Rubric!

It is difficult for me to do this blog simply because so much of our rubric is specific to the assignment guidelines (e.g. is applicable to the class).

This is our rubric. I hope it shows up ok. I didn't know how else to get it in here. Anyways, the online site that I chose to take a look at is here: http://maam.culturasalta.gov.ar/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1&Itemid=2

It is the Museum of High Altitude Archaeology, and was created to display the Llullaillaco Children, the three of the child mummies discovered.

SO, here we go!

For Topic Choice I would have to give this page an excellent! I like the topic, and think that it is interesting, but this is one of the categories in our rubric that really relate to the class, so even if they hadn't done well here, it would not necessarily have been a reflection on the website.

For Overall Appearance, I would give the site a high satisfactory. While the site is visually pleasing, it isn't that creative. More could have been done to spice it up.

For Content I give the site an excellent. The material is good, and presented in a good way. There don't seem to be any errors in the information, and it is all relevant to the Llullaillco find. Also, I like that there is a virtual tour.

For Quality of Sources I give the site an excellent as well. While the sources may not be hugely varied, the information is coming directly from the archaeologists. It doesn't get much better than that.

For Mechanics, the site gets an excellent as well (I'm starting to sound like a broke record). The word choice is good, and I don't notice any major errors. There are no references done, so I can't really comment on those.

I am not going to assign a mark for group work, for obvious reasons. Overall, I think this was a great site! Rating a site is easier than rating a newspaper article, which I have already done in past posts. I hope that our case study gets such a glowing review!

Compassion

Well, it's been a while. I've been very busy, with family visits and homework from other courses. But I haven't forgotten about my blog! So here's another entry.
As part of a project in another class I came across this TED talk. It's about compassion. And I think it shows an important part of dieing that may not always be in archaeology: the living side of death.  

http://www.ted.com/talks/joan_halifax.html



In our talk about animals and human remains we have briefly talked a little bit about compassion, but I think that this is a little bit different. This talks about having compassion for those who are dieing in the present, which is a lot more difficult than having compassion for those who died in the past. I think so anyways.
Anyway, I love TED Talks and wanted to share one on this blog, but I hadn't found one which was really appropriate until now. Enjoy!

Otzi: The Iceman Commeth? Really?

So I was stumbling today, as you do, and came across this article. I was stumbling 'health' and I'm not really sure how this relates to health, but there you go. Anyways, it is about Otzi the Iceman, and I think it is a pretty good example of what I was talking about in my last entry. When articles are written about archaeological finds that contain very little information, and only a few flashy sentences, sometimes readers can get the wrong idea. I don't think that Mirror News intends to misinform their readers, but sometimes these things happen. Which is unfortunate. If anyone is interested, this is a link to the article:

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/27Ahve/www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/new-dna-profile-reveals-clues-746637/

As you can see, broad, sweeping statements are made about the find, without any sort of evidence mentioned or clarifications made. Oh well.

I think that it is also important to note that this happens with almost every field of research, not just archaeology. 'Psychology' is a subject that one can 'stumble' and I am a pysc major so occasionally I do. And while I find the articles I read there interesting, I know to take all of them with a grain of salt.

Journalists don't put the full story into articles because if they did there would be no point, they would just be rewriting academic papers. And while I respect that and still enjoy reading these articles, I think it is important to think critically about them. We are in university after all! Isn't that what were supposed to be learning to do?!

Anyways, just a quick example of what I was talking about last week. I hope midterms are treating everyone well!

Gay Caveman

The first thing I notice when googling "the gay caveman" is that the results all seem to be from online versions of newspapers (e.g. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1374060/Gay-caveman-5-000-year-old-male-skeleton-outed-way-buried.html or http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/8433527/First-homosexual-caveman-found.html). One has to be careful when reading a newspaper, or any non-scholarly source, because experts are often quoted out of context. Also, many times when an expert says something it means a different thing in their area then it does in everyday language. I think that both of these misinterpretations have happened here.
In many of the articles that come up on google there is only one or two quotes from the archaeologist. These quotes state that the caveman found was probably gay because of the way he was buried. But chances are the researcher said a lot more than that in their statement, possibly qualifying the statement about the caveman being gay.

Another problem that I am having with many of these articles is the fact that the caveman is refered to as being 'transgendered' or 'third gendered' in the same sentence. In anthropology a 'third gender' is a gender that is neither male nor female nor something in the middle. A third gender is a different entity who does not conform to male social norms or female ones. A 'third gender' does also not mean hermaphrodite. However, when reads 'third gender' in the same sentence as a the word 'transgendered', they may assume that third gender means the same thing are transgendered or hermaphrodite.
As students of anthropology or archaeology know, there are many possible reasons for why this man was buried in an unconventional way. Perhaps he was a third gendered individual, and therefor was not buried like a man, even though he was biologically male. It is also possible that he was a member of a religious elite, and purposely buried differently than other men for a reason. It is possible that this was a man from another group or area than the community burying him, and so they did not follow their own unique customs with his grave. It is also possible that the man was homosexual, and so was buried in a different way than the heterosexual men of the area.
There was also an oval shaped beaker found in the grave, a good that is usually associate with female burial. Many of the articles state this as evidence that the buried individual was gay. While this is a confusing anomaly, it is in no way evidence of homosexuality.
What is so dangerous about these articles is that they are read by the public, who does not always think critically about them, or get the whole story. A person may read an article, and come away thinking that the caveman found was definitely gay, although there are many alternative explanations for his strange burial that are all equally possible.

