Archaeology of Ancestors

For many years Late Postclassic-period (AD 1250 – AD 1500) Maya culture was interpreted in light of the preceding Classic-period (AD 600 – AD 900) when ancient Maya history, religion and the arts reached its perceived apogee. The term for the-period itself, Postclassic, implies from the start a decline from the achievements of the Classic. Other terms for the-period, such as “decadent,” convey in even stronger language an impression that the Postclassic-period was a time of cultural demise, collapse and near chaos (Proskouriakoff 1955; Thompson 1970). However, research in recent years has called for a reevaluation of this flawed perception and the abandonment of biased Classic-centric views. A new, clearer and more accurate picture of Late Postclassic-period Maya culture is emerging, one that considers this-period unique, innovative, progressive, dynamic, flexible, responsive to change and much more similar to the Classic-period than previously thought (Leventhal 1983; Freidel 1985; Robles-Castellanos and Andrews 1986; Pendergast 1990; Andrews 1993; Lorenzen 2003). As a result, researchers have increasingly moved away from using pejorative terminology when describing Postclassic-period culture, opting instead for a more objective view that treats this-period as simply different from the Classic, neither better nor worse. A perspective such as this is critical to our knowledge of ancient Maya ritual and religion; particularly, in understanding the function and meaning of public verus private miniature masonry shrines and the role of ancestor veneration in shrine rites. To these ends, new archaeological research carried out at the Late Postclassic-period center of El Naranjal, located in northern Quintana Roo, Mexico, treats these and other related issues. Findings from this research conducted in 1999 and 2001 address ritual shrine use in both public civic-ceremonial precincts and private domestic compounds situated in the site center. To date, twelve miniature shrine complexes (each composed of a single shrine and stairway set on a substructure, together with a series of associated altars) are reported within the two square-kilometer core of El Naranjal (Lorenzen 1995, 1997, 1999, 2003). Functional interpretations are presented in the context of early historical accounts, recent ethnographic reports, previous archaeological description and current research at El Naranjal and other sites in the Maya region. Considering these data through an ethnoarchaeological perspective, a final discussion posits that the nature and significance of ritual evidence excavated from shrine complexes indicates their intensive use as religious loci for the performance of agricultural fertility-based ceremonies – rites and rituals inextricably tied to ancestor veneration that involved the actual deification of particularly revered familial lineage heads and esteemed community leaders (Lorenzen 2003).

In this paper I present considerations on a phenomenon of an ancestor cult evidenced by rituals associated with vaulted chamber tombs located within the limits of Middle Bronze Age II settlement on Tell Arbid in NE Syria. The tombs were constructed with shafts, in the fill of which, remains of subsequent deposits of offerings were found on different levels. This fact, as well as the specific location of the tombs, and the amount of energy expended in their construction, convinced me that we are dealing here with practices characteristic for ancestor worship. The phenomenon appeared at the site suddenly in the first half of the second millennium BC and disappeared in mid-second millennium BC.

Salas Carreño, Guillermo. 2018. “On Quechua Relatedness to Contemporary and Ancient Dead.” In Non-Humans in Amerindian South America. Ethnographies of Indigenous Cosmologies, Rituals and Songs, edited by Juan Javier Rivera, 197–223. New York; Oxford: Berghahn Books.

Built in the early 9th century BCE, the Northwest Palace at Nimrud presented a new “imperial” architecture and iconography that was related to Assyrian expansionism at this time. Yet it also contained specific points of contact with the past via the royal Assyrian ancestors. A monument in the throneroom, the “center” of the state, provided the “public” view of this ideology, while one of the palace's more secluded wings was devoted to the performance of ancestral cult. Through these and other means, rapid and fundamental socio-political change was accompanied by the idea of a logical and direct continuity with the history of Assyria.

Dans l’Égypte pharaonique, les vivants entretenaient des relations avec
les défunts de leur communauté domestique, notamment à l’occasion
de fêtes et de célébrations rituelles spécifiques. Dans ce cadre, le mode
de communication privilégié avec l’ancêtre était celui de la parole, du
discours oral. L’écriture était toutefois aussi occasionnellement utilisée
comme médium de communication. C’est ce qu’atteste en particulier
le corpus des « lettres aux morts » – requêtes formulées sous format
épistolaire et tracées en écriture cursive («hiératique») sur divers supports
(vaisselle en terre cuite et papyrus essentiellement) –, attesté de
la fin du IIIe millénaire au Ier millénaire avant notre ère.
À travers l’étude de ce dossier, révélateur des mécanismes relationnels
reliant les survivants à leurs morts, cet ouvrage propose une
enquête sur un usage de l’écrit dans la procédure rituelle de l’Égypte
ancienne. L’importance de l’écrit dans le domaine religieux pharaonique
est bien connu, mais c’est sur l’écriture monumentale hiéroglyphique,
dont la « fonction de sacralisation» a particulièrement été
bien mise en évidence par Pascal Vernus, que l’essentiel de la
réflexion a jusqu’ici porté. Ce livre cherche donc à engager une
réflexion sur l’utilisation rituelle d’une technique d’écriture d’abord
réservée à une pratique quotidienne de l’écrit (documents administratifs,
lettres, archivage…), et aborde la question de l’efficacité de la
parole écrite par rapport à la parole énoncée en contexte rituel, ainsi
que la question de l’efficacité du texte tracé en écriture cursive par
rapport au texte hiéroglyphique en contexte votif.
(Ouvrage publié avec le concours de l'Université de Strasbourg)

