Nexus: The Canadian Student Journal of Anthropology, Volume 21, July 2009: 27-40

Bones, people and communities: Tensions between individual and corporate identities in secondary ritual

Ani Chénier McMaster University, Department of Anthropology

This review of archaeological and ethnographic literature on secondary burial practices explores how different theoretical understandings of the body inform interpretations of mortuary practice as a forum for negotiations of identity and community among the living. Tension between various scales of identity – personal and corporate – assumed by the deceased are shown to be key elements in many of these negotiations. The materiality of the body can allow participants to explore these tensions through physical manipulations that are part of ritual practice. However, ethnographic examples suggest that multiple interpretations can exist for similar practices, and that secondary burial practices are often mutable and fluid in meaning. While historically contingent, variations in practice can become a means of group identification or differentiation.

Introduction perceived alternatively as individual or part of a Seeing bodies, individuals, and communities in corporate group, as named or anonymous, then secondary burial rituals how does the interaction between these scales of ast work in anthropological theory has identity inform ritual practice? A survey of P questioned many “common sense” ethnographic and archaeological literature will conceptions, including that of the focus on the common interpretations of body as individual, whole, and un-theorized. secondary burial rituals in order to explore how This broadening conception of the body has the very materiality of the body helps make inspired new archaeological interpretations of these rituals powerful forums for the living to past experiences, especially in relation to negotiate questions of identity. funerary practice (Tarlow 2002, Fowler 2002, 49; Thomas 2002, 33). At the same time, much Defining secondary burial can be difficult recent work on the of has since various practices may be encompassed by provided interpretations of funerary ritual as a the term. Following Hertz (2004 [1907]), forum for the assertion and re-negotiation of many authors use it to designate funerary rituals identity, where personal and community composed of two essential stages between which memories could be articulated (Cannon 2002; a length of time elapses, and where the body is Chesson 2001b, 4). This paper examines how moved or altered during both stages. Typically, theoretical approaches to understanding the the flesh is disposed of before the second stage - body have inspired these readings, specifically in through exposure, platform , temporary the case of secondary burial rituals, where the burials, cannibalism, incineration, embalming plasticity and materiality of the human body are (Hertz 2004 [1907], 201) or mechanical themselves central to the ritual process. If a excarnation and disarticulation (Murphy and body can have many identities, and can be Mallory 2000). Contact with the body is also

Author correspondence should be directed to [email protected] (Department of Anthropology, McMaster University, CNH Room 524, 1280 Main St. West, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada L8S 4L9)

Nexus is an annual graduate student publication of the McMaster University Department of Anthropology, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. http://digitalcommons.mcmaster.ca/nexus 28 A. Chénier

sometimes maintained in the long term through such manipulations can be performed by anyone continued visits to ancestral (Beckett and from the bereaved themselves (e.g. Conklin Robb 2006; Bloch 1982), multiple incinerations 1995) to mortuary specialists (e.g. Watson (Beck 2005, 154) or the maintenance in 1982), and necessitate different levels of active circulation of removed body parts (McNeill transformation and involvement with the body, 2005, 315). from simply moving bones after natural Other forms of secondary burials were not has occurred (e.g. Ariès 1977, performed as part of a corpus of ritual activity in 64) to actively de-fleshing the corpse and boiling the Hertzian sense, since exhumation of burials its bones clean (e.g. Naji 2005, 178). The could be done by later people, whether physicality inherent in these practices raises accidentally or intentionally. While such questions pertaining to the body and how it is disturbances may not have been planned at the understood and perceived by the people time of the initial interment, they would still be involved in the ritual. culturally meaningful. At the least, they entail a Attitudes about and understandings of the choice to do something with rediscovered bones living body are not universal, nor are people’s rather than leave them in situ; at the most, they experiences of living in their bodies, because are the planned outcome of a process of symbolic they are culturally mediated (Tarlow 2002; violation or veneration (Duncan 2005) of the Fowler 2002, 49; Thomas 2002, 33). dead. Furthermore, ideas about what elements Since secondary burials, whether in the constitute a person, and about the relationship Hertzian sense or not, leave almost between body, soul, and self (or other such undistinguishable assemblages behind (Weiss- permutations) can vary wildly according to Krejci 2001, 769), this paper will address both cultural context (Fowler 2004, 87), and can secondary burial that results from intentional play an important role in determining how the later disturbances and secondary burial as a dead body and its components are seen and planned aspect of the initial death ritual. understood.

