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Objects of Memory: The Ethnography and

Archaeology of Heirlooms

Article in Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory September 1999

DOI: 10.1023/A:1021999319447

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Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, Vol. 6, No. 3, 1999

Objects of Memory: The Ethnography

and Archaeology of Heirlooms
Katina T. Lillios1

With the emergence of chiefdoms, a new ideology of inherited social difference

had to be created and sustained over time. One way that inherited social in-
equalities may have been constructed, legitimated, and maintained is through the
transmission of heirlooms or artifacts that objectified a collective ancestral past.
Archaeologists have generally viewed heirlooms as anomalies or complications
in the archaeological record. In this paper, however, I argue that, if identified,
heirlooms have the potential to provide a richer and finer-grained understanding
of the human past, in general, and to aid in the determination of hereditary rank,
in particular. I discuss and compare the ethnographic evidence for heirloom use
in bands, tribes, and chiefdoms, and, based on this evidence, I suggest criteria
by which heirlooms might be identified in the archaeological record. Some exam-
ples of possible heirlooms from the archaeological literature are also presented.
Finally, an evolutionary model for the circulation and disposal of heirlooms is
proposed.
KEY WORDS: heirlooms; social inequality; chiefdoms; inheritance.

INTRODUCTION

The emergence of societies with hereditary rank, generally referred to as

chiefdoms, marked a pivotal moment in human evolution (Oberg, 1955; Steward
and Faron, 1959; Service, 1962; Sahlins, 1963; Earle, 1987, 1991a). In contrast to
egalitarian societies, such as bands and tribes, in which achievements, age, and sex
determined one's identity and rank, in chiefdoms one's links to an ancestral past
defined, to a large extent, what resources, power, and responsibilities one could
expect to enjoy, or endure, in a lifetime. An emphasis on ascribed, in contrast to
achieved, characteristics and status governed the social order. Thus, in addition

1
Department of Anthropology and Sociology, Ripon College, Ripon, Wisconsin 54971.

235
1072-5369/99/0900-0235$16.00/0 C 1999 Plenum Publishing Corporation
236 Lillios

to the reconfiguring of political, social, and economic structures, the nature of

personhood was profoundly transformed in the evolution of egalitarian societies
to chiefdoms (Gilman, 1995, p. 236).
Despite their apparently secure status, chiefs are, nonetheless, vulnerable. A
failure on the part of chiefs to maintain successfully their power or prestige, or
rather their failure to maintain successfully the appearance (or, some might argue,
the illusion) of their right to power or prestige, could lead to their demotion.2 Thus,
although the origins of chiefdoms are likely to be found in the control of critical
resources, such as land, productive technology, and labor (Earle, 1991b; Gilman,
1991), a new ideology of rank, of inherited difference, and of ascribed personhood
also had to be created and sustained over time.
In this paper, I explore one means by which social inequalities were likely
constructed, and contested, in emerging chiefdoms of the ancient past. Through a
survey of the ethnographic literature, I examine the potent role of heirlooms and
their transmission in constructing social inequality, particularly hereditary rank
in chiefdoms. In chiefdoms, heirlooms serve to objectify memories and histories,
acting as mnemonics to remind the living of their link to a distant, ancestral past.
And because not all the living have equal access to that ancestral past, as heirlooms
are typically valued objects that are not available or equally accessible to all mem-
bers of a community, the possession, display, and transmission of heirlooms also
differentiate the living and help to reify inherited social differences. The ethno-
graphic literature suggests means by which heirloomsand, I suggest, hereditary
rankmight be identified in the archaeological record, and I discuss these, as well
as some possible heirlooms from the archaeological literature.
In this paper, I am concerned primarily with the material and symbolic means
by which rank is legitimated and maintained over time, rather than the economic,
ecological, social, or political factors that facilitate or necessitate hereditary rank.
However, to paraphrase Drennan, I do not see the relationship between heirlooms,
as markers of hereditary rank or ancestry, as the secondary, epiphenomenal "plumes
of the chiefly peacock," in contrast to the primaryeconomic, ecological, social,
or politicalbasis of the peacock's "diet" (Drennan, 1991, p. 281). The ethno-
graphic record illustrates, in fact, that heirlooms are often precisely those same
objects that contribute to, or are the products of, economic, ecological, social, and

2
Firth (1960, p. 163) describes one such case, known through oral tradition, in the "demotion" of a
Tikopia chief, an Ariki Kafika, who abdicated after a serious case of yaws. Yaws is a contagious skin
disease, common in the tropics, which produces raspberry-red open sores on the afflicted. However,
the demotion of the chief had less to do with the disease impacting his efficacy but rather, in the words
of one of Firth's informants, "When the yaws stands (in the body of) a chief, it is the doing of the
gods." According to Firth, "The underlying reason for this setting of a chief aside...was not that the
disease was physically contaminating or ritually destructive, but that it was a manifestation of the dis-
pleasure of the gods towards the chief. There was a suspicion that he had done something wrong. In
any case, his power with the gods must have been ineffective, otherwise he would not be suffering."
Firth does note, however, that this principle was not often carried out in practice.
Objects of Memory 237

political success. Heirlooms are, commonly, the adzes and axes of farming and
forest clearance, the vessels used in food preparation, consumption, or storage, the
clothing and personal ornaments that are produced for, or displayed and exchanged
at, important feasts or rituals, and the weaponry of battle. Thus, heirlooms are in-
tegrally associated with productivity and social reproductivity. And, for hereditary
rank to be maintained over many generations and to transcend individual memo-
ries, potent symbols which effectively communicate to others a link to an ancestral
past are critical. Achievements in the political, social, and economic realms may
make a man a Big Man, but only with material symbolssuch as heirloomswill
chiefs and chiefly lineages be recognized as legitimate over many generations.
Distinguishing between prehistoric societies with inherited or ascribed sources
of rank and those with achieved sources of rank has long been an intractable prob-
lem for archaeologists (Saxe, 1970; Brown, 1971, 1981; Peebles and Kus, 1977;
Tainter, 1978; Chapman et al., 1981; O'Shea, 1984; Wason, 1994). Brown (1981,
pp. 29-30) reviewed the techniques available to archaeologists, identifying three
methods. These involve the energy-expenditure principle, the study of symbols
of authority, and the analysis of demographic structure. The energy-expenditure
principle posits that the more energy a human group expends in disposing of a
deceased individual [which includes that involved in building burial structures
and carrying out rituals and the abundance/weight of grave offerings (Randsborg,
1974)], the higher-ranking the individual. The existence of marked differences
in the energy expended in processing the dead should reflect marked differences
in the rank of that society's members. Yet, how exactly one distinguishes differ-
ences in energy-expenditure based on heredity, as opposed to achievement, remains
problematic (Tainter, 1978; Braun, 1979). The context of "symbols of authority"
which cross-cut age and sex categories has also been used to identify ascribed sta-
tus. For example, in his analysis of the burials at the Mississippian site of Etowah,
Georgia, Larson (1971, p. 67) interprets the presence of copper plates found in
an adult male burial and a child burial to suggest inherited rank. The problem
with this method is that one must first assume that certain items are "symbols of
authority" before proceeding with the analysis. Finally, archaeologists can use the
demographic structure of the population represented at a burial site to infer rank.
An egalitarian population would be expected to treat all its dead equally, and the
distribution of the dead, by age and sex, would be roughly similar. However, if sig-
nificant members of a population are missing from a burial assemblage, one might
infer that differential treatment of the dead occurred and that ranking existed. Like
the energy-expenditure principle, though, it is still difficult to determine if this
differential treatment was due to ascription or achievement.
Traditional processualist methods of determining the presence of hereditary
rank, such as those described above, have been, I would argue, overly attentive to
quantifying components of material culture, at the expense of understanding the
more qualitative aspects of material culture. Heirlooms, as symbols or emblems
238 Lillios

of inherited rank, will not necessarily be identified through quantitative methods

