TY - JOUR
T1 - Mortuary practices
T2 - Their social, philosophical-religious, circumstantial, and physical determinants
AU - Carr, Christopher
N1 - Copyright:
Copyright 2007 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 1995/6
Y1 - 1995/6
N2 - Recent, mainstream, American mortuary archaeology, in its paradigmatic outlook, middle-range theory, analytic methodology, and case studies, has emphasized social organization as the primary factor that determines mortuary practices. Broader anthropological and social science traditions have recognized philosophical-religious beliefs as additional, important determinants. The historical roots of mortuary archaeology's focus on the social, and the consequence of this on theory development, is reviewed. Then, through a Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) cross-cultural survey, the kinds of philosophical-religious, social organizational, circumstantial, and physical factors that affect specific kinds of mortuary practices, and the relative importance of these factors, are documented. The data are also used to test basic premises that mortuary archaeologists routinely use today to reconstruct social organization. A balanced, more holistic, and multidisciplinary approach, which considers many kinds of causes beyond social ones, is found necessary to interpret mortuary remains and to reconstruct the past from them.
AB - Recent, mainstream, American mortuary archaeology, in its paradigmatic outlook, middle-range theory, analytic methodology, and case studies, has emphasized social organization as the primary factor that determines mortuary practices. Broader anthropological and social science traditions have recognized philosophical-religious beliefs as additional, important determinants. The historical roots of mortuary archaeology's focus on the social, and the consequence of this on theory development, is reviewed. Then, through a Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) cross-cultural survey, the kinds of philosophical-religious, social organizational, circumstantial, and physical factors that affect specific kinds of mortuary practices, and the relative importance of these factors, are documented. The data are also used to test basic premises that mortuary archaeologists routinely use today to reconstruct social organization. A balanced, more holistic, and multidisciplinary approach, which considers many kinds of causes beyond social ones, is found necessary to interpret mortuary remains and to reconstruct the past from them.
KW - archaeology of social organization
KW - ideology
KW - mortuary archaeology
KW - mortuary practices
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U2 - 10.1007/BF02228990
DO - 10.1007/BF02228990
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0000080674
SN - 1072-5369
VL - 2
SP - 105
EP - 200
JO - Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory
JF - Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory
IS - 2
ER -