A little mid-week humour

EDIT (March 28, 2012): Well it seems that my comic posting was "not approved" by its original website for which I do apologize. Here's a link instead because it is still good for a chuckle and of course if you like it, do take a minute to stop by Brevity Comic. I also stumbled across another great archaeology related comic hosted by the Smithsonian, also definitely worth a glance! Now back to your regular programming original blog post...

A thousand years from now you're going to be able to tell which are the graves of past archaeologists based solely on the weird and unexplainable grave goods!  Also for another humorous look at archaeology you should check out the introductory textbook "Archaeology: The Comic" I haven't read through the whole thing but I would have been delighted if my ANTH100 teacher had used it as a text, if only for a joke!

A New Dig Hopes To Tell A New Story

So I stumbled across this article the other day on the excavation of a slave burial ground in St. Helena. Now first of all, I had no idea where St. Helena was. And it's no surprise really...that purple maker on the map marks the tiny island, so small it doesn't even show up (only 122 square kms)! But despite its size during the mid-1800s St. Helena was the landing place for over 26,000 freed slaves. However even these freed slaves became victims of the horrendous conditions aboard the ships and many succumbed to various illnesses before landfall. Because of this, a huge cemetery developed on the island and the article's authors were able to excavate 325 of the estimated 5000 bodies that were buried there.

View St. Helena in a larger map

The main reason I found this article fascinating, and an idea that the authors themselves touch on, is that this is truly archaeology of the individual. This excavation is looking at these bodies as people with faces, names, and stories. The article even touches on a few possible kin groups that may be present! This archaeological dig is helping to highlight that each of this victims has a history that unfortunately was robbed from them in more ways than one. The complete report is published in book format and looks like it could be an interesting read. Unfortunately with an Amazon price of $50.00 I think I'll have to wait until it's available through the library!

Room for improvement...

Mycenae, Greece is a recognized UNESCO World Heritage Site and was first excavated in the 1870s by Heinrich Schliemann. However, it seems that even though Mycenae has been studied for over a hundred years there are few websites that are dedicated (or even touch on) the grave circles found there. I chose to look at Dr. J's Illustrated Grave Circles and see how it held up to our rubric.

First of all, the site is not particularly attractive.  It's simple and is easy to look at, but it's lacking any sort of pizzazz that would keep my attention. It is very easy to navigate though as there is only one page on the Grave Circles. There are others on the various other "finds" at Mycenae and there is a great "site index" link that lays everything out. 

Content wise, this page is sorely lacking. There are brief descriptions explaining various photos and a very short introduction but there is no attempt to analyze or look at the multiple excavations in depth. To be fair, the website seems to be geared more toward those perhaps travelling to Mycenae rather than those interested in the archaeological record. Saying that, there are some great photos both of the site and the significant artifacts that were found. The content is also clearly articulated though not particularly interesting. The major downfall of this site (besides the design) is the lack of sources. Although the author clearly has done some reading or is herself knowledgeable it would be nice to see some bibliographic links.

Overall, Dr J's website is a great introduction to the Grave Circles at Mycenae. Held to my group's rubric I would say that it falls into the "good" category rather than the "strong" or "excellent". The things that would make it better, and which we hope to achieve with our site, are definitely more depth in the content and a greater degree of design. Dr J's page is boring and in no way reflects the awesomeness and importance of the Grave Circles or the Mycenaean culture.

Writing about how I came to understand death made me think about how I deal with death in my life today. Beyond the foreseeable deaths of older relatives and friends in my life I have also had the misfortune of seeing a handful of friends taken from me by alcohol and/or drugs. If there is one thing that always gets me through any hardship in life it's music and of course there are many songs that take on the subject of death. Dallas Green is arguably my favourite Canadian artist and I pretty much love anything he touches. "Body in a Box" is a favourite of mine and always makes me think about my own "dying day"

Song starts in at about 1:15

Lyrics | City And Colour lyrics - Body In A Box lyrics

Anybody else have a favourite "death" song?