(or exclusively quantitative methods). As I discuss further below, the recognition
of heirlooms archaeologically requiresfirst and foremostan appreciation of
the life histories or biographies of artifacts, or the fact that, for many artifact
types, their time of manufacture significantly predates their period of disposal in
an archaeological context.
Discussions of the inheritance of moveable property and the role of heirlooms
in symbolizing and maintaining rank over the generations are, however, scarce in
the archaeological literature. Childe (1944, p. 87) alluded to the role of heirlooms
in the apparent "impoverishment" of burials in otherwise "complex" societies: "In
a stable progressive society, the tendency is for the grave-goods to diminish abso-
lutely, or at least relatively; in other words, a diminishing proportion of society's
growing wealth is buried with the dead." He further suggested that "as possessions
came to be regarded as commodities, as wealth, they were ever more grudgingly
left with their former owners or users" (Childe, 1944, p. 87). Later, Ashbee (1960,
p. 73) echoed similar concerns when he noted the increasing impoverishment of
burials between the Early Bronze Age and the Middle Bronze Age of Britain,
despite the appearance of prestige goods in other contexts, and wondered if "the
greed of the heirs (overcame) their religious scruples."
Ucko (1969, p. 267) in his oft-cited World Archaeology article, referred to
heirlooms as a cautionary example in the mismatch of burial goods and the de-
ceased's wealth or status in life. Heirlooms are viewed as noise that make it diffi-
cult for archaeologists to read social organization directly from the burial record.
Among the Yoruba, for example, Ucko noted that the bodies of deceased priests of
certain cults were displayed with valuables offered by kinsmen. These valuables
were not buried, however, but were taken by fellow priests of the same cult. If,
however, the deceased's kin were not members of the same cult, these objects were
then buried.
More recently, Schiffer (1976, pp. 37-39, 1987, p. 35) has written about
heirlooms as a type of cultural formation processspecifically a reuse process, or
a process which takes an artifact from one state in a systemic context to another,
bypassing, at least temporarily, the archaeological context. Heirlooms exemplify
a kind of lateral cycling, which occurs when an object is transferred from one user
to another without a change (or at least minimal changes) in the object or its use.
Chapman and Randsborg (1981, pp. 12-13) also make note of lateral cycling in
their review of the formation and transformation of the burial record.
Rather than view heirlooms as anomalies, noise, or complications in the read-
ing of the archaeological record, I want to explore in this paper the notion that, if
identified, heirlooms have the potential to contribute to a richer and finer-grained
understanding of past human behavior. As the material symbols with which indi-
viduals and groups actively construct and negotiate their identities and histories,
the archaeological recognition of heirlooms offers the archaeologist the possibility
of a glimpse into the self-consciousness of ancient peoples.
Objects of Memory 239

METHODS AND APPROACHES

The ethnographic record provides a large and instructive body of case studies
describing heirloom use and inheritance practices. Over a period of about a year,
I searched3 this literature with three questions in mind:
(1) What kinds of objects become heirlooms and how do heirlooms "work"?
(2) How do the nature, function, and transmission of heirlooms vary cross-
culturally?
(3) How might heirlooms be recognized archaeologically?
Each of these questions is discussed in terms of the ethnographic record in separate
sections of this paper. For those societies included in the discussion of question
2, there exist detailed accounts of inheritance practices for portable property or
heirloom use as well as descriptions of the nature of social rank. They also represent
societies from different areas of the world and, thus, have relatively independent
histories.
In doing this research, it became evident that, while ethnographies regularly
include a section on inheritance patterns, these accounts are generally more thor-
ough in treating the inheritance of nonmovable property (land, houses, etc.) than
the inheritance of movable property. This may be because cultural anthropolo-
gists have traditionally viewed the inheritance of nonmoveable property as fun-
damentally more important to the reproduction of social and economic life than
moveable property. This bias may also reflect the traditional division of labor in
anthropology, with archaeologists principally associated with the study of artifacts.
Furthermore, it was often unclear how many funeral rites had been observed, how
the transmission of heirlooms among elites differed from that of commoners, or
how the mortuary rites of females varied from those of males. Thus, these sources
did not lend themselves to highly quantitative analyses. Therefore, a qualitative
and somewhat impressionistic approach had to be taken in this study. Clearly,
some detailed and systematic studies of the ethnoarchaeology of heirloom use and
transmission are sorely needed.
The anthropological study of heirlooms, as objects that are curated for mul-
tiple generations before entering the archaeological record, necessitates both a
life history or biographical approach (Schiffer, 1976; Appadurai, 1986; Kopytoff,
1986; Skeates, 1995) and a contextual approach (Randsborg, 1974, 1980, p. 126;
Braun, 1979; Hodder, 1982b, 1991, pp. 143-146; Bradley, 1982; Parker-Pearson,
1984; Morris, 1992, pp. 25-26; Skeates, 1995).4
3
This paper was written while I was on leave, in Wellington, New Zealand, and affiliated with Victoria
University of Wellington. I was limited, therefore, in my search to only that material that was locally
available. The records of the Human Relations Area Files were not available.
4
While putting the finishing touches on this paper, I became aware of a recent paper by Skeates (199S)
in which the author employs these same methods: biographical and contextual, to explore the value
and meaning of "ax-amulets" from the central Mediterranean (continental Italy, Malta, Sardinia, and
240 Lillios

A biographical approach takes into account the shifting recategorization of

artifactsparticularly heirloomsover their lifetime. It recognizes that artifacts
are "culturally constructed entities, endowed with culturally specific meanings,
and classified and reclassified into culturally constituted categories" (Kopytoff,
1986, p. 68). An object's biography comprises the -emic and -etic dimensions of
its production, distribution, consumption, and disposal. A typical life history of
an heirloom might include its manufacture out of an exotic raw material, perhaps
imbued with the symbolism of an ancestral place or time (Helms, 1988, pp. 42-
45), its use and display in rites of passage and other social crises, its inheritance
over a number of generations, and finally, its deposition into an archaeological
context, such as a burial or a ritual monument. As with human life histories,
artifact biographies are culturally patterned, yet they also reflect the unique ways
that identity is negotiated between individual actors and their wider social context.
Despite the fact that their implications have not been fully recognized by
archaeologists, the distinction between inherited objects and those acquired in a
person's lifetime, and the different fates or biographies of these objects at the death
of that person, have been appreciated by cultural anthropologists. As Goody (1962,
p. 305) observed, many African groups distinguish between ancestral or corporate
property and self-acquired property "brought into being by an individual" and
treat goods in each class differently at death. For example, the Tallensi and other
Ashanti tribes distinguish between patrimonial property and individually acquired
property (Rattray, 1932, pp. 266-271).
Echoes of these distinctions can also be found in Weiner's (1985, 1992, 1994)
analyses of inalienable and alienable wealth, and in her demonstration of the critical
role that inalienable wealth has played in reproducing social relationships over long
periods of time in Australia, Melanesia, and Polynesia. Weiner (1992, p. 6) defined
inalienable wealth as those objects that are "imbued with intrinsic and ineffable
identities of their owners which are not easy to give away. Ideally, these inalienable
possessions are kept by their owners from one generation to the next within the
closed context of family, descent group, or dynasty." In contrast, alienable wealth
is that which is not so closely linked to an individual's corporate identity and, thus,
can be more easily relinquished.
In addition to a biographical approach, a contextual approach to material
culture, which identifies and compares the different contexts into which artifacts
enter the archaeological record, is also important to the study of heirlooms. Only
in this way will the divergent trajectories of heirlooms and other forms of material
culture be recognized as well as interpreted appropriately. The presence of an
heirloom in a burial, for example, is not necessarily a direct reflection of the status

