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14. Funerary Crematories or Sacrificial Altars?
- The University of Akron Press
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Name /uap04/22015_u14 04/28/04 01:53PM Plate # 0-Composite pg 325 # 1 ⫺1 0 ⫹1 325 Chapter 14 F U N E R A R Y C R E M A T O R I E S O R S A C R I F I C I A L A L T A R S ? The last several chapters have focused on characterizing the social organizational aspect of Ohio Hopewell as a network of autonomous ecclesiastic-communal cults variably distributed primarily within the Miamis, the Scioto, and the Muskingum drainages of the Central Ohio Valley. Critically important to confirm is the ritual nature of the practices that it is claimed this cultic context made possible and, indeed, demanded. To this point, the nature of the mortuary data of the great earthworks as manifesting world renewal ritual has been assumed, largely by relying on both the associations between the mortuary mounds and the earthworks, which the findings of the World Renewal Model concluded were the context and outcome of world renewal ceremony, and the Mourning/World Renewal Mortuary Model. However , the empirical evidence in support of this latter model was presented in the context of the Archaic period as part of the initial critique of the Exclusive Territorial/Proprietorial Domain Paradigm. This chapter initiates the empirical grounding of the Mourning/World Renewal Mortuary Model in the Ohio Hopewell record, thereby firmly tying the nature of the mortuary practices to the symbolic pragmatic function of the embankment earthworks as world renewal locales. This is done first by demonstrating that the mortuary patterning of Mound City is more coherently accounted for in terms of the mourning→ Name /uap04/22015_u14 04/28/04 01:53PM Plate # 0-Composite pg 326 # 2 326 o h i o h o p e w e l l a n d w o r l d r e n e w a l ⫺1 0 ⫹1 spirit-release→world renewal process than in terms of the funerary view, and then by extending this interpretation and empirical grounding to the mortuary patterning of the Hopewell and Turner sites. the mortuary practic es and cultural paradigms The symbolic pragmatic approach of this book argues that material cultural style is a critically important symbolic expressive medium by which humans constitute the action nature of their regular material behavioral interventions. If this is accepted, then it follows that the users of material culture have a vocabulary to express in ordinary conversation the pragmatic meanings that correspond to the stylistics this material culture bears and by which it is conventionally endowed with action constitutive force. Recalling the earlier discussion of the bladelet /flake dichotomy, it can be imagined that, in conversation, Ohio Hopewell participants would unproblematically speak of an elongated or prismatic blade made of Flint Ridge flint or Wyandotte chert in terms that could be glossed as, say, a “mortuary shaving blade,” while speaking about a non-prismatic flake tool made of local river cobble chert in terms that could be glossed as, say, a “hide scraper,” even though either could equally mediate the same objective steps required for shaving the dead deer or the deceased human. These terms would implicate overlapping but contrasting terminological paradigms mapping what might be instrumentally equivalent but pragmatically contrasting material assemblages constitutive of contrasting contexts, for instance, cult Renewal Lodges and extended family households. Thus the use of bladelet and flake tools would be part of the production of the context natures of the respective locales, and of the social systems of which the context nature of these locales were partly constitutive. In short, it becomes very important to ensure that the terminology that is used to refer to the Ohio Hopewell material features, facilities , and artifacts related to the mortuary sphere adequately characterizes these in terms that do not contradict and, preferably, correspond in sense with the terms that the Ohio Hopewell would [44.192.71.254] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 09:40 GMT) Name /uap04/22015_u14 04/28/04 01:53PM Plate # 0-Composite pg 327 # 3 f u n e r a r y c r e m a t o r i e s 327 ⫺1 0 ⫹1 have used themselves. Unfortunately, this may not currently be the case and, indeed, this terminology not only may be inadequate but may actually distort our understanding of the social reality manifested in the materials that it labels. As pointed out in the presentation of the Mourning/World Renewal Mortuary...