176, 177, 177–78, 180; sex/ gender differences, 171–72, 178, 183, 184; skeletal analysis, 178–79; social status and marginality, 170, 171–72, 174, 181, 184; society and culture, 171–72; stones on top of bodies, 177, 178, 180, 182; strontium and oxygen stable isotope analysis, 175, 179–80, 181, 183 Central Europe in middle ages. See Kanín, Bohemia Cerezo-Román, Jessica I., 9, 19, 21, 31, 401 Cerro Sechín temple, Andes, 162 Cesium magnetometry, 153 Chancay culture, 164 Chapman, John, 2 Charlier, P., 197 Chicama Valley, Pampa de los Fósiles, Peru, 157 Children and infants. See Age Chimú culture, 164 China, castrates and castrate burials in, 380, 381–86, 385, 387–89, 390, 392n5. See also Castrate burials China and Mongolia (3500/3000 BC to AD 744–840), 13, 361–72; body positions, 364–65, 367–68; composite/multiple burials, 361, 363–64, 365–66, 369; Dawenkou culture, 364, 366; grave goods, 363, 367; Hulin Am Site, Uighur Culture (AD 744–840), 370–71; Jinlianshan Site, Dian Culture (206 BC–AD 220), 366–68, 368; Longhu Xingtian Site, Han State (475–221 BC), 365–66, 366; map of sites, 362; Mianchi Duzhong Site, Yangshao Culture (3500–3000 BC), 362–64, 366; Mogou Site, Qijia Culture (2300–1800 BC), 364–65; secondary burials, 361–62, 364, 367; Shitaizi Site, Koguryo Culture (37 BC–AD 668), 368–70, 370; stones on top of bodies, 365, 368

Index

411

Cholera, 286 Christianity/Christianization: ad sanctos and apud ecclesiam burials in Sicily, 313; castrati singers associated with Catholic Church, 381–82, 386–87, 388, 390, 391– 92n3; at Çatalhöyük, Turkey, 329, 330–31; cemeteries, burial outside, xv, 141–42; in Central Europe, 206–7, 209, 217–18, 219; ceramic vessels, infants buried in, 252; cremation, modern reintroduction of, 379; in Finland, 225–27, 238; Greece, mortuary ritual in, 293–95; incorruptibility of the saints and mummification in Sicily, 317; inhumation, shift to, 217, 218, 225–26, 248; normative burial practices in, xvi–xvii, 93, 122, 379; in Poland, 248, 250, 276–77; Purgatory, and mummification in Sicily, 318–19; Reformation, 276; in Roman empire, 195–96; vampire/revenant mythology and, 278, 297 Chullpa Pata, Tupuraya ceramics at, 144 Ciepłe, Poland, 261 Cillíní (Ireland), xv Circular spaces, burial in, 196–97 Cixi (dowager empress of China), 385 Cleve, Nils, 237 Climate, influence of, 143–44, 146n6 Cochabamba, Bolivia, 135 Coin placed in the mouth, as Charon’s fare, 195, 200, 264 Colchester, England, kiln burial, 197 Columbus, Christopher, 116 Composite/multiple burials: in Caribbean Ceramic Age, 119, 120, 123–25; at Çatalhöyük, Turkey (Roman/Byzantine period double inhumation), 335, 335–36, 338–39; in China and Mongolia, 361, 363–64, 365–66, 369; in Early Iron Age Central Europe, 172–73, 175–76, 176, 182– 83; Huarmey Valley, Peru, 156; in Kanín, Bohemia, 212, 214–15, 218; Kusakari site, Japan, 351; in medieval Finland, 234–35, 238, 239. See also Secondary burials; Weasel Pueblo pit house multiple burial Confucianism, 383, 385, 387–89 Constantine I the Great (Roman emperor), 195, 198 Contortionists in Latin American art, 163 Cook, Della Collins, 9, 66, 401 Corinth, Greece, kiln burial, 197 Cosmas of Prague, 217, 219

412

Index

Cox, Andrew Jackson, 106 Crambeck, England, kiln burial, 197 Cranial modifications, 78, 122, 364 Craniosynostosis, 229 Cremation versus inhumation: Caribbean Ceramic Age burials, 119, 120–21, 121, 123–25; castrates in China, special crematorium for, 384–86, 389; in China, 379–80, 384–85; Christianity and shift to inhumation, 217, 218, 225–26, 248; in medieval Central Europe, 217, 218; in medieval Finland, 225; in medieval Poland, 248; modern Christian use of cremation, 379. See also Tucson Basin Hohokam Cribra orbitalia, 50, 159, 179, 283–84, 285 Criminality/punishment: in China and Mongolia, 365, 369; Güllü Ayşa burial (Islamic early twentieth century), Çatalhöyük, Turkey, 336–37, 337; Hailuoto burial, Finland, 229; Merenda, Greece, Late Antique kiln burial, 190, 196–200; in Poland, 253–54, 257, 264, 287; Seccombe Lake Park Burial 5, 107, 108–9 Cupisnique culture, Peru, 156, 157, 163 Danebury/Hampshire hill fort, England, 174 Dante, Divine Comedy, 261 DAP (Dolores Archaeological Program). See Weasel Pueblo pit house multiple burial Dawenkou culture, China, 364, 366 Decapitation, 11, 82, 157, 160–63, 197, 228, 256, 257, 259, 259–60, 262, 279, 369–70, 370 Delos, Greece, cistern burial, 197 Dental caries, 97, 98–99, 179, 183, 184n2 Dental modifications and ablation, 122, 364 Dental wear and chipping, 97, 98–99 Dentition: Aranjuez-Santa Lucia, burial E2, 137; edentulous female, post-medieval Poland, 281, 281–82; erupted teeth, children born with, 265, 286, 287; at Kanín, Bohemia, 213, 214, 216; Lesbos, vampire/revenant burials on, 303, 304; Luistari, Eura, Finland, 237; Merenda, Greece, Late Antique kiln burial, 193, 200n1; of Schild site SA117 compared to other Schild site individuals, 78, 80, 81; of Seccombe Lake Burial 5 individual, 97,

