The memory of The Bo people of China

The Bo people of China are an ethnic group that once lived along the borders of modern Sichuan and Yunnan provinces. They lived and worked there as early as 3,000 years ago and ancestors of the Bo helped the Westend Zhou overthrow the ruling Yin when the Shand Dynasty ended. Why are these people so interesting? They practice a burial custom that suspends coffins (complete with bodies and grave goods) on the sides of limestone cliffs on wooden pegs, in unreachable caves, or on protruding rocks at a minimum of 10 metres above the ground. In this particular location in Gongxian county in southwest China's Sichaun province 43 coffins were restored and 16 new ones were discovered in September of 1992. This marks the third time these coffins have been restored (1974 & 1985) since the People's Republic of China was formed in 1949. My main question is why choose this burial practice? According to a Li Jing writing from the Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368) this burial practice states that “Coffins set high are considered auspicious (fortunate). The higher they are the more propitious (favourable) for the dead. And those whose coffins fell to the ground sooner were considered to be more fortunate.”. I'm curious as to why it is favourable to have your body higher above the ground, why those coffins that fell were considered to be more fortunate? If this Li Jing writing is true, why in 2002 did a team of cultural and museum specialists allowed to restore and re-secure the coffins if it's considered lucky to fall?

This question came to me when I was thinking about the topic of our last week's lectures on memory. From what I can gather from the limited resources on their burial practice and my knowledge of the course, I think it's possible that The Bo people of China suspend their coffins on the side of cliffs and in caves with the belief that the spirit needs to be placed in an uncovered open location in order to pass through to the afterlife successfully. The fact that being higher above the ground and having your coffin fall to it's brutal demise is considered lucky says to me that there is something valued about having your body released into the environment whenever nature says so. Where memory comes into play is if this could be a possible interpretation of The Bo people of China, why are archaologists preserving the coffins if it's considered lucky to have them fall? It seems that The Bo people of China would most likely disapprove of preserving their coffins because they believed they were supposed to fall and be destroyed. I think that by preserving these coffins archaeologists are doing an important service by creating and preserving the memory of this fairly unknown people whose population and memory is slowly dwindling, however, I don't think this is actually how The Bo people of China would have wanted to be remembered.

It seems that there's a very tough line to balance when preserving the memory of a culture. You have to consider how the group wanted to be remembered based on their grave goods and what remnants of written texts are left, but you also have to consider what is going to be the most beneficial to the archaeological community in better understanding that particular culture. Although I speculate that it's not what The Bo people of China would have wanted, I do think that it's a good thing that archaeologists are making an effort to preserve their memory in their natural intended form and use their grave goods as a way to help understand what these people really wanted and believed in life.

Images from:http://recedingrules.blogspot.com/2010_11_01_archive.html
 http://pyramidbeach.com/2010/10/23/the-hanging-coffins-of-the-bo-people/

References

http://www.china.org.cn/english/culture/55407.htm

Sedlec Ossuary

The Sedlec Ossuary at Kutna Hora in the Czech Republic is an amazing example of a burial ritual, post burial, that I cannot believe I have neglected to talk about until now. To give you some history, it's a small Christian chapel located under the Church of All Saints in Sedlec, an area in the small Czech town of Kutna Hora. The story goes that the abbott of the Cistercian monastery in Sedlec, Henry, was sent by King Otakar II of Bohemia on a diplomatic mission to the Holy Land in 1278. When he left, he took with him a handful of earth from Golgotha, where Christ was crucified. When he brought that soil back to Sedlec, he sprinkled it over the abbey cemetery which turned it into a desired burial sight almost overnight. As a result of the Black Death mid 14^th century and the Hussite wars in early 15^th century thousands of bodies were buried in the cemetery and it had to be enlarged to accommodate the vast number of people. In 1400 a gothic church called the Church of All Saints was built in the centre of the cemetery and had a lower chapel which was to be used as an ossuary for the mass graves that were unearthed during its construction. According to legends, in 1511 the task of exhuming skeletons and arranging their bones in the chapel was given to a half-blind monk from the order. Over the next few years (1703-1710) a new entrance to the church was built, as well as rebuilding the upper chapel. 1870 was the date that the Sedlec Ossuary really took shape, as a woodcarver named Frantisek Rink was hired by the Schwarzenberg family to organize the heaps of bones located in the ossuary. Here are his results.