Attitudes and ideas about the body Distinctions between individual and corporate There are many ways of understanding identities of the dead secondary burial, not only because of the variety One important question stemming from of forms that this practice takes in different this cultural variability in understanding the cultural contexts, but also because of the body is the issue of the identity of the dead different theoretical approaches through which body, which can be perceived as a specific anthropologists try to apprehend its meanings. individual or as an anonymous member of a Interpretations range from the very culturally corporate group (see for instance Verdery (1999, and historically specific (as with Ariès’ (1977) 13-23), who explicitly articulates her discussion study of changing attitudes towards death in of corpses in post-socialist Eastern Europe Western Europe, from the Middle-Ages to the around the “named and famous dead” and the 20th century) to generalizations about the “anonymous dead”). This distinction can be human psyche (as with Hertz’s (2004 [1907]) manipulated through burial practices because sociological interpretation of the purposes of all the individuality of the body can be exaggerated secondary burial rituals, or Stephen’s (1998) or minimised through the transformations psychoanalytical approach to all mortuary operated on it. cannibalism). Nonetheless, because of the On one end of a spectrum of possibilities is nature of these rituals, a number of basic issues that of extreme anonymity. A dead body need are recurrently raised in the literature. not be understood as an “index [of] the single Secondary burial practices involve the living individual whose remains are examined” manipulation of a dead body. According to the (Tarlow 2002, 23), and bones are not different cultural traditions where they occur, necessarily seen as metonymically symbolic of

Nexus: The Canadian Student Journal of Anthropology, Vol. 21 (2009) Bones, people, and communities 29 the whole person/body (Fowler 2002, 50). manipulations. Their place in existing Therefore, bone and flesh can be made into narratives make these dead symbolically material culture that is not interpreted as powerful because they can be related to referring to a person, becoming instead contemporary issues and identities of the living, integrated in an “economy of substance” where and their bodies can be made into a focal point they are traded, exchanged, and used (Thomas for debating these questions (Verdery 1999, 2002, 42). Human bone has in this way been 20). The “anonymous dead” are also used as a raw material imbued with special symbolically malleable because they can be properties (McNeill 2005, 314-5); in Melanesia attached by the living to corporate identity and Micronesia, long bones have served for categories that are relevant to the latter making powerful spear points (Stodder 2005, (Verdery 1999, 20). 248; McNeill 2005); in Tibetan tantric traditions, bones have been made into cups or Ethnographic and ethno-historic interpretations flutes which were filled with inherent vitality of secondary burial practices (Malville 2005, 191, 197). Hertzian interpretations of secondary burial as a Bones can also be seen as belonging to means of maintaining social cohesion individuals without being attached to specific, Hertz’s (2004 [1907]) sociological analysis known, people. In her discussion of burial of secondary burials has had an immense practices at Tlatlico in Mexico, Joyce (2002) influence on later research on the topic and is explains that the skulls found when older burials quoted in almost all the related literature. The were accidentally uncovered would likely have premise of his study of Dayak death rituals is been seen as people, because the skull was “the that mourning is a social event more than it is a physical site of individuation of the person in personal emotional process (Hertz 2004 [1907], Mesoamerica at this time” (Joyce 2002, 23). 197). Secondary burial serves as a rite of However, the dead person was still anonymous, passage, marked by two main ceremonies in and their subsequent re-burial was likely that of which society, the dead person’s soul and the a generic “ancestor” of the House (Joyce 2002, dead person’s body, are all transformed. 23). The first ceremony involves the temporary Even the bones of people whose individual disposal of the corpse, allowing the flesh to identity is known have the potential to become decay (Hertz 2004 [1907], 198). This anonymous, because people are not only “violence” against the body’s integrity is seen as individuals, but are also part of larger corporate a means to effect a transition away from normal groups such as houses (Joyce 2002; Schiller social life (Bloch 1992, 4). During the liminal 2002), demes (Bloch 1982, 211), villages time between the first and second phases, the (Ramsden 1991), families religious soul is still somewhat attached to the body and communities, or others. The intentional erasure remains on earth, often unhappy, and dangerous of names and means of personal identification, for the living who enter a period of mourning the physical mixing of bones together (Thomas and taboos (Hertz 2004 [1907], 197, 199). 1988; Bloch 1982, 217), or the stressing of Eventually, the body is recovered and processed overall homogeneity in funerary treatment in a final burial ceremony. The “rebounding (Chesson 2001a, 106) can serve to erase the violence” performed on the body during this particularistic aspects of identity, or at least to second ritual ends the transition phase (Bloch subsume them within a broader corporate 1992, 4). This allows the soul to enter the identity. community of the dead and frees the living from Finally, the “famous dead” (Verdery 1999) the taboos of mourning. Death, therefore, is not - people known by many, not personally but for instantaneous, but a process undergone by the what they had done or been in life (such as soul and mimicked by what the body is exposed political figures, royalty, or martyrs) - are to. themselves a subject of ambiguous

