Keeping your head.

Today we consider the head to be one of the most critical parts the human body. Without it we lack visual, auditory, and verbal capacities. It also houses the brain, our most complex organ which acts as a centralized control point for all other organs in our body. While this post was originally meant to discuss the post-mortem significance of the head in a variety of cultures, it quickly deviated to being a post about head-hunting.

When investigating burials, one of the first things we note is the orientation of the head and body compared to nearby burials. Often we find some sort of decoration associated with the head, often in the form of a diadem, crown, wreath, or head dress. In modern western funerals, it is common for only the head of the deceased to be shown prior to burial, for this is how we recognize the individual.

A coffin opened to reveal the deceased's head.

Detaching the head and skull from the rest of the body for burial or treatment can be found among a number of cultures. The Maori of New Zealand are infamous for their Mokomokai, the tattooed mummified remains of their enemies' heads.

While fascinating in their own right, they also represent one of the biggest archaeological disasters ever. Due to extreme European interest in Mokomokai during the 19th century, the heads had become almost a form of currency with which the Moari could purchase firearms and other European goods. The demand became so great that tribes even resorted to outright war with each other in order to collect more heads for barter. As a result, heads found their way to museums and collections all over the world. Efforts to repatriate them to the Maori have lead to some very unfortunate circumstances.

Shrunken head from Peru.

Head-hunting wasn't exclusive to Maori, examples of the practice can be found from South America to Europe, to Polynesia. American WWII soldiers were even reported of collecting Japanese skulls as trophies.

Celtic Mythology has several references to the power of the head. While it appears to be debated among scholars, Roman sources mentioning the practice of Celts mounting heads on walls, provide strong evidence that Celts were Head Hunters. The apparent Celtic fascination with collecting heads is informally known as the "Cult of the Head."

The Hero of the Tain, Cu Chulainn, beheads a large number of foes through the course of his adventures. One case has him decapitating twelve foes and placing their heads on separate pedestals.

However, the archaeological evidence for Celtic head-hunting is nearly non existent. Some scholars suggest that this portrayal of Celts in myth was the result of Christian scholars barbarizing pagan Celts in their recording of their mythology.

I'm uncertain, and probably unqualified to make a guess at what drove the people of these cultures to collect the heads of their enemies. Perhaps they believed that heads held the soul, and holding heads held power over the enemy? Or maybe, head hunting was an infrequent practice in most cultures, and only emphasized by "civilized" peoples  to demonstrate how "barbaric" they were (as many argue cannibalism to be).

Anyways, I'll leave you with my necessary pop culture reference and favorite fictional example of head-hunting.

Mummified Cats/Playing with Scheduling

This post is just my attempt to see if I can make something post at 4:30 in the morning next week (or today, the 30th, if it publishes properly).

Snapped this a few years ago when I ended up in the Louvre. While packed with interesting and bizarre things, mummified cats topped the list for the strange. Apparently they were mostly made as sacrifices for Egyptian Gods, rather than grave goods.

What is really frightening is the fact that they still looked cute.

Planning your own funeral is a dead end job

Terrible puns aside, this post will have me exploring how I would like the living to deal with my own remains.

What you take into the grave is ultimately the choice of the living. This became apparent to me at an early age, when I discovered that the little sticker on the edge of my care card meant that I wished for my organs to be donated to a hospital in the case of an accidental death. I wasn't appalled at the idea of donating my own organs, rather that my parents had made the decision for me without consulting me first.

Anyways, upon my death, I would like a burial. I have thought about other methods including cremation, sunk into the ocean, even being left to rot on a pike. In this post I will briefly explain my thoughts these methods, and why I ultimately chose a burial.

Cremation:
I find this a very intriguing way to deal with a body. The idea that you can have your remains spread in locations you strongly associate with is very tempting. Recently there have been several innovations in how one can choose to dispose of ashes, including launching them into space. An example follows.

Five years before his death, my Godfather requested that he be cremated, then have his remains turned into shotgun shells. At his funeral they were distributed among the attendees who were directed to fire them at a location they strongly connect with him. I still have one sitting on my desk; I'll deal with it some day.

I think the biggest draw to cremation is that your "essence," represented by your ashes, is free to flow where ever without restrictions of a grave. It also allows for multiple people to dispose of an individual as they see fit.

Naval Burial:

I find they idea of my body floating endless in the ocean whilst being nibbled upon by fishes to be a bit frightening. However, if I could have an entire casket launched into space, that would be an entirely different story.

Left on a Pike to rot:
 I'm not certain if this is even legal, but I find this an interesting way to be disposed of regardless. Like cremation, my "essence" (via the consumption by carrion) would be distributed throughout the world.

Burial:
While I don't affiliate myself with any religion, growing up in a small rural towns has conditioned me to strongly associate death with creepy graveyards, mourning, and most importantly, permanence. This is ultimately why I rejected the above funerary methods.

Once you are dead, you are dead. You no longer have influence upon the world. If you are cremated, or left at sea, there is no way that future generations can even know you existed. Being irreligious, I believe that once you pass, the only thing that happens too your being is nothing. You are dead; it's over.

A burial at least allows for you to make a permanent mark on the landscape. That is my general train of thought on death, which is a bit depressing.

"If you just want a permanent monument, why not be cremated then have your ashes buried?!"

