Final Thoughts... What could they be... READ ON

My original plan was to do two last blog posts one being on personal adornment and the other my final thoughts on the class, but looks as thought I have run out of time. With a rush of papers, projects, and exams in the last two weeks my blog as been put on the back burner slowly simmering and waiting to be brought to a boil again. So here we go, my final thoughts.  

Well as the semester comes to a close I thought I would share a few last thoughts on the dead and the stories they tell from my perspective. It has been an absolute pleasure to learn and understand what we can tell from the dead from Dr. McGuire, but its my turn now. So far we have looked at 10 different themes that have to do with the dead. They are;

Ethnoarchaeology

Treatment of Dead

Status

Landscapes of The Dead

Gender

Life-cycle

Kinship

Death Through Time

Politics of Death

and Memory

These themes have given me a good understanding of why we should look at our dead and how thy effect the decisions we make about of dead today. Surprisingly or so I thought we all buried our dead the same way over time, not the case. This may seem like an ignorant thought but I, as you know if you have been reading my blog, have not really been exposed to death passed someone close dying or visiting a cemetery. My eyes were opened, so much thought used to go into where someone was buried, what they buried with and how they were buried. It seems these days you are lucky if you have a family plot that you can get put into. If not you are on your own to find a place to dispose of the remains, if you so wish. Make sure you don’t break any laws, as there seem to be many out there prohibiting certain ways of disposing your deceased.

     It makes you have an appreciation for what the people before us did with their dead and understand why they did it that way. After learning about the many different things that happen and what they mean I look at our system of burying the dead and it seems so cold and unpersonable. While I get that times have changed and the ways in which we live our daily lives have changed we have become so cold and unwilling to deal with our dead in a respectful manner. I feel like those that were here before us, long before us, would frown upon the way we deal and dispose of our dead. We don’t get me wrong have come up with some pretty interesting ways to get rid of our dead. Overall what meaning does a simple gravestone mean these days?? Is there any way to really get someone’s status, gender, kinship, life cycle and landscape all in one?? Not even just the personal headstone but in a grave.

This I hate to say seems almost impossible. As I wrote in previous blog entries the things I would want to be buried with but that was only a few, but do those items say anything again about my gender, status, kinship, and life-cycle?? Not even close. I understand that those would be hard things to wrap up into a few items these days but the people before us left so much behind that could tell us these things. Here we are how many years later evaluating their remains, the graves, and the grave goods to see what their lives were like, where they ranked in society and who their kin were. It sounds like such an easy thing to put together yet somehow we can’t recreate that today. No single items could explain the complexity of the world we live in today. It helps a little that we have writing, language and communication but what if years from now like we evolved before evolve again into something different. What would massive cemeteries say about us??

There is so much to ponder about this topic, especially talking to someone who is not comfortable with it. The whole semester I have had people looking at me like why would you want to take that, and people saying that’s a class?? Yes, believe it or not it is. This class has truly opened me up to the idea of death and what I want to leave behind; not only in the elaborate grave and party I am planning for myself but what I want to leave behind in the world.    

Love me some Nat Geographic.

What’s better then National Geographic??

Let me tell you… Not much.

I should probably expand on this, I LOVE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC. I think I always will. They are always incredibly interesting, doesn’t have to be the cover story but there is always something I am going to learn out of those magazines. Ever since I was a little girl I remember there being stacks of them at my grandmas house. Didn’t matter if they were old or new at the time I loved to look at the pictures and read what was in them. Now of course I have probably read most of them and they kind of have to be new for me to look at them. As you can tell National Geographic has a special place in my heart. 

As I goggled the site that we a examining for our case study called La Doncella one of the first websites to come up was none other then National Geographic. Did I expect nothing less, not really. Check it out here  http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/09/photogalleries/mummy-pictures/index.html

Our rubric is divided into 6 different categories or headlines. They are topic choice, overall appearance, content, quality of sources, mechanics, and cooperative work. Some of these categories are a bit hard to evaluate from our rubric, as some of these categories would not apply. For instance I have no way to see how the cooperative work played out on this article the authors produced. The article and website are easy to navigate and very informative. The wed page dedicated to this site has pictures for what it is talking about, as well as very informative pieces to let people know what it is about. While this page is mostly fact based and does not go into detail about the site I feel like there is limited information. I think there could be more information shared about what they found and the specifics of their findings rather then a basic introduction to what they found. The sources for the website are completely reliable as they reference the specific archaeologist that found the bodies. I find that the pictures and visuals that they have are great, but offer no warning to how graphic they are going to be or the significance of each photo. The overall appearance of the website is well done and very put together. As most National Geographic sties are well put together. This specific site is a connecting site to the main National Geographic webpage, it is called the National Geographic News. This page allows you to connect to many other pages that have to do with the same topic.     