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The central point of this Hertzian seen as temporary, while others (such as bones understanding is the idea that the ritual process and certain relationships, like kinship) are seen can serve to deny individual death, the latter as permanent (e.g. Kan (1986, 196)). In some being seen as an affront to the continuity of cases, the entire social identity – gender, social society (Hertz 2004 [1907], 207). The unequal status, kinship – is maintained for a time after treatment of individuals according to their death (Watson 1988, 8). It is those aspects of relative importance in the living social system the self that transcend death which can remain (Hertz 2004 [1907], 207), and the normally active and socially meaningful in ongoing collective form taken by secondary burial (Hertz relationships with the living. 2004[1907], 204) are interpreted as supporting In some cases, corporate groups such as the idea that the motivation of secondary burial lineages are one of the aspects that remain rituals is a fundamentally sociological one. Thus socially recognised in death (Bloch 1992, 4). In tensions between the individual and the this context, bodily modifications become more corporate are absolutely central to this than symbolic transformations of individuals into conception. In this model, secondary burial something else. They are part of the creation of practices serve to deny the individual aspects of classes of beings, such as “the depersonalized death by effecting transformations on the collectivity of ancestors” (Bloch and Parry 1982, physical body of the dead in order to allow the 11), that are central to a community’s social group as a whole to be preserved. The experience and understanding of itself. importance of communal treatment of ancestors is also central to Ramsden’s (1991) Interpretation of secondary burial as a form of political understanding of Huron ossuaries and Bloch and manipulation of the dead Parry’s (1982) understanding of Merina Ideas about body and soul have played an secondary burial. The creation of homogenized important role in Hertzian interpretation. Yet post-mortuary spaces is seen as part of a political even in the absence of any such beliefs, statement concerning the cohesiveness of the secondary burial practices can serve to transform community after death (Ramsden 1991, 31), bodies into artefacts; physical things that can be and the sometimes destructive treatment of manipulated as symbols. Analyses of secondary bones by denigrating the individual body helps burial as a political device bring out how these accentuate the continuity of social unity (Bloch practices can serve motives that are more and Parry 1982). specific and personal than the maintenance of a For this active downplaying of the general social structure. individual identity of the dead through The case of Roman ancestor masks, though manipulation of the body to make sense to it does not involve secondary burial per se, sheds participants and observers, it must be performed light on ways in which the dead body, or images in terms of a given cultural understanding of the associated with it, can be made into propaganda body. There exist multiple ideas about what tools. In her discussion of Roman imagines, aspects of the self are permanent, disappear at Flower (1996) describes how these wax death, or are slowly eroded over time. A impressions of politicians’ faces were passed number of studies of secondary burial practice down in a family for generations and exposed in highlight how these conceptions impact and around the house (Flower 1996, 43). They understandings of secondary burial (e.g. Kan were brought out during elections and (1986), in 19th century American Northwest processions where the dead and their long term Coast, Watson (1988) in 20th century Southern ancestors were lauded (Flower 1996, 92). Such China, and Bloch (1982, 224-5; 1992, 86) in practices influenced popular opinion by making 20th century Madagascar). ancestors more illustrious. Masks thus became In these frameworks, certain aspects of a “the family’s public face”, serving to harness this person – both the material (skin and flesh) and fame and increase the electoral success of the immaterial (social identity, emotions) – are descendants (Flower 1996, 65-66).