97–101. See also Strontium and oxygen stable isotope analysis; specific features, e.g., Linear enamel hypoplasia Depth of burial, 216, 253, 298 Deviance, concept of, xviii, 4, 5, 6, 21, 66, 114, 133, 397–400 Deviant burials. See Atypical burials Diabetes, 74 Disabled individuals: Çatalhöyük, Turkey, Neolithic young adult male midden burial, 333–35, 334, 338; Huarmey Valley, Peru, 2012-CF6 (hunchback missing lower body), 158, 158–59, 163–64; at Kanín, Bohemia, 211; left hand amputation and left arm pathology (see Schild site, west-central Illinois); Weasel Pueblo pit house multiple burial, 49, 51, 58 Dismembered bodies, primary interment of: decapitation, 11, 82, 157, 160–63, 197, 228, 256, 257, 259, 259–60, 262, 279, 369–70, 370; Huarmey Valley, Peru, 158, 160–63; Kusakari site, Japan, 351–57; in medieval Poland, 254; Merenda, Greece, Late Antique kiln burial, 193, 194, 196–200; Mianchi Duzhong Site, Yangshao Culture, China, 363; vampire/ revenant burials, 219 DNA analysis, 78, 96, 194, 256, 267, 339 Dolní Vestonice triple burial, 143 Dolores Archaeological Program (DAP). See Weasel Pueblo pit house multiple burial Donnan, Christopher B., 157 Drawsko 1 site, Poland. See Poland, postmedieval Drowning and distinctive mortuary practices, 82, 286 Dubisch, Jill, 297 Du Boulay, Juliet, 296–97 Duckfoot site, Mesa Verde burials at, 54, 55 Duday, Henri, 233 Duncan, William, 6 Düring, Bleda S., 338 East Asian sites. See China, castrates and castrate burials in; China and Mongolia; Kusakari site, Japan Eberdingen-Hochdorf burial mound, 172, 173 El Chorro de Maíta burial 72B, Cuba, 121–23, 127

Eleusis, Greece, kiln burial, 197 Enamel hypoplasia. See Linear enamel hypoplasia Enthesopathy, 125 Epilepsy and seizures, 77, 82–83 Eunuchs. See Castrate burials Eura Osmanmäki-Käräjämäki cemetery, Finland, 233, 234 Evil eye, 261 Fabun, Susan, 106 Facedown burials. See Prone burials Farinelli (Carlo Broschi), 381, 387 Fear of the deceased/necrophobia, 142, 144, 161, 199–200, 218–19, 227–28, 300–301. See also Vampire/revenant burials Feng-shui (geomancy), 380 Fibrous dysplasia, 334 Filotas, Greece, kiln burial, 197 Finland (AD 900–1200), 11, 225–40; Christianization and shift to inhumations in, 225–27, 238; composite/multiple burials, 234–35, 238, 239; Eura OsmanmäkiKäräjämäki cemetery, 233, 234; explaining atypical burials in, 237–40; “family dead” or “home wanderers,” 227, 237; grave goods, 225, 227, 228, 232, 233, 234, 235, 236; Hailuoto burial, 229; Köyliö Köyliönsaari cemetery, 233, 234, 237; Luistari, Eura, prone burial (grave 62), 235–37, 236, 239, 240; map of sites, 226; methodologies used, 229–30; Mikkola Cemetery, Ylöjärvi, 231, 232–34, 234, 238, 239; secondary burials, 228; sharp objects and weapons stuck in coffins/ bodies, 228, 230–36, 231, 234, 237–38, 239–40; Toppolanmäki Cemetery, Valkeakoski, 234–35, 238, 239; Turku Kirkkomäki graves, 237; vampire/revenant burials, 227–28, 229, 233, 237, 238; Vilusenharju cemetery, Tampere, 231, 231–32, 238, 239 Fire and burning: distinctive mortuary practices associated with death by, 82; in mortuary ritual for SA117, Schild site, 68–69, 70; partially cremated remains in medieval Poland, 252; pathology of SA117 at Schild site and, 75, 77, 83; torture of captives, use in, 82; vampire/revenant burials, 219

Index

413

Fitzpatrick-Matthews, Keith, 5–6 Flexed burials: at Aranjuez-Santa Lucia, 134, 135, 137; in Caribbean Ceramic Age, 116, 117, 120, 122, 124; at Çatalhöyük, Turkey, 325, 331, 333; in Huarmey Valley, Peru, 156, 157–58; at Kanín, Bohemia, 206, 212, 212–14, 215, 216, 217–18; Kusakari site, Japan, 348, 352, 353; in medieval Poland, 252; Merenda, Greece, Late Antique kiln burial and, 194; Mogou Site, Qijia Culture, China, 364; at Schild site, 60, 68, 77; semi-flexed burials, 54, 67, 68, 93; at Weasel Pueblo pit house burial, 49, 54, 57 Flexion contractures, 68, 76–77 Flute in vagina, Moche/Lambayeque female buried with, 142 Free woman and slave couple, Merenda site as possible burial of, 198–99 Funerals versus burials, 377–79, 386 Gabelmann, Olga U., 10, 133, 401 Gaming pieces (bone dice), 50 Gano, Laura, 66, 71, 402 Gardeła, Leszek, 11, 246, 402 Garra, Antonio, 92 Garvie-Lok, Sandra, 12, 292, 402 Geller, Pamela L., 388 Gender. See Sex/gender Geomancy (feng-shui), 380 Ghaib service (funeral for dead where body is missing), 384 Giersz, Miłosz, 152, 402 Goldstein, Lynne G., 4, 69, 70 Grave goods: at Aranjuez-Santa Lucia, 139; in Bolivian Formative period burials, 134, 135; in Caribbean Ceramic Age burials, 118, 119, 120, 128n1; Çatalhöyük, Turkey, 325–27, 329, 336, 338; at Chinese and Mongolian sites, 363, 367; Christian and Islamic sites normally not including, 331; classification of, 25; in Early Iron Age Central Europe, 172–73, 174, 178, 180, 183; Huarmey Valley, Peru, 155–56, 157, 158, 159–60, 161; Kanín, Bohemia, 213–14, 215, 217; Kusakari site, Japan, 348–49, 351; male artifacts in female graves and vice versa, 228; in medieval Finland, 225, 227, 228, 232, 233, 234, 235, 236; in medieval Poland, 250–52, 264; Merenda, Greece, Late An-