What would make it better???

I think a bit more specific information about the site and what they found would make the webpage more informative and a better read. This would also allow the reader to get a larger amount of information in a shorter article that is easier to read. National Geographic is a great webpage that is very interactive and informative for people that don’t want too much of a scientific explanation for it. I think a more interactive section on the site would make it more relatable to the general public. A good mix of information and interactive qualities to a website make it engaging for the general public, resulting in more hits to the website in general.   

How would you teach your child about death???

How children learn about death I think depends on the society and culture that they are brought up in. For instance those that grow up in a country with high poverty rates and a society stricken with disease and death are more used to the idea and have probably have more exposure to the subject. Versus a society that is not often stricken by poverty and disease, the exposure to death in these societies is very small compared to other countries.

This is how I see my exposure to death. I can’t say I really learned about it. I was never really sat down and told this is what death is, or this is what happens when someone dies. Growing up in a pretty religious house I learned a little bit based on the bible, but had no real experience of someone dying close to me until my junior high years. I also had questions about where we went or what would happen to us but a solid answer was never given. Not that I am saying people skirted around the issue with me because they didn’t think I could handle it, I just think people didn’t want to tell me at such a young age. It seems like it would be hard to explain to a child. I think that is why a lot of people don’t dive right into it with children. Most I think like me aren’t exposed until someone close to them has passed. I defiantly was when my grandma passed in 2007. 4 months later my other grandma had passed. They were the only two grandparents I had left, in a matter of 4 months they were both gone. It was a whirlwind activity flying between Calgary and Toronto. Having gone from attending no funerals to going to two in a small amount of time. They were both extremely different funerals and events leading up too. I had a lot of questions for quite a while and was scared to approach anyone about them because it was so fresh. Knowing now the relationships that both my parents had with their moms helps me understand that I probably could have asked them questions, that may have helped them heal a bit more as well.

I am getting away from myself, back to the reason I am blogging. I defiantly think that the exposure to death has an affect on the children and how they learn and deal with death. Many different societies are exposed to it all over the world and are okay with it. They all have traditions and rituals that take them through the burial of the dead as well as the healing process. I think that Western Society has put a negative spin on death through many different events in our history. Death has been seen as a topic that many people don’t talk about openly, an issue that is skirted around often by families and our society. Our exposure to death is very individual but collectively we are not open about the topic. Our society is not as exposed as others are due to our level of development.

I am not sure if our opinion of death as a society has changed overall or not. I think if it has it will have only changed a little bit. Events in our history every time something happens changes the way in which we look at death. This has an affect on our opinions and exposure to death as a whole. The more I think about it we have been changed by events in our history, but have our children, do they know what is going on???

So I ask this, how would you expose your child to death?? 

Would you wait for something to naturally happen and 

then go from there or would you just jump right into it???

Is he really Gay???

Typing gay caveman into Google seems like kind of a weird request, so why not do it. Well I did. I expected something kind of different from what actually came up. First of all I expected a lot more pictures to come up when I typed it in.

 

Instead I got news articles from sources like the telegraph, globe and mail, and the National Post. This kind of media needs to be taken with a grain of salt, as many of these sources tend to be biased from one side or another. The evidence that is brought up to prove that this individual was homosexual does not seem to measure up with a number of other different situations that could be possible. For instance they might have been buried that way because of something that had happened in that community. The individual may not have been from that community and had died there, out of respect this society buried them, but to show they were different they were buried in a different way. They may have been buried that was to confuse them if they were ever to come back in the after life. These could all be plausible understandings for the same findings. Which one is right??

 

As you can see from just a small amount of brainstorming on my part there can be many conclusions made from the individual found. Not that I am saying that these articles are not credible or correct or incorrect in any way. They can simply be seem as misleading to the average reader. This can also cause people to make their own assumptions about where the origin of homosexually has come from. It fuels the fire to many sides of this ongoing debate. Soooo which explanation is right?? I guess like all situations in archaeology we make an educated guess. As ya do. 