Pictured: Stairs leading down into Sedlec Ossuary
Credit: All photos taken by Baylie Corner

What I find so amazing about this macabre display of human remains is the beauty and detail put into arranging them. There are garlands, a a coat of arms, piles of organized bones, and a chandelier that contains every bone in the human body. Although I find it quite beautiful, the one thing I can't shake from my head after taking this course is ethics. During the construction of the new church all of the bones we see beautifully arranged were once exhumed and placed in heaps until church workers knew what to do with them. So how must have the surviving family members (if there were any) felt about their ancestors being dug up, mixed up, and placed into piles to make room for a new church? I can't help but wonder if there was any community protest when work began building the new church, and the exhuming of the bodies began. In total the Ossuary contains the remains of over 40,000 people....and that's a lot of people to be exhuming and arranging for the construction of a new church. I have a few theories as to why it was considered ok to dig up the bones of 40,000 people to make way for the new church. First, it is possible that people were upset with the decision to exhume the entire cemetery and move it to the ossuary, but the benefit of having a new church outweighed the cons of moving 40,000 skeletons underground. Second, it's possible that because the skeletons were primarily from the time of the Black Death and the Hussite wars they either had no surviving family, or remained nameless which made it less ethically wrong to construction workers to exhume the bodies and move them somewhere to be displayed. Third, the people of Kutna Hora may have seen nothing wrong with exhuming the bodies because they were just being moved to make room for a new church, and were moved to another place still within the holy boundary of the church. Overall, it seems that the Sedlec Ossuary is still a respectful cemetery, and a beautiful place to pay respect to those who lost their lives to tragic deaths.

Pictured: Bone chandelier containing all the bones in the human body

Pictured: Bone piles

Pictured: My short self in comparison to the massive vaulted ceiling

Pictured: One of the many caged off piles of bones

Pictured: Coat of arms and skull garland

When I visited the cemetery I thought it was one of the most serene and beautiful places I had been in all of Europe. While yes, I do already love skeletons which may influence my opinion on this wonderful place, but the careful way that the bones are all placed and beautifully crafted into something that can be appreciated and be respected shows that the exhuming of these bodies wasn't malicious, they were cared for and lovingly arranged so the memory of their owners can still be respected. I also heard a rumor while I was there that every few months they have to re-arrange the bones in the bell shaped piles to ensure that they don't weigh down on one spot for too long. Now THAT is dedication to a memorial that may seem macabre to some, but it is easily one of my favourite places in the world.