414

Index

tique kiln burial, 194–95; Schild site, 68, 69; at Seccombe Lake Park, 106; Tucson Basin Hohokam, cremations versus inhumations among, 25–30, 27–29, 33–34; Weasel Pueblo pit house multiple burial, gaming pieces at, 50 Graves, atypical. See Atypical burials Greece: normative mortuary ritual in, 292–97; Philiron burial of dismembered individual, 197; vampire mythology in, 297–301. See also Lesbos, vampire/revenant burials in; Merenda, Greece, Late Antique kiln burial Grinnell, Emma, 106 Grupe, Gisela, 170, 402 Guadagni, Gaetano, 382 Guadagni, Vincenzo, 382 Güllü Ayşa burial (Islamic early twentieth century), Çatalhöyük, Turkey, 336–37, 337, 339 Gwiazdowo (grave 2), Poland, 250–51, 256, 260, 261 Haddow, Scott D., 12, 323, 402 Hailuoto burial, Finland, 229 Hair down the back, children born with, 286, 287 Hallaran, Kevin, 92 Hand amputation. See Schild site, westcentral Illinois Hawaiian Islanders, 141 Health and deviancy: post-medieval Poland, lack of relationship in, 279, 285–86. See also Disabled individuals; specific diseases and conditions Hedman, Kristin M., 66, 70, 402–3 Helfrich, Susan Spencer, 66, 403 Herodotus, 196 Hertz, Robert, Death and the Right Hand, 1, 30, 317–18 Heuneburg, southwestern Germany, 171 Hoffman, J. Michael, 55 Hohokam. See Tucson Basin Hohokam Holladay, Leonora, 106 Hoogland, Menno L. P., 114, 403 Hopi, 31 Hosek, Lauren, 11, 205, 403 Huarmey Valley, Peru (800–100 BC), 10, 152–65; 2010-CF-10 (tightly flexed burial/contortionist), 157–68, 158, 163; 2012-CF1 (secondary burial), 156; 2012-

CF6 (hunchback missing lower body), 158, 158–59, 163–64; 2012-CF8 (child with chanque shell and adult pelvic bone), 159–60, 160, 164–65; 2012-CF11 (primary interment of dismembered body), 158, 160–63; 2012-CF12 (composite/multiple burial), 156; age/sex distribution of burials, 156; body positions, 156, 157–58, 159; burial characteristics, 154–57, 155; grave goods, 155–56, 157, 158, 159–60, 161; site and excavations, 153–54, 154 Hulin Am Site, Uighur Culture (744–840), Mongolia, 370–71 Human sacrifice, 162, 174, 181, 248, 258, 365, 369 Hummingbird Pueblo burials, 54 Hunchback (Huarmey Valley, Peru, burial 2012-CF6), 158, 158–59, 163–64 Huron, 75 Infants and children. See Age Inhumation. See Cremation versus inhumation Inka/Inca, 142, 164, 165n2 Inuit, 74 Iron Age Europe: bog burials, 142, 143, 397. See also Central Europe in Early Iron Age Ishikawa, Takeshi, 12–13, 347, 403 Islamic mortuary ritual: for castrate Zheng He, 383–84; Çatalhöyük, Turkey, Güllü Ayşa burial (early twentieth century), 329–31, 330, 339; Çatalhöyük, Turkey, normative burials at, 329–31, 330, 339; ghaib service (funeral for dead where body is missing), 384; in Greece, 295–96 Isotope analysis. See Strontium and oxygen stable isotope analysis Italy, castrati singers and castrate burials in, 381–82, 386–87, 388, 390, 391–92n3 Janowski, Andrzej, 281 Japan. See Kusakari site, Japan Jia Yinghua, 386 Jinlianshan Site, Dian Culture (206 BC–AD 220), China, 366–68, 368 Johnson, Susannah Willard, 82 Journey of the soul to hereafter: in Greek culture, 296–97; mummfication in Sicily and, 317–20

Justinian I the Great (Byzantine emperor), 198 Kallmünz-Schirndorf, Bavaria, 173 Kane Mounds, 68 Kanín, Bohemia (tenth century), 11, 205–20; age and sex/gender differentials at, 211; atypical mortuary practices at, 209–11, 210, 212; body positions, 206, 209, 212, 212–14, 215–16, 217–18; burial 98 (prone burial), 212, 215–16; burial 99 (flexed burial), 216; burial 139 (flexed burial), 212, 213–14; burial 185(a-c) (multiple burial), 212, 214–15; Christianization of Central Europe and, 206–7, 209, 217–18, 219; composite/multiple burials, 212, 214–15, 218; disabled individuals, 211; flexed burials, 206, 212, 212–14, 215, 216, 217–18; grave goods, 213–14, 215, 217; Kanín cemetery site and excavation, 208, 208–9; Libice nad Cidlinou archaeological site, 206–9, 207; methodologies used, 212; necrophobia/fear of the deceased at, 218–19; orientation of bodies, 213, 214, 215; prone burials, 206, 209, 212, 215–16, 218, 219; social status and marginality, 211, 217; strontium and oxygen stable isotope analysis planned for, 211 Kelbey’s Ridge 2, Saba, burial F068, 123–25 Kempston, Romano-British cemetery at, 196 Keres Pueblo of Cochiti and Zia, 31 Kfar HaHoresh, Israel, 333 Kikuyu, 77 Kiln burials: in England, 197; in Greece, other than Merenda burial, 197. See also Merenda, Greece, Late Antique kiln burial Kiowa Apache, 141 Kite aerial photogrammetry, 153 Klinta, Sweden, 237 Knüsel, Christopher J., 323, 403 Kolberg, Oscar, 262 Koperkiewicz, Arkadiusz, 252 Korea, 361, 368–70 Kouphovouno, Greece, burial of dismembered individual, 197–98 Köyliö Köyliönsaari cemetery, Finland, 233, 234, 237 Kroeber, Alfred L., Disposal of the Dead, 1 Kuntur Wasi, Peru, 157