Who would have thought a cemetery would be such a calming place...

Now I must admit I didn’t really know where we were going with the whole monument analysis project until we were there. I think I can speak for most members in my group when I say it was not at all what we had expected. There was something soothing and peaceful about the Ross Bay Cemetery. Surprisingly a busy social spot as well. We instantly found an area and type of grave that we wanted to take a closer look at. Considering we are the group that is doing our case study on the Inca child mummies we figured it would lay a good groundwork to look at child and infant graves in the Ross Bay Cemetery. Check out our mp here!!

View Anth 392 Assignment - Monument Analysis in a larger map

To our surprise we found a lot of child and infant graves. This led us to wonder why there were so many. What seemed to be no specific order to which they were buried other then by religion and or family plot. Here are the research questions that got us thinking when we were in the Ross Bay cemetery. We classified infants as being two years old or under, and children as being two to ten years old.

1.     Is there a noticeable difference in the ornamentation on the graves of children compared to the graves of infants? Is one type more elaborate than the other?

2.     Is there a pattern for which children and infants are buried with their parents? Is it mostly infants or mostly children that are buried this way? Is there a specific time period when this is most common?

3.     Some headstones have clearly been changed or altered since they were first erected. Is there a pattern for which tombstones have been replaced?

Looking at our first research question I can’t help but think there would be an obvious answer to this question. There is a definite difference between the ornamentation on the graves of children to those of infants. The child graves tend to have more elaborate and descriptive gravestones. The graves for both children and infants tend to be smaller in size with less descriptive gravestones. We discussed while we were there that this might be because of the short life lived that they had less time to create a personality for the parents to base a grave stone on. This might be why many of the child and infant graves had a lot of bible quotes on them. I found this to make those gravestones a little less impersonal, but I don’t know why. They had chosen that quote for a reason why could I only see the generic quote and nothing more. It wasn’t till we stumbled upon a specific infant grave that had way more ornamentation then that of the children. Take for example the “baby shoes grave” seen below. This grave holds a 17-month-old child, D.B. Campbell. Given the name by is grave that has a child’s chair with two baby shoes sitting on the chair.

 D.B. Campbell

March 29, 1913

As for research question number 2 and patterns found in the way the children were buried with their parents I think we need to look at familial ties and when the deaths took place. The Kuwabara family is a good example for this. Both of the children died within two years of each other, the mother not far behind the children’s passing and the father not far behind them. We can only assume that it would make more sense to place them all in the same family plot all on one gravestone, versus different gravestones on the same plot of land. The interesting part about this grave is there seems to be an extra person in with them that we can only assume is another child in the family, even though the dates don’t necessarily make sense.

The Anderson family is another good example of this while many people seem to be buried in this plot and many names mentioned on the gravestone. None seem to be correlated in time periods. It seems to me that a lot of family members get buried with their families and another name is added to the gravestone.

  

Research question 3 has us again looking at the gravestones to see differences within them. While I am not certain when they were replaced or why there seemed to be a general pattern on location in which graves were replaced. Many sets of gravestones you could tell had been replaced recently in specific areas. This might have been because of decay of the material of the gravestone or possible erosion of from tree roots and water. Saying that there were quite a few old gravestones that have yet to be replaced and do not look like they need to be.

Who would have thought a cemetery would have been such a soothing and calming place. I guess my old age (not really) has really changed me. I no longer find them dark, creepy and weird. I am a peace with cemeteries, for now at least.

  

the unknown stories of Nkuu, Tanzania

 

Tanzanian Flag

If I could do my monument analysis somewhere else I would hands down choose a little village on the side of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, called Nkuu. Two years ago I spent 2 ½ months living there, teaching first aid and other subjects in the local secondary school. I became very close with my students and the people in the community. While I was there one of my students had lost her grandmother. I was invited and attended the funeral and the after gathering for this lady I never knew. Now you would expect that I might feel slightly awkward at a random lady’s funeral with a family I sort of knew, and her very large extended family and their friends, well... I did. They on the other hand acted like I was a special guest at a special ceremony, not really what I was expecting. Knowing only the basics of Swahili I could really only make out a few things that were said but, actions say a thousand words. This experience made me think of the difference between our funerary practices and those of people around the world.