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There is a fascinating tension here between Secondary burials are usually recognised on the different levels of identity. There is the level of basis of bodies being in a disarticulated position. the specific ancestors whose masks are paraded The bones having been re-organised (e.g. and who are celebrated for their individual Chesson 2001a, 104) or clumped together in a accomplishments. Yet these ancestors are also bundle (either for transport or in preparation for incorporated in the common identity of the interment) (Shaffer 2005, 150) can help to family group. The descendants, by their confirm that this displacement is not the result participation in the same corporate group as of non-human taphonomic processes. Also their ancestors, are somehow made to seem as suggestive are certain surface modifications such sharing some of their qualities. Even though as burn marks on bones where there is no personal identity is subsumed as part of a evidence of pyre (Walthall 1999), or cut marks corporate family group, it is individual action indicative of excarnation or disarticulation of the which is at the source of the corporate prestige. body (Murphy and Mallory 2000, 393). This back and forth between a specific Finally, the incompleteness of a skeleton – individual and a corporate group, in which the provided the bones missing are not the most body is used as a visual reinforcement, can be fragile (Duday 2006, 47) – may indicate that manipulated by the living in order to make a certain bones were removed and circulated. powerful political statement. In the case of communal secondary burials, The propagandist potential of bodies is also reconstructing what activities took place is discussed by Trout (2003) in his work on early particularly relevant. This would allow one to Christian relics. The “bivalency of presence and see whether, as in 20th century Madagascar, absence” (Trout 2003, 525) of relics gave them the repeated handling of the bones of the dead a kind of power because they were physically served to fragment them into homogenized and available and could be manipulated and were de-individualised state of ancestorhood (Bloch visible in people’s daily lives, yet were 1982, 217-8), or whether, as in Bronze Age simultaneously imbued with another, Babh edh-Dhra, individual bodies were clearly immaterial, existence. In the case of Christian demarcated through the positioning of bones relics, this bivalency implies presence in a (Chesson 2001a, 104). It would also show metaphysically different world, but this concept whether most of the community were buried could also apply to bones which are at once together or whether only specific individuals physically present in the contemporary world, were singled out. Such questions are difficult to and in the past, as objects belonging to specific resolve and are subject to ongoing research. As histories. In this sense, bivalency would lend Beckett and Robb (2006, 69) point out, even symbolic potency to the bones and enhance with a slow rate of bone destruction in common their ability to reinforce narratives about the burials like British , only a present. As Verdery (1999, 27) notes about minute percentage of all bones initially interred political exhumations, re-burials and would remain in the long term. These questions desecrations in post-socialist states: “bodies have are, however, important to resolve because they the advantage of concreteness that nonetheless can help give a clearer sense of what secondary transcends time, making past immediately burial practices were like in that particular present”. context, and how/if they changed over time. A number of works have drawn on Archaeological interpretations of secondary ethnographically attested relationships between burial rituals living people and their ancestors in order to An added level of complexity in interpret archaeologically identified cases of archaeological interpretation stems from the secondary burial. Concepts of ancestorhood are need to determine if the assemblage was indeed used to better imagine the relationships of living the result of secondary burial, how many bodies with the people they buried near them were included, and other similar points. (e.g. Parker Pearson and Ramilisonina 1998;