Sicily). It is clear that Skeates and I are thinking along the same lines and have been inspired by many
of the same scholars. However, Skeates' primary concern has been to explain central Mediterranean
ax-amulets in terms of their sociohistorical contexts, whereas I have sought to emphasize the broader
relevance of inherited wealth in the production of memory and the emergence of hereditary rank and
have offered some means by which heirlooms can be identified archaeologically.
Objects of Memory 241

of an individual. Rather, it must be viewed ultimately as the product of an act of a

living person toward a deceased person. The dead do not bury the dead, the living
do, and it is the motivations and decisions of the living that play the defining role
in the form of the mortuary ritual [a point also made by Peebles (1971, p. 69),
Parker-Pearson (1982, p. 101), and Bradley (1989, p. 448)].
The archaeological study of heirlooms, thus, entails both diachronic and syn-
chronic perspectives. A holistic approach to material culture, in which mortuary
studies are integrated with contemporary settlement studies, becomes essential.
The study of heirlooms also forces the archaeologist to transcend the temporal
and geographic boundaries that divide prehistory and history, as well as the disci-
plinary boundaries that separate archaeology from cultural anthropology, history,
art history, and material culture studies. This is because heirlooms and other ob-
jects produced in prehistoric or precolonial periods are regularly found in historic
or postcontact, ethnographic contexts. The need to remember or manipulate the
past through material culture seems to be a fairly common and enduring trait of
the human species.

WHAT KINDS OF OBJECTS BECOME HEIRLOOMS AND HOW

DO HEIRLOOMS "WORK"?

The etymology of the word "heirloom" illuminates, yet also suggests cau-
tion, in our understanding of prehistoric inheritance behavior. Derived from two
Middle English wordsheir and lomeheirlooms are those implements or tools
(lomes) that are transmitted to heirs (Oxford English Dictionary, 1989, p. 110).
Thus, heirlooms in medieval England, and in many cultures, were primarily the
tools and implements of production. However, the ethnographic record shows that
objects associated with social reproduction, whether of the family, lineage, or so-
cial group, are also inherited regularly. Thus, Maori women and men have inherited
flax cloaks (kahu) (Weiner, 1985, p. 217), many Transvaal tribes have maintained
ancestral glass beads as heirlooms (Davison and Clark, 1976), the Aymara have
long passed down woven mantles and belts (Adelson and Tracht, 1983), and aris-
tocratic Yoruba families owned gold chains and pendants and embroidered gowns
and caps handed down over the generations (Coker, 1958, p. 60). Even in the
highly commodified society of the United States, many Americans have inherited
the wedding rings and other jewelry, watches, china, and furniture of their ancestors
(Quay, 1996).
In this paper, I consider an object as an heirloom if it is portable, if it has
been inherited by kin, either before or after the death of its original owner, and if
it has been maintained in circulation (i.e., not buried or destroyed) for a number of
generations. Thus, despite their obvious importance, land and other nonmovable
property, spouses, slaves, rights, privileges, and nonmaterial aspects of culture
(such as genealogies, knowledge, myths, songs, and dances) are not considered
242 Lillios

here for the simple reason that I am interested primarily in inheritance practices
that might be detected in the archaeological record.
Typically, heirlooms are made of both durable (stone, ceramic, metal) and
semidurable (wood, textile) materials, and often the materials from which heir-
looms are made have mythical or cosmological associations for their owners. For
example, pounamu, or jade, for the Maori, which was used to make so many
heirlooms, is linked mythically to the founding of Aotearoa/New Zealand (Riley,
1987). Similarly, the term for the flax cloaksor kahuthat the Maori tradition-
ally inherited is related to other terms associated with death, birth, and ancestors.
Kahu is also the word for the membrane surrounding the fetus, and flax threads
were believed to incorporate ancestral spirits (Weiner, 1992, pp. 215-216). Skulls
and limb bones of ancestors, as well as the scalps of rival groups, as for the Pueblo
Indians of the North American Southwest (Parsons, 1939), can also be curated
and inherited and can function as heirlooms. This symbolic potency of heirlooms
gives heirlooms a particularly conservative and enduring quality; objects that are
considered heirloom-able by members of a culture are generally rather restricted
in type and material and remain heirloom-able over many generations.
The portability and physicality of heirlooms are not simply arbitrary crite-
ria, suiting the artifact orientation and materialist biases of archaeologists. Items
which are portable can easily be carried or worn by a person, particularly at feasts
or important rituals, and thus can function well to differentiate a person from an-
other person. In many cultures, heirlooms, as emblems of ancestry, are worn or
gifted at weddings. For example, in the recent (1997) marriage of Princess Eilika
von Oldenburg, a German with ties to much of European royalty, to Gyorgy von
Hapsburg, descendant of the rulers of the Austro-Hungarian empire, it was re-
ported that the Princess wore "an heirloom lace veil and an antique bracelet of
twisted gold embedded with dark blue beads" (The Dominion, Wedding Unites
Royal Families, Oct. 20, 1997, p. 5). Likewise, heirlooms can be accumulated by
an individual or a family, further marking the social distinctions between individ-
uals and families. Jewelry, especially beads, serves this purpose quite well, and
many cultures in the Philippines and Borneo have, perhaps for hundreds of years,
made beads valued heirlooms (Legarda, 1977; Abellera, 1981; Francis, 1992).
By virtue of their portability and physicality, however, heirlooms can also
be easily lost, stolen, or destroyed. This makes them highly charged objects, both
intensely valuable yet vulnerable to loss, theft,5 or destruction. According to Smith
(1910, p. 127), the Maori would organize "warlike" expeditions to obtain some
of the fine flax mats produced in Taranaki (North Island); similarly, greenstone

5
The acquisition of objects by force or theft is, likely, a universal cultural transformation process,
although it seems to be underappreciated by archaeologists. Goody (1962, p. 308) briefly discusses
this mode of acquisition for the LoDagaa. I think it would be reasonable to assume that, along
with violent conflict, this cultural formation process became more prevalent as ranking intensified,
particularly when heredity (and objects associated with heredity) emerged as a source of political
legitimation.
Objects of Memory 243

hei-tiki and weapons were stolen (Smith, 1910, p. 335) or taken as booty (Smith,
1910, p. 225). The bones of dead chiefs were often hidden to prevent enemies from
stealing them and from making fishhooks out of them (Phillipps, 1966, p. 175).
The theft of skulls from graves, perhaps by enemies, is also suggested in prehis-
toric contexts, such as Neolithic Denmark (Kristiansen, 1984, p. 81). Although
technically not heirlooms as I have defined them, the relics of Christian saints
were similarly vulnerable to theft; the most notable example is the systematic raid
of relics by the Crusaders during the sack of Constantinople in 1204 and their
redistribution throughout the Christian world (Geary, 1986, p. 184).
Nonmaterial valuables, such as songs, dances, and genealogies memorized
by community elders in traditionally nonliterate societies, are, of course, simi-
larly vulnerable to loss. For example, an elder Maori who knows the whakapapa
(genealogy) of a hapu (subtribe) but who does not pass it on to another individ-
ual before he/she dies threatens the loss of that group's history and, ultimately,
its mana. Yet, despite the possibilities for manipulation and transformation of a
genealogy and the centrality of genealogies in constructing personhood and social
history, the opportunities for theft and appropriation by others in the case of non-
material possessions seem to be more restricted than for material goods, such as
heirlooms.
Heirlooms are maintained in circulation for a number of generations because
they possess an inordinate value to their owners, not simply because it is economical
or practical to do so. Heirlooms not only evoke the sentimental feelings an heir
may have had for a particular parent or grandparent, but also represent links to
an ancestral past, to a place filled with relationships that transcend the bounds of
a human lifetime and memory. Heirlooms represent primarily a collective past,
rather than the association of one individual to another.
Clearly, however, to call an object an heirloom refers primarily to how that
object is treated by its owner, or to a state of being, rather than to any essential
quality of that object. An object can move from an heirloom state to a nonheirloom,
commodity state, and vice versa, many times in its life history (cf. Gregory, 1982).
Along a similar line of thinking, Goody (1962, p. 306) also noted that the distinction
between personal and corporate property is "never absolute in the long run, since
when self-acquired property has once been inherited, it tends to become absorbed
into the familial resources and transmitted along the same rules."
Modernization is one force that encourages people to see their heirlooms as
marketable commodities. In Borneo, for example, for hundreds of years, large
stoneware jars, originating in mainland Asia, specifically China, Thailand, and
Vietnam, have been inherited by families and have been treasured as heirlooms
(or pusaka) (Harrisson, 1986). Functioning sometimes as ossuaries for the bones
of the dead, these jars often had names and were associated with legends. Today,
however, Borneans are selling these jars to tourists and to antique dealers in order
to raise cash in their move to modernize. But, as Barbara Harrisson (1986, p. 1), a
scholar who has studied these heirloom jars, notes "Selling heirlooms to outsiders
244 Lillios