 

Hannah, Me, and Rosie (student whose grandmother passed) on our way to the funeral

I passed many, what you could call gravestones and fresh burials, on my way to school every morning and even more on my way walking to catch the local transit back to the city. I never really thought too much about it until this assignment came up in class. I wondered who these people were and how old they were, I wondered why they were buried there and how many other people were buried in the same place. I had so many questions but no way of asking in the correct way, the joys of a language barrier. They do not have your typical cemeteries there. The dead seem to be placed and buried on the same land that the family currently lived on. Whether they owned that land or not we will never know. A massive celebration was also held, some seem to be filled with joy and the others a deepened sadness, depending on the family and the one who passed. Nonetheless it is an extremely colorful celebration that brings people from all over the mountain villages to mourn the loss of a loved one. It makes me think there must be some sort of organization to how they bury their dead, the celebration, and where they bury their dead. If only my Swahili wasn’t so ruff around the edges and I wasn’t so shy to ask, I might know a little more. 

While this may seem like a random place in the middle of no where I feel connected to it and can’t help but think there is defiantly a reason for the way in which they bury, and deal with their dead. It is a strange topic to bring up and research but would be incredibly interesting to study. When I think about it further I am not sure how far you would actually get. The people up there take a long time to feel comfortable with you. It may take longer than you think.       

Ceremony at Nkuu

Mushrooms

Did anyone just see that???

Erin mentioned a TED talk last week in class and posted online. Did anyone catch it?? If not here it is.

 

Thoughts???

I'm sure yours, like mine, went a little something like this, that is so cooooooool. I had never thought that this would have been an option. This is an extremely scientific approach yet it considers culture in a new aspect. Could a new culture be created from this?? This practice is something that could be everlasting and unique to us.

While I wouldn’t consider myself an extreme environmentalist I try and do my part by recycling and turning off the lights when I’m not using them. Some wouldn’t think that’s much, but I try my best to be conscious. This idea gave me a completely new look at our funerary practices. Rather then the average cremation or inhumation we could give back to the environment and bury our dead. Currently our funerary practices consume an extreme amount of energy and resources, from the pollution caused by cremation to the process of making the coffins, it all has a very large affect on our environment. Many people, I know do not think about the amount of energy it takes to produce a standard body to ready it for burial or for a funeral. This mushroom approach is a good mix that accounts for the environmental impact the our current funerary practices have. A change like this one to our funerary practices can have a lasting effect on our planet. A few weeks ago we were to look at the non-standard funerary practices that are out there. This would certainly qualify as one of them.

Who knew that a mushroom known as the infinity mushroom could wind you up in a ninja esk mushroom death suit, talk about non-standard burial practices. I really got into this TED talk, as I normally do because I love them. TED talks normally spark my interest and makes me think deeper and differently about the subject, good thing, I'm pretty sure that’s what they are for. Have a break?? need a good movie?? TED talks it is. 

The end of the talk was what really got to me. The part where she says…

The Mushroom Death Suit Itself

“We came from dust and we will return to dust. Survival of our species depends on the survival of the planet. This is the beginning of a true environmental responsibility” - Jae Rhim Lee

 

Something so pure and true, that makes you think. All of this other stuff like decreasing driving to cut pollution, or saving energy by turning the lights off matters but where we can make another difference is a place where people don’t talk about. Funerary practices. Can’t blame people that don’t like to talk about death let alone their funeral, but there comes a point where we all think about it. Whether it be from personal experience with death or just something that sparked the thought, we all ponder it at some point. This is an area, as in environmental funerary practices, that I would think many people don't know about and probably should. No one can deny that the last ten years has been a flurry of environmental movements hitting different industries at different times. It was only time for it to hit our funerary practices. It seems like a very smart way for new generations to think about when it’s their time to go. It is a lasting effect on the planet we call home, for future generations its a place to live longer and happier lives.  

It is more and more convincing these days when you say that the survival of our species depends on the survival of our planet. These words could not be further from the truth and make you wonder how do you want to be buried and do you want to have a lasting effect on the planet you are leaving…  

 Could this be you???

For more information on this project go to...

http://infinityburialproject.com/burial-suit