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Joyce 2002; Porter 2002). Porter (2002) especially with those places that were the examines this question critically, proposing that designated sites of death ritual. Indeed, many the conjoint practice of secondary burial and interpretations cite practical problems to bone removal is a strong suggestion that ancestor explain instances of secondary burial where the veneration practices were important in the corpse could not, for whatever reason, be society being studied (10). processed properly at the time of death: death in Many of the elements of ritual practice that winter when frozen ground made burials have been the focus of ethnographic interest – impossible (Jacobs 1995, 394-5); lack of space the social environment within which the ritual in a cemetery, sanitary reasons (a desire to let took place, the participants, the emotions flesh decay before handling the bones, especially overtly expressed, and so on – remain invisible in the case of house burials (Andews and Bello archaeologically. The meaning of many of these 2006, 17)); and, most commonly, a death away practices can be extremely difficult to make out; from the community burial ground are all veneration and violation can both involve exactly invoked. the same bodily manipulations for utterly The idea of “special place disposal” being different purposes (Duncan 2005). Indeed, used by nomadic or semi-nomadic peoples who boiled and excarnated bones could as easily carried the bones of the dead back with them result from exo-cannibalism of slain enemies, has been used to explain secondary burials in endo-cannibalism of a loved relative, or areas ranging from North America preparation of bones for long distance transport (Walthall 1999, 4), Archaic Mississippi Basin to their final burial place (Stodder 2005). (Charles and Buikstra 1983), Scythian period Nonetheless, many archaeological works have burials in Tuva (Murphy and Mallory 2000, transcended these limitations in novel ways, 394), to the Bronze Age Levant (Chesson notably by turning to an analysis of mortuary 2001a). Regional (Charles and Buikstra 1983, space and place (see volume published by 132) and temporal (Byrd and Monahan 1995, Aragon et al. (2002) for the theoretical 265) differences in the prevalence of secondary importance of spatial analysis in mortuary burial within an area have been taken as archaeology) to better elucidate important indicative of differences in the degree of mobility aspects of past practice. The combination of of the inhabitants. In cases where the ethnographic research on secondary burial with population was only partly mobile, certain this interest in space has led to archaeological population patterns (e.g. more secondary burials interpretations wherein burials are increasingly of young adults than of children or elderly seen as one stage of a possibly multi-stage event. people) have been interpreted as signs that the As such, contemporaneous mortuary diversity more mobile people, being at greater risk of within the archaeological record is not only, or dying away from camp, received secondary even necessarily, explained in terms of social burials more frequently (Andrews and Bello stratification (Hutchinson and Aragon 2002, 35; 2006, 23). Shaffer 2005, 153). Furthermore, the use of Yet such interpretations are incomplete space has often been re-thought since different because there is no reason to assume that mobile sites could be part of a ritual landscape in which people would necessarily choose to use special elements of the full cycle took place burial places, as evidenced by Woodburn’s (Hutchinson and Aragon 2002, 35). (1982) research on burial practices in four African hunter-gatherer societies. In all four Special places and secondary burial practices: cases that he discussed, death was followed by a A way to cope with practical constraints limiting burial local interment of the body and abandonment of practices the camp. Why, then, are the same spaces used The most commonly encountered recurrently by some people, and what makes archaeological interpretations of secondary this important enough to justify carrying a body burial focus on people’s relationship with places, over long distances?