was no great cultural leap. Borneans had always regarded heirlooms as represent-
ing investment. Motors, mills, and radios were merely looked upon as modern
substitutes."
Objects can also, however, shift from being commodities to heirlooms. On
the internet, for example, there are numerous sites which offer heirlooms for
sale. These heirlooms, or more accurately, heirlooms-to-be, include china (www.
websampler.com/bluewill), faux 18th-century furniture (www.cherryhillfurn.com),
reproductions of 12th- to 19th-century tapestries (www.tapestries-inc.com), and,
for newborns, bronzed shoes, teethers, and even lawn mower push toys (www.
babyheirlooms.com). Perhaps in the highly fragmented and mobile state of
American society today, many Americans no longer have objects that can be clas-
sified as genuine heirlooms, yet still feel the need to possess them (or objects that
will become heirlooms). Or perhaps, as Baudrillard (1996, pp. 73-84) suggests,
humans have a universal need for marginal objects, such as heirlooms, which link
them to distant times or distant places and which function as myths of origins.
Heirlooms can be defined better by what they do, rather than by what they
are. Weiner, building on the ideas of Mauss (1954), has been the most eloquent
voice in anthropology for the generative property of heirlooms. She wrote that
heirlooms, as inalienable wealth and goods that are "kept-while-given," have the
power "to define who one is in an historical sense. The object acts as a vehicle
for bringing past time into the present, so that the histories of ancestors, titles,
or mythological events become an intimate part of a person's present identity"
(Weiner, 1985, p. 210).
And, Weiner (1985, p. 210) notes, in ranked societies, heirlooms take on a
particularly potent role.

Persons and groups need to demonstrate continually who they are in relation to others,
and their identities must be attached to those ancestral connections that figure significantly
in their statuses, ranks or titles. To be able to keep certain objects that document these
connections attests to one's power to hold oneself or one's group intact. For to give up these
objects is to lose one's claim to the past as a working part of one's identity in the present.

Thus, heirlooms, like the human body and commemorative rituals (Connerton,
1989; Battaglia, 1990), monuments (Bloch, 1971; Kuchler, 1988), landscapes
(Schama, 1995;Zedeno, 1997), and texts (Carruthers, 1990), are important memory
sites. Davis and Starn (1989, p. 2) remind us, however, that "whenever memory is
invoked we should be asking ourselves: by whom, where, in which context, against
what?" Which individuals or groups have the most to gain (or lose) by the mainte-
nance, display, and transmission of heirlooms? Are heirlooms visible in public or
private settings? What forms do heirlooms take, and why? When is the invocation
of memories through the display of heirlooms most criticalduring periods of
discontinuity, rites of passage, radical social change, migration, or conquest, or
when economic, political, or social benefits might be accrued?
Objects of Memory 245

HOW DO THE NATURE, FUNCTION, AND TRANSMISSION

OF HEIRLOOMS VARY CROSS-CULTURALLY?

In this section, I discuss and compare the inheritance and life histories of
movable property, including heirlooms, in band, tribal, and chiefdom societies.

Bands

Among band societies, including Australian aboriginal groups, the !Kung,

the Mbuti, and the Inuit, behavior toward property and personal possessions was
strikingly similar. Most often, all the possessions of the deceased were buried with
the individual, and thus, there was little movable property to inherit.
Bendann (1969, pp. 116-117) noted that among numerous Aboriginal groups,
including the Wogal, Jajaurung, Ngarigo, and Warramunga, all the possessions of
a dead man were buried with him, even valuables such as spears, nets, and pieces
of canoe.
Similarly, among the Netsilik Inuit, most of a deceased person's belongings
were left with the body (Balikci, 1971, p. 222).
Among the !Kung, most possessions were destroyed at the time of death, and
thus, inheritance was relatively unimportant. Certain valuables, however, such as
spears and ornaments, might have been inherited by children.
There is not much property to inherit.... A considerable amount of an individual's personal
property is destroyed at the time of his death. This is not done to provide implements for the
spirits in the afterlife. The !Kung believe that the spirits of the dead have their own heavenly
objects and need nothing from earth. It is done because no member of the family wants to
use the common objects of the dead, which too vividly remind them of their loss. Only the
more rare and important possessions are kept, such as assegais and fine ornaments. These are
inherited by the eldest son. Failing a son, the spouse or a daughter or sibling or, failing these,
some other close relative who was present would take the things. (Marshall, 1965, p. 260)

Finally, among the Mbuti, Woodburn (1982, p. 197) noted that "nothing is
left to indicate the grave site, nothing being buried with the body except maybe
a few very personal belongings such as bark cloth, a bracelet, or a necklace. All
other property is divided before the camp is abandoned."
The behavior of the Mbuti, and other hunters-foragers, toward property at
death is, according to Woodburn (1982), a function of their being immediate return
rather than delayed return economies. In immediate return societies, hunting activ-
ities were oriented to the present, and not much was stored for later periods. Thus,
...questions of succession and inheritance (and of successors and heirs) scarcely arise since
there is no office of household head (if by household head we mean someone with a measure
of real control over assets and personnel) nor any other office of much significance, nor any
property of much value, to be transmitted from one generation to the next. When someone
dies, he (she) is not replaced socially by someone else in the sense that he or she is in
delayed-retum systems. (Woodbum, 1982, p. 206)
246 Lillios

One important exception to this apparent lack of concern over property in band
societies is the high value placed on items associated with magic and ritual and
their transmission for a number of generations.
Among the Inuit of North Alaska, amulets and charms made of whale ivory
were regularly inherited. Amulets were used for protection or to ensure good luck,
and charms were used to influence a hunted animal or to direct destiny. Some could
be quite old (although it is unclear how old), as the Inuit thought that old ones had
more power (Ray, 1977, p. 17).
Among Australian aborigines, tjurunga, made of stone or wood, "are thought
to be 'the changed immortal bodies of ancestors' who underwent this transfig-
uration when they finished their travels and, exhausted, turned to stone as they
sank into the ground" (Weiner, 1992, p. 106). The tjurunga could be loaned to
other groups, although among the Pintupi, copies of the original were loaned, and
the original remained hidden and guarded (Weiner, 1992, p. 108). They were in-
alienable possessions, yet what their life histories were (i.e., whether they are ever
buried or destroyed) is unclear from the literature.
The molimo trumpet of the Mbuti, played in festivals and used as a sign of
the presence of supernatural powers, had a similar value, although Turnbull (1965,
pp. 265-266) argued that it was not considered sacred in itself and its theft would
not cause a ritual crisis. Although young Mbuti seemed to have a rather casual
approach to it, the ideal stance toward the molimo might better be understood by
the opinions of the older Mbuti. Turnbull (1965, p. 266) noted, "The elders say
clearly that there used to be one for each family, and by family they plainly defined
a minimal lineage, all male members descended from a single living grandfather
or from the same father, living or dead." Again, it is not clear what happened to
molimos over time, but one can infer that they were not usually buried with the
dead, but were maintained in the land of the living, associated with the continuity
of lineages or bands.
In general, most movable property in band societies tends not to be inherited.
Most objects associated with an individual's achievements seem to be either de-
stroyed or buried at the time of death. Ritual objects, items associated with magic
or ritual, or objects representing the band or a family group might, however, be
curated and inherited. Because of the mobility of these groups, most of these items
are either large yet made of relatively light and perishable materials or small and
made of relatively durable materials. The heirlooms made from perishable mate-
rials would not likely be preserved archaeologically, although the smaller objects
(i.e., amulets) might be recovered and identified archaeologically.

