Introduction
The goal of this paper is to discuss gender
roles and ideologies that are important among southeastern Mississippian
peoples. Traditionally, gender roles
have been ignored or presented as a universal assumption in archaeological
research. For many decades
archaeologists have looked at the burials of people in prehistoric communities
as expressions of those communities gender ideologies and social organization.
This paper considers the research of Southeastern Mississippian mortuary
practices and how they have been studied in the past and present. My primary interest is the inclusion or
exclusion of gender in mortuary studies and how researchers study gender
issues. I will conduct a basic analysis
of the mortuary practices at the Warren Wilson site, focusing on
sex-differences and social status representations within the burials.
The term Southeastern
Mississippian refers to the region that includes Georgia, South Carolina, North
Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, and parts of
Louisiana (Bense 1994:2). The
Mississippian stage occurred around A.D. 1000-1500. The Mississippian stage’s hallmarks were the development and
spread of chiefdom level sociopolitical organizations, the belief system known
as the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex, and the expansion of platform mound
centers (Bense 1994:6).
Archaeologists can benefit from looking at mortuary
practices by observing the manner in which the dead were disposed, as well as
spatial and architectural associations with the burials. When looking at mortuary practices,
archaeologists can compare the material culture shown in the burials along with
age and sex to answer questions about social status and gender. There is a basic assumption regarding
mortuary practices, described by O’Shea (1984) as, “an individuals treatment
following death bears some predictable relationship to the individual’s state
in life and to the organization of the society to which the individual
belonged” (O’Shea 1984 in Driscoll, Davis, and Ward 2001:134).
Archaeologists need to use caution when applying
this assumption to other cultures. It
is a common mistake for someone to leave out or overlook the symbolism and
ritual that lies behind a person’s burial (Driscoll, Davis, and Ward 2001:134). Symbolism is especially important in
mortuary practices; the way that a person is buried is a process centered on
ritual. Ritual can portray a message of
how things should be or an expression of how things really are. We must keep in mind that it is other people
who bury the dead, and they are the ones who have the power to manipulate these
expressions.
Gender is defined as a product of social and cultural
processes, not biological givens (Conkey and Spector 1984:2). In our culture we are taught to believe that
there are only two gender categories, males and females. There can also be other gender categories,
which include boys, girls and others such as the “berdache,” a native North
American who adopts an identity usually associated with the other sex. In our society today we have gender
categories such as transsexuals and hermaphrodites. Our ideas of gender are created by our society’s expectations
(Eastman and Rodning 2001:3).
Most of the time archaeologists appear to be aware of the
limitations of what they can know about the past, which is called the “false
notion of objectivity” (Conkey and Spector 1984:6). As Lewis Binford said, “We have no idea how prehistoric human
groups were socially partitioned” (Binford 1968 in Conkey and Spector 1984:6). Later in the same article Binford
contradicted himself when he said that men made stone tools and women
presumably engaged in plant processing.
Binford indicated that the division of labor is based on gender, which
is a statement about the way prehistoric groups were socially partitioned. How can an archeologist actually know that
gender roles dominated a strict division of labor? Some archaeologists have said that there is a lack of female
evidence in the archaeological record; this sort of attitude reflects the
problem with androcentrism. By saying
that there is a lack of evidence of females in the archaeological record
archaeologists are exhibiting preconceived notions about gender roles. Many
archaeologists also approach the issue of gender from a presentist perspective
in which the past is viewed with the intent of elucidating features that can be
linked to the present (Conkey and Spector 1984:5). Archaeologists describe other cultures using our own assumptions
about what gender is without thinking about whether or not the culture being
studied differs from ours. Approaching
research with a presentist perspective does not meet the goals of anthropology,
which are to describe cultural diversity and commonalities.
Many archaeologists use ethnohistoric references when
approaching the issue of gender roles in their research. Although ethnohistoric evidence is essential
to our understanding of prehistoric human groups, it is important to keep in
mind that most of these descriptions were written by men and may have an
androcentric bias. The European view
contributed to androcentrism because in the past most anthropologists have been
western, white, middle to upper-class men whose positioning by race, class, and
gender shaped their perspective on research and especially their research
questions (Conkey and Spector 1984:4).