Monument Analysis

As I mentioned earlier, our monument analysis took place at Ross Bay Cemetery. Since our plan is to eventually focus on Inca child burials and mummies for the case study, we decided to take a look at the graves of children and infants. Infants were considered to be up to two years old, and children age three to ten. Our first research question came out of my studies in personality. In personality psychology we say that even though a infant can have tendencies, a person does not have a fully developed personality until they are a young adult. This got me thinking. The parents of passing children may have had more of an idea of their child's personality then the parents of passing infants. Would this make a difference in the type of grave markers they chose? Would the graves of children be more ornamented than the graves of infants? This was our first research question.
As we were making our way through the cemetery, we found that in many cases children and infants were buried together. Either that just the two of them, or with the rest of the family. We began to think, is there a reason for this? If there a pattern for who is buried together and who is separate? This became our second research question.
We also noticed that there was a number of gravestones that had dates on them from many years ago, but clearly had been made much more recently. A good example of this is the grave of the Kuwabara Family.

The earliest death on the stone is from 1913. But clearly this head stone is much newer than that. Why were some replaced and some not? This became our third research question.


So, to recap, these were our research questions:

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?


All right, here we go...
When we first set out, I thought that the graves of infants would be less ornamented, simply because the parents who buried them didn't have as much time to 'get to know them' as the parents of passing children. I'm not trying to say that they didn't love their infants, just that few infants have developed distinct personalities or interests. Many of the graves that we think of nowadays have inscriptions relating to what the person did with their life, or even, in the case of the fire hat monument, an object to symbolize the person. I had assumed that the graves of infants would be obviously less ornamented. I think that I was wrong. 

While many of the most ornamented monuments that we found were of children, such as the above graves of Dottie Robertson and Leila Englehart, there were also a number of infant graves that were very ornamented, such as D.B. Campbell and William Henry. 

It became clear to me when setting up our goggle map that how old the child had been at the time of death didn't matter, because either way they were being buried by their parents. As Pearson (1999, 103) points out, children are not burying themselves. So we are never going to see a grave that truly reflects the life of a child. What we are seeing is a grave that reflects the grief of the parents. For example, the monument of D.B. Campbell (above) features a pair of baby's shoes. Now, it is possible that little D.B. had a favorite pair of shoes, but it is more likely that his or her parents decided to feature baby shoes in the monument because to them the shoes symbolized innocence and infancy. The headstone of Mary Anne Bryant reads "Asleep in Jesus". Mary Anne was only eight years old when she died, and while she probably knew who Jesus was, very few eight years olds have a real concept of Jesus or religion or what it means to go to heaven. I am guessing that her parents added that inscription because it comforted them to think of their daughter peacefully asleep with Jesus. 
There is no pattern or rhyme or reason regarding which graves were more heavily ornamented because they were not designed by children or infants, they were designed by grieving parents. These parents chose which ever monument they thought would best honor their lost child. For some parents, like those of Minty Wriglesworth, a simpler monument seemed best, while others chose something more elaborate. 

Our second research question was why some infants and children were buried either together or with their entire families. The Kuwabara family (above) is a good example of this, as is the Anderson Family. I have three different theories for why this would happen.

In this example all members of the family died at different times, and yet were still buried together. As Aragon (2002) points out, often families are buried together as a way to preserve the social ties that existed in life. This particular monument was included in our data set because M. V. Anderson was just an infant when they died. The whole family was probably buried together as a way to symbolically and physically keep them together. This is my first theory. 


In other cases it appears that members were buried together because they passed away at about the same time. In the case of the Sprinkling family, Jane passed away at about the same time as Baby Max. 

Having two family members pass away at the same time could be a reason that these three were buried together. This is my second theory. However, there could be another reason that Baby Max was buried here. As I mentioned earlier, children are often buried in a way that most comforts the parents, or the caregiver who is burying them, and perhaps Max's parents took comfort in knowing that his final resting place was with his grandparents, who would look after him. This is my third theory, that children and infants are  buried with family members because it brings some comfort to those that are burying them. This may seem similar to the first theory, but they are actually subtly different. In this case Max's parents  may not have buried him with his grandparents to maintain any kinship ties, but rather to make sure there was someone that they trusted around to look after him. I think another good example of this kind of group burial is the grave of Nonnie Kelly and Willie Hogan. 

When these two were buried Nonnie was seven years old, and Willie was seven months. There are no years on the monument, so we cannot tell if they died at the same time. However, the inscription under Willie's name reads "Our Baby". This leads me to believe that in life Nonnie's role was to look after Willie because he was, well, the baby. There is also an inscription that reads "Erected by Mother". Maybe because the mother could not always be with them, she made sure that they were with each other. 