Death and Dinosaurs

As someone with absolutely no "maternal instinct" and no wish or desire to ever procreate I count myself lucky that I will hopefully never have to explain death to a child.  Children terrify me and the idea that I would be responsible for teaching a little human being about things that could potentially scar it for life is truly bloodcurdling.

Image Source: Chattahbox.com

My own education surrounding death is somewhat convoluted. My parents tell me that I learned of death in what they consider the predominant fashion, through the church. However, they also remember that the idea of death I first developed was somewhat warped. Apparently they first sat me down to talk about death after I threw a tantrum while visiting Drumheller.  My demands for a pet dinosaur could not be dissuaded by their state of distinction.  I argued that if Jesus could die and come back so could a brontosaurus. Or, like the photo, they could come back together! Death, in my 5 year-old mind, was temporary and you either came back again or went to heaven which was just like real life only better (it definitely had dinosaurs!).

Image Source: Amazon.ca

These days there are a plethora of resources for parents or any adults to use when preparing to talk to children about death.  I googled "children death" and came up with whole guides to explaining death to your child.  And if you're feeling particularly overwhelmed or inept there are even whole libraries of books to use!  Lifetimes is one that I recently came across in a book drive and gave to my cousin to read to her children after their cat, Seagram, passed away.

Reading the comments on this book's Amazon page prompted me to think about the ways death is perceived and explained by people.  Usually I refrain from reading internet comments due to their alarming predisposition to decline toward indecency and simple stupidity. This time, however, the comments pointed out what I believe to be perhaps the biggest factor that influences our ideology surrounding death - religion! Despite my relatively religious upbringing I consider myself today an atheist, or perhaps more aptly, a humanist. I no longer believe in an afterlife and instead view death as the end of being. Nothing more, nothing less. When I die, my neurons will cease firing and I will no longer exist.  This is something I have embraced but I feel would have difficulty sharing with a child.  In some ways the idea of heaven is the perfect addition to death.  It takes away the oblivion which I believe in and replaces it with a paradise to look forward to. Plus with heaven comes hell, the threat of which is sure to make most children behave!

Gay Cavemen and Gender in Archaeology

Googling the term "gay caveman" was not done without a degree of apprehension. As I typed in the words my mind was already filled with an idea of what I would find and I wasn't disappointed. The first headline that appeared was exactly as I suspected - "First homosexual caveman found" - no ifs, ends, or buts about it. If I had stopped reading at this point I would have not only gone through life misinformed but would probably have been an agent of dissemination, spreading this statement to others as "fact". However, delving further into the article I started to question a couple of points. First, there is no direct claim of homosexuality. The archaeologist uses words like "more likely" and "probably" but never states that this individual was indecisively homosexual. Second, the idea that this 'caveman' was of a different sexual orientation or was transgendered stems from his burial in a manner typically associated with females. I unfortunately immediately conjured to mind a stereotypical image of what this may have looked like and thankfully people with far better photoshop skills than mine have also jumped onto the that wagon.

"Gay Caveman"
Photo Source: Freerepublic.com

Archaeologists are limited in their understanding of the past by their understanding of the present.  Modern societies, especially our western one, usually view not only sex but gender as a dichotomy; we are male or we are female.  The idea of a third gender is slowly making its move to the front but we are still light years away from accepting that the true categorizations of gender are infinite. Archaeologists are by definition looking at material remains and trying to deduce ancient human history. Recognizing patterns is one way in which archaeologists have tried to give meaning to remains and while patterns provide great frames on which we can build they are far from absolute.  The idea that ancient humans had the same or similar ideologies to our own contemporary ones cannot be accepted at face value.  We may be able to study what they did but it is far more difficult to study how they thought.  And an understanding of how they thought is exactly what we need before we can go about making claims that any ancient human was transgendered or gay.

