Going back to where we belong

    The last couple of days we've been talking about repatriation of the artifacts including human remains. The topic is so controversial that I don't see the problems would be solved at any time sooner.
    Personally I think we all deserve to rest in peace after we die, and I honestly don't know anyone who would appreciate any people including the archaeologists to destroy his or her grave years later. 
    Digging up someone out of the ground is not the nicest thing to do considering the spiritual peace and respects any individual deserves. However, sometimes we could not really explore the past history without destructing the original burials.
    I am enrolling in this forensic osteology with Dr. Donaldson and he is one of my favorite professors here at Uvic, but many people think he should not be teaching the course because he has this huge collection of human remains and the remains of more recent crime victims has caused the issue in particular.
    I was deadly terrified when I handled those remains in the lab for the first time. I seriously felt a strong sympathy towards those victims regardless of what they did before they died. That depression lasted about a month before I could start my studying on them.
    I think often we found the more recent human remains or the older ones with traceable records the most terrifying, because what we get are not just remains, but also stories of these people when they were alive. They are also the ones that are easy to connect with because of the same reason. Thus these remains should not be disturbed whatsoever.
    In terms of the older human remains especially the ones, repatriation and maintenance of their peace are still as much important because we can't ignore the evidence of the fact that they were once alive. We have to pay as much of our respects to them as possible since they already had no actual voice to tell us how they would feel if we did anything to them.
    So how do we learn as anthropologists if we leave all these remains intact? Frankly, I don't know. The situation is so overly constrained and the only thing we can do is to make the best choice out of each specific context.

credit: deposit photos

Ghostly

First of all I want to apologize for any content, especially the pictures that would possibly cause any uneasiness. Sorry if I creep any of you out.


Being inspired by a reading we did a couple of weeks ago, in which the idea of 'ghost marriage' was referenced, I decided to do a blog on this to briefly introduce this fascinating old Chinese tradition that has been practiced by the Chinese. Similar ritual is also practiced in various Asian countries including Korea, Singapore, Sudan etc.and it's a legal event in France, but here I will only focus on talking about the Chinese one.

Hung Liu Minghun – Ghost Marriage
Oil on canvas, 80" x 80" 2010. Courtesy of Rena Bransten Gallery. 

When it comes to finding a quick definition there's nothing works better than Wikipedia (here I used Chinese Wikipedia and translated the definition to avoid cross-cultural misinterpretation). According to Wikipedia 'ghost marriage' is a folk custom. If an engaged couple died before they were actually married or two young kids died before they get engaged, then their parents will "help" them to get married in the love and memory for them.

In old China ghost marriage is normally practiced by affluent families, and poor families could rarely afford it. The custom has been quite popular lately in Northern China. There are more men than women in China for now, and dead bodies of women has been very precious and are frequently stolen and sold as items. This raises social issues and concerns. I won't be ranting about this problem too much here, but WHERE ARE THE RESPECTS PEOPLE?!

An old picture of ghost marriage from the period of Republic of China.
The ceremony was held in a family of Shanxi province (my hometown).
The couple in the picture were dead when the picture was taken
and both of them had their feet hung in the air. credit

The originating time of this custom remains ambiguous. Some say it is from Zhou Dynasty (1046-256 BC) while the others say it's from Han Dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE). The custom peeked at Song Dynasty (960-1279 CE), and it was documented by scholars at that time:  “年当嫁娶未婚而死者，两家令媒互求之，谓之鬼媒人。通家状细帖，各以父母命祷而卜之。得卜，即制服冥衣，男带女裙帔等毕备，媒者就墓备酒果，祭以合婚”. (Translation: The ones died before marriage, their families hire matchmaker to find an appropriate families, this is the ghost matchmaker. The families list out detailed record of their horoscope, and have their parents to pray. If the matchmaking went well, they immediately make clothes for the dead, and when the couple is well-dressed, the matchmaker prepare the offering and hold the wedding) .

Most parts of China are patrilineal. It was seen as a shame and misfortune of a family to have a unmarried daughter dies because the deceased woman could not be included in the genealogy. Thus the ghost marriage was often a way to maintain a woman's status and name, and a way to find the woman a home so she would not wander and get lost in the living's world.