Index

415

416

Kurasiński, Tomasz, 281 Kusakari site, Japan (3500–2500 BC), 12–13, 347–57; atypical burials, 351–53, 352; body position and orientation, 348, 350, 351, 357; composite/multiple burials, 351; grave goods, 348–49, 351; No. 216, 351; No. 516-A (partially dismembered body), 351–57; No. 516-B, 351; No. 516-C, 351; No. 516-D, 351; No. 585, 351; pit house burials, 348, 351, 352, 354, 356; prone burials, 351–53, 354, 357; sex/gender differentiations, 351, 354–55, 357; site, excavations, and normative burial practice, 348–51, 349, 350; spatial distribution of graves at, 354; vampire/revenant burials, 355, 357 Kyphoscoliosis, 334 Kyphosis, 159, 163

vampire mythology in Greece, 297–301; written evidence of, 305 Lewis, Jane, 106 Libice nad Cidlinou archaeological site, 206–9, 207. See also Kanín, Bohemia Lichtenfels-Mistelfeld, Bavaria, 178 Lightning, being struck by, 82 Li Lianying, 385, 388 Liminal events, mortuary rituals as, 389 Linear enamel hypoplasia (LEH), 50, 78, 97, 100–101, 284, 285, 371 Living dead. See Vampire/revenant burials Longhu Xingtian Site, Han State (475–221 BC), China, 365–66, 366 Lowland Maya, 122, 123, 127 Luistari, Eura, Finland, 235–37, 236, 239, 240 Lyman, Amasa, 103, 107

La Bomba site, Peru, 156 Laffoon, Jason E., 114, 403 Lambayeque, 142 Lambert, Patricia M., 9, 90, 403 Larco, Hoyle Raphael, 157 Larsen, Clark Spencer, xxii, 323, 403 Larsson, Åsa M., 22 Late Antique kiln burial. See Merenda, Greece, Late Antique kiln burial Late Woodland burials. See Schild site, west-central Illinois Ledders site, 78 Lee, Christine, 13, 361, 404 LEH (linear enamel hypoplasia), 50, 78, 97, 100–101, 284, 285, 371 Lehtosalo-Hilander, Pirkko-Liisa, 235–36 Leicester, England, kiln burial, 197 Leppäaho, Jorma, 234 Leprosy, 74 Lesbos, vampire/revenant burials in (eighteenth-nineteenth centuries), 12, 292–307; Christian mortuary ritual, 293–95; identifying and dispelling vampires, 299–300; Islamic mortuary ritual, 295–96; journey of death in Greek culture and, 296–97; nails/spikes associated with remains, 301, 302, 303, 305, 306; necrophobia/fear of the deceased and, 300–301; Nikomedia Street Cemetery, Mytilene, 301–3 302, 305, 306; normative Greek mortuary ritual, 292–97; rarity in archaeological record, 306–7; Taxiarchis Myrintzou cemetery, 303–4, 304, 306;

Mackey, Carol J., 157 Magdalenberg, Villingen-Schwenningen, southwest Germany, 172, 178 Magic, sorcery, and witchcraft, 131, 237, 264, 277, 287–89 Manichaeanism, 370 Mäntylä, Sari, 228 Maunsell, Dorothea, 381 McGuire, Randall H., 20, 21, 25 McPhee Village multiple burial. See Weasel Pueblo pit house multiple burial Measles, 101 Mellaart, James, 323 Merenda, Greece, Late Antique kiln burial (fourth century AD), 10–11, 190–200; body position, 193, 193–94; as circular space, 196–97; criminality/punishment, association with, 190, 196–200; cutting of body in half, 193, 194, 196–200; dentition, 193, 200n1; grave goods, 194–95; historical context, 195–96; kiln burials in Roman Britain and Greece, 197; marital transgressors, as possible burial of, 198–99; multiple killing, practice of, 199; necrophobia/fear of the deceased, 199–200; secondary burial, 190, 194; site and excavations, 190–92, 191, 192; skeletal analysis, 192–94, 193 Mesa Verde multiple burial. See Weasel Pueblo pit house multiple burial Meskell, Lynn, 338 Mianchi Duzhong Site, Yangshao Culture (3500–3000 BC), China, 362–64, 366

