The Poetics of Processing: Memory formation, cosmology and the handling of the dead
Part of: Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)
Throughout time, the human body has acted as a canvas for survivors. Processing of the body varies in time and space and is contingent upon the relationship between the living and the dead. Body processing acts as a mechanism for the recreation of cosmological events and is important for memory creation. The creation of processed bodies has the capacity to transform space, ritually open and close spaces, and to reinforce relationships between the living and the dead. This session will focus on how the processing of the body, in any way that occurs, impacts and is impacted by the use of the body as a social tool.
By including both old and new world case studies, general patterns of human behavior can be compared and contrasted. Through a large-scale analysis, we can examine common threads of the use of the body as a social tool that builds a relationship between the living and the dead, memory creation, and the use of space for both the living and the dead.
Other Keywords
bioarchaeology •
mortuary practices •
Ritual •
Mortuary Customs •
Processing •
Cannibalism •
Mortuary Practice •
Inhumations •
Warfare •
Violence
Geographic Keywords
North America - Southwest •
South America •
AFRICA •
West Asia •
North America - Great Basin
Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-11 of 11)
- Documents (11)
-
BODIES AMONG FRAGMENTS: NON-NORMATIVE INHUMATIONS AMONG THE PRECLASSIC AND CLASSIC PERIOD HOHOKAM IN THE TUCSON BASIN (2016)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
Inhumation and cremation usually are studied in isolation regardless of the fact that they may be practiced in the same culture and time period. Among the Tucson Basin Hohokam in the Prehispanic American Southwest cremation was the main funeral custom and normative and non-normative inhumations were practiced with very low frequencies throughout the Preclassic (A.D. 700-1150) and Classic (A.D. 1150-1450/1500) periods. This paper explores changes through time in non-normative burial customs of...
-
Dissection as Social Process: Anatomical Products in the Nineteenth-century United States (2016)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
In the nineteenth-century United States, the number of medical schools increased significantly, which in turn spurred efforts to ensure a steady supply of bodies for gross anatomy courses. Supply was largely derived from marginalized groups such as African Americans and almshouse inmates. Based on available archaeological and skeletal evidence this paper approaches dissection as a multivalent process that transformed participants in radically different ways. For the medical student, the process...
-
Memory and mortuary practice in Neolithic Anatolia (2016)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
Social memory has been argued to be a key component in the formation of the large Neolithic village site of Çatalhöyük, Turkey. This assertion has focused on daily practice centered within the house (Hodder and Cessford 2004), and may have extended to more architecturally elaborate houses as a central repository for memory and symbolism (Hodder and Pels 2010). Surrounding this discussion of social memory, there has been less focus on human burials; particularly on the treatment of human remains...
-
Narration, Mediation, and Transformation: Dismembered Heads from Middle Horizon Uraca (Majes Valley, Arequipa, Peru) and the Andean Feline-Hunter Mythology (2016)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
Excavations of two sectors of the cemetery site of Uraca in the Lower Majes Valley (coastal Arequipa, Peru) yielded human skeletons with evidence of post-mortem processing, including defleshing, removal of the soft tissues of the eye orbit, and drilling holes into the frontal and parietal bones. The 11 beheaded individuals were young adult or adult males. In addition, 6 defleshed (and unarticulated) mandibles belonged to likely males, whose crania were not recovered. Decoration styles,...
-
A Neolithic Irregular Burial at Çatalhöyük (Turkey) (2016)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
At Neolithic Çatalhöyük adult burials are usually located beneath platforms within habitations. Middens (waste areas) are, on the other hand, only sporadically used as burial locations at the site and, overall, are consistent with intentional exclusion from platform depositions, therefore representing a form of irregular burial. Here, we describe a young adult male from Çatalhöyük buried in a midden and presenting several skeletal anomalies (united and unhealed fractures, and bone structural...
-
The Poetics of Corpse Fragmentation and Processing in the Ancient Southwest (2016)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
The bioarchaeological record in the ancient Southwest has an abundance of evidence of disarticulated remains to suggest a long history of body (corpse) processing and fragmentation. From AD 800 to the 1500s, various assemblages of processed human remains have been recovered. Published studies of these have argued for a wide range of motivations that could account for such assemblages including anthropophagy/cannibalism, massacres, torture, witch executions, ritualized violence, warfare, raiding...
-
Postmortem Human Body Manipulation in the Mid-Chincha Valley, Peru (2016)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This paper investigates postmortem human body manipulation associated with above-ground and semi-subterranean tombs known as chullpas, which date from the Late Intermediate Period (A.D. 1000-1476) to the Late Horizon (A.D. 1476-1532) in the mid-Chincha Valley, Peru. Mortuary processes involve groups interacting with the dead to negotiate sociopolitical relationships. Groups commonly manipulated human corpses as part of mortuary processes performed cross-culturally. In the Andes, groups...
-
Ritual for the Ancestors or Acts of Violence: Biocultural assessment of culturally modified human remains (2016)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
A number of culturally modified human remains from three sites in Utah were reanalyzed with a biocultural approach that considered the poetics of violence and the role bodies play in cultural memory. The remains analyzed consisted of twenty-two individuals affiliated with the Fremont and Northern San Juan Puebloan cultures. The focus of this study was to transcend the surficial evidence of dismemberment and mutilation, and to view these bodies as cultural artifacts that could provide deeper...
-
Ritual Modification in the Context of Social Unrest in the Northern San Juan (2016)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
Among the Ancestral Pueblo peoples of the northern San Juan, outbreaks of warfare coincided with periods of environmental deterioration and subsistence stress. The archaeological record of this region contains abundant data that reflect a final period of heightened lethal interactions in the late A.D. 1200s. The data reveal a pattern of attacks that ended the occupations of several villages just before the northern San Juan was permanently depopulated by Pueblo peoples about A.D. 1280. Evidence...
-
Smiting Pharaohs: Violence and Power in Ancient Egypt (2016)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
Violence against the physical bodies of both the living and the dead provides a powerful way to create and reinforce power dynamics, modify and maintain social roles, and to structure identity groups. The human body has been used as a canvas for violent messages both in modern communities and in past societies. Throughout the long history of ancient Egypt, violence against foreigners and prisoners of war was regularly depicted in art that was intended to demonstrate the king’s dominance over...
-
Stone Bodies and Second Lives: Preserving the Person in Ancient Ethiopia (2016)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
Aksum, the capital of an ancient northern Ethiopian kingdom (50-700 AD), is well known for its elaborate funerary stelae, the largest of which were carved in the impression of multi-storied “houses.” Prior to a widespread conversion to Christianity, the Aksumites buried their dead in kin-groups either in tombs or in shafts that cluster around the stelae. Human remains are often burned, fragmentary, disarticulated and jumbled, creating an impression of ephemeralness that contrasts with the...