                                        Pictured: The cemetery grounds outside Sedlec Ossuary
 

Reference

http://www.kostnice.cz/

Maya Royal Tomb Found Beneath El Diablo Pyramid

            On my google hunt I found an interesting article about the discovery of a royal tomb underneath El Diablo pyramid in the Guatemalan forest in July 2010. The well preserved tomb containts carvings, ceramics, textiles, and the bones of six children, which are interpreted as possibly the remains of a human sacrifice.  The archaeologists who discovered the tomb stated that “When we sunk a pit into the small chamber of the temple, we hit almost immediately a series of ‘caches’ - blood-red bowls containing human fingers and teeth, all wrapped in some kind of organic substance that left an impression in the plaster. We then dug through layer after layer of flat stones, alternating with mud, which probably is what kept the tomb so intact and airtight.”. I think that the discovery of this tomb was so interesting to archeologists and the public because of the well preserved nature of the artefacts as well as the bizarre nature of the severed fingers and teeth. Finds like this are interesting to the public because we so rarely hear about cultures anymore that have found new evidence of human sacrifice, and also because most people don't know a lot about human sacrifice and we are usually curious about seemingly 'strange' things we have no knowledge about. Finds like this where people discover secret tombs beneath existing structures are also very indiana jones esque, which I believe piques peoples curiousity because of circumstances of falling through a floor into a passage, a fantasy in many people's minds because it seems like it could happen to anyone.
        What I found interesting about this article is that it was the discovery of the tomb through probing for cavities and the surpise upon finding the red bowls filled with fingers, as well as the well preserved nature of the artefacts because they had been sealed off from air and water for over 1600 years. The strange thing about this extrordinary find is that until I completed this search I had no idea this discovery even occurred. I believe that this was because I could only find two or three different articles about the discovery, and the majority of the sites that I found with information for the find were just exerpts or links to the original few articles. In the article they make reference to royal tombs such as this one taking years to study because of their history laden nature, which I believe has something to do with only a small amount of articles published. Because they posted the intitial discovery only a couple weeks into the excavation I believe that they are waiting to post a follow up article so archaeologists can do more digging and researching to find concrete explanations and then they will present their more complete findings, which at the time of the discovery they would not be able to speculate what anything meant. I do believe though that once proper analysis of artefacts and historical research is done, a much more comprehensive article about the find will be posted, and more people will know, and be interested about it once some more definitive findings are released.
Pictures:



Both pictures came from this source:

http://heritage-key.com/blogs/ann/maya-royal-tomb-found-beneath-el-diablo-pyramid

Links to the articles:

http://heritage-key.com/blogs/ann/maya-royal-tomb-found-beneath-el-diablo-pyramid
http://news.discovery.com/archaeology/mayan-kings-tomb-found-in-guatemala.html

Monument Analysis Revisited: Kinship?

           In our dataset for the monument analysis at Ross Bay Cemetery kinship was actually one of the more obvious concepts that I was able to identify throughout examination. For graves (#1,2,5,6 & 7) in our dataset, all of them showed the presence of multiple names on the same stone. While in my monument analysis I mostly described the appearance of multiple names as a result of impoverished conditions, I think that those conditions would have resulted in the creating of family monuments or tombstones in order to save money as well as having some type of a family legacy with all their names included. For example, one of the stones has the names Anastasia Downes and Hannah Downes, which is a strong, if not definite indicator that those two names are linked by kinship in one way or another. Another monument with multiple names also has "in loving memory of Kate wife of Richard Wolfenden died July 28 1878 age 39, Georgie Kate daughter of the above died September 10 1867 aged 7 months. Anna Gertrude died June 7 1870 aged year 1." inscribed on it, which blatantly states kinship relations by identifying the relationship between the names on the stone.

        Based on the evidence from simply looking at the monuments I believe that archaeologists of the future would probably deduce the same thing that I was able to, that the appearance of multiple names on one grave had to be a result of some type of family or kinship link. Because none of the monuments had monuments with the same last name, or common family name in the vicinity (other than the on that same monument), there is no evidence in our dataset of family cemeteries or groups of family buried in the same region. Since 4 of the monuments from graves  (#1,2,5,6 & 7) had multiple names that specifically stated relations or had identical last names, I believe that archeologists of the future would come to the same conclusion I did, that inclusion of multiple names on one monument stone signifies a tie or reference to kinship.

Gender and Life Stage

Normally after reading an article for anth I can usually tear apart the article and criticize it for being too beat around the bush, too boring, or too data laden, but I actually found this one to be a good balance of physical evidence, comparison between cases, theory, and tables to present the findings. The article I read was 'Rings of life: the role of early metalwork in mediating the gendered life course' by Joanna Sofaer Derevenski. Her strategy in this article was to present the theory she formulated from study and comparison of two sites utilizing early metalwork in the Copper Age of the Carpathian Basin, and present the data from these  two sites in the same location that existed during two different time periods at Tiszapolgar: Bastanga, and middle copper age culture seen in Bodrogkeresztur culture.

