Deciphering our Transition to the Undiscovered Country

I am fascinated by funeral practices.  This is an initial exploration...

It has often been said that modern Americans are not good at accepting death, in part because we cultivate better living standards, medicines, and cosmetics, reject the processes of physical decay and grief, and embrace a media culture of death as painless/quick/surrounded by family and friends in a halo of stage lights/a transitory moment ignored in the necessary welcome to the company of heaven.  There is no doubt that we individually recognize that death is a lot more real, often accompanied by shock and fear and anger and pain and mess.  And while there are some cultures that are “better” at death, I think it’s wrong to create an impression that this makes death any easier for the grieving. 

Funerary practices are the ritualization of death.  They may ostensibly be for the dead—to ease the transition to the next world—but they are constructed by the living for the living.  If we think of Sutton Hoo, the 7^th century boat burial was clearly about constructing a tableau for those remaining.  The mode of burial was meant to evoke Scandinavian boat burials, to emphasize the connection to this ethnicity and its heroic burial form.  The coins sent off the dead man in a way that also emphasized the connection to the Merovingian monetary cultures around them.  The metalwork was created in the local Hiberno-Saxon technique using the interlace of fantastic beasts but also using addorsed beasts on either side of a man, a motif taken from Scandinavian metalwork, and bird motifs from fibulae seen in cultures like the Lombards.  The silver bowls and baptismal spoons were about visible wealth, cosmopolitan interaction with established empires like the Byzantines, and perhaps a hedging against the possibility that the fledgling Christian culture was right about the afterlife.  It is entirely likely that the site remained uncovered for a time—a month?—for the viewing of the body and goods, before being covered by the barrow. 

This blog entry was sparked by a passing article about 12 pre-Hispanic burials from around 1000 discovered in Nayarit, Mexico.  (I want to specify that I know NOTHING about this period or culture and there’s little more info available about this site at this time.  I’m curious though)  The burials were in a volcanic area, covered by lava and hence preserved.  (Did they know that the site would be covered? Was this a deliberate choice?) The bodies were interred in basalt boxes built of 8 stones (why 8?); it interests me that there was intentional fragmentation of the stones on the tops (what does this mean? Fragmented before? Fragmented during the installation of bodies? After, perhaps to release the spirit of the dead?).  There were also bodies interred around the boxes and in clay vessels buried in the boxes.  According to the article, this kind of burial is unknown in the area—with shaft tombs and clay vessel burials the standard.  (Why change form?  This seems to suggest multiple status of burials—families? Gendered? Social rank?)   

image from: http://www.arqueomex.com/S2N3nMalinches108.html

Inside one of the boxes were found two Mazapan style figurines, about 11 inches tall, female, with blouses, skirts, headdress, earflaps, bracelets, with red pigment on them.  (Why only two? Were these bodies special? Were the deceased in these graves female? Are the figures just “standing figures” or the goddess Xochiquetzal (who seems to have been a fertility figure)? Protectors? Indications of larger cultural identity?  So much I don’t know.)  I did learn that there was a lot of commercial travel across Mexico at this point (ca. 800-1000), resulting in Mazapan style figures deposited as far away as El Salvador (which Cherra tells me tends to go south not north...).  I’ll undoubtedly go hunt down my friend and colleague Cherra Wyllie for some help (wow, do I have a lot more questions now, even though this isn’t her area.  Children buried with toys with wheels in an area where wheeled carts and pottery wheels aren’t used? Women’s goods and imagery vs. men’s…)

What we take with us in our graves tells something very important about the way others relate to us.  If we are buried with our wedding rings or without, it could be taken either way as valuing the marriage as valued to the death.  There's the issue of being buried in a way that makes the individual seem like his/her self--glasses on, favorite dress (interesting audio programme on this with Dr. Sheila Harper on BBC, about 13 min in).  We tend to want funerals/burials to erase the death--does this make the person complete for the afterlife?.  Perhaps because we don’t have a consistent practice of burial that says the same to all viewers. Perhaps because there are so many things that can be buried with us--there isn't a particular style of brooch or knife that resonates across cultures.  Perhaps because we're afraid of talking about what we want death to be socially...