status

So next the upcoming week's topic is status, which in my opinion can mean a ton of different things. The traditional archaeological definition of status from my understanding is the differential labels placed on a person based on their marriage/family lineage, property ownership, and accumulation of wealth. A high status is something to be reveared, like that of a king or master of his craft, and often defines the type of power and wealth you have access too. This status shapes the view of how all people that you interact with, perceive and treat you.

Now beyond the traditional wealth and power status, there are many other definitions. For instance relationship status, single or married? Mistresses, how many? This states the availability of one to be offered, or approached for marriage. Or the status of progress on a customer's new sword, completed or not? This more flexible definition of status can be applied to many different situations, as this definition applies to the current situation of anything at all.

To measure the traditional view of status, I believe that the sum of a person's individual/family wealth, position in the hierarchy, and personal belongings are the best way to designate a status. This is problematic for archaeologists because their criteria of  position in hierarchy is only distinguishable based on the grave goods provided, as the verbal record is obviously not available. As seen on p.203 of Parker Pearson's article The Powerful Dead: Archaeological relationships between the living and the dead, he states that although many people specify to their families how they want to be buried, and what to be buried with, the family members responsible for the burial don't always do as the deceased wished, instead how they think it should be, or how they want their family to be perceived. This is problematic for archaeologists because what they may find is an array of objects that belonged to the deceased, as well as various objects from their family, thus not painting a picture of who the deceased was, but what that whole particular family was like(or wanted to be like). These items and situations are still of great value for archaeologists because it provides them with a material account of posessions from a whole family, but they have no definite way of proving whether it was only the individual's belongings, or those belonging to a dynasty.

While status for a certain individual is difficult to prove based on grave goods because of a possible discrepancy between the deceased's wishes and the family's actions, any wealth of objects found in a grave can help archaeologists reconstruct the social and personal beliefs and interests of those that lived long before us. Maybe a mound full of mismatched items can actually provide us with an understanding of family values and love, or maybe it just proves to us that no matter what society or age you're in, your family always thinks they know what is better for you than you do yourself. Either way, archaeologists definitely have their work cut out for them.

Here's the link to Pearson's article
http://sfx.uvic.ca:3210/sfxlcl3?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&ctx_enc=info:ofi/enc:UTF-8&rfr_id=info:sid/summon.serialssolutions.com&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:journal&rft.genre=article&rft.atitle=The+Powerful+Dead:+Archaeological+Relationships+between+the+Living+and+the+Dead&rft.jtitle=Cambridge+Archaeological+Journal&rft.au=Pearson,+Mike+Parker&rft.date=1993-10-01&rft.issn=0959-7743&rft.volume=3&rft.issue=2&rft.spage=203&rft.externalDBID=n/a&rft.externalDocID=076700100003
  Alright, that's enough for tonight.


See you all in class,

-B