Siting, sighting and citing the dead

Abstract

From the Middle Archaic through Mississippian periods of the prehistoric American Midwest (ca. 7000-700 B.P.), the specific location, form, and intensity of funerary activity varied through time, but always within a limited, yet evolving, range of alternatives. This material record can be understood as resulting from the interaction of traditional (i.e., meaningful) symbolic systems, the agency of the participants, and specific (i.e., historical) social, economic, and political contexts. In particular, we examine the shifting emphasis on mortuary ritual versus ancestor cult and this is manifested in terms of the location and form of burial mounds and cemeteries. In addressing the space and place of death in the prehistoric American Midwest, we ask questions about where the dead, and the activities surrounding their deaths, were situated; the ways in which their remains or their final resting places were (or were not) open to view; and how, when, and in what contexts the dead were referenced. In asking these questions, we are immediately faced with the issue of much of this prehistoric past we can actually recover. As Carole Crumley (1999:269) reminds us, nearly fifty years ago Hawkes (1954) admonish[ed] archaeologists that they should not expect to retrieve what today might be called 'mind/ Nevertheless, as we enter a new century, archaeological theory is dominated by the debate over not / / but mind is recoverable (Crumley 1999:270, emphasis in original). But we must not forget Hawkes as we attempt to recover mind, because that how was the very basis for his pessimism: some questions are more readily answered than others, and questions of mind are the most difficult of all. Where the dead were ultimately placed, and where at least some of the activities following their deaths occurred, can be addressed in fairly straightforward ways. In the lower Illinois River Valley alone (Figure 1.1), hundreds of Middle and Late Woodland burial mounds have been surveyed and recorded (e.g., Charles 1992b). Dozens of mounds have been excavated and reported (e.g., Perino 1968, 1973), and hundreds of skeletons of the dead themselves have been analyzed (e.g., Buikstra 1976). Many bodies were processed in centrally located log crypts or other facilities and the partially or fully defleshed remains then moved to peripheral graves (Brown 1979), or even to other sites (Charles et al. 1988). When a corpse, crypt, or mound was seen or acknowledged, by whom, and under what circumstances are more difficult questions and our interpretations are more provisional. The majority of interments in Middle and Late Archaic cemeteries in the Illinois Valley occurred shortly after death, whereas in upland areas away from the main valley the predominance of secondary burials indicates that populations in those regions curated bodies for longer periods of time and could have incorporated them into extended funerary ritual (Charles and Buikstra 1983). From differences in size and form of Ohio Hopewell charnel structures versus Illinois Hopewell burial crypts we infer differences in the numbers of people that could have viewed a corpse at any one time. 14 Douglas K. Charles and Jane E. Buikstra

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