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Enforcing corporate ownership of lands through accomplish (Fustel de Coulanges 1979 [1864], mortuary practice 62). Conversely, relationship to ancestors could Secondary burial is sometimes explained by take precedence over that with space itself to proposing that people needed to bring the dead the point where any land that held ancestors back to specific places at least in part to could be sacralised. If people had to move, reinforce their own corporate relationship to this secondary burial could be motivated by a desire place. In terms of the relationship between the to bring ancestors along in order to maintain a individual and corporate identities of the dead, long term relationship with them. This is this view is relatively similar to those pertaining attested in a wide range of contexts, from to the political manipulation of the dead; bodies forcible departure in war-time to planned become used, in a sense, as symbols of the movement of bones as part of a normal cycle of larger-scale group to which they belong and periodic village movements. Such movements become physical reminders of long-term have been performed by: Serbs leaving Sarajevo corporate presence in a given area. Secondary in the 1990s (Verdery 1999, 109); Chinese burial here is only a means of getting the body to immigrants to North America bringing with its proper place. them ancestral bones (Greenwood 2005); 17th Morris (1991, 151) explains the difference century Nanticoke people who were moving between hunter-gatherer societies that practice villages (Shaffer 2005, 141); families leaving special place burials and those that do not in apartment compounds in Classic Teotihuacan terms of their differing economic systems. (Manzanilla 2002, 62); and by communities in Contrary to the societies referred to by Natufian period Levant (Byrd and Monahan Woodburn (1982), many hunter-gatherer 1995). societies used a “delayed-return” system in which subsistence depends on investment in Creating sites for community gatherings specific resources ahead of time, and where Another interpretation of special-place specific social obligations and rights could be burials evocative of a Hertzian understanding of passed on from one generation to the next. In the ritual is that they served to bring people such cases, the affirmation of a common together through ritual participation in a inherited relationship with the land could be common location. The repatriation of bones to bolstered by the maintenance of conspicuous such cemeteries would form a ritual event, the mortuary structures (Morris 1991, reviewing repetition of which could help form community the Saxe-Goldstein hypothesis). A few ties (Jacobs 1995, 397-8; Walthal 1999, 23; archaeologists use this concept when explaining Chesson 2001a, 110; Porter 2002, 6; see also bone repatriation (e.g. Charles and Buikstra Kan (1986) for an ethnographic example). 1983, 117-20; Walthal 1999, 5). Charles and Furthermore, secondary burial practices may Buikstra (1983), working on Archaic sites in the have been one means through which different Mississippi area, support their interpretation by levels of community could be articulated noting that these cemeteries were often very together. In the early sedentary communities of conspicuously placed near long-term occupation the Neolithic Levant, Kuijt (2001) found that camps (129). certain practices occurred among many different The relationship with space, however, communities. Most bodies were buried in could also be mediated, not through the dead as houses, but certain skulls were removed and visible markers of corporate identity, but kept in either the house itself or in public spaces through an ongoing relationship with the in the city (Kuijt 2001, 89). Repetitive ancestors themselves. In early Greece, having patterns in the placement of the skulls created a dead ancestors buried somewhere created an commonality between homes and public space immutable, legally recognized bond with the (Kuijt 2001, 89), and a certain level of land that stemmed from the need to care for the homogeneity was maintained between different dead; a duty that only descendants could individuals. In this way, the skulls of specific

