A sample of 1227 Spanish wills dating from fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth century Madrid and Seville is the basis for an in-depth exploration of the connection between individual action, identity and grave location. Each will is a repository of information concerning the will (intent) and prospective actions of one individual. The field of action in which personal will operates in my study centers on the necessity of finding a gravesite--an endeavor that is highly relevant to archaeological interests. Real-world descriptions in the wills of where graves are and how they may be identified, or not, with the bodies of the deceased and with the remembrance of their souls, highlight the sharp distinction between archaeologist's and testator's concepts of space and grave location The distinction is rooted in the testator's construct of personal identity, associated with the placement of his or her grave and the artifacts used to indicate the allegiances of body and soul in death, as in life. Such associations are lacking in the archaeological view of grave location and the identification of human remains, in part because we do not normally have access to documentary sources such as the wills to tell us otherwise. Yet, my study shows that identity is the source of all human action in the world. It is translated into physical space and time by the exercise of individual will. I use examples taken from the wills to illustrate some of the ways in which the personal connection between action and identity impinges on all material evidence, both positive and negative, that may be unearthed in archaeological excavation of grave sites / acase@tulane.edu
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TULANE/oai:http://digitallibrary.tulane.edu/:tulane_26060 |
| Date | January 1998 |
| Contributors | Pinto, Marina (Author), Bricker, Victoria R (Thesis advisor) |
| Publisher | Tulane University |
| Source Sets | Tulane University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | Access requires a license to the Dissertations and Theses (ProQuest) database., Copyright is in accordance with U.S. Copyright law |
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