Theda Purdue said, “Like the Native men who provided most of their
information, male European observers had virtually no access to the private
lives of women or to women’s culture” (1998:4). The problem with an androcentric assumption is that roles and the
social status of males and females are derived from our own cultures
assumptions. Our society’s cultural
constructions of gender characteristics are that men are stronger, dominant,
and more active than females. Females
are weak, passive and dependent.
Conkey and Spector discuss the Man-the-Hunter model
created by Washburn and Lancaster (1968) in their discussion on androcentrism
in archaeology. The Man-the-Hunter
model makes assumptions about gender roles and has served as a baseline for
archaeologists working with later human populations. The model discusses assumptions about a male and female division
of labor in early hominid life. In
archaeology, the division of labor assumes a gendered distinction of artifacts;
projectile points as male and ceramics as female. Conkey and Spector found that the Man-the-Hunter model lacked any
explicit theory of human social life.
This model is an example of an attempt to reconstruct past lives using
our cultural notions of gender as the basis for reconstruction. An example would be the assumption that
females are restricted by their biological characteristics associated with
pregnancy and childrearing, which is a full-time activity. These are culturally specific ideas and are
projecting our cultural constructions onto our earliest ancestors.
In the past, most researchers interested in prehistoric
peoples have been male and have brought their gender ideologies into the field
with them. This has resulted in the
loss of females in the historic and prehistoric records. The dominant androcentric paradigm appears
to have been widely accepted by most people.
Female anthropologists, such as Margaret Mead did not begin writing and
questioning gender roles until the 1950’s.
Women like Mead brought about awareness concerning these issues and were
partially responsible for the creation of feminist anthropology.
Feminist Approaches
Feminist approaches in anthropology and archaeology are
recent; they did not appear until the end of the 1970’s. Most recent works with feminist studies of
gender are concerned with gender and sexuality and how they are cultural
constructs. Researchers’ theoretical
perspectives may vary, but all feminist researchers agree that gender is
multifaceted and an important social phenomenon with different dimensions such
as gender roles, gender ideology, and gender identity (Conkey and Spencer
1984:15 and Eastman and Rodning 2001:3).
Approaches in feminist anthropology fall into three main
categories and reflect the chronological development of feminist
anthropology: feminist critiques of
androcentrism, studies that can be described as “the anthropology of women,”
and issues related to sexual asymmetry or the relationships between gender
systems (Conkey and Spector 1984:17).
An example of the early feminist critique would be the critiques that
many women wrote concerning the Man-the-Hunter model. Feminist critiques of early hominids have raised questions about
the universality of the sexual division of labor. Later anthropological studies have looked strictly at women and
have been useful in revealing the range of activities of women when viewed
cross-culturally, challenging the stereotypes that women have limitations. This focus has initiated numerous new
ethnographic studies that revisit previous works and attempt to highlight
women’s roles. It is possible that this
sort of information could challenge the rigid sexual division of labor theory
in archaeology.
The latest interest of feminist anthropologists debates
the universality and expression of sexual asymmetry. The classic work Women,
Culture, and Society edited by Michelle Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere,
sparked this debate (Conkey and Spector 1984:18). The authors in the volumes make the general assumption “that all
contemporary societies are to some extent male-dominated and although the
degree and expression of female subordination vary greatly, sexual asymmetry is
presently a universal fact of human social life” (Rosaldo and Lamphere 1974:3
in Conkey and Spector 1984:18).
Sherry Ortner attempts to formulate a theory as to why
there is universal gender asymmetry in Is
Female to Male as Nature is to Culture? (1974). Ortner says there is a universal cultural construction of
male-power versus female-subordination.
She reasons that if everything universal relates to nature, and if
female subordination is universal, then female subordination must relate to
nature. Women’s physiology is seen as
closer to nature than men, “the woman is adapted to the needs of the egg rather
than to her own requirements” (Ortner 1974:24). In many cultures this sort of biological cycle interrupts a
woman’s routine, putting restrictions on her activities, thus stigmatizing her.
