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ANTH 0538- Midterm 1

Terms in this set (71)

Navajo deathways
Body buried soon after death, taboo to touch the dead or any part of a dead person, do not speak the names of the dead, private affair, belief that contact with dead will attract malevolent spirits
Dia de los Muertos
Celebration to remember the dead with parades, dancing, parties; joyful, colorful; reestablishes familial ties, celebrates dead as vibrant part of life; Mexico
Social death
When someone is treated as if they were dead or non-existent; the condition of people not accepted as fully human by wider society; related to a person's ability to meet social expectations and roles
Biological death
the permanent cessation of all biological functions that sustain a living, physical organism
Cryonics
freezing and storage of a human corpse, severed head, or brain in the hopes that resurrection may be possible in the future
Uploading consciousness
hypothetical process of scanning the mental state and copying it to a computer; simulation to mimic brain and consciousness; whole brain emulation, mind upload, or brain upload
Digital zombies
original user is dead, but account is still administered by the living making the user appear alive; accounts may take on a life of their own
Viking ship burial
biologically and socially dead; dead placed inside ship accompanied by material wealth (even slaves and animals) and ship was then buried or set on fire
Inca mummies
Biologically dead, socially alive; dead ruler arranged in a seated position and bundled in layers of textiles and placed in chamber with possessions; periodically taken out for feasts, opinions sought for important political decisions
Ostracism
expulsion from a place; ex. Ancient Athenians could be ostracized from the city for 10 years; biologically alive, socially dead
Deathway
rituals, rites, and traditions associated with the handling, disposal, and memory of the dead
Animal reactions to death
Mostly observed in highly social animals, likely a basic understanding.
Chimps: carry their dead babies, clean the dead, avoid places where others died
Elephants: gently touch remains, may throw dirt on corpse, display depressed behavior
Whales/dolphins: keep dead infants afloat, vocalizations, act lethargic
Homo naledi
pre-human species, some indications that they were deliberately placed in a chamber near the time of their death ~250,000 years ago in Rising Star Cave
Neanderthals
Found buried with flexed knees and elbows, with hands raised to the face; burned bones, artifacts; Sima de las Palomas, Spain; 54,000 years ago
Middle Paleolithic
300,000-50,000 years ago; some 'burials' in body locations, positioning; earliest abstract/non-figurative art, simple jewelry and adornment; ritual deposits of animal remains
Upper Paleolithic
50,000-10,000 years ago; explosion of figural art; extensive cave painting
Rising Star Cave
Site in South Africa with indications of Homo naledi burials around 250,000 years ago in the Middle Paleolithic Age
Artifacts
portable objects that owe their form to humans
ex. pottery, jewelry, tools, portable art
Ecofacts
portable objects that have cultural significance, but don't owe their form to humans; ex. animal bones, seeds, charcoal, modified soils
Ossuaries
a site that holds the bones of the dead; charnal houses
Mass graves
large graves meant to hold many bodies
Middens
trash heap where dead bodies have been buried
Taphonomy
identifying pre, peri, and post-mortem processes; study of how organisms decay; can be used to determine what caused damage to bones and therefore cause of death, process of burial, pre-burial processing, time since death
Relative dating
methods to date an object with a date expressed as "older" or "younger" than something else; stratigraphy and seriation
Absolute dating
methods to date an object with a date expressed in specific units of time
Stratigraphy
Studying sequences of soil and sediment layers below the ground; lower layers are the oldest, highest layers are the most recent
Seriation
a relative dating method in which assemblages or artifacts from numerous sites, in the same culture, are placed in chronological order; compared to other artifacts with known value
Radiocarbon dating
living organisms take in carbon-14 in the same ratio as exists in the atmosphere, but no new carbon is consumed after death; carbon-14 atoms decay and amount of atomically stable carbon-12 increases; amount of carbon-14 left can tell us how much time has passed since death
Dendrochronology
process of using tree rings in wood of archaeological objects to date them
Pazyryk
Iron Age culture (6th-2nd c. BCE) in south central Russia; nomadic pastoralists; animal style art; part of the broader Scythian or Saka cultures; buried their dead in kurgans
Kurgan
earthen and/or stone burial mound or barrow used to bury the dead of the Pazyryk culture; widespread across Eurasia in the Iron Age; sometimes dug into permafrost
Permafrost
ground never fully thaws, allowing for very good preservation of burials
The Ukok Princess
