The Materiality of Death - mikroarkeologi.se

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the summer months of June to September at Skateholm (Carter 2004). This supports the re-evaluation of the shore-displacement effects previously discussed, suggesting that the Skateholm area was probably not an ideal site for continuous habitation. The question of ‘multi-ethnical’ use of the site, parallel or synchronous, is thus rather something to expect. Towards a Bigger Picture: Skateholm and the Late Mesolithic In sum, it can be established that the Skateholm area was occupied during at least four separate phases (most likely even more than that concerning the seasonality of the habitation). During all phases of activity at Skateholm, possibly except for phase three, a distinction between the bodies of dead adults and children below the age of eight was apparently made. The threshold for proper burial thus coincides with the age when the child has achieved most of the basic abilities most adults have besides the ability of procreation (Fahlander 2008). This could suggest that achievements and abilities were considered more important than corporeal bodily properties such as sex, or for that matter, kinship and status. Concerning the adults, no corporeal aspects such as sex and age seems to have been emphasized in death, but, of course, we cannot tell if this also was the case among the living. We know far too little about the burial ritual to properly be able to interpret placement, orientation and form of the grave, the variability on body position and bodily manipulations and grave interments in any reliable manner. The buried dogs may, however, provide us with some clues. The dog obviously occupied a special position in contrast to other animals. Although other animal bone are present in some graves, only the dogs was buried separately. Traditionally, large tools found in child graves that are too big for the child to have used in life have often been explained as evidence of inherited prestige. But how do we then explain the tools in the dogs’ graves? It seems rather far fetched to assume that they were intended to be used by the animal in an afterlife. From a general point of view, the simplest explanation must be that the burial interments were not primarily related to the buried individual. It make more sense to assume that the so called burial gifts in the Skateholm graves probably represent something more of a communal effort of the burial participants rather than that the dead were buried with their personal belongings or according to their social persona. This suggests that traditional Saxe-Binford inspired analyses, such as Schmidt‘s (2005) previously discussed study, is rather pointless. It seems that issues of personal identity, gender and social structure (beside the distinction of children under the age of eight) are not possible to answer in this particular case. Concerning the horizontal stratigraphy, the present study confirms that the graves of Skateholm II most probably are earlier than most of the graves of Skateholm I. Skateholm II constitute the first phase of burial activity and is ‘framed’ in all four cardinal points by graves of dogs and children, a structurating practice that is continued in phase two at the southern part of Skateholm I. The following third, possibly short-termed phase is associated with postdepositional manipulations at construction 10 in the midst of the area, but not necessarily with any burials. Finally, the ‘normal’ and less varied graves in the northern part constitute a fourth phase at Skateholm. During this final phase of activity, children and dogs are no longer buried at all. If the status children further declined or not during this phase is not possible to determine, but their position subaltern nonetheless seem to have remained. Unfortunately, there is no way to determine whether the different phases at Skateholm are the result of one and the same collective that repeatedly visited the site or if they may reflect the appropriation of the area by different independent groups, although it seems likely that some time passed between the second and third phases and that the latter was likely to be short termed with few or none burials. The differences in attitudes towards death and dead bodies between the four phases at Skateholm clearly emphasises the importance of the temporal issues, i.e., the body, the grave and the burial place, raised in the first part of this text. The sometimes parallel synchronous and diachronic patterns in burial ritual emphasised in this study should be argument enough against interpreting all graves of a site from homogeneous cultural perspectives. Obviously, the burials at Skateholm cannot be interpreted from a one-dimensional perspective only – whether it is from a normative or a queer standpoint. It is interesting to note that the bottom-up approach actually tells a different story than the conventional processual and interpretative studies have done. Such a perspective