Ortner’s second
point is that women’s role is seen as closer to nature referring to her
confinement to the domestic family.
Women are connected to children, and children are likely to be
categorized with nature, which connects women even closer to nature. Ortner argues the validity of women’s
closeness to nature and culture using the comparison of women raising children
to Levi-Strauss’s theory – The Raw and
the Cooked (1969) that we as humans distinguish ourselves from nature and
regulate it through the use of ritual. It is through ritual that the natural,
dangerous, and unacceptable is transformed into the cultural, acceptable, and
safe. She says it is women who
transform babies into cultured adults, teaching them the proper ways to adhere
to our culture, thus aligning women closer to culture and farther from nature.
Most current feminist research has moved away from the
discussion of the universality of gender roles to the variability of gender
roles. Recent work that looks at the
relationship of gender organization to culture change are extremely relevant to
archaeologists. Archaeologist Chris
Rodning has made some of these observations concerning gender roles and culture
change by looking at women in protohistoric Cherokee society and their shifting
gender ideology with the advent of the deer skin trade. The hormonology of the development of
feminist research can also be seen in archeological research.
Background Information
It is important to look at past studies on southeastern
mortuary practices in chronological order to see how these general ideas of
gender and social status are displayed in actual archaeological studies. The studies provided are by no means
exhaustive, but representational of particular periods and important sites in
southeastern archaeology.
Most of the earlier archaeological work that was done
around the 1940’s to early 1970’s tended to focus on mounds and ornate grave
goods. “Traditionally, archaeologists
have concentrated on the lives of past elites, whose social status and place
are represented by monumental architecture and prestige goods that have a
greater archaeological visibility than the architecture and other material
culture associated with more routine aspects of past lifeways” (Rodning
1998:5). A lot of the ethnohistorical
writings described mounds and their use for burials and as the bases for
ceremonial structures (Peebles 1968:82).
Most of the research at this time was interested in issues such as
social stratification and identifying who the elites were of such stratified
societies.
The work of Lewis Larson
looks at social stratification at the Etowah site (1968). This study analyzes the burials that are
located in Mound C compared to the burials that are located in the close
village cemeteries. Larson looks at the
range of burial goods that accompany human burials in both areas to figure out
whether the population was socially stratified and whether individuals with
more power were buried in Mound C. The
individuals buried in Mound C do not appear to have been discriminated based on
their age or sex. Men, women, and
children were all found buried in the mound indicating that the individuals
buried in Mound C are from a selected group, probably based on kinship. Larson says, “The only type of social
selection on this level of cultural complexity, a selection that is not
predicated on age or sex, is one that is apparently based on kinship (a
selection based on the manner of death does not seem likely) (1969:66).
The presence of children buried in Mound C with identical grave goods as
adults indicates that there was ascribed status in this society.
The range of exotic materials included in the mound
burials consisted of marine shells, sea turtle rattles, gorgets, and shark
teeth. These types of grave goods were
completely absent in the village cemeteries.
Even within the descent group, there are indications of internal ranking
due to the ornate grave goods such as copper headdresses. Larson says that there were two individuals
wearing this uniform one male and one child whose sex was not indicated.
Larson states that the main purpose of his research is to
look for social stratification at the Etowah site. He does not mention the word
gender or try to compare social stratification based on grave goods and
sex. Larson does observe that there is
no age or sex distinction within the mound.
In 1968, when this research was being carried out, there was not an
emphasis being made on gender; instead, mounds lead people to speculate on
issues such as power and ranking within societies.
Christopher Peebles conducted a study at the Moundville
site, which was another large ceremonial center, and sites in the nearby
Pickwick Reservoir in Alabama. Peebles
wrote Moundville and Surrounding Sites:
Some Structural Considerations of Mortuary Practices II in 1968, around the
same time of Larson’s research on Etowah.
There is an occurrence of a certain class of grave goods that are buried
with individuals in the platform mounds but not in village cemeteries or the
cemeteries located in the mound center.