Index

Mickleburgh, Hayley L., 9–10, 114, 404 Mieszko I (Polish duke), 248 Mikkola Cemetery, Ylöjärvi, Finland, 231, 232–34, 234, 238, 239 Miller of Highdown, Sussex, England, 400 Milner, George R., 83 Mississippian burials. See Schild site, westcentral Illinois Mitchell, Douglas R., 25 Mithraism in Roman empire, 195 Mizque-Concupata, Bolivia, 135, 139, 145 Moche, 142, 164, 165n4 Mogou Site, Qijia Culture (2300–1800 BC), China, 364–65 Moilanen, Ulla, 11, 225, 404 Mol, Angus A. A., 114, 404 Mongolia. See China and Mongolia Moore, Sophie V., 323, 404 Moreschi, Alessandro, 382 Mormons near San Bernardino, California. See Seccombe Lake Park Morse, Dan, 75 Mouth of deceased, objects placed in, 195, 200, 264 Müller-Scheessel, Nils, 10, 170, 404 Multiple burials. See Composite/multiple burials Multiple killing, European practice of, 199 Mummification: Andean mummified children, 397; of castrate (China), 384, 385; at Hulin Am Site, Uighur Culture, Mongolia, 371. See also Sicily, mummification in Mundelsheim “Ottmarsheimer Höhe” burial, Baden-Wurttemberg, 175–76, 176 Murphy, Eileen M., xix, 404; Deviant Burial in the Archaeological Record, xv, 8 Muslims. See Islamic mortuary ritual Mycenae, Greece, kiln burial, 197 Nachzehrer, 265, 266 Nakamura, Carolyn, 338 Nasca culture, 162 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, 49 Native Americans: Seccombe Lake Burial 5 identified as, 97–98, 99, 100, 102, 107, 108; Seccombe Lake Mormon settlement’s relationship with, 92, 107, 108–9. See also Aranjuez-Santa Lucia; Caribbean Ceramic Age burials; Huarmey

Valley, Peru; Schild site, west-central Illinois; Tucson Basin Hohokam; Weasel Pueblo pit house multiple burial; specific groups and sites Natufian burial sites with domestic animals, 332–33 Necrophobia/fear of the deceased, 142, 144, 161, 199–200, 218–19, 227–28, 300–301. See also Vampire/revenant burials Neolithic period: atypical burials at Çatalhöyük, Turkey, 331–35, 332, 334, 338; British Early Neolithic cave burials, 141; Mianchi Duzhong Site, Yangshao Culture, China, 362–64; normative practices at Çatalhöyük, Turkey, 325–27, 326 Neumann, Georg, 71 Neuntöter, 265 Nichoria, Greece, kiln burial, 197 Niemcza (grave 104), Poland, 263 Nikomedia Street Cemetery, Mytilene, 301–3, 302, 305, 306 Nilsson Stuz, Liv, 22 Nonlocal origins, detecting. See Strontium and oxygen stable isotope analysis Non-normative burials. See Atypical burials Norris Farms site, 83 Norton, England, kiln burial, 197 Nugent, Selin E., 323, 404–5 Núñez, Milton, 229 Nystrom, Kenneth C., 12, 312, 405 Olliver, John, 400 Oneota, 83 Orientation of bodies: in Caribbean Ceramic Age burials, 118, 119, 120; at Çatalhöyük, Turkey, 330–31, 338, 339; in Early Iron Age Central Europe, 172–73, 176, 177, 177–78, 180; in Greek Christian mortuary ritual, 294, 295; in Greek Islamic mortuary ritual, 296; at Kanín, Bohemia, 213, 214, 215; Kusakari site, Japan, 348, 350, 351, 357; Lesbos, vampire/ revenant burials in, 301; in medieval Poland, 253–54, 255–57, 257, 261; at Seccombe Lake Park, 93, 96 O’Shea, John, 4 Osteoarthritis, 50, 303 Otherness and the other, 58, 182, 227, 277, 397, 400 Owens, Lawrence S., 10, 133, 405

Index

417

Oxygen stable isotope analysis. See Strontium and oxygen stable isotope analysis Pacchierotti, Gaspare, 382 Parker-Pearson, Michael, 3 “The Parks,” Godmanchester, England, kiln burial, 197 Pentikäinen, Juha, 227 Pepin the Short, 261 Perego, Elisa, 142 Perino, Gregory, 67, 68, 70–71, 74, 75 Periostitis/periosteal reaction, 215, 216, 284, 285 Peru. See Huarmey Valley, Peru Pessinus, Central Anatolia, 329 Pete Klunk Mounds, 75 Philiron, Greece, burial of dismembered individual, 197 PIACH (Castille de Huarmey Archaeological Research Project). See Huarmey Valley, Peru Pimentel Nita, Roberto, 152, 405 Piombino-Mascali, Dario, 12, 312, 405 Pisani, Maria Carlotta, 381 Pistocchi, Domenico, 381 Pit burials, Early Iron Age Central Europe, 173–74, 175–78, 176, 177, 181–84 Pit house burials: Kusakari site, Japan, 348, 351, 352, 354, 356. See also Weasel Pueblo pit house multiple burial Platt, Louisa, 106 Poland, medieval (tenth–thirteenth centuries), 11, 246–67; atypical burials in, 250–52, 253; body positions, 250–51, 252, 256, 260–62; Brześć Kujawski (grave 27), 264; Cedynia (graves 146 and 186), 256, 258, 259; ceramic vessels, infants buried in, 252; Christianization and shift to inhumation, 248, 250; Ciepłe, 261; funerary practices in, 247–50, 249; grave goods, 250–52, 264; Gwiazdowo (grave 2), 250–51, 256, 260, 261; marginal areas, burial in, 252–53; missing limbs/dismemberment, 254; mouth of deceased, objects placed in, 264; Niemcza (grave 104), 263; orientation of body, 253–54, 255–57, 257, 261; PoznańŚródka, 261; pre-Christian burial, 247–48; prone burials, 246, 253–54, 256, 257, 260–62; secondary burials, 254, 255; sharp objects and weapons stuck

