Famous Quotes About Death

"I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them." Ian Fleming

"I dont want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying." Woody Allen

"Always go to other people's funerals, otherwise they won't come to yours." Yogi Berra

"Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing." Redd Foxx

"Certainty? In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes." Benjamin Franklin

"A recent survey stated that the average person's greatest fear is having to give a speech in public. Somehow this ranked even higher than death which was third on the list. So, you're telling me that at a funeral, most people would rather be the guy in the coffin than have to stand up and give a eulogy."
Jerry Seinfield

Tutenkhamen 'Killed by Sickle-Cell Disease'

I found an interesting article in the "New Scientist" magazine online by Jo Marchant.  It states that a team of German archaeologists seem to think there is evidence that Egypt's boy-king was killed by Sickle-Cell Disease, not malaria.  There has been speculations of his death, from falling off a chariot, to murdered by poison, since his body's discovery in 1922, but this has been the best shot yet at determining the young Pharaoh's early demise.  Earlier observations explained that his death at 19 years old was caused by malaria, but these observations can be better explained by the diagnosis of sickle-cell disease.  People with two copies of the sick-cell gene suffer severe anaemia and often die young.  Tutenkhamen's parents were thought to have been related, boosting the chance that they both had the sickle cell gene.  In the young king's case, this could have triggered fatal "sickle cell crisis" in which his essential organs were starved of oxygen.
Members of Egypt's team describe the suggestion as "interesting and plausible" and that they are "currently investigating".  However, collaboration invitations from US teams have been left unresponsive.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19094-tutankhamen-killed-by-sicklecell-disease.html

9,000 Year Old Mysterious Burial Ritual Discovered in Iran

The Ancient Sialk Ziggurat located near the city of Kashan

Reported on May 18th, 2009, archaeologists at Iran's Sialk Mound discovered a mysterious burial ritual that is dated as old as 9,000 years.  Sialk is located in the center of Iran and is seen as one of the focal origins of technology and religious thought.  This discovery had shed new light on religious rituals in ancient Iran because it revealed practices they had never known existed.  Hassan Fazeli, the Director of Iran's Archaeological Research Center, explained that four bodies had been burned at temperatures ranging from 400-700 degrees.  A combination of Ash and remains were found buried in jars at the site.  Traces of red petals were also found in these jars which were believed to signify life and eternity in ancient Persia.  What made this discovery so important was that this kind of burial ritual involving burning and the containing of remains in jars had never been discovered before in Iran.  The excitement of the discovery brought together archaeologists from not just Iran, but from France, Italy, England, and Germany.

I had found quite a few other news articles on this same discovery, but they were all posted within a few days of each other, so it's hard to say that this discovery held it's excitement for any extended period of time.  I found this article interesting because it's not everyday I read an article about an archaeological finding in Iran.  It has actually inspired me to look more closely at archaeological findings in the middle east, and see how these compare to those found in Europe.  How will their mortuary practices differ? How will status be represented? So many new interesting things to learn!

http://www.kavehfarrokh.com/iranica/maps-of-iran-5000-bc-651-ad/9000-yr-old-mysterious-burial-ritual-discovered-in-iran/

Funerary Practices of the Non-Elites

Finding information on the burial practices of non-elites was actually quite frustrating. It didn't seem to be a topic that any anthropologists or archaeologists were interested in researching.  Finally I came across a half decent thesis paper for a Master's project.  It is an article by Ruth Humphreys on the Matmar site in Egypt from the Third Intermediate Period.  It was a site originally excavated by Guy Brunton between 1928 and 1931 containing almost 1000 burials of non-elites.  The individuals were generally buried flat on their back with their arms crossed over their chest oriented East to West (heads facing West).  Most of them were buried wrapped in some kind of bandage or cloth, but no evidence of mummification.  The graves of the non-elite were buried quite shallow.  The deepest grave being 200cm deep with no stone or brick walls to give it structure.  This shows that there was no construction of these graves before the death of the occupant.  Only 25% contained precious metals of any kind within a particular time period, 6.5% contained pottery, and 41% contained amulets of some kind.  Humphreys noticed that Brunton didn't even bother to record the burials at Matmar that contained no grave goods at all.  This shows how insignificant non-elites are viewed in the archaeological record.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Iu5nCYh0SZwJ:etheses.bham.ac.uk/963/1/Humprheys_10_MPhil.pdf+research+on+non-elites,+funerary+practices&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca&client=safari&source=www.google.ca

Status

 Anthropologists and archaeologists are commonly interested in studying the "status" of individuals and cultural groups. Status is the hierarchical ranking of persons or groups in relation to others, which can be based on several differing aspects of their lives.  The kinds of status that anthropologists and archaeologists generally talk about are economic, religious, political, and status based on age. Other kinds of status that might be talked about are social status, biological status, status within the household, and status based on gender.