Researchers exploring Ukok plateau in 1993 found group of partially disturbed kurgans; found burial mound with log construction inside acting as an imitation of a house; woman buried had tattoos; buried with sacrificed horses, long silk shirt, wool skirt, long felt sleeve boots, tree of life hat; dated using dendrochronology and radiocarbon dating; from 5th century BCE; cause of death was breast cancer
Victorian Mummy Craze
Mummies served as huge objects of fascination during the 19th century and thousands were sold and destroyed; mummies seen as disposable; burial contexts often destroyed; mummy powder used as medicine; mummy unwrapping parties
Howard Carter
Funded by Lord Carnarvon to explore the Valley of the Kings and employed early archaeological excavation techniques; discovered Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922 behind a sealed doorway
The Moundbuilder Myth
19th century myth that the mounds built by Native Americans were built by people from Europe because Europeans didn't think Native Americans could build such structures; thought of mounds as fortifications
Scientific theory
a statement that links observations together into an explanation and must have a lot of support
Low-level archaeological theory
observations and interpretations from hands-on field and lab work; allows us to identify, classify, or measure things in the field and lab
Middle-level archaeological theory
link archaeological data to human behavior or natural processes that create them
High-level archaeological theory
links together explanations of past human behaviors to understand why history happened the way it did
Monumental tombs
large permanent structure built to house the dead; powerful public statements requiring a lot of coordination and resources
Coercive labor
forced labor; integral part of the construction of the mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang
Adena culture
Semi-nomadic horticulturalists found in Pennsylvania and Midwest ~800 BCE; no clear hierarchy of power (heterarchy), so mound building was a community effort
Towers of Silence
Zoroastrian burial places used for generations by communities; public, prominent structures; declaration of influence of the community
Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang
Resting place of Qin Shi Huang, first Qin Emperor, in Xi'an China; recreation of Qin capital, huge central mound, over 7,000 Terra Cotta Warriors, hundreds of chariots; tomb itself is unexcavated, supposed reconstruction of China with rivers of mercury; 700,000 workers needed, prisoners and skilled laborers forced to build the complex, foreign and local workers, mass burials of workers discovered
The Valley of the Kings
region of Egypt hidden in an isolated are in the Thebian Hills used between 1539 BC to 1075 BC to bury pharaohs and leaders of Egypt
The Pyramids of Giza
Burials of pharaohs of the 4th Dynasty of the Old Kingdom; construction by paid labor; built by skilled workers, workers paid in beer and bread, lived in purpose-built town
The African Burial Ground
Site of African burials in New York.
Reburial ceremony in 2003. Controversy over what should have been done/whether to continue excavation/what to do to honor the dead buried there
Ancestor veneration
veneration of apical ancestors common in societies organized by kinship; notion of "family" includes dead and living; ancestors play active role in society; ancestors desire/require activities provided by the living; living desire/require activities required by the ancestors; ritual communication links living and dead; may be concepts of reincarnation; worship often linked to geographical place
Maya ancestor veneration
intangible components of the dead: names and souls that belong to a kin group are recycled, giving the soul immortality; evidence of ancestors watching from above on stelas; receiving torch from founder of dynasty; deities bled maize to create the world, Maya let blood to nourish the deities; bloodletting to communicate with the ancestors; below floor burials and burials in benches that express family continuity and strengthen rights to material property, as well as allow the dead to "share" the house with the living
Pilgrimage
travel to sacred sites, with one destination or many, often centered around the burial sites of saints or important figures; the whole path is imbued with memory; collective knowledge of where to go, eat, stay; gathering spaces allow for sharing of knowledge; rites of passage require intergenerational knowledge
Huacas
mountains and other geographic features considered to be gods by indigenous Andean people, especially the Inca (15th and 16th c. CE); object that represents something revered, can be natural or manmade; individuals, particularly children, sacrificed and placed in these features when Andean peoples were asking for protection or rain; the dead are associated with and empower these sites, so the feature can come to represent the dead
Cemeteries
designated are for the disposal of the dead, separate from residential or other use areas; extent is defined by human activity, limited by a wall or landscape, and may continue to expand over time; public, accessible, inscriptions on tombstones, visitation
Cenotes