418

Index

in coffins/bodies, 260; skull damage/ decapitation, 257, 258–60, 259; stones on top of bodies, 262–64, 263; vampire/ revenant burials, 246–47, 248, 252, 254, 256–57, 258, 259–60, 262, 265–66; weapons, women and children buried with, 252; Wolin Młynówka (graves 15[29] and 31[96]), 256, 257, 260–61; Wzgórze Świętojakubskie (grave 90), Sandomierz, 253–54, 256, 260; Złota Pińczowska (grave 107), 254, 255 Poland, post-medieval (seventeenth–eighteenth centuries), 11–12, 276–88; atypical burials at Drawsko 1 cemetery, 280–81, 280–82; burial 6/2012 (young female, sickle around neck, copper coin and headband), 281, 283; burial 24/2009 (female, sickle around neck and copper coin), 280; burial 28/2008 (male, sickle around neck), 280; burial 29/2008 (subadult, stones beneath chin), 280; burial 49/2012 (female, sickle around neck and coin), 280, 280–81; burial 60/2010 (female, sickle across abdomen/ pelvis and stone beneath chin), 281, 281–82; Christianity/Christianization in, 276–77; Drawsko 1 site, 279; health and deviancy, lack of relationship between, 279, 285–86; skeletal analysis, 283–85; vampire/revenant mythology and burials in, 277–79, 286–88 Porotic hyperostosis, 50, 283–84, 285 Position of body. See Body positions Poznań-Śródka, Poland, 261 Prone burials: at Aranjuez-Santa Lucia, 137, 141; in Caribbean Ceramic Age, 120, 122; Çatalhöyük, Turkey, 333; in China and Mongolia, 365, 367–68, 368; in Early Iron Age Central Europe, 176; Huarmey Valley, Peru, 159; in Kanín, Bohemia, 206, 209, 212, 215–16, 218, 219; at Kusakari site, Japan, 351–53, 354, 357; in medieval Finland, 235–37, 236, 239, 240; in medieval Poland, 246, 253–54, 256, 257, 260–62; Merenda, Greece, Late Antique kiln burial, and, 193, 196, 197, 199; Weasel Pueblo pit house burial, 54, 56; written accounts of, 261–62 Pseudarthrosis, 75 Psychopomps, 82 Puémape site, Peru, 157

Punishment. See Criminality/punishment Purgatory, and mummification in Sicily, 318–19 Purhonen, Paula, 233 Pydna, Greece, kiln burial, 197 Rakita, Gordon F. M., 2 Ramus eversion, 98 Real Time Kinematic (RTK) mapping, 153, 165n1 Rebirth, child destined for (Huarmey Valley, Peru, burial 2012-CF11), 164–65 Reburial of excavated remains, 49 Reformation, 276 Reusch, Kathryn, 13, 376, 405 Revenants. See Vampire/revenant burials Reynolds, Andrew, 397, 405; Anglo-Saxon Deviant Burial Customs, 8 Rib lesions, 101–2 Rich, Charles, 103 Rickets, 284, 285 Ridges Basin, Pueblo I burials at, 47–48, 54, 57, 58 Rinaldi, Pietro, 382 Rites of passage: liminal events, mortuary rituals as, 389; Tucson Basin Hohokam burial practices and, 30–31. See also Journey of the soul to hereafter Ritual murder, 56–57 Riverine Yuma/Yuman, 21, 31 Robb, John, 32–33 Roman Catholicism. See Christianity/ Christianization Roman Greece. See Merenda, Greece, Late Antique kiln burial Rose, Fionnuala R., 79 Rose, H. J., 297 RTK (Real Time Kinematic) mapping, 153, 165n1 Russell, Nerissa, 338 Sadvari, Joshua W., 323, 405 Salinar tradition, 157 Salvatori, Domenico, 382 San Bernardino, California. See Seccombe Lake Park Sarasmo, Esko, 232 Sarkki-Isomaa, Seija, 232–33 Sarti, Angelo, 381 Saxe, Arthur, 2, 4 Saxe-Binford hypothesis, 4

Scalping, 82 Schild site, west-central Illinois (AD 830–1030), 9, 66–83; age/sex analysis for SA117, 70, 78, 79, 83n1; body position, 68, 69; common mortuary practices compared to SA117 burial, 68–70; dentition of SA117 compared to other individuals, 78, 80, 81; description of, 66–67, 69; fire and SA117’s pathology, 75, 77, 83; fire used in SA117’s mortuary ritual, 68–69, 70; grave goods, 68, 69; left hand amputation and left arm pathology, focus on young adult male (SA117) with, 67–68; missing left leg and foot of SA117, 67, 70, 74, 83; paleopathology of SA117, 70–74, 71, 73; possible diagnoses for SA117, 74–77, 76; relationship of other burials to SA117, 69, 69–70; secondary burial at, 70; social marginality of SA117, 77–83, 79–81; strontium and oxygen stable isotope analysis, 70, 78–80; violence in Late Woodland and Mississippian societies and, 83 Schillaci, Michael A., 31 Schwentke, Annette, 170, 406 Scoliosis, 159, 163 Scott, Amy B., xv–xvi, 1, 11–12, 276, 406 Scott, E. C., 98 Scurvy, 284, 285 Seccombe Lake Park, San Bernardino, California (mid-nineteenth century), 9, 90–109; African ancestry at, 92, 98; bioarchaeological evidence for identity of Burial 5, 97, 97–102; body positions, 93; Burial 5 as atypical burial at, 90, 93, 93–96; coffin, Burial 5’s lack of, 93–96; criminal, treatment of Burial 5 as, 107, 108–9; description of first Seccombe Lake cemetery, 91, 91–92; grave goods, 106; historical record, evidence of deaths and burials from, 103–7, 104–5; methodologies used, 96; Mormon settlement, affiliation with, 92, 108; Native American, Burial 5 identified as, 97–98, 99, 100, 102, 107, 108; Native Americans, Mormon community’s relationship with, 92, 107, 108–9; orientation at, 93, 96; Pioneer Memorial Cemetery (current burial site), 92, 96, 103; recovered burials, 93, 94–95; spatial segregation of Burial 5, 96; stature estimates, 102

