I think that archaeologists look at status as a way to separate the people, the land and the world. Status can be a way to categorize and describe what we see each and everyday. Depending on where an archaeologist is working, status could refer to a simple or complex hierarchy of social organization within a society, which could be determined by birth, family, marriage, occupation, death, or perhaps religion. These are just a few ideas I thought of off the top of my head but once again depending on the person, each and every one of us could have a different idea about status and investigate this abstract concept in a different way. Status is perceptual and is a cultural construct.
Depending on whether we are studying a deceased past population, whose remains are excavated and studied, or a living population, that we can study through ethnographic field work, the techniques and strategies of measuring status could be completely different. The advantage of investigating a living population is that an anthropologist can go into the field and observe behaviour as it is occurring in real-time; whereas when studying a deceased population we have to interpret, from the remains, how these people may have interacted. I believe these two different types of studies have one overarching factor in common and that is the fact that in both cases the anthropologist may not be able to fully understand the society, but needs to make inferences based on patterns and relationships that they see.
Often times when looking at burials, anthropologists are quick to assume that a person buried with or without particular grave goods would have had a high or low status, but these assumptions are based on what we believe to have value today. Below is a picture of burial goods from a Late Roman burial, these grave goods which are thought to have been valuable to this culture may carry little value in another society so it is important to remember that value is perceptual.
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| (Example of grave goods from a Late Roman burial) Available at: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/36/82535535_32bee80cd3.jpg |
I believe that, often times, archaeologists will interpret grave goods as representations of the person buried and not always take into consideration the family and society that contributed to this process.
In fact, graves can often tell archaeologists more about a living society from the past than it can about the particular deceased individual being studied because, “the wishes of the deceased are not always followed” by the living (Parker Pearson 1993:203).
As much as I would like to believe that my family knows me well enough to bury me with items that I associated with and had a fondness for in life, if I were to die tomorrow I don't think that my grave would be an exact representation of the real me. I think that they might put items in that reminded them of me and perhaps not what I would put it.
As well, I think that if someone were to undercover me years from now they may be misled as to my social status within the society. As I am a student, and we all know how tough that can be on the wallet, I would not be able to afford the burial that my parents would most likely provide for me.
In the end it is not important to me how or where I am buried, it is how I will be remembered that will count.
Resources Consulted:
- Parker Pearson, M. 1993. The Powerful Dead: Archaeological Relationships between the
Living and the Dead. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 3(2):203-229.
- Parker Pearson, M. 1999. The Archaeology of Death and Burial. Texas: Texas A&M
University Press.
True. You should have a look at Richard Bowker's entry (http://richardbowkeranth392.blogspot.com/2011/02/archaeology-of-middle-class.html) and my reaction to it, as it relates to what you say about projection of our own categories and perseptions onto the past.
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