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people were removed while maintaining a level can be explained in very different terms by the of corporate similarity between members of the participants. Explanations range from the community. desire to have their dead “buried with their One important concept brought forth in Relations” (Shaffer 2005, 149) to a desire to Kuijt’s article, that of social memory (Kuijt “conserve land” (O’Rourke 2007, 390). 2001, 81-2), helps give meaning to explain the Ethnographic research has also found that interaction of places (where bodies were participant explanations can be surprisingly repeatedly brought and processed), of the bodies diverse even within a single community where themselves, and of the oral histories repeatedly practice was relatively homogenous. Through told about these objects. Through the her fieldwork with Wari elders who had repetition of such rituals, individual people performed mortuary cannibalism in their youth, could be recognised while “the idealization of Conklin (1995, 75-6) discovered that while links between the living, the deceased, and the participants described their conduct of this collective ancestors” (Kuijt 2001, 89) created a ritual as important because it had been the sense of community that transcended individual greatest possible expression of respect for the death. dead, they did not necessarily have an articulated and unified explanation of why this Discussion was so. The ways of thinking about secondary This is also shown with particular clarity in burial rituals outlined thus far all help to bring O’Rourke’s (2007) report on her fieldwork in a out important aspects of the practice in specific rural Greek village where secondary burial had contexts. Because of the great variability of long been performed. Traditionally, this practices that exist, however, interpretations are involved the eventual removal of bodies from intensely bound to specific contexts and are individual tombs and their transfer to an ossuary inadequate for others. Indeed, the very concept where no marks of the personal identities of the of “secondary burial” has been critiqued on the deceased were allowed. This transfer was grounds that: followed by a break in relationships between the mourners and the specific person who had died. A term that does not allow researchers to distinguish The practice has changed rapidly within between secondary rites in Indonesia (Hertz 1960 the past 50 years with increased [1907]) and the relocation of bones into European memorialisation of the dead as individuals and charnel houses is bound to confuse any cross-cultural increased maintenance of living-dead discussion of mortuary practices. Additionally there relationships even after secondary burial is no commonly applied method to evaluate whether (O’Rourke 2007, 387). This change was disarticulated remains result from , cannibalism, body processing, or reburial, and only a surprising since many participants still describe few studies have addressed the problem […] the universality of the decomposition of the body (Weiss-Krejci 2005, 156) and its return to the same earth as all other bodies, and the minimization of inter-personal After all, between placement of bones in and class differences in death, as central and ossuaries by families in a small community as laudable features of traditional practice part of the normal mourning process, yearly (O’Rourke 2007, 391). After inquiring about visits to powerful ancestral places and how people explained this change, O’Rourke destruction of royal tombs during a revolution, (2007) found herself “surprised by the range and the motivations of the participants, their intensity of responses, not only about why experience of the event, and the event’s social practice was changing but [even] about what impact (either in the short or long term) have was currently happening after disinterment” little in common. What is more, even outwardly (388, emphasis added). similar practices, such as the use of ossuaries, This conjunction of often intense and sincere feelings about the importance of rituals

Nexus: The Canadian Student Journal of Anthropology, Vol. 21 (2009) Bones, people, and communities 35 with a lack of consensus about what they meant, commemoration and affirmations of and sometimes even about what specific form personal/family status are also present (166-7). they take, seems surprising. Yet this flexibility Yet the memory of the deceased, not the body, makes it more possible to adapt ritual practices form the focus of these activities. The most to a range of circumstances. It also creates mutable practices, in this example, are those potential for debate and for tensions between concerning what is done to the body itself. The the different levels of identity that could be continuation of relationship between dead and commemorated. living, and the re-negotiation/re-assertions of The concept of secondary burial is also relationships among the living, can be expressed problematic because activities that were similar just as vehemently in rituals that do not include in their purpose could leave utterly different secondary burial. traces in the archaeological record. Thus the twofold ceremonial structure described by Hertz Conclusion can also occur without the body actually These examples highlight how tensions needing to be physically transformed (Hertz between individual and corporate identities can 2004 [1907], 203). Similarly, it is possible for be expressed without any recourse to bodily the living to memorialise the dead and to have modifications, and how participants can value a ceremonies that unite the community without specific mortuary practice as a sign of love and involving the bodies of the dead in any way. respect for the dead without having or needing a For instance, Kan’s (1986) discussion of the shared notion of possible complex symbolic 19th century Tlingit potlatch focuses on two underpinnings to their gestures. Both of these ceremonies necessary for the proper disposal of examples concur with the surprising degree of the dead. These ceremonies seem to be a good mutability that death rituals in general seem to fit for a Hertzian understanding of secondary express, as well as the high emotional value they burial; although the body was incinerated hold for many people (Kroeber 1927, 314). during a wake ceremony which occurred soon This very mutability and fluidity of after death, the soul could not fully integrate life secondary mortuary ritual make them an in the village of the dead until the interesting topic for study. If meanings were not commemorative potlatch (Kan 1986, 195-6). inherent in ritual practice, they can be Respect and care for the dead were understood attributed post facto when a practice gained by participants as the central point of this visibility through juxtaposition with other second ceremony which was described as “the possible ways of doing things. In situations of finishing of the dead body” (Kan 1986, 193). cultural contact with new groups, or between During the course of the ceremony, the body people within a group, such practices could be was moved into a new container by the affines of invested with importance. Speaking of the dead person’s clan (Kan 1986, 196) who statements made by a group of people about the were thanked with gifts. As well as affirming death rituals of the Sepik (who had traditionally community ties, the potlatch could serve as a practiced mortuary cannibalism), Knüsel and forum for prestige building, an endeavour Outram (2006) state that “[t]he apparent understood as a way of honouring the lineage’s relativism of [statements about inherent cultural ancestors (Kan 1986, 201). difference […], although lacking in obvious In other contexts, mortuary potlatches can contempt and fear, provides the basis upon occur without secondary burial of any kind being which difference could be accentuated to justify necessary. Simeone’s (1991) ethnography of actions at another time or under circumstances” Northern Athapaskan memorial potlatches (253). brings out, again, the importance of re-affirming Indeed, secondary burial rituals may be affinal-consanguine social networks through gift- made into arguments in a discourse about giving and shared sorrow for the dead person, difference and sameness – about identity. This and highlights that tensions between collective is true, as has been explored within a group of

