'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.