Tribal Societies

Among tribal or Big-Man societies, there is a greater concern for the inheri-
tance and distribution of a larger variety of goods (not only ritual items) prior to
Objects of Memory 247

or after death. Attention is devoted to the distribution of property laterally, that is,
among distant kin or nonkin, rather than to its transmission lineally. In almost all
cases noted, however, some personal belongings are buried with the deceased.
The Melpa-speaking groups of the Mount Hagen area, comprised of Big-Man
societies traditionally lacking in hereditary chiefs and vividly documented in the
film Ongka's Big Moka, provide an instructive demonstration of this principle.
By the time most big-men died, they rarely had a large stock of shells that had
not already been promised to exchange partners or had to be paid out to maternal
kin. That is, there was little property to inherit"Transmission inter vivos is much
more important than post-mortem inheritance" (Strathern, 1971, p. 211). Most of a
big-man's shell-decorations were distributed to lineage mates or buried with him.
Strathern (1971, pp. 191-192) described the burial ritual:

After a day the actual body is removed and buried, but the big-man's personal decorations
are left on the platform for a while and mourners may continue to come for a week.... At
this time also some of the dead man's decorations may be divided among his lineage mates
as reminders to avenge him. The rest of his shell-decorations and feathers were in the past
broken over his body, as his kin were said to be 'sorry' for him and did not want others to
gain his possessions; only his own decorations were thrown in the grave, for otherwise, it
was thought, his spirit would take off with the soul of the owner of the extra items deposited
there.

As Weiner (1992, p. 118) observed, "The control over possessions through which
authority arises among the Melpa is ego-centered, and the possessions themselves
(traditionally pearl shells, stone adze blades, and mats) have no ancestral iden-
tity or cosmological authentication." Thus, exchange was geared toward giving
particularly at mokas and funerals, rather than keeping.
Reflecting the high value placed on the personal leadership attributes and
achievements of the big-man was the fact that sometimes his skull was made the
focus of a shrine. His head was seen as a concentration of power and a reservoir of
his personal skills [for other examples of curated human skulls, see Craig (1990)
and Urcid (1994)]. Again, the emphasis was on celebrating the ego, rather than
maintaining the endurance of lineage ties and claims.
As with other Highland groups, lineal inheritance among the Etoro also did
not play a significant role in the distribution of property after death (Kelly, 1993,
pp. 410-413). The deceased's estate would normally include a couple of axes, one
or two mother-of-pearl shell ornaments, three to six strings of cowrie shells, pigs,
and dogs (Kelly, 1993, p. 410). Because more shell valuables were offered than
received in each cycle of exchange, by the time men died, they usually had few
shell valuables in their possession. Older men, wives, sons, and daughters might
inherit these goods. Whether any of these goods are buried was unclear from the
literature.
Among the Tanga, of New Ireland, a similar lack of concern for the permanent
preservation of the deceased's goods was shown (Foster, 1995). Foster (1995,
p. 109) described "the feast concerning the spears" (carried out as recently as 1984),
248 Lillios

which "commemorates the burning or burial of personal effects of the deceased

(spear, purse, walking stick, etc.) which had been stored in the men's house since the
time of burial. This might occur up to twenty years after the death of an individual."
Apparently, at other feasts, other belongings of the long-deceased, stored in the
rafters of men's houses, were similarly burned or buried. These included purses
(tang) blackened with age, bamboo pillows, sleeping beds, and walking sticks
(Foster, 1995, p. 138). The only evidence for heirlooms, symbolizing the relatively
enduring quality of lineages, was the maintenance of shells. In the past, skulls of
the deceased were used for the same purpose (Foster, 1995, p. 135).
The Modoc of California, who regularly practiced cremation, usually burned
the property of the dead, which generally included (in the case of males) a quiver
of arrows (Ray, 1963, pp. 113-120). As Ray (1963, p. 120) noted, "Property was
destroyed simply to avoid painful reminders of the deceased." Some of the property
might also be appropriated by mourners, pyre builders and pallbearers. Keepsakes
of the dead were apparently unknown.
Maybury-Lewis (1967, pp. 280-281) clearly described the fate of property
after the death of among the egalitarian Akwe-Shavante of Brazil.

The possessions of the deceasedhis sleeping mat, weapons, and ceremonial ornaments,
in the case of a man; her gourds, firefans, carrying-baskets, in the case of a women
are torn apart or broken in pieces and put onto a big fire which is kindled in front of
the hut. Aboriginally, then, there can have been no question of inheritance. Nowadays,
manufactured articles are not always destroyed at the death of their owner. The disposal
of them is, however, not yet of any great importance.... The introduction of comparatively
imperishable and irreplaceable articles, which require to be handed on to the deceased's
kin, is so recent that the Shavante I knew had not yet developed an institutionalized set of
inheritance rules.

Among the Lugbara of Uganda, where there was minimal ascribed status
outside of age and sex, items that represented the deceased's status while alive were
buried with the deceased. There was, however, no belief that these accompanied
him/her on their journey to the land of the dead. A man, for example, was typically
buried with his quiver, drinking gourd, and stool; a woman, with her beads, the
firestones of her hearth, and one of the grinding stones she had used for grinding
flour (Middleton, 1982, p. 153, footnote 12).
Among the LoDagaa of Ghana, a distinction was made between objects that
reflected a person's unique traits or achievements and those that represented a
person's productive activities. Objects that were associated with a person's unique
qualities remained part of him/her after death and, therefore, were broken. For
women, these included calabashes, baskets, and soup pots; for men, these were
bows and quivers (Goody, 1962, pp. 84-85). In contrast, objects of production were
transmitted to heirs. For females, these were grinding stones, pots, and pans (given
to daughters) (Goody, 1962, pp. 134, 340). In the case of males, hoes and other
iron implements were passed on to the eldest son (Goody, 1962, pp. 205, 338).
The inheritance of important tools of production was also reported for the
Yombe of Zambia (Bond, 1992, p. 14). Axes, spears, and hoes were given to male
Objects of Memory 249

agnates of the same gen as the deceased, but only after these objects were purified;
sometimes these were given to the eldest son.
In summary, therefore, movable property in tribal societies is often distributed
to kin or nonkin by the owner before death or by other family members after death.
This property tends to include objects used in productive activities, such as farming
and food preparation. Objects associated with an individual's unique qualities are
often destroyed or buried as in band societies, because, as Goody (1962, pp. 305-
308) suggested, either they are seen as imbued or polluted with the essence of the
deceased or the deceased may need them or have rights to them in the afterlife.
Because these generally agricultural societies tend to be less mobile than band
societies, heirlooms tend to be larger and more durable, and thus, it is more likely
that heirlooms would be preserved archaeologically.

