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3 Cosmological Layouts of Secondary Burials as Political Instruments James A. Brown Secondary burials offer a fertile field for research that has barely been tapped. The very diversity of secondary burial treatments allow us cultural insights that offer surprising rewards when coupled with fresh analytical perspectives. When we reflect on the deep and myriad cultural connections that bones have as an essence of human life, we can readily recognize the extent to which hard organic residues of life constitute a potent cultural resource in ancient societies . From this observation one can conclude that an important role of bones is to aid in the reproduction of social life. Core structural schemas become acted upon, including notions of how the universe perpetuates itself (Williamson and Farrar 1992). The goal of this chapter is to identify ways that secondary interments can actively portray visions about the cosmos in the pre-contact Americas. My point of departure will be the storied Great Mortuary located in one of the mounds at the Spiro site of eastern Oklahoma. Although this burial display has garnered most of its fame from the sheer volume of graphic art material, the provocative mortuary context is what makes this burial display such fertile ground for the following analysis. Of particular relevance is the unprecedented scale of the piles of scarce artifacts that were amassed among secondary burials. One could slot this feature into ready-made customary categories , but there are too many unique aspects to the feature to make this operation credible. Instead, I advocate detailed comparisons of collective mortuary displays. The burial display from the summit of Submound 1 of Mound 72, Cahokia, which looks very different from others, is the focus of this essay. This approach throws diverse cultural priorities into relief. Social Display and Secondary Burials The principle that sometimes human bones are employed as a social resource without any necessary connection to actual social identity is relatively new to Cosmological Layouts 31 southeastern archaeology. That resource can become an instrument for what can be termed a social display. What I have in mind is an analogy with a floral display in which the component elements and their arrangement are consciously chosen for an intended effect. Social display is as worthy a subject for analysis as individual identities are. However, the implied disconnect with specific individuals makes for an awkward fit with perspectives that start with arguments about the social identities of individual interments (Parker Pearson 1999). Secondary burials draw upon a much larger social field than that of the identity of a particular individual (Goldstein 1989). Reburials of all kinds lend themselves to political uses that largely sidestep considerations grounded in the practical disposal of the dead. This has led some scholars to draw the conclusion that politics underlies nearly all mortuary treatments (Parker Pearson 1999). Whatever advantages this all-embracing view of the pervasiveness of politics may have, it does little to uncover connections to what Wolf (2001) terms structural power, which commonly acts through broadly supported cultural conventions that are ostensibly power neutral (Bloch and Parry 1982). Although social identities have been central to the perspective of burial sociology, they have little to do with the symbolism involved in shaping the treatment and disposal of burials. Typically these symbolic expressions have been consigned to the workings of culture in the abstract with little further analysis. In large part this disinclination is a response to the weak and often ambiguous cultural patterning incorporated in displays of secondary burials. For instance, critiques of the cultural-historical school of thought have repeatedly shown that no particular form of burial is a sign for a specific fact about society, culture, or ethnicity. This avenue of analysis has long been discredited (Binford 1971). For these reasons a direct or “self-evident” reading of secondary burials raises more problems than analysis can resolve. A different tack is mandated, and I have adopted an approach that grounds itself in comparing mortuary displays. Instrumental Uses of Burials Heretofore, burial analysis has emphasized the social identities of individual interments as the primary vehicle for analysis (Brown 1971, 1975, 1981b; Peebles and Kus 1977). But individual identities do not make sense as a starting point for analyzing secondary burials. Any number of other considerations can assert priority. Whereas age, gender, and wealth have been instrumental in translating individual burials into social identities, the number of analytical considerations prompted by secondary burial, particularly when multiple [13.58.252.8] Project MUSE (2024-04-20 03:21...

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