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Issued also as thesis, Univ. de Lyon.

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archives@tulane.edu / 1 / Bebel R. Ibarra Asencios

The principal aim of the thesis is to investigate the mortuary practices of the late Iron Age period in south-eastern Britain, focusing on identification of the wider sequence of activity. It is evident that the deposition of the calcined remains and associated objects are just one element in a more complicated pattern of behaviour. A number of contemporary inhumation burials and mortuary-related features drawn from an increasing number of sites illustrate the wider practices in operation. The identification of pyre-related features and debris lies at the core of this study providing an opportunity to advance understanding of pyre technology as well as the mortuary rituals. This study provides an opportunity to advance late Iron Age mortuary studies in relation to the cosmological, political and ideological structure (Fitzpatrick 1997; Pearce 1997a; 1997b; 1999; McKinley 2000).

abstract: This research explores how people's relationships with the spirits of the dead are embedded in political histories. It addresses the ways in which certain spirits were integral "inhabitants" of two social environments with disparate political traditions. Using the prehistoric mortuary record, I investigate the spirits and their involvement in socio-political affairs in the Prehispanic American Southeast and Southwest. Foremost, I construct a framework to characterize particular social identities for the spirits. Ancestors are select, potent beings who are capable of wielding considerable agency. Ancestral spirits are generic beings who are infrequently active among the living and who can exercise agency only in specific contexts. Anonymous groups of spirits are collectives who exercise little to no agency. I then examine the performance of mortuary ritual to recognize these social identities in the archaeological record. Multivariate analyses evaluate how particular ritual actions memorialized the dead. They concentrate on treatment of the body, construction of burial features, inclusion of material accompaniments, and the spaces of ritual action. Each analysis characterizes the social memories that ritual acts shaped for the spirits. When possible, I supplement analysis of archaeological data with ethnohistoric and ethnographic information. Finally, I compile the memories to describe the social identities for the spirits of the dead. In this study, I examine the identities surrounding the spirits in both a Mississippian period settlement on the Georgia coast and in several Protohistoric era Zuni towns in the northern Southwest. Results indicate that ancestors were powerful members of political factions in coastal Mississippian communities. In contrast, ancestral spirits and collectives of long-dead were custodians of group histories in Zuni communities. I contend that these different spirits were rooted in political traditions of competition. Mississippian ancestors were influential agents on cultural landscapes filled with contestation over social power. Puebloan ancestral spirits were keepers of histories on landscapes where power relations were masked, and where new kinds of communities were coalescing. This study demonstrates that the spirits of the dead are important to anthropological understandings of socio-political trajectories. The spirits are at the heart of the ways in which history influences and determines politics. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Anthropology 2014

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Umm el-Jimal, Jordan, located along the Syrian border in Norther Jordan, began as a Nabatean caravan station in the 1st century AD. After AD 106, the Roman Empire built a line of forts (Limes Arabicus) along trade routes to Arabia for protection. A Roman fort was constructed along with a small village at the site of Umm el-Jimal. Cultural and political change occurred during Late Antiquity (c. AD 250- 800) when the western Roman Empire, commonly referred to as the Byzantine Empire, took control of the Levant. During this period, residents at Umm el-Jimal moved into the Roman fort and built domestic structures and Christian churches along with becoming a supporting town to the larger surrounding cities. Archaeological evidence indicates that the Byzantine period at Umm el-Jimal was a time of prosperity. This research utilized 241 individuals, represented by 126 adults and 115 subadults, excavated from five cemetery Areas (AA, Z, CC, W, and O) and three monumental tombs (BB.1, BB.2, and V). The three main research questions are (1) is there a significant difference in overall biological health within and between burials and throughout time at Umm el-Jimal; (2) are there any relationships or patterns between mortuary practices within and between cemetery areas or throughout the time periods; and (3) Does the bioarchaeological evidence support the ideas suggested by the archaeological evidence that the Byzantine period was a more prosperous time compared to the earlier Roman period. Social bioarchaeological theories, the Poetics of Processing and Colonialism and Imperialism, were utilized to interpret the skeletal and mortuary results to better understand how the living populations at Umm el-Jimal were affected by the changing empires. Groups of individuals were affected biologically by the changing empires at Umm el-Jimal. This could have been the result of increased exposure to disease, the increase of physical activity to build and support the community during the change into the Byzantine period, or an increase of stressors that accompany cultural and political changes. Mortuary practices were the same within and between each cemetery area except for Cemetery Area Z having more cist tombs and coffins present, suggesting that there were individuals with more access to resources burying their dead in that cemetery area. The mortuary treatments and burial locations portrayed important social messages by the living population at Umm el-Jimal. Mortuary practices did not change from the Roman through the transitional period and into the Byzantine period. This suggests that the empires most likely did not enforce the ruling culture to be followed or that the individuals at Umm el-Jimal deliberately chose to keep their beliefs because they were important to them and a way to keep and show social memory of the community.