Chiefdoms

Among chiefdoms, the transmission and inheritance of a variety of objects

associated with production and ritual, as well as emblematic of economic success,
social affiliations, and political rank, take on an acute importance. For elites, in
particular, the ritualized transmission of ancestral heirlooms is paramount. Impor-
tantly, relatively little of a person's total property (in comparison to band or tribes)
seems to be actually buried with the deceased.
Among the Trobrianders, for example, few of an individual's belongings
remained with him in a burial (Malinowski, 1922, pp. 512-513). Most were claimed
by relatives. For example, a plate in Argonauts of the Western Pacific shows a
dead man immediately before his burial. The caption reads, "A great number of
valuables, including large axe blades, with which this man was covered at dying,
have been already withdrawn. Only personal possessions are left on the corpse,
and they will be removed immediately before the internment" (Malinowski, 1922,
Plate LXV). Weiner (1992, p. 130) noted that, as heirlooms, Trobrianders might
carry with them shell necklaces with a dead person's hair or fingernails.
A clear concern for the inheritance of personal property, with the result
that little ended up in burial, was also exemplified by the Tikopia. Firth (1936,
pp. 344-347) noted that
...on the death of the head of a household, the family propertymats, sinnet cord, bark-
cloth, paddles, bowls, fish-hooks and tobaccois largely absorbed in the various ritual
payments to the mother's family of the deceased and other mourners. Apart from this,
goods go to his daughters in other households, since their children are the lama tapu of
him and his sons. Land interests may also be transferred. Some other goods remain with
the sons, especially sinnet belts, clubs, spears, and ornaments which have been the property
of the family ancestors. These are tauarofa. heirlooms, of which the history is known and
which are not lightly given away.

Among the Tikopia, questions of inheritance were closely tied to succession.

Regarding a Tikopia chief, Firth (1960, pp. 169-171) wrote, "One day the chief
said to the lad (an adopted child living in his house), 'When I am gone, that which
250 Lillios

hung round my neck shall be yours'that is, the lad would be given the chiefly
necklet (kasoa) of coconut frond which was worn by a chief on ritual occasions."
Before death, a chief also indicated which canoes were to be inherited by his son
and which would be neglected. Any canoes that were neglected would have their
bark-cloth ritual vestments buried with the chief. Possibly also buried with the
chief might be turmeric cylinders or bonito-hooks (Firth, 1939, pp. 344-347).
Among the Maori of New Zealand, the importance of ancestral taonga
(treasures) in inheritance and succession is well-known (Best, 1924, pp. 54-70;
Reed, 1961;Phillipps, 1966;Weiner, 1992). Greenstone objects in the form of toki
poutangata (adzes), hei-tiki (neck pendants), and mere (clubs), as well as kahu
(flax cloaks) and human bones, wereand still areclosely associated with the
mana of a lineage or iwi (tribe). Importantly, the taonga of chiefs, at death, were
displayed with the body, but very often they were not buried with the deceased.
They continued to live on, one might say, as the possessions of descendants or
successors. The hei-tiki, which represent humans and which served as mementos
of deceased ancestors, were treated this way. If there were no living descendants,
however, the hei-tiki were buried with the deceased. As Tregear (1904, p. 247)
notes, "If the last of a family died the hei-tiki was also finally buried. If ornaments
were buried with a chief or lady of rank they were re-acquired when the exhumation
(uhunga) took place."
This distinction between the achieved and ascribed aspects of chiefly person-
hood and the different fates of objects representing each is stunningly illustrated
by the fate of some toki poutangata upon the death of a Maori chief. When a chief
died, the wooden handle of the adze, made specifically for that chief, would be
cut off and buried with the chief. The adze, considered to have mauri (life force)
and symbolic of ancestral mana, would then be hafted on a new handle and passed
on to the new chief. Thus, even the component parts of one object can symbolize
the two components of personhood and, as a result, undergo different fates (Mead,
1984, pp. 184, 222).
That objects symbolizing chiefly office are removed from the body prior to
burial seems not to be unique to the Maori. Among the Goula Iro of Chad, the ritual
copper bracelets of a chief were always removed prior to burial (Pairault, 1964,
p. 149). Similarly, among chiefs of the Lower Congo, the copper bracelets emblem-
atic of chieftaincy were removed before burial. At the time of death, however, stone
bracelets were made and buried with the deceased, and the copper ones passed on
to the successor (Herbert, 1984, p. 274).6
Among the Makah of Washington in the 1940s, Colson (1953, pp. 202-
219) described a situation where a high degree of fluidity between achieved and
ascribed status existed. The Makah, according to Colson, had a strong sense of
their inherited status, although some Makah noted that to be a chief, achievements
6
This is a practice found even in state societies. Rahtz (1981, p. 119) for example, describes the grave
of a 13th-century parish priest in Gloucestershire, England, who was buried with a paten "model."
This "model" was made of base metal and was produced especially for the burial. The "original" was
evidently passed on to his successor.
Objects of Memory 251

also counted. Much had changed, though, and former sources of rank were being
undermined.
The old system...permitted the rise of new men into positions of leadership, but this is a
far cry from the present insistence upon claims to high status by all and sundry. My own
belief is that the present situation is related first to the increased opportunities for acquiring
property and secondly to the ban on potlatches. (Colson, 1953, pp. 214-215)

Thus, in the mortuary practices reported by Colson, and contrary to the patterns
shown in other chiefly societies, there seems to have been little concern for the in-
heritance of the property of the deceased. Rather, a son of potlatch of the deceased's
property took place.
Private possessions are usually burned, or broken and thrown upon the beach immediately
after the death of the owner. Some people prefer to invite friends of the dead to take some
of the less-personal belongings, for if these objects pass beyond the family, there is little
danger of the dead person returning to dispute possession. It is dangerous to keep them
within the family. (Colson, 1953, pp. 274-275)

Colson's account of the Makah illustrates well the tensions and ambiguities inher-
ent in the construction of rank in chiefdoms. Even when heredity is used as the
primary calculus for determining social rank, achievements and personal qualifica-
tions of individuals can still play an important role in constructing rank. This was
also the case for some of the most highly stratified of the Polynesian chiefdoms
Hawaii and Tonga (Goldman, 1970, p. 21). On the Hawaiian chiefdoms of the
19th century, Valeri (1985, p. 159) wrote that "the system of transmission of rank
is such that it creates a number of pretenders with equal or near-equal claims." And,
in Tonga, Gailey (1987, p. 49) noted that "it was debatable whether the children
of a junior-born sister were less chiefly than those of a senior-born brother."
In summary, therefore, the inheritance of property in chiefly societies is more
critically related to succession and access to important resources (land, prestige,
wives). A variety of heirlooms made of highly durable materials (e.g., hard stones)
will be particularly valued as emblems of rank and/or ancestry and will be circu-
lated by heirs over many generations. In chiefly societies, therefore, very little may
actually be buried with the deceased, relative to the total quantity of possessions
the deceased owned in life. The rank of the deceased may, however, be expressed
in other aspects of the burial ritual, such as the location of the burial (Goldstein
1981), the amount of feasting at the mortuary ritual, and the energy expended on
the burial monument.

HOW MIGHT HEIRLOOMS BE RECOGNIZED

ARCHAEOLOGICALLY?