Through cross comparison of two different time periods at very similar sites during the Copper Age, the civilizations on the Tiszapulgar sites, Sofaer Deverenski is able to explore the changing role of metalwork in mediating the age - gender distinctions of social identity. Within each time period she focuses on the skeletal remains and grave goods to serve as an indicator of how metal work/metal possessions differed between people of different stages in the life course, and used the distinct changes in the use of certain grave goods as means to formulate her hypotheses that copper goods were used to convey differences within the complex constructions of female and males gendered experiences.

I honestly thought that her approach in using the position of skeletal remains, compared to the copper goods (or lack thereof) to determine the significance and stage of life that person had entered when they were buried was the best way to approach her theoretical investigation. She compared these behaviours and archaeological finds between the Bastanga and Bodrogkeresztur civilizations and was able to find differences and definite distinctions between important life events of the two cultures that helped to create distinctions between the two civilizations in regard to their importance of certain life events.

Overall I found Sofaer Derevenski's article to be very well thought out and very well supported in her use of archeological finds compared to position of skeletal remains in creating the hypotheses that copper goods were used to signify a particular important life stage, and that the sudden change of these finds indicates an ideological change in the conception and importance placed on certain life stages. I really agree with her that by using an absence or change in a particular funerary practice or grave goods can we can  signify a change in beliefs, just as much as the presence of a particular grave good could provide.

I feel a bit like i'm failing by not identifying any dislikes or cons for this article, but I believe that  Sofaer Derevenski did a great job of creating theories and providing enough evidence to convince me that the presence and change in finding certain copper grave goods when compared with the position of skeletal remains can tell us something significant about the life stage they were in, and the possible dichotomy of gendered experiences signified by these copper goods.

Goodbye reading break, hello last month of school! here's something that sums up how I predict my last month to go....




always trying to catch that elusive red dot....

anyways, hope reading break was great for you all! see you next week

Baylie

Memorial Monument Analysis: Ross Bay Cemetery, Why are there so many dead babies?

      After venturing into Ross Bay Cemetery we settled on a data set of infant graves in the section called Potter‘s Field. A Potter’s Field is a section of graves in a cemetery for people who didn’t have any money for proper burials or family to pay for them either, mainly resulting in impoverished persons, stillborns, and criminals being buried here. This section was located a part F of Ross Bay Cemetery (The Old Cemeteries society of Victoria, 2011). We focused on infant graves from the impoverished section, and wanted to find trends between infant graves between 1867-1900. We decided that comparing it to another group of baby graves would have been too large a task for this project, so we instead tried to focus on Irish infant graves in order to explain irish immigration, and also discovered many anglo-saxon infant graves along the way that helped make up our dataset.

      In the research questions I formulated for looking at the graves, I want to see if I could identify different trends between the grave stones of infants as well as explain why many of the stones had multiple names listed on them, and if I could find out why there were so many baby deaths from 1867-1900.

      From my research on the Ross Bay Cemetery website I was able to find out the section of infant graves we focused on were located in the place for stillborns and the destitute (The Old Cemeteries society of Victoria, 2011). Since I know the origin of the grave site, I feel comfortable claiming that the ten graves we focused on were most likely premature deaths due to the poverty and unsafe living conditions. As we looked at the graves we noticed that a few of the grave stones (#1,2,5,6 & 7) all had more than one name located on the grave stone, which I believe has to do with the impoverished conditions of the burial and a need to save money and time on only one grave. I believe that knowing that the grave is for impoverished persons and finding that half of the graves were for multiple people after studying their inscriptions closely, my question about why so many graves had multiple names is answered. I believe that the high number of grave stones for multiple people,all of which include infants, correlates directly to being from an impoverished family. It's also possible that due to the close range of some of the graves to one another, the bodies of the mass memorial stones may not be buried there. I also believe that because of the impoverished conditions, if a parent was to die and leave an infant behind, the infant may not be recieving the care they need which may explain why grave stone #1 was marked with an inscription that was for a 69 year old mother who died one year before her young daughter, who died in 1900.

