ya...that's gonna leave a mark

I’ve recently been spending far too much time staring, with equal parts horror and fascination, at pictures of skeletal pathologies and trauma. A really cool resource I was introduced to through a different class is a downloadable excel table which has links to thousands of pictures of skeletal pathologies/traumas (To access the table just follow the link and click ‘skeleton photos’ to initiate the download).

It’s worth mentioning that these are photos of real human remains and some of the pathologies can be quite unpleasant looking so if you find that sort of thing disturbing then this resource is not for you! If you have an iron constitution however and are bored one evening feel free to peruse the collection. Personally I find many of the pathologies give me the heebie-geebies but I do enjoy the battle-type wounds such as sword or battle-axe wounds. Sorry, perhaps I should rephrase that. I am interested in looking at the effects of battle on the skeleton; I’m quite sure I wouldn’t 'enjoy' getting my skull sliced through with a sword.

 At this point you may be asking yourself what is the relevance of all this babbling. Aside from being very interesting, blade injuries are quite useful to a mortuary archaeologist because they are one of the few skeletal pathologies or skeletal markings that are relatively easily attributable to a cause. Blade wounds appear, to the trained eye, quite different than post-depositional damage and unlike the diseases which leave skeletal traces, are much more easily attributable to their specific cause.

Of course evidence of blade wounds only appear on the skeleton if the blade comes into contact with the bone. It is quite possible to kill someone with a blade and leave no evidence of the injury on the skeleton. Additionally, blade wounds cannot always be determined to be cause of death. Some blade wounds, for example, are clearly severe enough to have caused the death of an individual if they were inflicted ante-mortem.

The problem is that peri-mortem injuries (that occur around time of death) can’t be attributed to occurring before (causing death) or after death (post-mortem mutilation) with certainty. Nevertheless blade injuries present on skeletal remains are one of the most useful forms of evidence available to archaeologists for reconstructing cause of death.

 References:
Images from Donald J. Ortner, Ohio State University, Global History Health Project.
Image 1: Towton No. 006, Adult male from Towton, England collection AD 1461. Sword wound to top of Skull.
Image 2: ANM 2069, Adult male from Prague, Czechoslovakia collection. Sword wound, dislodged bone on skull.

The Writing's on the Wall (but you probably can't read it, unless you're good with hieroglyphs)

My classmate Cailin posted a cool blog about a necropolis in the ancient kingdom of Kush which neighbours Egypt. The people there built funerary monuments that seem to be hybrids between pyramids and tumulus’ (tumuli?). The part of her blog that really caught my attention though was the archaeologists who worked there found inscriptions wishing grandma good meals in the afterlife.  That reminded me of some very cool graffiti from the builders who worked on the great pyramids of Giza in Egypt.

Some of the ancient graffiti found deep inside the Great Pyramid Photo credit: © WGBH Educational Foundation (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/who-built-the-pyramids.html).

I love ancient graffiti because it is one of the few glimpses we get of ‘real’ people. The graffiti by the pyramid builders, such as an inscription by one of the worker gangs identifying themselves as ‘the Drunks (or the Drunkards) of Menkaure’, breathes life back into the ancient stones of these monuments. I think sometimes when we are looking at monuments from so far in the past, especially monuments like the pyramids that have been assimilated and incorporated into popular culture; we forget that they are graves.  Even the powerful pharaohs were people who loved and were loved and while their funerals and funerary monuments undoubtedly had important socio-political functions they were probably emotionally important to the people who mourned them as well.

This week we have been learning about how different cultures understand or categorize the lifecourse. For simplicity’s sake, the lifecourse is basically different stages an individual goes through in life such as childhood, adolescence, etc. I found the discussions we had in class about the lifecourse really got me thinking about how individuals experienced life in past societies. I suppose I tend to get so caught up with the material culture side of archaeology; C14 dates, grave goods, stone monuments, etc. that  in a strange way I almost dehumanize the people I’m trying to learn about. Archaeology is all about reconstructing social organization, and subsistence patterns, and funerary practices, and the list goes on and on. I think it’s really important to look at a smaller scale sometimes even though reconstruction of individual lives from the archaeological record is often not possible; we can at least imagine some of those little moments in life that the archaeological record remains largely silent about. I mean, perhaps a bunch of rowdy ancient Egyptians builders got drunk and urinated on the partially constructed tomb of their illustrious pharaoh while he was in bed restlessly counting sheep? cattle? camels? because he had lost at Senet that evening.