Local communities had no sex differentiations within their mortuary
practices although Peebles did comment that he found ceramics with males and
females. When speaking of ceramics
found within these burials, I am referring to ceremonial ceramics that were
made for the purpose of accompanying the deceased. This observation is significant because both males and females
are receiving the same treatment at death, indicating that this society did not
correlate power with sex. Within the
village cemeteries there appeared to be necessary rituals that accompanied
people with status, although these rituals were not as ornate as those of the
individuals buried within the mounds.
Charles Snow sexed most of the skeletons that were sexed
in the Southeast in the 1930’s and 1940’s.
The criteria that Snow used to sex skeletons were the skull and the
grave goods. The act of sexing a
skeleton was backed up by cultural constructions about what were male and
female attributes and artifacts (Claasen 2001:16). The recent criteria for sexing individuals are based on
characteristics of the pelvis. Snow was
responsible for sexing the skeletons at Moundville, resulting in a female to
male ration of one to two (Claasen 2001:16). Powell conducted research on mortuary practices in 1968 and
eventually attempted to resex 424 adults in 1988. Powell’s results were a female to male ratio of forty-five to forty-four. Powell did note that four other physical
anthropologists have examined the skeletons, and although there were some
discrepancies there was a far better agreement between them and the
excavators. The excavators made sex
distinctions in the field based on grave goods. The nature of Powell’s research between the 1968 study and 1988
study shows the evolution of feminist approaches in archaeology over a
twenty-year duration.
Few would argue that the dominant theme in archaeology
has been the systems theory, which was popularized by Kent Flannery in
1967. Systems theory looks at the large
picture as one big system and how everything is connected within the
system. This perspective has found
useful information on resource-procurement systems, seasonality and scheduling,
and other general features of subsystems.
This approach is preoccupied with the system(s) behind the Indian and
the artifact (Conkey and Spector 1984:22).
When studying these systems individuals are not considered: “The actors
who procured resources and made decisions about the allocation of their time
and labor have somehow become invisible, if not irrelevant and subservient to
the system of which they are a part” (Conkey and Spector 1984:22). Gender is not taken into consideration when
using the systems approach. The
individual and small groups are irrelevant, thus gender roles are not taken
into account.
Christopher Rodning has written three studies that all
look at gender at the Coweeta Creek site located near Franklin, North
Carolina. Rodning’s first paper is Archaeological Perspectives on Gender and
Women in Traditional Cherokee Society (1998). This paper’s argument is that gender distinctions made through
the burials of people in different architectural spaces are critical for
understanding the social structure at Coweeta Creek. There are two different architectural spaces that are
representative at Coweeta Creek. The
council house is associated with the burials of men, and most of the graves in
the village are associated with women.
Women’s graves in the village also tended to be associated with houses
that were themselves usually associated with a particular clan. This reflects the power that women had
within kinship since Cherokee societies were matrilineal. There is ethnohistoric evidence that men
spent most of their time within the council houses, thus it is logical to
believe that male burials associated with council house stands as a monument of
honor to the deceased. Rodning goes on
to mention other archaeological sites that have comparable mortuary patterns in
nearby Cherokee villages.
This study was
the beginning of Christopher Rodning’s investigations into gender roles at
Coweeta Creek and Cherokee cultures as a whole. He says, “I would argue, however, that understanding the social
structure of Cherokee communities before the deerskin trade and cultural
interactions of the eighteenth-century is critical to understanding Cherokee
cultural change as documented in historical and archaeological records of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries” (Rodning 1998:17).
Rodning’s second paper regarding gender at Coweeta Creek
was Early European Trade Goods in the Native Town at Coweeta Creek in
Southwestern North Carolina (2000).
The goal of this paper is to reconstruct the role of European material
culture, focusing on how access to European goods may have affected the Coweeta
Creek’s gender ideology. The evidence
of European material culture at this site consists of glass beads and kaolin
pipes, which were found in male burials and around the council house. The presence of trade goods in an
architectural space that served as a men’s space offers clues into the role of
trade in men’s lives. The
archaeological and ethnohistoric evidence indicates that men were the ones who
were involved in trade with early Europeans.
