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    Alekshin Burial Customs PDF

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    Burial Customs as an Archaeological Source V. A. Alekshin Current Anthropology, Vol. 24, No. 2 (Apr., 1983), 137-149. Stable URL: bhtp//links jstor.org/sici2sict=001 1-3204%28 198304% 29249 3A2%3C 137%3ABCAAAS%3E2.0,CO%3B2-2 Current Anthropology is currently published by The University of Chicago Press, ‘Your use of the ISTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use, available at hhup:/www.jstororg/about/terms.hml. JSTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at hup:/www jstor.org/jouralsuepress.himl, Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the sereen or printed page of such transmission, STOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals, For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support @jstor.org. hupswww jstor.org/ ‘Tue Feb 15 09:49:44 2005, ccunaznr anmaxorosoey Val. 24, No.2, April 1983 © 198 by The WennerGren Fontan for Antropol Retr al set rsved O11 S204/9/202 000882. Burial Customs as an Archaeological Source’ by V. A. Alekshin Buniat cusrous are one of the most important archaeological sourees, and for a number of regions (for example, the Eurasian steppes) they are the only one. In many cases, only the excava~ tion of ancient burial geounds can give us information on the spiritual and material culture of ancient peoples. This is espe- cially true for archaeologists in the Soviet Union, where the ‘vast steppes from the Black Sea to the Transbaikal region contain burial grounds of ancient pastoralists but almost no ancient settlements. Soviet archaeologists have accumulated vast experience in the methodology of excavating ancient burial grounds and the scientific analysis ofthe burials unearthed. The point of depar- ture for the analysis of ancient burials is the reconstruction of Durial rites. Classic examples of such reconstruction are the researches of Gryaznov (1956). As early as the 1930s, Soviet archacologists had concluded that burial customs reflect the basic features of the social structure of primitive teibes (Ravdonikas 1932), Their studies of this problem have taken two principal directions. The first involves the interpretation of the double burials of the Bronze Age in connection with the reconstruction of the social structure of Eastern European primitive tribes. One of the first attempts at_ sociological analysis of these double burials was the work of Artamonov (1934), who proposed that what we are dealing with here is the violent killing of wives of concubines characteristic of the period of establishment of patriarchal relations. Subsequent ‘excavations cast doubt upon this proposition when it was ©X gready abridged version of thie paper, entitled “The Burial ite as an Archaeological Source,” has recently appeared in Krathie Soobsholeniye Inada Arbheologli AN SSSR NOK. V. A. Arse is Research Assistant atthe Institute of Archae- logy, Departmentaf Central Asia and Caess of the Leningead Branch of the USSR. Academy of Sciences (Dvortsorays nabereznaya 18, 192041 Leningrad, USSR). Horn in 1944, he received his PhD. in 1977 and hat lectured on the archacology of Central Asia’ at the University of Leningrad, His dissertation Seale with the social structure of easly agricultural societies as evidenced in burials in Central Asia and the Near East. He has published "Burial Customs of Uhe Ancient Agricultural Con fhunities of Southern ‘Turkmenia and the Problem of Their Sociological tnterpretation’”(Soveiaye Arkhelogiya, 1976, vo, 2epb. ete Develvment ant Succi of Hone Age ‘Caltures in Southern Turkmenia” (Krathie Soobscheniya Insta Aytheslogt AN SSSR 101: 24-31), and "Traditions apd Innova tions in Burial Customs,” in Todi and Tnnovalons i He Evolution of Ancion Cultures, edited by V. Ml. Masson and V.N. sf o.16-2 Leningrad, 19) “The present paper was submitted in final form 19 w 82, Vol. 24 + No.2 + April 1983 found that the joint burials of persons of opposite sexes had. often occurred at different times, the woman not infrequently hhaving been buried first (Itina 1961, Sorokin 1962). In the current Soviet archaeological literature it is widely held that Aouble burials attest to the importance of the nuclear family, which had become the most significant social unit, asserting its ‘economic and ideological independence (Masson 1976: 186-57) ‘The second direction is represented by studies in the social dfferentiation of primitive collectives where this differentiation was reflected in mortuary practices. The first steps in this direction were also undertaken in the prewar years. Especially noteworthy is the monograph by Kruglov and Podgaetskii (1935), in which burial grounds of the Pit Grave and Catacomb cultures of the Black Sea steppes were subjected to sociological analysis and, for the first time in Soviet archacology, criteria for assessing burials in terms of poverty and wealth were proposed. Problems in the study of the social structure of Ancient societies were also posed in works by Iessen (1950) and Piotrovskii (1949). Development of this problem proceeded on the widest scale in the 19608 and 1970s, In this connection one should mention frst ofall the synthesis of Masson (1976) and a series of articles by him analyzing the social structure of carly agricultural societies in terms of data on burial customs (Masson 1967, 1973, 1974). Bronze Age burial grounds of the Causasus have been analyzed by Kushnareva (1973), those of southern Siberia by Khlobystina (1972, 1973), burials of the Catacomb culture by Klein (1968), and Iron’ Age burial grounds in the Urals by Smimov (1970). In 1972 an All. Union Symposium devoted to problems of reconstruction of the social structure of ancient tribes based on data on bu customs was held in Leningrad (see Uspebhi sredneasiatskot arkleologii 1972:48). Among the topics discussed at this sym- posium were problems of methodology in sociological research and criteria for evaluating the wealth of burials. The symposium ‘ave new impetus to studies of this problem (Masson 1976, Alekshin 1977). ‘The burial rite belongs to that category of rites by means of which society sanctions the passage of a person from one ‘qualitative state to another, among them rituals connected with childbirth, initiation, and marriage. From the time of their appearance in the Mousterian, burial customs indicate that they served to transmit the deceased member of the com- ‘munity