Queen Nefertari Playing Senet, Tomb of Nefertari;
ca. 1279–1213 B.C. (http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/100005246)

Gladiator Burial Clubs

Reading my classmate Lauren’s post on the discovery of Richard the III (http://beyondgraves.blogspot.ca/2013/02/can-you-judge-life-by-its-skeleton.html), and pondering some of the luck involved with our ability to ID him, got me thinking about issues of archaeological inquiry/discovery and status. When we get right down to it both archaeologists and the general public have an affinity for high status figures and discoveries (in general!). While doing research for a case-study on deviant burials I was plagued by high-status discoveries. My search results for the site of Sutton Hoo went something like: ‘Sutton Hoo ship burial, the treasures of Sutton Hoo, Sutton Hoo a princely burial ground’, and on and on. To be fair I understand that it is much more difficult to make interpretations from the archaeological record the less information you have. High-status individuals, like Richard the III, appear more commonly in our written history and very ‘rich’ burials such as the Sutton Hoo ship burial give archaeologist a wealth of information to work with. An unmarked mass grave, where many lower-class individuals have ended up, offers archaeologists fairly limited interpretive potential.

I would suggest an interesting area for looking at mortuary archaeology of the lower-class is Roman-period gladiators. While some gladiators could actually become quite wealthy most were not and regardless of wealth, they were still slaves. Gladiators were actually part of a specific social class legally referred to as infames in which people with certain occupations such as gladiators, prostitutes, and  actors were considered, regardless of wealth or fame, to be very lower-class (Lex Julia Municipalis (CIL n. 206)) (For more information on Infamia see: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0063:id=infamia-cn). Additionally because they were slaves many gladiators ended up dying far away from their kin and homeland; while this makes for interesting isotopic analysis, it means gladiators may often lack the people who would traditionally mourn and bury them. Gladiators, however, dealt with these issues in a very cool way. They created what might be called burial clubs or unions. They would all contribute a small portion of their winnings to a fund which they would then use to provide a funeral and burial for other gladiators in the club when they died (Kyle 1998:160-1). We have extant epitaphs that allow burials to be identified as gladiators (Carter 2007).

I, Victor, a left-handed gladiator, lie here, though my fatherland is Thessaloniki. Fortune killed me, not perjured Pinnas; no longer let him boast. I had an arms-mate, Polynices, who avenged me by killing Pin-nas. Claudius Thallus was in charge of this memorial from what Victor left behind (ex testamento).

(Robert (1940) 94-5 no. 34 = IGBulg III 1019, In Carter 2007).

I think these burial clubs are a fascinating way we see a group coping with their social position that would provide an interesting means of investigating a lower-class group from the archeological record.

References: 
Carter MJ. 2007. Gladiatorial Combat: The Rules of Engagement. The Classical Journal 102(2):97-114.

Kyle DJ. 1998. Disposal from Roman Areans: Some Rituals and Options. In Spectacles of Death in Ancient Rome, 5:155-183.  London: Routledge.  

Map to 'My Guys'

View Royal Oak Burial Park Sections B and G in a larger map Here is the Google map we created of some of the military burials in Royal Oak Burial Park. If you want to visit my guys you can check out where they reside in Section B of the park. You Can also find links to all the photographs that featured in my last post.

I will remember you

As part of a class project we were required to conduct data collection in a cemetery. I admit as I drove to the cemetery on the day we had selected for our fieldwork I was all business; get in get out approach. I had a ton of school work to get done that weekend and I wanted to get the fieldwork done quickly so I could get started on the essay portion of the project. As our group trudged into the cemetery, notebooks and cameras in hand, there was a distinct feeling of uneasiness that settled over us. I felt that I was somehow trespassing on the people buried there, that somehow, because I did not know them I had no right to be there. As we walked past the crematorium my uneasiness increased especially as I looked at the thick chimneys sticking up at the back of the building. It`s strange the way cemeteries affect us. I do not consider myself to be a particularly religious or superstitious person but I was acutely aware that I had crossed some form of boundary by entering the cemetery and was now in a space where the boundary between the living and the dead was blurred.

 As we began our data recording, issues of ethics were foremost in my mind. I felt uncomfortable crouched over a grave with my notebook, again with a feeling that I was trespassing. I felt that by recording information about the grave marker, I was somehow reducing a human life filled with emotions and experiences to a couple of rows and columns on a wrinkled piece of paper. As I progressed through my recording however I began to feel less intrusive and more attached to the individuals whose graves I was reading. While at the beginning I felt it was sad that a human life could be reduced to a chunk of stone with some words scrawled on it, as time passed I began to feel the magnitude of their (the gravestones) presence. These markers were much more than stone and words. Despite the limited amount of information displayed on their graves I felt a connection to the individuals buried there. One of ‘my guys’ as I began to call them died on December 25^th 1950 and I found I was struck by an overwhelming sadness at the idea of dying on Christmas day. Then I felt bad for feeling preferential sadness to someone because he died on Christmas, as if that was somehow worse than dying any other day of the year.