A poetry written by Anita N. Feng provides some sort of description of the ghost marriage in modern Chinese community: 

ghost marriage 

paper stars and moon  three tiered houses and their utensils 

fast heated column of paper money 

lifted by ghosts 

the 

impatient  and delighted spark 

here are two houses 

crackling to heaven  paper rabbit lantern tinseled and sprung 

into celebration 

and from the mud bath the ghosts 

lay paper rice into their mouths 

fire dribbling down their chins with happiness  black 

liquor 

double tongued 

flame and aspirations lovely ash a young bride 

lovely ash a husband  their children deities 

strewn about the burial site as the 

living guests depart 

 This video recorded a ghost marriage in Chinese community of Lukut, a small town in Malaysia. You guys can get a taste of it. Please turn your volume down if you decided to watch it as it has continual sound of clapping cymbals.

What it takes to be a good webpage

So our group project focuses on Japanese elite burials across time, we'll try to look into the material culture, religious beliefs etc. I'm responsible for looking into the Japanese Kofun, not as a period of time but as a specific type of site. I did some googling and find one site that I like: link.

So here's my grading:

Category	4	3	2	1	Score
Reference/ Citation Styles	Full and accurate Harvard styled bibliographic references. Correct and full use of in-text citations	Overall clear citations with minor errors that need improvement	Few major errors and some missing content in the references or citations	Attempt to reference sources but citations are done inappropriately	3
Quality of Research	The sources are relevant and mainly academic; and researchers attempt for peer reviewed sources though it’s not required	The sources are overall relevant and academic, but some content are missing	The sources are slightly irrelevant to the topic but researchers show effort to apply them into their work	The researchers fail to make minimum reference and make use of it	3
Pictures in Content	The pictures are properly referenced and have descriptions. They are also relevant to the content	Small bits of the criteria of a 4 are missing	Majority of the criteria of a 4 is missing	The researchers attempt to include pictures but it is improperly done	4
Text	The text is descriptive, insightful, clear and is also accessible to large audience	The text is overall descriptive and insightful but there is a lack of clarity in it	The relevant content is missing and there is a lack of clarity in writing	The text is not accessible to larger audience, and the writing is unclear or redundant. There is also missing content	4
Grammar & Spelling		There is no errors in grammar or spelling that distract the reader from the content	There are some grammar or spelling errors that cause distractions for the reader	There are many grammar or spelling errors that cause distractions for the reader	3

Category	4	3	2	1	Score
Appearance			The website is clearly constructed and offers easy navigation for viewers	The website shows attempt to do the work but the construction is unclear or confusing	2
Flow and Coherency			The work flows together in a coherent manner, and there is consistency between writers	The writers attempt to flow but the output is disconnected	2

This site provides a good overview on Japanese Kofun, but I deducted 1 point each on "Reference/Citation Styles" and "Quality of Research" because the citation style is clearly not Harvard style which it not the writer's fault, but based on this rubric it cannot be a 4 on this section. The quality of research is good, although I think more sources should be used in this writing as the author only have 2 sources.

'Gay Caveman'?

After I google searched the phrase 'gay caveman' news reports of a site located at suburban area of Czech Republic, dated back to between 2900 (2800 in some other reports)~2500BC came up. The archaeologists found a male body that was buried in a way that was usually for females of Corded Ware culture in the Copper Age. During this period of time, men were traditionally buried lying on their right side with their heads pointing towards the west, and women on their left sides with their heads pointing towards the east. In terms of grave goods, male burials often have weapons, hammer along with food and drinks; and female graves usually have jewelry, jugs, as well as egg-shaped pots near their feet.

Some archaeologists believe that this might be one of the earliest graves for "homosexual", "transexual", or "third gender" people. A detailed report from Telegraph: click to see.

As soon as the name 'gay caveman' was proposed, critiques flooded in: 'gay' is a oversimplified definition and it was not a caveman we are looking at, it is "pre-Bronze Age farmers" we are talking about. (Pappas, Science on MSNBC.com)

The skeleton of a Stone-Age man, dating back to about 2,500 to 2,800 B.C., found on the outskirts of Prague. He was buried on his left with his head facing west — a traditionally female position. (Science on MSNBC.com website)

I think people cannot any assumptions out of the actual social and cultural context. Determining this individual's sexual orientation based on solely the burial norms at the same period of time can hardly provide us any accurate information. According to Wikipedia, the word 'gay' is used as an adjective to describe people, especially male, and the cultures and social pratices associated with homosexuality in modern English. This person could be a deviant of that society, and there is not enough evidence indicating his social and economic status. This person could be a twin-sprited person and considered to have super power, but at the same time had "normal" sexual orientation. He could be raised as a girl due to any religious or personal reason. In acient China, some physically weak boys would be raised as girls. The parents dress them like girls (i.e. ear piercing) so that they would have bigger chance to survive the illness. These are all wild guesses without cultural evidence. The point is we cannot separate this person's sexual orientation from the larger social context.