Employing biographical and contextual approaches, and taking the above

ethnographic data into account, I suggest that heirlooms might be recognized
archaeologically by the following attributes.
252 Lillios

(1) Heirlooms Will Date to an Earlier Period than Other Objects in that
Context. The repeated inheritance or lateral cycling of heirlooms for many gener-
ations should make it possible for archaeologists to detect heirlooms in carefully
dated contexts. The fact that some heirlooms, such as human skeletal remains,
can be directly dated by radiocarbon means offers the archaeologist some intrigu-
ing possibilities for identifying curated relics. The repeated cycling of heirlooms
means also, of course, that heirlooms are not particularly sensitive "type fossils."
(2) Heirlooms, Within a Culture Area, Are Conservative in Their General
Form Over Time. The ethnographic literature illustrates that there is a distinctive
regularity and conservatism in the kinds of objects that are treated as heirlooms
among members of the same culture, ethnic group, or social class over time.
Beads in Borneo and the Philippines, for example, have been treated as heirlooms
for hundreds of years (Francis, 1992). Davis (1985, p. 152) noted that, in England
and Japan, hereditary emblems, such as coats of arms or mon, similarly did not
change rapidly in their design. The unique or rare heirloom "anomaly" within
an archaeological (or ethnographic) culture might represent the behavior of an
individual or a few individuals who simply felt a particular fondness for the object.
(3) Heirlooms, Particularly as Symbols of Authority Associated with Chiefly
Succession, Are Often Represented in Different Raw Materials. Representations of
these symbols of authority in less valuable (local, for example) raw materials might
be found in burials, while the original might remain in use [as among chiefdoms
of the Lower Congo (Herbert, 1984; cf. Braun, 1979)] and be deposited at a much
later date.
(4) Heirlooms Are Often Items of Ornamentation, Agricultural Implements
Made of Highly Valued Materials, Weaponry, Textiles, and Ceramic or Metal
Vessels Used for Food Production, Preparation, or Storage. This list would appear
to include most artifact classes that archaeologists find on sites, and thus, it is
likely that archaeologists have been regularly handling ancient heirlooms without
knowing it. However, as mentioned above, heirlooms do seem to be quite culturally
specific, and most likely, only certain classes (and artifact types within each class)
would have been considered worthy of heirloom status at any given time.

EXAMPLES OF HEIRLOOMS IN THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL

LITERATURE

In this section, I briefly review some of the evidence that exists for heirlooms
from archaeological contexts.

Europe

Skeates (1995) has suggested that stone ax amulets from late prehistoric
sites in mainland Italy, Malta, Sicily, and Sardinia may have been heirlooms. He
Objects of Memory 253

argues that some of these appear to have begun their "lives," so to speak, as larger
functional objects and that, over time, adzes made of particularly distinctive stones,
or adzes possibly associated with ancestors of note, were transformed by further
polishing and perforation and made into pendants.
I have also suggested that, during the later prehistory of the Portuguese low-
lands, groundstone tools, particularly those made of amphibolite, were heirloomed
(Lillios, 1997, 1999). Amphibolite is a highly durable metamorphic rock, whose
sources are located in the uplands of Portugal, between 100 and 500 km from
lowland sites. Our study of five sites, including three settlements and two burials,
pointed to patterns in the distribution of amphibolite that suggested its differen-
tial treatment and, possibly, heirlooming. First, tools made from amphibolite were
rarely found in Late Neolithic and Copper Ages tombs in the lowlands, yet amphi-
bolite tools (versus tools of other raw materials) dominate settlement assemblages.
There they show significantly more signs of recycling (e.g., worn-down axes/adzes
turned into hammers, split axes/adzes made into chisels) than tools made of other
local raw materials. Groundstone tools in burials, however, were generally made
of local raw materials (basalt, metabasalt, and siltstone), quite thin in form, and
clearly unused. Their form and the unsuitability of some of the raw materials (silt-
stone) for working tools suggests that these objects might be considered replicas,
perhaps of amphibolite tools. Given these data, one possible life history for am-
phibolite tools was their maintenance in the land of the living, both as effective
tools and as heirlooms, to signify the link of the living to an ancestral past, perhaps
originating in the uplands of Portugal.
Dated to roughly the same time as amphibolite tools in Portugal is a series
of disk amulets made of human crania found in the Coizard hypogea in the Marne
(Mohen, 1990, p. 229). Found in association with these amulets were a number
of trepanned human skulls, the possible "sources" of these amulets. Although not
definitively heirlooms, these amulets do suggest that the curation of human re-
mains, or portions of these remains, as relics occurred in late prehistoric France.
It may also suggest that trepanning was not necessarily a clinical practice but that
it might have been associated with the production of ancestral relics. Direct dat-
ing of the disks as well as their associated skulls, both trepanned and not, would
determine whether these were, in fact, curated objects or heirlooms.
Bronze tripod stands, recovered in Iron Age deposits in Cyprus, Crete, and
mainland Greece but produced during the Late Bronze Age in Cyprus, have also
been suggested as heirlooms (Catling, 1984). Catling argues that these stands must
have been in circulation through the Iron Age because they seem to have provided
models for stands made in clay from the Geometric period.

China

Large inscribed ding vessels were treasured family heirlooms, and during the
Zhou they were rarely deposited in burials (Rawson, 1993). They are generally
254 Lillios

found in sacrificial pits and hoards, apparently to protect them from invading north-
ern and western tribes, who drove the Zhou from their capital near Xi'an in 771 BC.

New Zealand

A pendant, made from whale ivory, is believed by some archaeologists to

be an ancestral heirloom (Trotter and McCulloch, 1997, p. 49). Its shape and
decoration have early Polynesian features, and the oral tradition of the Ngai Tahu,
a Maori subtribe, records this pendant as being one of three pendants brought to
New Zealand from the ancestral homeland of Hawaiki.
In addition, a pearl shell lure from the Tairua site on the Coromandel Peninsula
of New Zealand has been suggested to be an heirloom (Davidson, 1987; Trotter
and McCulloch, 1997, p. 31). Although the context in which it was found dates
to about AD 1300, it is apparently identical in form to lures from Hane in the
Marquesas. It may represent either an heirloom from Eastern Polynesia, the likely
place of origin for the Maori who left there in approximately AD 1000, or a second
wave of colonization from Eastern Polynesia.
Finally, another example of an heirloom is an argillite adze, or toki, still in
circulation as a prized heirloom of the Tainui subtribe (McKay, 1973). Its form
suggests that it was made around AD 1400. Oral tradition records that it was used
to take the first chip in felling a tree that was to be used to make the central roof
beam of a major house or to take the final chip off a canoe before its launching.

North America

A soapstone pipe fragment found in a Late Woodland feature during excava-

tions at the Gropp's Lake site in Trenton, New Jersey, has been suggested to be
an heirloom for three reasons (Stewart, 1992). First, it was found in a much later
context than the period when such pipes were typically used. Second, it exhibits
considerable wear and a patina resulting from prolonged use. Finally, damage to
portions of the artifact indicates that it was probably suspended as a pendant after
it no longer served as a pipe.

Mesoamerica

Olmec jades regularly occur in later archaeological contexts in Mesoamerica,

and some, at least, are likely to have been heirlooms. At Cerro de las Mesas, for
example, Olmec jades were recovered, in apparently excellent condition and with
few signs of rough use (Drucker, 1955, p. 30).
Finally, at the Templo Mayor at Tenochtitlan, numerous pre-Classic and Clas-
sic offerings were recovered in excavations (Lopez Lujdn, 1994). These have been
interpreted as having been taken out of graves, but they may also have been, for
Objects of Memory 255

some time at least, heirlooms. Included in these offerings were an Olmec jade
mask and 41 Teotihuacan pieces.
In summary, there are a number of cases of possible heirlooms in the ar-
chaeological literature. Interestingly, they all were found in the context of ranked
societies and, in some cases, given the historic and ethnohistoric evidence, societies
with inherited rank. This seems consistent with heirloom use in the ethnographic
literature.
The difficulties of identifying heirlooms in archaeological contexts are, cer-
tainly, great. The temporal resolution of most of our dating techniques is not precise
enough to determine whether we are looking at an object that was produced at a
much earlier time than another object sharing its context. The only way an heir-
loom will be recognized in a prehistoric context is if its antiquity is so great that
it can be identified by radiometric dating techniques or if its style clearly dates
from an earlier period. It is also impossible to know whether the ancient owner
of an heirloom knew that it was really old or held on to it simply because it was
special or different in its appearance. Ancient peoples seem to have been just as
curious and attracted to strange-looking objects as archaeologists are, given the
numerous examples of fossils recovered in archaeological contexts (Oakley, 1975).
Some heirlooms that have been identified may have been either intentionally or
accidentally excavated or discovered by ancient peoples and kept for their unique
characteristics, rather than continuously circulated. There are, indeed, many cases
of monuments, such as megalithic tombs in Europe (e.g., Hingley, 1996), that
were reused or reconstructed by ancient groups, perhaps as part of these groups'
reinvention of their past and identity, and the discovery of earlier artifacts would
have been a predictable outcome of this activity. Finally, it is impossible to know
if an object was a strict heirloomthat is, an object passed on to descendantsor
simply circulated and exchanged between elites or nonkin, for example, for a long
period of time.