As we wrapped up our fieldwork and headed home to warm up I felt emotionally drained. Instead of getting right to work I needed to recharge. I went to the beach with a friend to watch his dog race up and down the beach exuding joy and vitality and life. Our trip to the cemetery turned out to be so much more than just scholarly data collection as I had anticipated but ended up being a thoroughly emotional experience. Even as I began analyzing the collected data looking for patterns in monument styles it was no longer ‘strictly business’. I had forged an emotional connection with the individuals whose graves I visited. I felt protective of them. It had somehow become my responsibility to make sure they were not forgotten. And isn’t that really the point of grave markers, to make sure when we die we don’t just cease to exist? Even if our body decomposes into nothing there is still some tangible marker of our lives, that we are remembered. Well if that is the case ‘my guys’ can rest in peace because I will remember them. 

  All photogrpahs were taken by me on February 10th 2013 at Royal Oak Burial Park, Section B.You can visit the Google map we created of some of the military burials in the park. On the map you can also find links to all the photographs that feature in this post. If you want to visit 'my guys' you can check out where they reside in Section B of the park.

Where is your line?

This week we have been learning about mummies!!! Mummies are an interesting and controversial subject that has captured the imaginations of people everywhere. They stir up strong responses; fear, awe, disgust, fascination? For me they bring issues of ethics to the forefront because they force us to confront how we conceptualize bodies as human or object or maybe even somewhere in between. They bring us face to face with death in ways that less fleshy remains perhaps do not.

I like bones. Bones appear to be hard, unchanging objects and I think we often conceptualize of them as objects because we do not usually witness the dynamic nature of live bone but only the static state of dry-bones. Last semester I took human osteology and I found, for the most part, that I did not have a problem dealing with human remains in this way. It was in an educational environment emphasizing the importance of bodies for anatomical learning and scientific pursuit. Even the fetal or young skeletal remains did not evoke a large reaction for me. It wasn’t until I was studying carpals (wrist bones) one day that I really got the heebie-jeebies that fleshy remains give me from the get go. I was sorting through a bag of random carpal bones identifying them and when I was done I had eight of one type, six of those from one side of the body. That’s when it hit me. I had a small handful of bones each one no bigger than a cm long and they represented the remains of six people. Could I really be holding the remains of six human lives in one hand? Could a human life filled with laughter and tears, hardships and victories really boil down to a centimeter long chunk of bone? That was the moment for me when these clean, dry, dis-articulated teaching bones made the shift in my mind from object to person.

It wasn’t as if I didn’t conceptualize human remains as human. When faced with a full skeleton I would clearly identify it as a person and I would be eager to study their bones not so much because I find bones themselves a remarkable tissue, which I certainly do,  but because I would want to bring them back to life, to know their story. As less and less of a complete body is present however I think it is easier and easier to see objects rather than people. Unless confronted with the discomfort of facing the magnitude of dead individuals as I did, it is easy for your brain not to make the connection between a chunk of bone and a living human. Personally I find fleshy bodies such as mummies much harder to conceptually divorce from personhood although certainly not everybody views mummified remains as people rather than objects.

Where is the line for you? Is it mummies? Is it children? Is it the recently deceased? It is an interesting question to consider as it is a very complex and individual process but I think it gets you thinking about how you conceptualize death and how that relates to issues of ethics when dealing with human remains. Hopefully these pictures will stimulate you to consider where you conceptually draw the line between person and object.

 Image References:
1. Lamp (http://store.graciousliving.com/brown-ballister-table-lamp.html), Chinchorro mummy (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/08/pictures/120813-mummies-chinchorro-proceedings-desert-driest-chile/), John Cleese (http://masticateonthis.blogspot.ca/2010_09_01_archive.html)
2.Tollund Man, Denmark (http://www.mesh5.com/tension/febmarch/tollund1.htm)
3. Sedlec Ossuary, Czech Republic (http://twistedsifter.com/2012/08/sedlec-ossuary-bone-church-czech-republic/)
4. Bronze Age Wessex, UK (http://flickrhivemind.net/Tags/archaeology,ps/Interesting)
5. Rosalia Lombardo (http://www.ticinolive.ch/2013/01/23/rosalia-lombardo-bella-addormentata-nella-catacomba-dei-cappuccini-a-palermo/) 
6. Capuchin Monastery mummies: Palermo, Sicily (http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/countries/crypt-photos/