Monument Analysis

Our group visited the famous Ross Bay Cemetery, and we originally wanted to focus on the graves with statues, specifically the angel statues. Unfortunately, there weren't that many human-statues within the cemetery, so we decided to include the ones that located closely to the statues and with obelisks or urns for the purpose of this project.

The first statue we saw the moment we walked into the cemetery was the Pooley angel (picture 1). This appears to be a family monument since the names carved on the stone show family relations. There were no obelisk or urn graves around this monumnet.



picture 1



The Woods family's monument has this maiden statue on the top, and there are obelisk and urn around it (picture 2, 3, 4 repectively).

It's possible that the familys of these three statues are related, or from the same region, but I do not have enough evidence to be certain on this question. Further research is definitely needed if I want to find the relationships between these families. We can certainly track down to the descendants of these families or interview the managers of the cemetery to get some answers. The family with maiden statue appears to be from England, the family with obelisk appears to be from Scotland and some members from Germany, and the family with the urn on the top appears to come from England originally. The oldest dates on each grave are around the same time. But it is still hard to tell if these people are in any way related. It is also possible that the graves were arranged based on where these people came from geographically.




Picture 2





The third statue we looked at was the Dean's family statue (picture 5).  And the fourth human-like statue is the Bossi family angel (picture6).Similar to the Woods family, we found a obelisk and a urn grave in the surrounding area of these two statues respectively. The research method would likely to be the same to the Wood's family in terms of answering the questions I proposed above, so I won't repeat here.





The questions our group attempt to study are: what are the changes of these statues over time? Are there any gender/age/status/job differences in terms of the locations or the appearances of these monuments?

I think the change of each statue over time would be related to the materials and styles of statues (i.e. what type of angel, urn or obelisk), or even the font of carving on the stones of them.

  



picture 3



picture 4


The gender differences are easy to see: they generally show male dominant pattern. Men's names are usually on the top of women, and most of time there are "wife of..." before the names of these women. The men's achivements during their lives are usually clearly documented if there were any. For instance,  on the front side of the Robson's family urn it says: "

Hon. John Robson premier of British Columbia. Born at Perth, Ont. March 14th 1824 died in London, Eng. June 29th 1892 “He was a faithful man and feared God above many” 

also his wife Susan Longworth died June 9th 1918 in her 86th year 'He giveth his beloved sleep'"

Here's the map of our group, it has all the detailed inscriptions of these graves: monument map




picture 5











picture 6



 







Things about death that terrify me the most...

After reading Dr.McGuire's blog and the sad story about her student, I started thinking about what if the same thing happened on people around me?
I'm not ready to face death, I think most people at my age aren't. But this fear for death gets even bigger when the thought of someone I know might go before I do. I remember how devasted I was at my uncle's funeral when I was 15, and it felt like a big piece of sky above me fell out. I can hardly imagine how it would be when my parents, or anyone I care about leave me like that.
A selfish thought once came to my mind-- I'd rather die young, so I don't have to handle the loss of my most loved ones. But this isn't fair to people who love me, so I've never told anyone about this, especially my family members. It has always been a strict taboo to talk about death, at least in our culture. The fear of losing the closest ones seems to scare everybody.
Living in a world without the ones you love is tough, but the courage to continue life comes from the experience and understanding of being human. As life goes on I might evantually accept the fact that one day we all have to leave, and that action only takes seconds. What truly important is how we get there: being born, growing up, happiness, sorrow, pain, laughter, tears, love, hatred, regrets, forgiveness, diseases, wounds, and finally death. It may appear to be a long journey to walk through, and it's too difficult to predict what would happen the next second. But cherishing and enjoying what we have at the moment minimize the regrets we have when either our own or others' lives end. Like William Ross Wallace once said:

Every man dies- Not Every man really lives.

Grave goods...