 I also looked into the origins of the names on the tomb stones from a basic internet name search, and 4/10 graves (#1,4,5, & 7) were all of Irish descent, and the rest of Anglo-Saxon descent (Name Origin Research, 2009). While this isn't 100% scientific, the knowledge from the database and my knowledge of Irish surnames was enough to make me confident to be able to hypothesize that due to the time period that most of these deaths occurred (between 1867-1900), it coincides with the Irish potato famine that occurred from 1845-1849 (McGowan 2007). Because the Irish potato famine happened under 20 years before the deaths occurred, and knowing that the graves in our dataset were mostly of Irish or Anglo-Saxon descent I believe that the reason for the large amount of Irish and Anglo-Saxon infant graves in Ross Bay Cemetery could possibly be due to the failure to thrive in Canada after relocating from Ireland. As McGown states in his article, Grosse Isle near Quebec was a huge recieving post for people emigrating from Ireland to escape the potato famnine (2007). The harsh conditions of the boats on the way over caused Typhus to spread rapidly in Canada. It's possible that these deaths in Victoria could have resulted from poor health and exposure to Typhus from emigrating to canada in poor conditions (McGowan 2007). He states that by 1861 over 2 million people left Ireland, so immigration was going on until the early 60's, it could correlate with the deaths seen in Victoria seen in our dataset that begin in 1867.

      So although I can't be 100% sure whether our dataset of infant graves were victims of the Irish potato famine and a failed attempt at settling in after immigration, I can be certain that due to the location of the graves in the cemetery, it was most likely impoverished conditions that caused the majority of these babies died prematurely. I also believe that since half of the grave stones were for multiple people, we can claim that this was done to save time and money, and there's a possibility that the bodies weren't buried there at all and we're just looking at a reminder of their lives in cold stone.

here's our map of Irish and Anglo-Saxon infant burials!


View Ross Bay European Infant and Children Burials in a larger map

Bibliography

McGowan, Mark. 2007. Famine, Facts and Fabrication: An Examination of Diaries from the Irish Famine Migration to Canada, The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies 33(2), p. 48-55.


The Old Cemeteries Society of Victoria. 2011, "Religious Partitions at Ross Bay Cemetery", Old Cemeteries Society of Victoria [online] available at
http://www.oldcem.bc.ca/cem_rb_par.htm

Origin Name Research. 2007, "Surname Database: Last Name Origins", The Internet Surname Database [online] available at
http://www.surnamedb.com



what's so awesome about the middle class?

Okay, other than being comprised of the largest group in society, what's so exciting about the middle class? They don't have as cool grave goods, and might not even have any sort of elaborate burial, but studying the middle class of any society is the key to understanding what it a given society consisted of most, and how it operated. Although the rich are interesting, as they often acted like 'I do what I want!' and often had really beautiful and ornate grave goods, as we all know, hegemonic ideals don't always represent what the whole country was like.

So after a bit of research into the subject, i'm having an extremely difficult time finding articles that focus only on middle class burial. The majority of articles i've read, including this one about burials in peru, only really mentions middle class burials when comparing them to high class burials, and why they aren't considered middle class.

http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/stable/pdfplus/4141562.pdf

the only article I was successfully able to find without driving myself crazy was an article about 'the emerging middle class' in Bath which used social history records about the general infirmary at the time. Although I found this article in the archaeological section of jstor, it uses marxist theory and historical records to reconstruct the emerging middle class that developed through this infirmary and no archaeological evidence whatsoever to talk about class or status.

http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/stable/pdfplus/4286579.pdf

So, I've concluded that middle class burials are rarely spoken about because they come in second to the lavish high class burials, and are usually used to create distinctions between middle and upper class burials, without going into much detail. I can conclude that middle class burials are part of a society that needs more research, as exploring the status of the rich isn't an accurate representation of the society as a whole.