However, another point that Aragon makes in her article (2002) is that often mortuary evidence is misinterpreted. While it seems logical to assume that The Anderson family wanted to be together in death because they were together in life, perhaps they were buried together because there was no more space left in the cemetery. Maybe this family fought when they were alive and did not speak, but a relative who was in charge of burying them thought that they should be together. We can never really know. Perhaps family members are buried together because it is cheaper to do so that way. You don't have to spend as much money on plots, and only have to pay for one tomb stone. While the three theories that I outlined seem logical to me, I am also coming at this from a middle-class, 21st century viewpoint. I could be very, very wrong. And that is always a possibility in archaeology. Nothing is ever 100%. 


As far as out third research question goes, I am not going to say very much about it. According to the Old Cemetery Society, when the cemetery first opened many of the monuments were made of wood, because those erecting them could not afford stone. Because wood decays (as we in archaeology know all too well), by 1983 all of the markers were replaced with stone ones. This could explain why so many 'older' monuments were clearly made very recently. The society also works to preserve the monuments, and keep them clean. More information about this work can be found here: 
http://www.oldcem.bc.ca/gp.htm


Over all, the monument analysis was a lot more interesting and enjoyable than I thought it would be. I think it was an interesting projects, because we were able to go out and do the kind of thing that archaeologists regularly do. And the Ross Bay Cemetery was so peaceful- how could you not enjoy it?!






References: 


Aragon, L.V., 2008. Collective Burials and Community Memories: Interpreting the Placement of the Dead in the Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic United States with Reference to Ethnographic Cases from Indonesia. Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association, 11 (1), 27-54. Available through Wiley Online Library [Accessed February 14th 2012].


Pearson, M. P., 2008. The Archaeology of Death and Burial. 5h ed. College Station: Texas A&M University Press. 

Cemetery tours.... I'm into it

This sunday my group began our monument analysis. We chose to study headstones are Ross Bay Cemetery, specifically the ones of children and infants. This may sound a little depressing, but we are doing our case study on Inca child mummies, so taking a look at Canadian child burials seemed appropriate. As we were working one surprising comment that we all kept making was how nice the cemetery was. It was peaceful and calm, right on the ocean, and it didn't hurt that sunday was a beautiful day. We were all saying how much we would like to have a picnic there.

My new found love of Ross Bay Cemetery led me to their website, and a list of tours that they offer every sunday. The tours are varied, each time focusing on a different type of person who is buried in Ross Bay. And now I really, really, REALLY wanna go on one. February 19th is the Black History tour, which will discuss the lives and deaths of many people who escaped slavery in California and ended up in Victoria. I think that sounds amazing. A full list of tours can be found here:

http://www.oldcem.bc.ca/tour.htm

Also, June 3rd it the Awake and Dreaming tour. Awake and Dreaming was one of my favorite books when I was in elementary school, but I never realized that Ross Bay Cemetery was involved in it at all. The tour is run by Kit Pearson, and I actually think I'm going to go to this one. Even if it's just to meet Kit Pearson. I read all of her books when I was younger, and loved them all. But I digress.

I have a sneaking suspicion though that there are a number of people who wouldn't be interested in taking a tour of a cemetery. It seems a little morbid, some may even say disrespectful. Maybe I am not troubled by the cemetery because I have spent so much time in museums. Our relationship with death as a society is somewhat complicated. I wonder what this says about me, that I was so comfortable in a place where so many would be uncomfortable. That I was so happy and peaceful in a place where so many go to mourn. But, when you think about it, cemeteries should be peaceful; it is the final resting place after all. 

White crosses

Now let's see... If I were to do my monument analysis somewhere else, where would it be?
This may seem a little morbid, but I think i would look at the crosses on the sides of highways. I can remember going to Montana to go skiing in  middle school, and being shocked by the number of crosses next to the highway, to represent people that had died in car accidents. Even though most of the monuments (most were crosses) looked very similar, I think it would be interesting to do a full inventory of them on a stretch of highway somewhere.

I did a little bit of research on these crosses (mostly indirectly while looking for pictures) and found this blog: http://blog.aggregatedintelligence.com/2008/07/white-crosses-along-montana-highways.html , which led me to discover that the white crosses along the Montana highways are apart of a special program run by the American Legion of Montana. It turns out that all of the crosses are white because they were put there by the legion. The program is called the 'Fatality Marker Safety Program' and is intended as a safety program, not a memorial program. More information can be found at these websites:
http://www.mtlegion.org/programs/30-highway-fatality-marker-overview.html
http://www.mtlegion.org/programs/highway-fatality-markers.html

The stories of the victims of the accidents can be found here: http://www.montanahighwaycrosses.com/

I couldn't bring myself to read any of them. A good friend of mine passed away this past summer in a highway accident, and so I think these stories would hit a little too close to home. Maybe that's why I started thinking about highway crosses in the first place, because the last death I experiences was on a highway. It gives me a good feeling to know that there is an organization out there that is dedicated to both memorializing these victims (although that is not what the program is intended for), and helping to raise awareness about how dangerous driving at high speeds can be.