The usual response for this is religious; God(s) has troubles resurrecting a corpse if it isn't intact. My reasoning is that some day, in the very far distant future, we could potentially gain the ability to reanimate corpses. Being a pile of ashes would likely make this difficult.

Being a fan of pop culture, I like to believe that this potential reanimation of corpses will come in the form of a Zombie apocalypse.

This is something I'd like to participate in.

Besides participation the apocalypse, a burial would also allow for the inclusion of grave goods. I think it would be great to be buried with a 12'' of "Live after Death," some ramen noodles, and one of Robert Jordan's books. Perhaps I would include some video-games, probably Zelda, Age of Empires or Final Fantasy IV.

For clothing, I'd want a suit, though with a kilt. Suits are traditional, and kilts are great.

I guess the fact that I'm thinking about including grave goods in my burial means that I believe there is something beyond death. Or at least consider it.

Anyways, thus ends a overly long, rambley and pessimistic blog post.

Ciao.

Yeah, no.

It doesn't look like there will be any Neanderthal clones any time soon. The media ate that one up quickly.

http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2013/01/harvard_professor_blasts_neanderthal_clone_baby_rumor_web

I'm terrible at physical anth, and this is a blog about death, so I don't have much to say on the topic besides that this represents an example of sensationalism overtaking sense in the media.

Unfortunately this also means that Neandertallica is still a ways off.

Rocks

Making comparisons between features of "cultures," whether contemporary or ancient, can be an enticing method of making inferences on human behavior. However, variability in environment and social history mean that no two "cultures" will have the exact same contexts, often making such comparisons negligible, and at times very misleading.

In my opinion, one such pitfall presents itself in Ramilisonina's comparisons between Stonehenge (along with "Bluestonehenge") and megaliths in Madagascar.  In a conversation with a journalist (See http://archive.archaeology.org/1001/etc/conversation.html), he suggests that there is a correlation between the (inferred) sacred use of rock in both Stonehenge and modern funerary monuments in Madagascar. He appears to infer that as a result of this connection, the funeral practices of Neolithic Britons may therefore be similar to that of modern Malagasy (definitively had to look that up).

Stonehenge, made of stones!

My biggest complaint with this comparison is that it could be used to imply that burial culture is either more "primitive" in Madagascar than in other locations (as it is being compared to a 3500 year monument) or even worse, that burial culture in Madagascar has been static since ancient times.

Naturally this produced criticism beyond my own, Dr. Brian John being an example. Since summarizing a blog post in a blog post is redundant, I'll just drop another link http://brian-mountainman.blogspot.ca/2010/11/sacred-stones-and-madagascar.html.
I agree with most of what John has to say in his response, particularly on the faults of implying that there existed a "universality to the belief system involving ancestor stones." A few years of taking anthropology in university has pounded the idea that there exists no human universals (besides perhaps incest taboos and separate gender roles) firmly in my head. I think John is more disappointed that the Madagascar/Stonehenge comparison has become popular in the media, rather than that Ramilisonina proposed it.

One thing I don't think is addressed in either the interview or the response is that perhaps stone appears to be such a prevalent part of early British monuments simply because it preserves better than other materials such as wood.

While I'm on the topic of human developmental universals, I might as well discuss what could be the "opposing extreme" which is that culture (by now it should be simply implied that "culture" is always surrounded by imaginary brackets) and technology is developed by people sharing their ideas with each-other, rather than developing independently. Generally this path of thought is associated with culture history.

Everyone's favorite culture historian, Gordon Childe. 

Well, close enough.

Anyways, this method has been used in the past to attempt to track potential migrations of peoples based on when certain technologies appear in geographic locations. The usual example I find in archaeology classes is the spread of beakers and other pottery throughout Europe, and past attempts to prescribe them to movements of people. The advent of advanced dating methods in the latter half of the 20th century eradicated several inferred migrations made by archaeologists, and can generally be said to have proven this theory to be faulty.

I however, find this a tame example. A couple years ago I came across a documentary on the History Channel which attempted to prove that due to the apparently numerous number of similarities between Egyptian and South American pyramids, Egyptians must have migrated to South America. Besides similarities in structure, the documentary argued that there apparent trace finds of cacao in Rameses II corpse, and a successful modern crossing of the Atlantic in a reconstruction of an ancient Egyptian boat, clearly meant that cross Atlantic travel was both possible and occurred. Unfortunately my tinfoil hat wasn't nearly thick enough to truly digest this.

Of course, if cross Atlantic travel was impossible during the bronze age, we can always rely on parasitic aliens using pyramids as spaceship landing pads.

About myself

It appears to be customary to write a brief intro blurb on one's blog, so why break the tradition.

I'm Alex, a third year anthropology student. 

I went to UVic intending to take a degree in engineering, but a glance at a calc textbook had me quickly changing departments to humanities. I've now essentially committed myself to anthropology though I dabble in medieval studies and history on the side. Since I have no real post grad ambitions, it's probable that I will go for a second degree after this one (don't ask in what).

Archaeology is my favorite subfield of anth, and dead people are exciting, so taking the class "Archaeology of Death" (which this blog is for) seemed like a no brainer.

Some of my interests include:

Heavy Metal, Quiche, Coffee, Fantasy Novels, Chicken Cordon Bleu, Neon Genesis Evangelion, and any series ever put out by BBC (Just caught up with Sherlock, which is excellent).

This is a blog about dead people and how the living deal with them.
More to follow.