Rodning’s theory is that men may have used trade relationships with
Europeans as a means to challenge their power vested primarily in women. Women’s power was evident and went
unchallenged for many years due to power that is given to women in matriarchal
societies. Men tried to enhance their
power and status to women through European trade goods. Chris Rodning’s ideas concerning gender at
Coweeta Creek are revolutionary for the region and have sparked much interest
concerning gender in archaeology in the Southeast.
The early mound focus ignored gender in its examination
of social stratification. The popular
systems approach is responsible for ignoring individuals and their ideologies
concerning gender. Perhaps earlier
archaeologists saw gender as a natural phenomenon, and did not consider gender
to be a cultural construction that was created differently in different
societies. Peebles research shows
progression from not mentioning gender to the re-sexing of skeletal remains
based only on physiology in response to Snow’s artifact based sexing. In the Southeast today, there appears to be
a strong movement towards looking at gender in the archaeological record. In 1996 there was a symposium about
archaeological studies of gender in the Southeast, held at the Southeastern Archaeological
Conference in Birmingham, Alabama.
Chris Rodning (2001) says that gender is a burgeoning niche within
archaeology.
Methodological Approaches
New
methodological approaches have come about in the past few years. The following methods are not ones that I
personally use or feel partial to, but are illustrations of what feminist
approaches in anthropology and archaeology have accomplished.
Bone chemistry is used in the analysis of human remains
when trying to determine what types of food were in people’s diets. There is two assumptions concerning gender
when studying bone chemistry: men and
women have the same diet and chemical uptake is uniform in the bones of men and
women (Claasen 2001:18). It is highly
likely that the individuals who participate in hunting and gathering of
resources will consume a larger amount of prey in their lifetime than the
individuals that do not participate in food-procurement activities (Claasen
2001:18). It is possible that there
were gender specific diets due to their different roles in
food-procurement. A gendered
methodology for a dietary study would be to treat the bones of males, females,
and children as their own distinct groups and not average them all together. Another important idea is that not all chemical
differences in bones are related to diet, there are other factors.
Janet Spector has presented a methodological approach to
the study of gender called “task differentiation” (Conkey and Spector
1984:24). The study of ethnoarchaeology
can result in theoretical contributions to the study of gender in prehistoric
groups. Ethnoarchaeology links the
material and nonmaterial world. Since
we are unable to back into the past and observe gender roles our best attempt
is to look at modern hunting and gathering societies and observe their gender
roles. Spector hopes that with a
sufficient cross-cultural framework application of the framework we can gain
reliable knowledge about the variation in gender arrangements, the factors in
explaining observed variations, and how the variability can be related to the
archaeological record.
The task differentiation framework highlights male and
female activity patterns and the four interrelated aspects of the
activity: the social, temporal,
spatial, and materials dimensions of each task carried out by any group. Tasks would include food procurement and
processing, construction and maintenance of buildings, reproduction, ritual
life, etc. Social dimensions are the
age, sex, number and relationships of the performers. Temporal dimensions are when the task is performed such as
seasonally and how long it takes each time.
Spatial dimensions are when each task is performed. Finally, material dimensions are all the
materials associated with one task, also including facilities and
structures. Once these dimensions of a
task are identified each gender can then be separated for analytical purposes
to study gender specific features. With
enough of these studies we could eventually approach the archaeological record
with an understanding to interpret assemblages in terms of gender.
Site cathchment is a classic archaeological approach that
can be suitable for gender studies (Claasen 2001:20). In order to do site catchment one would draw circles of one,
five, or ten kilometers radius around a site and then inventory the natural
resources within that area to determine which ones are local and
non-local. This technique has been used
in ethnological work studying the hunting and gathering Chipewyan of
Canada. When studying the hunting
patterns of the group it was observed that women tended to hunt closer to the
camp than men. “One archaeological
implication of this is that catchment analysis of food resources located within
3 to 5 kilometers of a settlement site, or 5 to 10 kilometers if [using a
canoe] will encompass the food-animal resources of primary interest to women”
(Brumbach and Jarvenpa 1997 in Claasen 2001:20). Claasen says that a site catchment analysis usually highlights women’s
activities as contributing more than men’s.