DISCUSSION: AN EVOLUTIONARY MODEL FOR THE

CIRCULATION AND DISPOSAL OF HEIRLOOMS

In this final section, I propose a working evolutionary model for the circulation
and disposal of heirlooms (Fig. 1). In it, the relationship between two variables is
modeled; these variables are

(1) the means by which personhood and identity are constructed in a

society and
(2) the expression of rank through the maintenance and disposal of heirlooms.

This model should be viewed as a tentative, first approximation of how these two
variables relate to each other. Determining the strength of this model will have
256 Lillios

Fig. 1. A working evolutionary model for the circulation and disposal of heirlooms. (---) Achieved
status; ( ) ascribed status.

to await the study of heirloom use and disposal in controlled archaeological or

ethnographic settings, which, as yet, has not been undertaken.
I propose that personhood can be analyzed as the relationship between two
variables: achieved status and ascribed status. I would argue that it is the tension
between these competing sources of identity and rank that ultimately generates
the conditions that lead to the use and circulation of heirlooms. As Davis (1985,
p. 151) has argued, based on his analysis of hereditary emblems in historic periods
of western Europe and Japan and archaic and Classical Greece, that "hereditary
emblems are only likely to appear in unstable systems of inherited social rank."
Conditions 1-4 in Fig. 1 represent different relationships between the role of
achieved and that of ascribed (or inherited) status in a society or subculture. These
conditions are not evolutionary stages or types of societies, as traditionally con-
ceived, although the scheme was developed using patterns found in examining the
ethnographic record in an evolutionary perspective. In condition 1, achieved status
is the dominant criterion by which personhood is constructed, and ascribed status
plays little or no role. Such a condition would exist in bands and tribal societies,
although theoretically, this condition could be met in other social contexts, such as
in subcultures within state societies. In condition 1, there might be individuals who
are competitive in certain social arenas, such as feasting or exchange. However,
the lack of formalization of ascribed status based on the achievements of certain
individuals maintains a certain equilibrium within that society over time, and an
individual's power is not linked to ancestral legitimation. In condition 2, there is
an increase in the importance of inherited status in determining personhood, which
challenges the existing, relatively egalitarian order. Ultimately, the dominance of
inherited status over achieved status (or individuals seeking to legitimate inherited
status) leads to a fundamentally different kind of social order, which anthropolo-
gists have generally labeled chiefdoms. In condition 3, inherited rank dominates
individual achievements in constructing social identity. This condition is, like con-
dition 1, relatively stable, and might characterize later chiefdoms or states with
determinate modes of succession. Condition 4 emerges when competition from
individuals or groups whose status is achieved threatens the status of those with
inherited rank. This might emerge when military leaders, for example, rise in sta-
tus owing to their success on the battlefield. Such a condition could occur in both
chiefdoms and states.
Each of these conditions gives rise, I suggest, to different modes in the main-
tenance and disposal of heirlooms. In condition 1, where achievements constitute
Objects of Memory 257

the basis of rank in a society, heirlooms, as objects maintained in circulation

for many generations, are relatively uncommon. In condition 2, however, with
the rise of inherited rank, I would suggest that a larger proportion of a person's
belongings would be inherited by heirs, and heirlooms, as emblems or symbols
of ancestry, would begin to circulate with increasing frequency and over longer
periods of time. Once, however, a new social order emerges (as in condition 3)
and succession becomes more determinate (Goody, 1966), the need to maintain
heirlooms may drop off for some time, and increasingly, they might enter the ar-
chaeological record as burial offerings. It is also arguable that the development of
literacy, and the use of written documents to record succession and inheritance,
would make the inheritance of heirlooms less criticalalthough probably not en-
tirely irrelevantto the construction and maintenance of social inequalities. In
condition 4, with an increase in competition or threats to the dominant rank of
groups with inherited status, heirlooms might once again gain in importance, and
their circulation, rather than their disposal, might increase (cf. Randsborg, 1980,
p. 49, 1981, 1982; Bloch, 1981; Hodder, 1982a, pp. 169-170; Parker-Pearson,
1982, 1984; Cannon, 1989). When new sources of wealth or achieved status so
seriously undermine a former system of ascribed status to the point that heredity
ceases to be an important basis of personhood (as in the case of the Makah, de-
scribed earlier), personal property would largely be destroyed or buried with the
individual, as in condition 1.
This model takes into account the life history of property, and heirlooms, in
particular. It is sensitive to the fact that when heirlooms are in circulationor val-
ued as markers of hereditary rankthey will not enter the archaeological record.
It is, I suggest, only when heirlooms lose their meaning as an emblem of heredi-
tary rank or when hereditary rank has declined that they enter the archaeological
record, in a burial or a refuse deposit, for example. Thus, there is not necessarily a
one-to-one correlation between the quantity of heirlooms in a burial and the status
of a deceased individual. The appearance of heirlooms in a burial might actually
reflect that the deceased, or the deceased's lineage, no longer had ancestral au-
thority or that the deceased left behind no descendants. Alternatively, heirlooms
in burials might reflect the decline in ancestral authority of the attendants to the
funerary ritual, who may have offered the heirlooms as gifts to the deceased. It
is clear that archaeologists need to be attentive not only to the quantification of
artifacts in burial contexts, or any other contexts, but also, perhaps more so, to the
qualitative aspectsthe possible meaning or meaningsof these objects in the
archaeological record.

CONCLUSION

In this paper, I have sought to explore the parameters and patterns of heirloom
use in the construction, maintenance, and challenging of social inequalities. I would
argue that to recognize and to interpret heirlooms in the archaeological record,
258 Lillios

archaeologists need to be sensitive to contextual variability and attentive to the

life histories of the objects they study. In the case of heirlooms, I would suggest
that this attentiveness is well worth our effort. While heirlooms are instrumental
in the production of social memory in all societies to some degree, this memory
may have constituted essential symbolic capital when power, economic resources,
or key social alliances were at stake, such as in early chiefdoms. Our ancient
ancestors may have discovered that, in defending territorial claims or legitimating
unequal rights to land or other critical resources, heirlooms, as tangible links to
their ancestors, were their most powerful weapons of all.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This paper was largely written in New Zealand during a one-semester leave
from Ripon College, and I would like to thank the Dean of Faculty, David
Seligman, and my colleagues at the Department of Anthropology and Sociol-
ogy, Paul Axelrod and Eric Godfrey, for granting me this precious time to pursue
my research interests. I am also very grateful to those friends and colleagues who
read drafts of this paper or who pointed me in the direction of case studiesPeter
Adds, Peter Akkermans, Bettina Arnold, Janet Davidson, Antonio Gilman, Mary
Helms, Paul Morris, Jeffrey Quilter, Morten Schliitter, and Karl Taube. Mike Schif-
fer provided the encouragement and sort of support that all authors should be so
lucky to have. I want also to express my gratitude to the reviewersBarbara Mills,
Timothy Earle, Susan Kus, Vincent LaMotta, and two anonymous individualsfor
providing such extensive and thoughtful comments. Finally, as a first-generation
American and someone who has been entrusted with valued heirlooms, I want to
acknowledge my debt to my parents and now-deceased grandparents for, however
unknowingly, planting the intellectual seeds for this paper.

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