I guess I'm a bit late on this topic, but I decided to write about it anyway. It's always good to plan ahead of time right?
Things I want to bring with after I die, let me see...lip balm is definitely on the list. My lips get dry easily, and I heard it's not exactly moist down there or up there (haven't decided where I wanna go, guess it's not my call anyway).

Another thing I want to bring into the grave is a bike. A car is way to big to bury and motorbike is not particularly environment friendly, but I do need to get around very often, bike seems like a good option. And it has to be purple.

There are also some meaningful stuff I received as gifts in life that I also want to carry to the other side of the world: a necklace from my parents(they gave it to me after they ditched me on valentine's day when I was 16 and single), a sisterhood bracelet that me and my cusine both have, and all the letters and cards I have ever received.

These are all the things on my list so far, I'm pretty sure it will expand over the next couple of decades. Grave goods can always help to identify individual identities, they speak for you, they tell part of the stories of people's lives. Although the list does get longer, the most valuable things I will bring but the later generations won't see are all the love and experiences I have, and these are what make me truly who I am.

A Falling Leaf Returns To The Roots

After I die, I want to be gone for good. Cremation is probably my prior choice. And I want to go back to where I first come from. Not just back to my mother country China on a larger picture, I want to go back to where my ancestors came from. I think that is the only place where my soul could rest in peace.
I was born and raised in Shanxi province of Mainland China,and that land has always been my home city. My father comes from Jilin province, and traditionally, the section of hometown on my birth certificate would be my father's hometown, which is Jilin. So I always believed I was from northeast China where my father was born until one day my grandpa told me our ancestors first moved to Jilin province about 200 years ago from Yunnan province located on southwest part of China.
There's this old saying that a falling leaf should return to its roots. Eventually, we all go back to where we come from following our ancestry. I don't want to be inhumed, partly because I don't want to be dug up hundreds years later. Also because the ashes can travel everywhere.

Funerary Practices in Canada

    I was born and raised in Mainland China, so I don't really know that much about Canadian burial rituals. But as much as I know, Canada is a country full of diversities and different cultures.
I googled "modern funerary practices in Canada", and the only approprite answer to this blog topic is natural burial, which Dr. McGuire mentioned during one of our lectures.
    According to Wikipedia, natural burial is "a process by which the body of a deceased person is interred in the soil in a manner that does not inhibit decomposition and allows the body to recycle naturally. It is seen as an alternative to contemporary Western burial methods" .
    In Canada, there is an association called Natural Burial Association (NBA). This NBA is "an independent, non-profit organization established to help reduce the environmental impacts of conventional death care practices through education and awareness, and to leverage the sustained popularity of burial towards the acquisition, renewal and permanent protection of Canada’s natural lands for the benefit of people and the environment" (Wikipedia_Natural Burial).
    Depends on what religion an individual used to believe before death, his or her burial ritual might be very different. For instance, for people who believe in Bahá'í Faith, cremation is forbidden, and the deceased must be buried one-hour-drive away from where they die. Hindus prefer to hold the funeral before sunset on the day of death, and the oldest son will be in charge of the funeral with the company of Hindu priest. Cremation is also acceptable in Hindu religion, and the cremated remains of the deceased are usually taken back to India to be scattered in the Ganges River, or another method of final disposition may be chosen. (If you're interested in looking into more details about other religions' funerary practices, here's the site where I found the above information: click)

Hindu funeral_image credit

    I come from Nothern part of China where cremation is usually practiced, though I'm pretty sure that inhumation was once a more common burial ritual. Remaining bones of the deceased was very important to the Chinese, and it was believed that the spirit of the deceased would be attached to the body and bones for a period of time before he or she crossed over and went onto a new life cycle. I'm not sure if this was the case for every part of China, as the country is also multicultural-- 56 ethnic groups live there.

    Considering Canada has a large number of Chinese descendants, many traditional Chinese burial rituals might also be practiced.

A Brief Self-Introduction

    Hi everyone, my name is Yiran Zhang. I come from Mainland China, I'm a third year Anthro-major, and this is my fourth year in Canada. I enjoy traveling, reading, and meeting new people from different backgrounds. Although I'm a bit shy, I keep trying to build up new connections here.

    Archaeology is really not my strongest suit, but the approach this course takes into the study of archaeology draws my attention. I've always been interested in cultural anthropology, and I'm looking forward to learning traditions, rituals, and stories of different cultures from various points of time.