But by observing the archaeological record with the goal to only
highlight women’s activities, we are doing what many feminist researchers claim
to be androcentric.
The disciplines of anthropology and archaeology have come
a long way from the early androcentric descriptions of prehistoric peoples, to
the study of gender roles in archaeology as a perspective new
sub-discipline. The study of mortuary
practices was far from a gendered awareness during the time when interests
where focused on social stratification and elites. The development of gendered analyses in archaeology still has
much room to improve and new methodological approaches are essential to the
development of this field.
The Warren Wilson site was recorded in 1940 during a WPA
archaeological survey. The Research
Laboratories of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
conducted excavations at the Warren Wilson site beginning in 1966. The main effort of excavations has been to
uncover the Pisgah village, which is believed to have dated to AD 1250-1450,
within the Mississippian period. The
size of Pisgah sites range from small seasonal or special-function sites to
groups of homesteads that is located within one village (Dickens 1976:18). The average size ranges from 2 to 3 acres
and larger villages with mounds have been identified. The Warren Wilson site has produced the most information
concerning Pisgah cultures. This site
was chosen not only for the Pisgah element but the presence of stratified
earlier Woodland and Archaic elements.
Since the
beginning of excavations in 1966, 59 burials have been recovered, fifty-four of
which could be studied. There has not
been much research about the mortuary practices at the Warren Wilson site. Roy Dickens conducted a preliminary
examination of the first 35 burials that were recovered discussing basic
behavioral patterns at the Warren Wilson Complex (Wilson 1986:44). Wilson conducted a study on burial 58
focusing on biological characteristics such as prehistoric demography,
healthways, and social organization (Wilson 1986:44).
Dickens (1976) discerned a number of basic patterns in
the mortuary practices. He observed
that most burials were flexed with their heads oriented to the west, they were
buried in a simple pit or shaft and chamber pits, and males were more likely to
be buried in chamber pits with grave goods than females. Dickens goes on to say that “grave
differences may be tied to differences between family or household units, which
in turn may indicate either differential ranking among kin groups in the
village community or temporal variation” (Wilson 1986:43).
Homes Wilson’s (1984) first area of study at the Warren
Wilson site was the analysis of Burial 58 focusing on biological
characteristics. Homes concluded that
the individual was a female between the ages of 35 and 40 years old at the time
of her death. The individual had
cranial deformation, which is a common characteristic of many of the
individuals analyzed at the Warren Wilson site. The body was lying on its side, flexed with her head facing to
the northwest. The grave was a simple
pit with no grave associations. This
description fits Dickens (1976) composite of burials 1-35. This study brings up information about
prehistoric demography, healthways, and social organization that a biological
focus can provide.
Wilson’s second area of study was to test the probability
of there being a correlation between burials with grave associations and the
placement of burials within the village.
She used two areas of distinction within the village, private and
public. A “private” area consists of
burials located within the confines of a house structure or in close proximity,
such as being intruded or intruding on the walls of a structure. A “public” area has burials that occurred
outside of the house structure walls (Wilson 1986:55). The results were that 44% were found in
public areas and 56% in private areas.
Of all the burials in the public area, only 11% had grave goods while
33% of the burials in private areas did have grave goods.
Wilson considered the male and female segments of the
population using an assumption based on this study, stating that individuals
with high or special status are more likely to be associated with house
structures. Special status is indicated
by the location of the individual’s burial within the site, grave associations,
and burial pit types (Wilson 1986:58).
Of the 16 individuals in the private area that could be sexed, 62% are
males and 38% are females. Wilson found
that young males less than 25 years old, and old males age 35 or more are more
likely to be buried in private areas.
For females, the older they are the more likely they will be buried in
the private sector. She suggests that
females buried in the private sector had achieved status, which is correlated
with old age. The fact that Cherokee’s
were matrilocal has an effect on the pattern of male burials. Males that married into a clan did not
achieve status until a period of a few years with the clan. Males that died prior to marriage still held
the status of the clan they were born into, and would be buried within that
clan.