Example of elite grave goods
from Varna Necropolis
4500-4000 BC

The question then becomes, how might we measure this status?  Status can usually be measured based on the quality, rarity, and abundance of grave goods.  The more they have, the more possibility there is of a high economic and political status.  If there is evidence that the grave has had continual modification and up-keep, monuments are present, or there is an abundance of space allotted for that grave, this could be an indication of high status.  Status can also be measured based on the osteology of the remains.  By looking at the bones you can usually tell the overall health of the individual; if they have healthy bones, they probably had a better diet, which means they had a higher status.  It can also be measured on whether or not there was shaping of the cranium and feet. Often, individuals of high status had their craniums elongated slowly over the course of their life, or had their feet bound to keep them small.  However, measuring status is never cut and dry.  According to John Robb et. al. (2001) in the article Social "Status" and Biological "Status": A Comparison of Grave Goods and Skeletal Indicators from Pontecagnano, the relation between status in life and treatment in death is mediated by many factors.  These can include the circumstances of death, the political situation of the surviving community, and the specific ideologies of death and identity.  Hence, grave goods can never easily be translated into living status. There are far too many variables that could effect this interpretation.

A Case of Historic Cannibalism in the American West: Implications for Southwestern Archaeology

The article that I found of interest for this blog is A Case of Historic Cannibalism in the American West: Implications for Southwestern Archaeology by Alison E. Rautman and Todd W. Fenton.  Here are some questions that emphasized what was most important in the article.

1. What do Rautman and Fenton argue in this article?
   They argue that osteological data from the historic Alferd Packer cannibalism case contributes to the debate on cannibalism because it provides remains that show non-debatable evidence that cannibalism was involved. They also argue that the Packer case contributes to the study of prehistoric cannibalism because of it's rich historical context.
2. What is the purpose of this article?
   Their goal is to inform archaeologists to a case study (the Packer case) that they feel should be of more than just historic interest.
3. What evidence makes the authors so sure that there had been postmortem processing?
   Evidence shows that there were multiple cut marks exhibited on the bones that would have had large muscles attached to them. These cut marks were not found on the small bones of the body such as hands or feet. They were not found on bones of the body that have minimal muscle attachment either, such as the skull.
4. What are two ways that prove the data from the Packer case is relevant to the debate regarding Anasazi cannibalism?
   The Packer case provides evidence that shows cannibalism has no necessary correlation with any particular postmortem treatment of the human body. It also shows how cannibalism can be identified from material remains in the archaeological record.

Kinship Patterns

While wandering around the Ross Bay Cemetery looking for the grave monuments of young children, we came across a few monuments that were devoted to kin groups.  We also noticed that many of the deceased were buried next to close members of their family (mother, father, brother, sister).  The monuments were usually much larger (in width and height) than the gravestones for an individual.  A few of them were tall, rectangular shapes with 3 or 4 sides dedicated to the inscription of the family names.  If archaeologists in the future look at these monuments, they might infer that these were the burials of an important political leader, or that they were a member of some sort of royal family.  It is common for royal kins to want to be buried in the same plot.  When looking at the remains, they might also interpret this as a sacrificial burial. For example, maybe the parents were sacrificed to be buried with their child who passed away, or vice versa.

Children's Grave Markers in Ross Bay Cemetery

1) For our data, we chose to look at graves of children under the age of 10 who died in the 19^th and 20^th   century. All gravestones came from Ross Bay Cemetery, Victoria.

2)The question we set out to answer was how are the dead of the young memorialized and represented through the use of grave markers?  Another question worth considering is do children’s memorials in Ross bay from the 19^th and 20^th century look different from those of adults?

3)For our monument analysis assignment, our group set out to Ross Bay cemetery with an interest in finding out how children’s graves were chosen to be represented through grave markers, and in particular, what these markers are made of, and what is illustrated on them. We focussed on children under the age of ten who had passed away in the 19^th and early 20^th century. To conduct our field work, myself and three other group members scoured Ross Bay Cemetery looking for the graves of the young. We photographed these markers so they could be referred back to, and mapped in their approximate location.

We found that all children’s grave markers were made of cement, concrete, marble, granite, or a combination of two. Cement was the material most commonly used for grave stones, most likely because it is cheaper, and stands the test of time. In some cases, cement was used as the base of a gravestone that was made of marble or granite, to keep it secure in its place in the ground. We did find that cement and concrete tended to show signs of wear and cracking, while marble and granite aged quite well, showing minimal signs of stress.

We also found that a few of the grave markers of children were represented by engravings, or carvings on the gravestone itself. These were of flowers, wreaths, sleeping lambs, sleeping babies, or in one case, a carved baby chair out of stone. In Heather Mckillop’s article, “Recognizing Children’s Graves in Nineteenth-Century Cemeteries”, she explains that the use of a sleeping lamb on a children’s gravestone was to depict innocence and nature (Mckillop, 94), while also tapping in to the 19^th century Christian mentality of death as sleeping (McKillop, 94). We found the gravestone represented by a granite baby chair quite fascinating and unlike anything most of us had seen in a graveyard. Mckillop explains in her article that the baby chair is often used to represent the infant’s connection to the home. Similarly, she states that the use of the sleeping baby image was used as a way of remembering the sleeping child, so that their family could use the figure as a connection to their lost loved one (Mckillop, 95).