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people who practise secondary burial together. practising these rituals; discourse about But it is also true in cases where secondary differences in ritual practice can be made to burial practices are juxtaposed with different refer to differences between the practitioners. mortuary treatments. For instance, in 19th and Since ideas about life and death, and about the 20th century Europe the practice of removing body and how to treat, it may be (although they bones to ossuaries was rarely seen in English are not necessarily so) emotionally resonant for cemeteries, although it had been common in the many people, such an emotional charge can be 13th century (Goody and Poppi 1994, 159). brought to bear upon whatever other social This disappearance had been gradual with the issues are being debated through the ritual. change occurring for various reasons, yet as a Using the longer term perspective provided by difference in the practice of secondary burial archaeology and ethno-history, periods of change began to emerge between England and or coalescence in mortuary practice would continental Europe, it became subject to constitute thought provoking topics for further discourse about other differences between the study. people in these places. An intense polemic Thus secondary burial practices provide a concerning mortuary remains was raised during forum for community formation and for the reformation, wherein attitudes towards the discussing ancestors, selves, and relationships. treatment of bodily remains was fashioned into a There can be tensions between different scales means of differentiation between the newly- of identity when it comes to how the person’s formed Catholic and Protestant groups (Goody memory and their body are represented and Poppi 1994, 161). Napoleonic reforms of throughout the ritual. Such tensions may be burial practices involved laws mandating played with as part of negotiations between the prompt exhumations from public cemeteries and living; individual death can be minimized as a re-burial in ossuaries (Goody and Poppi 1994, way to emphasize the continuity of social order, 163). By enforcing secondary burial as the norm but it can also be exaggerated as part of political throughout much of continental Europe, these discourse in which the individual person laws would have created an added incentive becomes a symbol. Yet in all of this, secondary towards differentiation. burial ritual is not fundamentally different from Treatment of, and attitudes about the other forms of ritual. Variations in practice body, as well as relationships with the dead, are seem, often, to be historically contingent, and varied. In certain cases, secondary burial serve as community forums to reflect, debate, or practices – or any burial practices – can be reinforce personal and corporate identities. made salient by contrast with other funerary traditions. Questions about the meaning of Acknowledgements ritual may become more important under these This article is based on a paper written for a seminar circumstances. In such cases, there can be a on the Archaeology of Death at McMaster University conflation of identity between a group and its in the fall of 2007. I wish to thank professor Aubrey practice in such a way that discourse about Cannon and my colleague Catherine Paterson for their advice, suggestions and ideas during this seminar. I am mortuary practice and about treatment of the also grateful to two anonymous reviewers from Nexus. body become discourses about the people

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