I have gone back and reviewed materials concerning the
mortuary practices at the Warren Wilson site.
My first initial goal was to look at burials with the intent of
discerning gender roles, but later found out this wasn’t feasible. Identifying gender and the roles that
accompany it is a very complex issue and I did not have enough time or
resources to conduct a reliable analysis of the gender roles at the Warren
Wilson site. Instead, I have looked at
the burials and the age and sex of the individuals, and whether or not there
was a presence of grave goods. The
placement of the burials in context with the village is other aspects I have
looked at. The resources that I have used consist of previous sex and age
determinations, which have been assigned to the burials, a map of the Warren
Wilson site, and a list of the grave goods that accompanied each burial.
All previous sex and age determinations were done either
in the field or in the research laboratories looking at cranial morphology,
suture closure, dental development, and dental attrition (Wilson 1986:46). It was determined that 13 females and 18
males were present while 28 individuals sex could not be determined. Such a high number of undetermined sexes
could be the result of the high number of infants buried, which are difficult
to accurately sex. Another possibility
for the difficulty in sexing individuals is inadequate preservation of the
bones. I believe that it most likely
that due to the high number of infant burials sex could not be determined; 16
burials contained individuals less than 3 years of age. The age distribution consists of 9
individuals in the range of 40+, 5 individuals ranging from 35-40, 3
individuals ranging from 30-35, 4 individuals from 25-30, 4 individuals from
20-25, 6 teenagers, 6 children ranging from 3-10, and 16 children 3 years and
under.
Grave accompaniments were present in 13 of the 59
burials. Based on sex, 5 burials with
grave accompaniments were male, 1 female, and 7 were undetermined. Grave goods consisted of shell beads, shell
gorgets, and shell ear pins, mica discs, turtle shell rattles, and perforated
animal bones (Dickens 1976:127). The
average burial containing grave goods would consist of a row of columella
beads. Most infant burials contained
shell gorgets, and no other group of individuals at the site were buried with
shell gorgets. There is one particular burial that stands out, Burial 7, which
belonged to a male between the ages of 35-40 years. This burial is located underneath of a fire hearth in a house
structure and includes grave accompaniments such as columella bracelets, conch
shell, bone awls, ochre, fish scales, and mica discs and panther claws. This burial is different because of the
wide-variety of grave goods that this individual had compared to the other
burials, which usually contained one type of grave accompaniment. The individual located in Burial 7 must have
held a position of power within the village.
Dickens (1976) interpreted the individual in Burial 7 as a shaman or
individual with great power.
Within the village, there appears to be a total number of
16 possible house- structures identified, and 12 of the house structures
contain one or more burials inside.
Most of the graves do appear to be associated with houses either inside
or in close proximity to a house.
Although, there are a few burials that do not appear to be associated
with any houses. There is one area
believed to be a “plaza” (Dickens 1976) that also contains burials. The burials located within the plaza do not
contain any grave goods. The
individuals buried in the plaza are adult males and females. There does not appear to be any children
buried in the plaza, although there was one burial that was unable to be aged
or sexed. There appears to be no pattern of males or females being associated
with houses or more public areas within the village. The only identifiable structures at the Warren Wilson Site are
houses; no structures resembling a council house have been identified.
Every house within the village contains a hearth that is
located in the center of the house and was used for cooking and for heat during
cold weather. Seven of the house
structures contain burials located underneath the structure, three females and
four males. All of these burials are
adults except for one, which is a young male between the ages of 14 and 16
years old. About half of the
individuals buried underneath of hearths contained grave accompaniments ranging
from columella beads, perforated rabbit bones.
Burial 7 was buried underneath a hearth and is the burial that contained
a wide-variety of grave accompaniments.
Ethnohistoric accounts about Cherokee culture come from journals and maps left by explorers and traders that traveled through the southern Appalachians. The people that left behind written accounts did not intend to record Cherokee culture; most of these people were looking at the flora and fauna of this region, or seeking out business opportunities. I am looking at summaries of ethnohistoric accounts, summarized by Theda Purdue (1998) and Christopher Rodning (1998, 2000, 2001).
