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.