Mortuary Behavior, Labor Organization, and Social Rank

Abstract

Mortuary analysis has a long and erratic history in archaeology. Studies of skeletal remains were first motivated by a desire for information on racial affiliation and population movement, while the associated grave goods seemed to offer detailed chronological ordering of artifact types. Much enthusiastic and unsystematic excavation also centered on monuments or site complexes with large quantities of mortuary remains. While archaeological interest has turned away from constructions of sequences and reconstruction of racial types, these complex sites and their archaeological materials, testifying to organized human activity on a large scale, have become key sources of information on broad patterns of social change. Mortuary remains, too, are often highly patterned and are differently so in societies of differing organization, seeming to inform us of social dimensions not readily visible in other archaeological materials. Consequently, we have a current problem (the understanding of social dimensions of nonliterate, prehistoric societies) and a large body of patterned material. The temptation to put two and two together is irresistible.