Archaeologists agree that ancestors figured prominently in the lives of the Classic (CE 250-900), particularly in the Late Classic (600-900), the period for which we have a wealth of epigraphic, iconographic, and archaeological evidence.  Most data are from monumental site centers where royalty were lavishly interred in large pyramids.  Much less is known, however, of the roles ancestors buried in small, often rural, shrines played in the lives of commoners--the remaining 90-98% of the Classic era population.  Still less is known regarding the origins and development of ancestral practices int he Lowland Maya area.  In this chapter I review archaeological evidence for ancient Maya ancestors rather than the deceased in general.  I approach this from a chronological perspective, beginning with the earliest evidence of ancestor during the Preclassic (1000 BCE- CE 250).  In so doing I emphasize changes in burial practices, including body position, architecture, and symbolic elements of grave goods.  I also evaluate practices of kings and commoners in the Classic era, with a focus on the ongoing use of various Preclassic symbols and practices in the continued creation of ancestors.  My emphasis is on the material manifestation of these ancestors, the practices associated with them, and the resulting implications for our understanding of ancient Lowland Maya society.

The Vounous Bowl occupies a privileged position in discussions of prehistoric representations on Cyprus. It has most commonly been viewed as a sacred scene, or a religious ceremony conducted within a rural sanctuary, and several commentators have emphasized the funerary connotations of the scene, perhaps depicting idealized funerary ritual or an ancestor cult. Somewhat mundane interpretations of the bowl place it within a range of genre scenes, portraying daily life in a Bronze Age village. More recently it has been interpreted as the physical expression of emergent elite authority on Cyprus during the Bronze Age. This study explores the object as a form of social communication: through a detailed structural analysis of the Vounous Bowl it aims
to develop a clearer understanding of the social world of Early-Middle Bronze Age Cyprus.

A rare group of enigmatic stone masks, which were created in the Judean Hills and the Judean Desert (Israel) and are the oldest human portraits known to us, sketch the cultural and spiritual world of the people who lived in Southern Levant during the Neolithic Period, 9,000 years ago.

Close observation reveals that despite their similarities – the use of stone, the method of carving, and certain features – each mask has a distinct “personality,” owing to its details and design. At the same time, the common features, especially the vacant eye sockets, truncated noses, lipless mouths, and exposed teeth, evoke human skulls. Based on their similarity to the cultic skulls of ancestors found in the villages of this period, the time of the “agricultural revolution” and the transition from hunting and gathering to permanent settlement and food production – we assume that the masks represented the spirits of the dead and were used in religious rituals, initiation ceremonies, and magical rites.

Local religion—defined here as religious activities and loci that lie in scale and institutionalization between domestic and state cults—has usually been quite an elusive phenomenon for scholars of the ancient Near East. Compared with the officially-archived texts and monumental architecture of state religion, evidence for local religion has been both less visible and less often sought after. However, a recent discovery at the site of Zincirli, Turkey, the ancient city of Sam‘al, offers new insight into local mortuary and deity cult in one of the Syro-Hittite kingdoms of the early first millennium BC. In 2008, the Neubauer Expedition to Zincirli of the University of Chicago‘s Oriental Institute recovered in its original archaeological context an intact stone mortuary stele bearing a relief image and an Aramaic inscription. Subsequent enlargement of the excavations in the vicinity of the stele from 2008 to 2010 has revealed a large part of its building and neighbourhood. Alone, this unique document discloses a number of new details about the beliefs, practices, and setting of non-royal Syro-Hittite mortuary cult. The addition of the stele‘s architectural and urban context at Sam‘al further opens new possibilities for the interpretation of the social setting of this cult. The interplay of the stele‘s text, image, and context suggests that this sacred space was a central nexus in an urban social network of which the deceased was a prominent member.

“Past peoples knowingly inhabited landscapes that were palimpsests of previous occupations. Landscapes were occupied and re-occupied. Rarely was this a meaningless or innocent re-use” (van Dyke and Alcock (ed). 2003. Archaeologies of Memory).