has also evoked new questions that seldom are of concern in traditional analysis. The local, bottom-up approach surely has proven to complicate some common-sense matters, but it nonetheless forces us to look at the material and the social life of the Late Mesolithic differently. It becomes more complex, less stereotyped, and indeed, more fascinating. But how do these local variations in burial practice relate to a bigger picture? Similar patterns concerning the placement of dogs and small children are not found in any other Late Mesolithic site. One infant burial at Bøgebakken (n. 21) can perhaps be regarded as liminally placed in the south, but this and other burial places from the same date are in general too small and often too poorly preserved to sustain horizontal analysis. However, many of the practices and elements discussed here are also found at other similar sites such as Tågerup, Vedbæk in Denmark or Zvejnieki in northern Latvia. This may indicate that some ideas concerning death and dead bodies extended over larger areas at the time (cf. Nilsson Stutz 2003:322). In order to properly relate these sites with each other, similar local bottom-up studies as the present are necessary in order to be able to relate the right 42
phase of one site with a contemporary phase of another. Such a comparative study would certainly prove interesting and additional analyses of other sites may possibly provide both earlier and later phases than those at Skateholm as well as some contemporary ones. It must, however, be emphasised that we can never employ such comparative study to reach a singular chronological ritual development of the Late Mesolithic in analogy with the construction of dendrochronologies made of overlapping, but different, wood-samples. It would only be expected to find great variation between different contemporary burials at different sites. It is also evident that similar lifestyles in similar environments often tend to lead to similarities in practice without the need for a common ideology or cosmology. This phenomenon can easily be demonstrated by comparing the many similarities of a much later Pitted Ware site of Ajvide on the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea. Most of the characteristic elements in burial practices discussed here are also present at Ajvide and at many other sites occupied by hunter-gathering fishers at coastal sites (Fahlander 2006a). The rather large gap in continuity between the Late Mesolithic and the Middle Neolithic groups suggest that such similarities probably originate from similarities in subsistence, biotope and those materialities and practices that normally follow such a lifestyle. The same argument is, of course, also valid for any similarities between different roughly contemporary Late Mesolithic costal sites. References AHLSTRÖM, T. 2001. Det döda kollektivet. Skelettmaterialet från Rössbergagånggriften, Falbygdens gånggrifter. Undersökningar 1985- 1998, (Eds: Persson, Per & Sjögren, Karl-Göran), GOTARC; 34 Göteborg: Univ. ALEXANDERSEN, V. 1988. Description of the Human Dentitions from the Late Mesolithic Grave-Fields at Skateholm, Southern Sweden, The Skateholm project, I: Man and environment. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International. ANDERSSON, H. 2004. Vart tog benen vägen?, Aktuell Arkeologi VIII:5-19. ANDREWS, P. & BELLO, S. 2006. The intrinsic pattern of preservation of human skeletons and its influence on the interpretation of funerary behaviours, Social archaeology of funerary remains, Eds: R. Gowland & C. Knüsel, Oxford: Oxbow books, pp1-29. ARTELIUS, T. & SVANBERG, F. 2005. Introduction, Dealing with the dead: archaeological perspectives on prehistoric Scandinavian burial ritual, Eds: T. Artelius & F. Svanberg, Stockholm: RAÄ BÄCKLUND BLANK, M &. FAHLANDER, F. 2006. Döden i den bräckta lagunen. Bland hundar och barn i Skateholm, Lik og ulik - Tilnærminger til variasjon i gravskikk, T. Oestigaard (ed), UBAS, 225-78, Bergen: Arkeologiskt institutt. BÄCKLUND, M. 2005. Mesolitiska gravpraktiker. Nya perspektiv på Skateholm I och II, Unpublished C- essay, Gothenburg: Univ. BAUMAN, Z. 1992. Death, immortality and other life strategies, Cambridge: Polity Press. BAXTER, J.E. 2005. The archaeology of childhood: children, gender, and material culture. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, cop. BAXTER, M. 1999. Dancing with the dead in a mass grave. Neolithic communities repeatedly handled the decaying bodies of their dead, British Archaeology, No 50:6–7. BELL, C. 1992. Ritual theory, ritual practice, New York: Oxford Univ. Press BERGENSTRÅHLE, I. 1999. Skateholm, a late Mesolithic settlement in Southern Scania, in a regional perspective, L’Europe des derniers chasseurs. Épipaléolithique et Mésolithique, Ed: André Thévenin, Paris: CTHS, pp335-340. BIETTI SESTIERI, A. M. 1992. The Iron Age community of Osteria dell'Osa: a study of sociopolitical development in central Tyrrhenian Italy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. BJÖRK, G., LIUNGMAN, O. & RYDBERG, L. 2000. Net circulation and salinity variations in an openended Swedish fjord system, Estuaries vol 23, no 3:367-380. BRADLEY, R. 2005. Ritual and domestic life in prehistoric Europe, London: Routledge. BRINCH PETERSEN, E. 2001. Mesolitiska grave og skeletter, Danmarks jægerstenalder - status og perspektiver, Ole Lass Jensen, Søren A. Sørensen & Keld Møller Hansen (Eds), Hørsholm: Hørsholm Egns Museum BRINCH PETERSEN, E. 2006. Manipulation of the Mesolithic Body, Frühe Spuren der Gewalt - Schädelverletzungen und Wundversorgung an prähistorischen Menschenresten aus interdisziplinärer Sicht, Eds: Jürgen Piek & Thomas Terberger, Schwerin: Archäologisches Landesmuseum Mecklenburg-Vorpommern BUCK, C., CHRISTEN, J., KENWORTHY, J., & LITTON, C. 1994. Estimating the duration of archaeological activity using C14 determinations. Oxford Journal of Archaeology,13(2), pp 229-240. CARTER, R.J. 2004. Seasonal Human Presence at the Late Mesolithic sites of Tegerup, Segebro, Skateholm I, Bvkeberg III and Ageröd V from the Developing Mandibular Dentition of Red Deer 43
Page 1 and 2: The Materiality of Death Bodies, bu
Page 3: Contents Chapter 1. The Materiality
Page 6 and 7: Fig. 1. Pieter Bruegel, The Triumph
Page 8 and 9: ather one has to emphasise the mate
Page 10 and 11: dead are often regarded as unfriend
Page 12 and 13: Fig 3. The old man Tei Tetuna by hi
Page 14 and 15: The Materiality of Social Change: H
Page 16 and 17: The Materiality of Eternity - The A
Page 18 and 19: FAHLANDER, F. & OESTIGAARD, T. 2004
Page 20 and 21: Susanne Kuechler-Fogden, Webb Keane
Page 23 and 24: Chapter 2 More than Metaphor: Appro
Page 25 and 26: discuss death and the treatment of
Page 27 and 28: had to deal with. This is not to sa
Page 29 and 30: hide that could be removed to expos
Page 31 and 32: pp111-123. Philadelphia: University
Page 33 and 34: Chapter 3 A Piece of the Mesolithic
Page 35 and 36: The main point is that the division
Page 37 and 38: A Piece of the Mesolithic: Skatehol
Page 39 and 40: question we need to construct some
Page 41 and 42: Fig. 4. Skateholm I (above) and Ska
Page 43 and 44: visible many years after the origin
Page 45: Phase Area Properties Interpretatio
Page 49: MILNER, N. & WOODMAN, P. 2005. Meso
Page 52 and 53: with dead people belonging to other
Page 54 and 55: Fig. 2. Due to the extraordinaire c
Page 56 and 57: As with all cremations in Hinduism,
Page 58 and 59: Based on the amount of scattered bo
Page 60 and 61: To have an ethical approach involve
Page 63 and 64: Chapter 5 From Corpse to Ancestor:
Page 65 and 66: Figure 2. Isola Sacra, Tomb 100. Ph
Page 67 and 68: Figure 4. Isola Sacra, Tomb 87. Pho
Page 73: 69 Burials
Page 76 and 77: through careful recording of the or
Page 78 and 79: Figure 4: Pencraig Hill: Distributi
Page 80 and 81: focussed on use of partial sets of
Page 83 and 84: Chapter 7 Ritual and Remembrance at
Page 85 and 86: urial (tomba a doppio loculo tipo M
Page 87 and 88: ‘original’ walls of the tomb. L
Page 89 and 90: chambers cut into two earlier trenc
Page 91: Madison: Prehistory Press, Monograp
Page 94 and 95: Well-organized cemeteries or messy
Page 96 and 97:
influenced who was buried inside th
Page 98 and 99:
it was quite short, which could ind
Page 100 and 101:
References ARTELIUS, TORE 2004. Min
Page 103 and 104:
Chapter 9 Life and Death in the Bro
Page 105 and 106:
Fig. 5.1. Cremation necropolis at P
Page 107 and 108:
place. These burials were very simp
Page 109 and 110:
Chapter 10 Norwegian Face-Urns: Loc
Page 111 and 112:
The recurring themes in the debate
Page 113 and 114:
The local context of the Norwegian
Page 115 and 116:
Death is the inevitable conclusion
Page 117 and 118:
OESTIGAARD, T. 1999. Cremations as
Page 119 and 120:
Chapter 11 The Use of Ochre in Ston
Page 121 and 122:
Ochre was used so intensively that
Page 123 and 124:
Fig. 5. Zvejnieki burial ground. Th
Page 125 and 126:
grave has been dated to 5690±45 BP
Page 127 and 128:
Khanty of northern Siberia, the col
Page 129 and 130:
125 Beliefs
Page 131 and 132:
Chapter 12 ”Death Myths”: Perfo
Page 133 and 134:
Variation within the same cist Bø,
Page 135 and 136:
Variation within the same mound Lyd
Page 137 and 138:
Figures 6 and 7. Modvo, Luster muni
Page 139 and 140:
To what extent there have been corr
Page 141 and 142:
when they die, a probable explanati
Page 143 and 144:
fragmented spindles, iron weaving s
Page 145 and 146:
Chapter 13 Reproduction and Relocat
Page 147 and 148:
may be questioned, and analysed mor
Page 149 and 150:
References Andersson, G. 1997: A st
Page 151 and 152:
Chapter 14 A Road for the Viking’
Page 153 and 154:
Figure 2. The Jarlabanke Bridge tha
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Chapter 15 A Road to the Other Side
Page 157 and 158:
Fig. 4. Clearing the bridge on an e
Page 159 and 160:
Chapter 16 Stones and Bones: The My
Page 161 and 162:
Fig. 4. An Iron Age scene at Sylta
Page 163 and 164:
Fig. 7. The resemblance between cru
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