Index

419

Secondary burials: in Caribbean Ceramic Age, 117, 119, 120, 121, 125–26, 126; in China and Mongolia, 361–62, 364, 367; in cremation versus inhumation, 22, 30, 31; defined, 36n6; in Early Iron Age Central Europe, 174; of Farinelli (castrati), 381, 387; in Greek mortuary ritual, 294, 295, 296, 307; Huarmey Valley, Peru, 156; Late Woodland and Mississippian, 67, 74; in medieval Finland, 228; in medieval Poland, 254, 255; Merenda, Greece, Late Antique kiln burial, 190, 194; missing bones in, 162; Sicily, mummification in, 317–18; skull burials, secondary, in Caribbean, 125–26, 126; Tucson Basin Hohokam, 20–21, 22, 24, 25, 30, 31 Semi-flexed burials, 54, 67, 68, 93 Septal apertures, 72 Serrano, 100, 102, 107, 108 Settlement pit/beehive burials, Early Iron Age Central Europe, 173–74, 175–78, 176, 177, 181–84 Sex/gender: Aranjuez-Santa Lucia, burial E2, 137; in Early Iron Age Central European burials, 171–72, 178, 183, 184; Greek vampires, sexual behavior of, 299; Huarmey Valley burials, Peru, 156; at Kanín, Bohemia, 211; at Kusakari site, Japan, 351, 354–55, 357; male grave goods in female graves and vice versa, 228; medieval Poland, prone burials in, 251, 260, 261; Schild site, SA117 individual, 78, 79; of Schild site SA117 individual, 70, 78, 79, 83n1; Tucson Basin Hohokam, cremations versus inhumations among, 25–30, 27–29, 32–34, 35 Shankland, David, 336 Sharp objects and weapons stuck in coffins/ bodies: Hailuoto burial, Finland, 229; Häme Region, Finland, 228, 230–36, 231, 234, 237–38, 239–40; Lesbos, vampire/ revenant burials in, 301, 302, 303, 305, 306; in medieval Poland, 260; in vampire/revenant burials, 279 Shay, Talia, 4, 66 Shi Huangdi (first emperor of China), 365 Shillourokambos, Cyprus, cat burial, 333 Shitaizi Site, Koguryo Culture (37 BC–AD 668), China, 368–70, 370 Shoveling and double-shoveling, 97, 109n2 Sicily, mummification in (sixteenth to

420

Index

twentieth century), 12, 312–20; ad sanctos and apud ecclesiam burials, 313; atypical mummification and display of bodies, 313–17, 315, 316; Capuchin friars and, 315; colatoi, use of, 316; incorruptibility of the saints and, 317; journey of the soul to hereafter and, 317–20; map of sites, 314; normative burial customs in Sicily, 313; Purgatory, connection to concept of, 318–19 Sickles, burial with. See Poland, postmedieval Sierra Mokho, Bolivia, 135 “Signs of the beast,” 286–887 Sinodont complex, 97 Sinusitis, 303 Sioux hekoya sacred clowns, 82 Sixtus V (pope), 392n3 Slave and free woman couple, Merenda site as possible burial of, 198–99 SNA (social network analysis), 115, 118, 121 Social age, 21, 23, 24, 36n1 Social bioarchaeology, 205 Social microarchaeology, 229 Social network analysis (SNA), 115, 118, 121 Social status and marginality: AranjuezSanta Lucia E2 burial, 142–43; of castrates, 377, 380, 382–83, 386–91; in Early Iron Age Central Europe, 170, 171–72, 174, 181, 184; at Kanín, Bohemia, 211, 217; Schild site, SA117 individual from, 77–83, 79–81; Seccombe Lake site, treatment of Burial 5 as criminal at, 107, 108–9; Weasel Pueblo pit house multiple burial and, 55–56, 57–58 Social stresses: Aranjuez-Santa Lucia E2 burial, 143–44; in Caribbean Ceramic Age, 122–23, 125; in Greco-Roman Late Antiquity, 195–96, 198; Kanín, Bohemia, Christianization of Central Europe and atypical burials at, 206–7, 209, 217–18, 219; Weasel Pueblo/McPhee Village, collapsing social and ritual hierarchy at, 44–45, 57 Sografi, Giovanni, 382 Sonderbestattung, 146n4 Sorcery, witchcraft, and magic, 131, 237, 264, 277, 287–89 Spatial analysis of surface artifact distribution, 153 Spencer, Susan Dale, 70, 72, 74

Spina bifida, 287 Spinal dysraphism, 286–87 Spondylosis deformans, 179 Stable isotope analysis. See Strontium and oxygen stable isotope analysis Staffelberg, near Staffelstein/Bavaria, 173 Stanaszek, Łukasz Maurycy, 251, 252 Staskiewicz, Anja, 170, 406 Stature estimates: for Caribbean Ceramic Age burials, 122; Lesbos, vampire/revenant burials on, 303; Schild site, SA117 individual, 70; Seccombe Lake Park, 102 St. Catherine’s Island, Georgia, xxi–xxii Stewart, Thomas Dale, 75 Stodder, Ann L. W., 9, 44, 406 Stojanowski, Christopher, 6 Stones on top of bodies: in China and Mongolia, 365, 368; in Early Iron Age Central Europe, 177, 178, 180, 182; in Late Antiquity, 196; in medieval Central Europe, 209; in medieval Poland, 262–64, 263 Strontium and oxygen stable isotope analysis: of Caribbean Ceramic Age burials, 122; at Çatalhöyük, Turkey, 339; of Early Iron Age burial sites in Central Europe, 175, 179–80, 181, 183; Kanín, Bohemia, planned for, 211; in Poland, 256, 287; Schild site, 70, 78–80 Strzyga, 265–66 Suicides, 104, 142, 233, 247, 277, 278, 286, 294, 298, 337, 339, 398 Summa angelica de Casibus, 262 Sun Yaoting, 385–86 Szymański, Paweł, 262 Tanner, Sariah, 106 Taxiarchis Myrintzou cemetery, Lesbos, 303–4, 304, 306 Tello Obelisk, Chavín de Huantar, 163 Tenducci, Giusto Ferdinando, 381 Terracotta army, 365 Terry Collection, 98 Tewa of San Juan Pueblo, 31 Thomas, David Hurst, xxi Thompson, Andrew R., 66, 406 Tian Yi, 380, 384, 388 Tibet, 141, 361, 364–65 Tohono O’odham, 31 Toppolanmäki Cemetery, Valkeakoski, Finland, 234–35, 238, 239 Torture, 74, 82, 198, 199