Engraved messages were obviously very common to represent the graves of infants, such as “A little hero”, “In loving remembrance of our little pet”, “Our darling baby”, “Sisters reunited”, and “Asleep in Jesus”. Using words such as “little” and “darling” are a common way to memorialize a child’s grave because of the connotation it has with delicate and innocent. Mckillop states that “...the death of a child was seen as an inspiration to help one live a better life on earth in expectation of that glorious reunion.” (Mckillop, 93). This explains the significance to the engraving “Sisters reunited”. You can tell that it was very important to the woman who died 80 years after her beloved younger sister, who had died at the age of 2, to live a good life so she could be reunited with her younger sister in the afterlife. The engraving “Asleep in Jesus” again taps into Mckillop’s explanation that death was seen as merely being asleep.

In conclusion, our findings did result in an answer to our research question. Children’s graves in the 19^th and 20^th century were represented through different materials, carved figures, and engravings that were chosen in a way to best memorialized their lost, young, loved one. Our research was derived from Victoria’s Ross Bay Cemetery, but I think what we have learned could be applied to a broader area. For future research, it would be interesting to take what we have learned from this study, and use it to compare with adult grave markers in the 19^th and 20^th century to see how their memorials differ.

Bibliography

Mckillop, H., Recognizing Children’s Graves in Nineteenth Century Cemeteries: excavations in St. Thomas Churchyard, Belleville, Ontario, Canada. Historical Archaeology, Vol.29(2), pp. 77-99. 

Link to Monument Map:

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&vps=2&jsv=310c&oe=UTF8&msa=0&msid=212371223124508187137.00049bba7e0bb83bc8985

Status in the Archaeological Context

When studying an ancient society or one that is a part of our modern world, Archaeologists always seem to be interested in the status of the deceased.  Status is generally defined as a stratified social order that humans tend to be organized within. There are many kinds of status such as polical, religious, economic, or status based on your age or gender that you are either ascribed (born in to) or acheived (gradually earned throughout your life time).  There are many other kinds of status that effect our everyday life without even realizing it.  For example, corporate status, status within your household or family, status based on your education or even status based on how famous you are.  Our society seems to be obsessed with it, and without knowing it, most of the tasks we accomplish in life are aimed at increasing our status.
When measuring the status of a deceased indidvidual, archaeologists generally look at the quality, rarity, and abundance of grave goods, osteology (healthier bones can mean higher status), shaping of the cranium and feet, evidence of continual modification or up-keep of the grave, monuments, or the amount of space their grave site is alotted.  All of these things can give us an indication of the individuals status, but archaeologists can never be too sure.  Grave goods could have been placed there by somebody else, the grave could have been looted, or items that are known today as ordinary, or inexpensive could have meant something completely different to that particular culture or society thousands of years ago.  It is important to assess the entire social context when indicating status.

Green Burial Practices

Traditional burials have been criticized
for their use of excess space

Once we are dead and gone, we generally think that our negative environmental impact follows suit, right? Wrong.  Apparently modern practices such as cremation, embalming, and burial practices make death un-eco friendly.  Embalming releases carcinogenic formaldehyde, cremation releases greenhouse gasses and mercury, while burials take up precious space and the coffins take years to disintegrate.  Being an Anthropology major and Environmental Studies minor, I found this alternative funerary practice quite intriguing.  "Dignity Memorial" in Colorado, has signed on to be certified by the Green Burial council.  So what will be so "green" about these new funerary practices?  Well, all caskets will be biodegradable, and alternative containers will be used made from plant-derived materials.  They do not use acrylics, plastics or fiberglass, even in adhesives.  "Dignity Memorial" has also partnered up with "Colorado Open Lands" to create honorariums for the family and friends of the deceased to donate on their behalf.  The family is also given the option to have one acre of trees planted in their name in any national forest, or to participate in the Sea Oats community reef where they create a system of environmentally safe concrete domes that provide new marine habitats.  "Dignity Memorial" is the first in the world to provide the option of eco-friendly funerary practices and has proven quite popular.
As for the archaeological record of these burials, I think archaeologist will really have their work cut out for them.  Seeing as though everything is biodegradable, there might not be much remaining of these practices!  The large concrete domes in the sea might create a stir, but would be very difficult to relate it to anything to do with the dead.  In any case, I would find it much easier to "Rest in Peace" knowing I'm leaving this earth a happy planet. :)

http://www.ecoseed.org/en/living-green-article-list/article/6-living-green/8499-green-burial-practices-help-reduce-death’s-environmental-impacts

my first blog

My name is Elise McCaugherty.  I was born and raised in Victoria BC, but have done a bit of travelling around Canada and throughout Europe.  I am majoring in anthropology and doing a minor in environmental studies.  I'm taking this course because it is unlike anything I have ever taken before in Anthropology, and thought it might introduce me to concepts I would not be able to learn elsewhere.