to another state, another world. Different communities conceived of that world in various ways, hence the great variety of burial customs recorded by archacologists in excava- tions of ancient burial grounds. Funerary practices have two interrelated components. The 137 first of these is ritual—the activities sanctioned by tradition that oceur before, during, and after the burial and are con- sidered essential to the transfer to the other world of deceased members of the community, both those forming its nucleus and others related by blood. ‘The second characterizes the social position of the departed. It consists of the collection of material elements—the burial structure, the assemblage of grave goods, and the position of the deceased—required for a person of particular age and sex to be transported to the other world. The combination of these two components of the burial rite makes up the standard (traditional) funerary customs of any archacological culture. These two fundamental components must not be considered in isolation one from the other. In order to extract any information, it is necessary to analyze in tail the burial rite as a whole. ‘A great variety of information is potentially incorporated in burial customs a8 an archaeological source. Hausler (1975:83- 94) considers it possible by investigating burial customs to establish the age-sex and social differentiation of the society and to illuminate certain points connected with the recon struction of the forms of marriage and the family in primitive ‘times. In my opinion he somewhat underestimates the amount of information that can be gleaned from the study of burial customs. ‘The current procedure for investigating a source such as a burial complex. requires preliminary reconstruction of the burial rite. Only through such reconstruction can burials be used as a source of cultura, sociological, and demographic information, Of course, the archacologist cannot fully. recon: struct all the details of burial customs. Beyond his field of vision li for example, the extremely varied ritual activites performed before the moment of burial. However, to the extent possible, the most complete reconstruction of the burial rite should be carried out, special attention being paid to the ‘method of burial (nhumation or cremation), the type of burial Golitary, double, or collective), the form of the burial struc- tue, ritual activities at the time of burial and later, the assem- Dlage of grave goods, and the position of the deceased. In reconstructive syntheses, burial customs can be broken down into six informational units, Each casts light upon a particular aspect of the life of ancient societies. In the ease of the first three of these informational units, both components of the Dural rite, the ritual and the material, are of decisive impor- tance. CONCEPTIONS OF DEATH AND THE OTHER WORLD ‘The first informational unit reflects the ideas of people about the means of passage of the deceased into the other world and about life in the land of the dead. By studying burial customs ‘temporally and spatially, itis possible to trace the evolution of conceptions of the other world and to arrive at an idea of the attitudes of peoples of remote historical epochs towards death and the dead. In studying this range of questions, one should make use of written sources if they are available. ‘THE DEVELOPMENT AND SUCCESSION OF CULTURES ‘The second informational unit covers problems of cultural genesis. By investigating burial customs, one can trace the formation and development of an archaeological culture and the succession of archaeological cultures. When one archaco- logical culture is succeeded by another, there may be a com- plete or a partial replacement of funerary practices. A com- plete replacement of one standard burial rite by another attests to the total disappearance of the bearers of a conerete archaeo- logical culture, which may be due to migration, military 138 catastrophe, or epidemics. Partial replacement ofa standard burial rte by another, fe, a basic change in the majority of the components of the previously stand burial rite and is transformation into a new standard rite, attests to the pene- tration of beaters ofan alien archaeological culere into the milieu ofthe beaters ofthe archaclogcal caltre in question. ‘This frequently leads to the formation of «third sechaclogca culture stint from the frst two. In ths situation any ofthe traditional elements ofthe previously stndard bara ie may be subject to influence. Changes may occur in the type of burial, the ital activites, the composition of the assemblage grave gods, and sometimes the form of the burial struct ‘The relation Between the previously tradional features se- ing in the new standard burial rite and the new clements Trnlling from outside influence addresses the question of which cultural component (local oF outside) is dominant in the formation of te new archacslogialenlture or example, in the erly and developed Aenelithic(Namnaz- fe FTI) of southern Torkmenia, the dead. were buried in Solitary. graves within their setements ‘The deosased lay on his side in crouched position, with his head to the south Burial accesories consist of onc o two pottery veses and beads. In the late Aeneolithic (Namazga III), there are col- lective burials intl! (Serianid 1961: 284-95; 19651025), which probably served as family tombs (Sarianidi 1972: 22-26). Tn adliton tothe lo, single burials are also known. Both types of bara! are found onty within settlements The suth- ward orientation of the deceased is maintained, although « torthward orientation hasbeen recorded in a numberof eases ‘The frst indkeations of property inequalities appear her; iblated graves contin bronze omaments (blade, pts) in Aiton fo pottery and beads. ‘The traditions of calletive and individual burials formed in the Aeneaithie continue into the Early and. Middle Bronze ‘Age (Namazga 1V and V) All the changes in burial ites from the preceding period are related fo a deepening ofthe process of social dlerentaton of the population Burials appear with Sromse ings, blades, and pine with 2oomomphic heads and gold and silver rings and pins. Rich burials include sels female statuettes, religious objects, and weapons. In meager graves ether thee areno grave goods at all or they are limited fo one or to pottery vessels and beads (Bg. 1). In general, ‘wth reference tothe character of Burial customs~

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