Traumatic injury: at Aranjuez-Santa Lucia, 137, 141; in Caribbean Ceramic Age burials, 125; Çatalhöyük, Turkey, Neolithic midden burial, 334–35; in Central European Iron Age burials, 175; at Chinese and Mongolian sites, 363–66, 366, 369; at Kanín, Bohemia, 211, 212, 216, 220; Lesbos, vampire/revenant burials in, 303, 306; in post-medieval Poland, 283, 285–86; at Schild site, 74–77, 82; Weasel Pueblo pit house multiple burial and, 49, 57, 58 Treponemal disease, 284, 285 Trophy body parts, 82, 162 Tsaliki, Anastasia, xv–xvi, 1, 10–11, 12, 190, 292, 300, 406 Tsotso, 141 Tuberculosis, 77, 102, 284, 285, 336 Tuberculum dentale, 97–98, 109n2 Tucson Basin Hohokam (AD 700–1500), 9, 18–35; academic attention to, 19–20, 21; adult inhumations, 32, 35; age differentials, 25–30, 27–29, 31–32, 35; biological profiles, reconstructing, 23–24; cremation versus inhumation, as mortuary process, 18, 21–22, 30; grave goods, 25–30, 27–29, 33–34; infants and children, 31–32, 34; inhumation as minority burial practice of, 18, 20–21; map of sites, 19; methodologies used, 23–25; postmortuary rituals, no evidence of, 31; rites of passage and burial practices of, 30–31; sampled individuals, 24; sex/gender differentials, 25–30, 27–29, 32–34, 35; table of sites, 20 Tupuraya ceramics at Chullpa Pata, 144 Turku Kirkkomäki graves, Finland, 237 Turner, Victor W., 31 Tütken, Thomas, 170, 406 Ubelaker, Douglas, 23, 24, 303 Ucko, Peter J., 4, 399 Uighurs, 361, 370–71 Ute, 107 ’Uyun al-Hammam, Jordan, 333 Vaginal insertions: Aranjuez-Santa Lucia burial E2 with finger inserted in vagina/ anus, 133, 137–39, 138, 139, 142–46; Moche/Lambayeque female buried with flute in, 142

Index

421

Valcárcel Rojas, Roberto, 114, 407 Vampire/revenant burials: at Kanín, Bohemia, 219; at Kusakari site, Japan, 355, 357; in medieval Finland, 227–28, 229, 233, 237, 238; in medieval Poland, 246–47, 248, 252, 254, 256–57, 258, 259–60, 262, 265–66; in post-medieval Poland, 277–79, 286–88; terminological issues, 265–66, 288–89n1. See also Lesbos, vampire/revenant burials in Van Duijvenbode, Anne, 114, 407 Van Gennep, Arnold, 4, 30–31, 317 Vestigial tails, 286–87 Vilaque, Bolivia, 135 Vilusenharju cemetery, Tampere, Finland, 231, 231–32, 238, 239 Violence: in Caribbean Ceramic Age burials, 125; in Late Woodland and Mississippian societies, 83; multiple killing, European practice of, 199; in transitional periods, 198; Weasel Pueblo pit house multiple burial and, 56–58. See also Traumatic injury Vrykolakas/vourvoulakas. See Lesbos, vampire/revenant burials in Wahl, Joachim, 170, 407 Wakarani site, Bolivia, 134–35 Walker, Phillip, 96 Walker, William Howard, 56 Wari, 153 Weaning diarrhea, 101 Weasel Pueblo pit house multiple burial (AD 725–900), 9, 44–59; atypicality of, 46–47, 58; body location within house, 54; body positions, 45, 49, 50, 54, 58; closure of pit house, 54–55, 59; collapsing social and ritual hierarchy at McPhee Village and, 44–45, 57; common mortuary practice at Puele I Dolores villages,

422

Index

47–48, 48; comparable multiple pit house burials in Mesa Verde, 51–56, 52–53; description of, 45, 48–51; map of McPhee Village sites, 46; social status and house floor burials, 55–56, 57–58; structure and type of pit house, 51; varying interpretations of pit house burials, 56–58; violence associated with, 56–58 Webb, Stephen, 75 Wessman, Anna, 228 Weston, Darlene A., 114, 407 Whooping cough, 101 Wickholm, Anna, 239 Więckowski, Wiesław, 10, 152, 407 Wiedergänger, 265 Williams, Howard, 22 Wilshusen, Richard H., 56 Wilson mound, 74 Witchcraft, sorcery, and magic, 131, 164, 237, 264, 266, 277, 287–89 Wolin Młynówka (graves 15[29] and 31[96]), Poland, 256, 257, 260–61 Wutasi cemetery, Beijing, castrate burials in, 388 Wzgórze Świętojakubskie (grave 90), Sandomierz, Poland, 253–54, 256, 260 Xunzi, 383, 388, 389 Xu Suizhong, 383 Yang Xixu, 383 Yokem, 68, 78 Young, Brigham, 92 Zheng He, 383–84 Zielonka, Bonifacy, 262 Złota Pińczowska (grave 107), Poland, 254, 255 Zuni, 31 Żydok, Przemysław, 251, 252, 258

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