limestone sinkholes seen as the doorway to the underworld where Mayan remains of the dead were placed; shape relationship to water (sacred); not all dead placed in cenotes; represent the intersection of individuals, society, and the gods
Uighur shrines
ethnic groups primarily located in Western China with Central Asian Turkic ancestry that established a large empire in the 8th-9th c. CE, face discrimination; pilgrimage to shrines is an important religious rite; practices established Pre-Islam and tied to Buddhism and Tengrism; pilgrimage to shrines of Bodhisattvas and important landmarks; historical documents record pilgrimage paths; burials of important Turkic Muslim saints, use of pre-Islamic rituals, songs and poems that recall the lives of these saints; shrined believed to have the power to cure infertility and diseases and avert natural disasters
Berawan deathways
people of central Borneo; want the body unchanged, wash the bones, keep bones in jars, storage of body in longhouse before final stages; four stages; may consume liquids of decomposition mixed with rice; often not buried at all; after death the soul is divorced from the body and cannot reanimate the corpse but cannot enter the land of the dead yet (hovering soul is feared)
Kaharingan deathways
traditional faith of people of central Borneo; eventual relocation to a bone repository with ancestors/family but bones must be purified by earth, fire, and prayers; secondary treatment (tiwah)- cleaning of unearthed remains and placing in sandung (repository) and eventually in family's bone repository; journey of soul to Prosperous Village
Merina tombs
strong ties to where dead relatives/ancestors (razana) are buried; partly underground chambers, walls of stone, top usually capped by a huge stone slab covered by concrete, chamber reached via staircase, sometimes highly decorated portion that comes out of ground; made by specialists; very expensive; desire to make it last as long as possible
"good" and "bad" deaths in Sub-Saharan Africa
good- some natural deaths, some deaths by accident, some deaths in warfare, some sacrifices, suggests some mastery over the arbitrariness of the biological occurrence; bad- suicides, witches, deaths in childbirth, executions, some sacrifices, deaths from some diseases, anomalous people
Constructing ancestors in Sub-Saharan Africa
process by which the dead were treated constitute primary stage (burial in myriad positions and contexts, desiccation, exposure, secondary treatment, curation); grave form could invoke the house; narrow tomb entrance was important as it evoked a passage to an ancestral existence; sitting upright seen as important; usually maintained, venerated, and 'socialized' by secondary treatments; skull often focal point of ancestor creation; could be transformed by fragmentation processes; wrapping; ancestors can relate to medicine and healing and thus to continuation of life
Osteology
the study of human bones; sub-discipline of anatomy, anthropology, and archaeology
Functions of the human skeleton
protecting brain, spinal cord, organs; movement and stability; haematosis (production of blood cells); mineral reservoir; endocrine regulation
Axial skeleton
skull, vertebral column, and rib cage; maintains the upright posture; carries weight of the head; protection; connection between the limbs; necessary to survive
Appendicular skeleton
bones of the limbs; locomotion; protection; growth and development
Compact bone
Also known as cortical bone; solid and dense; makes up bone shafts and external surfaces
Spongy bone
Also known as cancellous or trabecular bone; porous and lightweight; internal and sandwiched between flat bones
Types of joint
Fibrous (immovable)- joints in skull; cartilagenous (semi-movable)- vertebral joints; synovial (freely movable: gliding, hinge, pivot, ellipsoid, saddle, ball and socket)- hip
Sokushinbutsu
self-embalming; practice of Buddhist monks observing asceticism to the point of death and entering mummification while alive; At least 500 year old practice; Practiced across the Buddhist worldSlowly reduce intake of food and water; Dehydrate organs; Ate only pine needles, resins and seeds; Reduce body fat; Goal to prevent decomposition; Enter into deep meditative state, Chant mantras, Sometimes buried alive, Mimicking the BuddhaBiologically and Socially Immortal: Remains of "living" mummies displayed in temples, buried in stupas, Lack of decomposition evidence of heightened state, Followers insist they are still alive and are treated as such
Lama Dashi-Dorzho Itigilov
self embalmed, meditation ceremonies and funeral rites when felt he was about to die, began to meditate and soon ceased to breathe; body in pine box, packed in salt; Followers believe that he is still alive, just in a deep meditative or nirvana like state; Followers shake hands with him, speak to him; April 2013, Vladimir Putin went to "hold a conversation"
Transhumanism
belief that the human race can evolve beyond its current physical and mental limitations, especially by means of science and technology
Anthropology
the study of human societies and cultures and their development
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