Cherokee men and women occupied separate categories that opposed and balanced each other. They knew little about each other’s lives because of the common knowledge that crossing these boundaries involved an amount of danger. Cherokee’s did have a division of labor based on gender, men hunted and women farmed. The tasks that they carried largely defined gender. The myth of Kana’ti and Selu provides an explanation of why men and women live the way they do. Men hunted because the first man was responsible for providing his family with meat. Women did the farming because Selu gave birth to corn, and then became the source of corn. This myth provides insight into the reasons for the Cherokee’s gendered division of labor.
Cherokee communities were matrilineal communities, tracing kinship lines through the women. When a male and a female married the male would become a member of his wife’s clan. Their wife’s clan did not always accept men and at times it could take a number of years for them to be accepted by her clan (Homes 1986: 61). Younger males who had not married yet still had the status that he was born into in his clan. Women’s power within their communities is apparent due to the power that is associated with being the head of a clan.
Conclusion
I believe there were a number of houses in the village
that were associated with people of power.
House B appears to be the house with people who were the most powerful
in the village. First, there is burial
7, which is the male burial that had the wide range of grave goods and stood
out the most in the entire site. The
other two burials containing grave goods both belonged to infants and contained
shell gorgets, marginella shells, and tubular shell beads. One infant was buried without any grave
goods. The other two burials consist of
one infant and one female about 25-30 years old without any grave goods. One female is buried in the house, she was
25-30 years old, and had no grave accompaniments. I believe that these people contained the most power due to the
presence of Burial 7, and two infant burials with grave goods.
House E is located to the south east of House B, and also
appears to have a large degree of power associated with the individuals. A female between the ages of 35-40 is buried
underneath of the hearth and is accompanied with grave goods. One male and one infant are buried inside
with grave accompaniments. There is
another burial outside of the house, but close enough to be associated with
House E. The burial outside of the
house is an older male, 35-40 years old, with grave goods. This burial’s grave goods were also unique;
the burial contained a number of perforated animal bones. House’s D and C are also in the same
location in the village as House’s E and B.
Both of these houses contain one burial of infant with shell
gorgets.
I believe that the mortuary practices involving infants
at the Warren Wilson site is indicative of power. Young children with uniform grave accompaniments can be an
indication of ascribed status (Larson 1969:67). All of the infant burials with shell gorgets, excluding one, are
buried in the area of the village associated with people of power. Thus, infants containing shell gorgets at
the Warren Wilson Site are expressions of ascribed status and indicative of the
families that held power within this community.
The presence of clans and matrilocal residences is
apparent in the mortuary practices at this site. There are nine burials with males over the age of thirty in the
village. Seven out of the three of
these males are buried in close proximity to a house, or in the public
area. Two of the three males buried
within houses are interred underneath of hearths and one is just placed inside
of a house. Older men were more than
likely to have been married and part of their wives clan at their time of
death. Since they were not part of that
clan by birth, they are buried outside of their wives, or wives clans houses.
The area believed to be the plaza has four burials, most
of which are adults. The two females
were in their 20’s, the one male was forty years or older, and one
unidentifiable individual. For some
reason these adults do not appear to be associated with any clan. I believe that these individuals were
possibly never married, had deceased family members, or possibly crippled or
ill. These people could be the outcasts
of the society, and at their time of death other people were unsure about where
to bury them. The plaza may have served
as a good place to bury these types of individuals in a society that is largely
defined by the clan that one is a member.
I believe that the people that lived at the Warren Wilson
site were part of an egalitarian society.
There has been no evidence of a mound or a council house found at this
particular site, which are usually signs of great social stratification and
elites in a community. Placement of
burials and grave accompaniments do not appear to be isolated to any on type of
sex group, the differences between males and females do not appear to be
significant. Both males and females
have grave goods, and a small sample of each sex is buried beneath structure
hearths. It is true that women had
power due to their association with clans, but men also appear to have power
that was achieved. The Warren Wilson
Site’s mortuary practices reflect more of a balanced relationship between males
and females than a sex-based stratification.
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