The Monumental Graves at St John the Baptist Heritage Church

Cemeteries have always been of interest to me.  Rather than seeing them as places of sadness and death I always felt that they were a source of stories and as a little girl I enjoyed taking grave rubbings and weaving stories of the people whose names were commemorated in stone. I was very happy when my group member Emily suggested we look at the graveyard at St. John the Baptist Heritage Church in Colwood.  I had never been, nor heard of, this cemetery and couldn't wait to explore.

St John the Baptist Heritage Church

Emily's eleven-year-old memory of St. John's was unfortunately skewed and while we had originally planned on looking at all the graves within the churchyard, they numbered 153 and we quickly realized we had to narrow our scope.  It seemed almost natural that as we stood amongst the graves pondering how to form our dataset, our answer was literally standing in front of us.  Upright grave markers!  While there were numerous graves, only 18 of their markers stood over a foot tall and those that did certainly stood out in the landscape.

View St John the Baptist Heritage Church Graveyard in a larger map

Once our dataset was defined it became more reasonable to develop our research question.  We decided that the most obvious question was why our graves had upright markers.  We could see through observation that they were in the minority and that amongst them there was significant variation but would we be able to discern a pattern that may explain their usage?  Was it simply graves from a single timeframe?  Or perhaps they were family stones rather than individual grave markers. With all these ideas and questions we set out to record each grave and get ourselves some answers.

Unfortunately it quickly became apparent that we probably weren't going to find any answers, at least not from the scope of this project.  The 18 graves shared many similarities but we were ultimately unable to find a correlation to explain their upright markers.  The graves varied between single plots measuring 8'x4' and double plots measuring 8'x10' (measurements based on concrete grave slabs). The sole exception being the Wilson grave which was a single plot measuring 9'x4'.  The upright markers themselves varied in size and style were used from 1919 AD to 1955 AD.  The markers also commemorated women and men of all ages as well as both families and individuals.  Overall it seemed to be quite a hodgepodge of graves.

There were a few graves that had distinct features or caught our eye in some way:

First we noticed that the markers of both the Wells grave and the Evans grave were seemingly missing toppers.  We thought that based on the shape and size of the broken areas and the Wells grave's similarity to the base of the Ruddle grave that these toppers had perhaps been large crosses (à la Ruddle grave style):

Wells Grave - Top View

Evans Grave - Top View

Ruddle Grave - Full View

Photo Credit: National Portrait
Gallery UK

Second was the grave of Hubert Wilberforce Wilson.  Hubert's grave was unique in that it was a foot longer than any other in the cemetery.  But what really caught our attention was the name of Wilberforce.  This grave quickly became our favourite and we somewhat bizarrely became enamoured with Mr. Wilson (Wilberforce to us) enough so to do some further research and discover more information on who could only have been an impressive man.   Suffice it to say that we were able to locate Wilberforce's history and learned much about the man. I won't go on but do read my group member Emily's blog on the esteemed gentleman for more information.  I will, however, mention that from our research we discovered that his grave marker listed a birth year (1857) that was inconsistent with the birth year listed by all online records (1867). 

Looking at the upright markers it was clear that though we were unable to find a pattern to explain their choosing they were clearly monuments meant to distinguish. Having done further research on only one individual and discovering him to me a man of higher rank it could be theorized that these relatively high-visibility monuments were used to mark the graves of those of higher status in a vertically differentiated or stratified society (Parker Pearson 1999, p.74).  Unfortunately to claim so definitively would require further research and many visits to the archival offices which is an endeavour that will have to be reserved for a less academically challenging time of year.

Reference List

National Portrait Gallery. Hubert Wilberforce Wilson. [online] Available at <http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp52822/hubert-wilberforce-wilson> [Accessed 17 February 2012].

Parker Pearson, M., 1999. The Archeaology of Death and Burial. Stroud: Sutton.