This paper explores the implications of this quote in the context of the pre-pyramid landscape of early Memphis. It is argued that the Memphite necropolis is an inscribed landscape of social memory that contributed to a developing Egyptian identity.

Egyptological research appears to be entering a new paradigm, focusing on how the pyramids built Egypt rather than how the Egyptians built the pyramids. This paper aims to further the notion that pyramid construction contributed to the creation of social identity and ideology by examining the pre-pyramid landscape of early Memphis, from a purely symbolic approach. Building from over 50 years of research concerning the pragmatics of pyramid construction this paper will focus on the lesser-known symbolic associations of the Memphite landscape, such as the archaeology of natural places and the cultural appropriation of local topography. The accumulation of this material suggests that the deliberate placement of monuments was an act to acknowledge the ancestors and legitimize power.

The intention of this paper is to illustrate the degree of cultural activity that preceded pyramid construction. The purpose here is to examine two ideas: 1) the landscape was sacred before it was used for pyramid building and, 2) the patterns of Predynastic and Early Dynastic land use and how it may have influenced later pyramid placement. Over 1,000 years of life and death are represented in Memphis before the first pyramid was conceived, although the archaeology is very thin as not all activities leave a mark upon the land. There is substantial archaeological material to suggest long-term occupation and sedentary communities. It will be suggested here that these early communities of Egyptians had created specific symbolic associations with the landscape, where symbolic meaning and cultural significance was gained from repeated use. Memphis was thus ‘marked’ hundreds of years before a pyramid was ever built.

A rare group of enigmatic stone masks, which were created in the Judean Hills and the Judean Desert (Israel) and are the oldest human portraits known to us, sketch the cultural and spiritual world of the people who lived in Southern Levant during the Neolithic Period, 9,000 years ago.

Close observation reveals that despite their similarities – the use of stone, the method of carving, and certain features – each mask has a distinct “personality,” owing to its details and design. At the same time, the common features, especially the vacant eye sockets, truncated noses, lipless mouths, and exposed teeth, evoke human skulls. Based on their similarity to the cultic skulls of ancestors found in the villages of this period, the time of the “agricultural revolution” and the transition from hunting and gathering to permanent settlement and food production – we assume that the masks represented the spirits of the dead and were used in religious rituals, initiation ceremonies, and magical rites.

The book is concluding a comprehensive study of this rare group of Neolithic masks and offers a unique opportunity to discover the secrets of these powerful, magical, and artistic stone faces.

Living with the Dead presents a detailed analysis of ancestor worship in Egypt, using a diverse range of material, both archaeological and anthropological, to examine the relationship between the living and the dead. Iconography and terminology associated with the deceased reveal indistinct differences between the blessedness and malevolence and that the potent spirit of the dead required constant propitiation in the form of worship and offerings. A range of evidence is presented for mortuary cults that were in operation throughout Egyptian history and for the various places, such as the house, shrines, chapels and tomb doorways, where the living could interact with the dead. The private statue cult, where images of individuals were venerated as intermediaries between people and the Gods is also discussed. Collective gatherings and ritual feasting accompanied the burial rites with separate, mortuary banquets serving to maintain ongoing ritual practices focusing on the deceased. Something of a contradiction in attitudes is expressed in the evidence for tomb robbery, the reuse of tombs and funerary equipment and the ways in which communities dealt with the death and burial of children and others on the fringe of society.

Ausgangspunkt ist eine 2003 publizierte, eindeutige "Kultanlage" in Nieder-Mörlen, Stadt Bad Nauheim, Hessen, die aus einem über 40 m langen bandkeramischen Haus ohne Mittelpfostenreihe (!) besteht, dessen Nordwestwand von einem kreisrunden Palisadengraben gebildet wird (Durchmesser 31-32 m). Diese Kreispalisade wurde in bandkeramischer Zeit von einem flächendeckenden, hohen Hügel ausgefüllt, den man in der frühen Latenezeit als Hügelgrab wiederbenutzte. Ähnliche runde und rechteckige Palsiadeneinhegungen an und zwischen bandkeramischen Häusern werden verglichen. Da sie sich meist im Norden der Häuser befinden, folgt eine ausführliche Untersuchung der Nordwesträume und der Querwände in den Häusern. Die Länge der Nordwesträume variiert so stark dass sie keinem einheitlichen praktischen Nutzen gedient haben können. So bleibt nur eine symbolische und vermutlich kultische Zweckbestimmung, beispielsweise die Aufbewahrung von rituellen Objekten wie den Idolen und von "Schätzen" des Hauskultes.

"This thesis presents the results of a regional cave survey in the San Francisco Hills near the lowland Maya site of Cancuén, Petén, Guatemala. The survey was a component of the Cancuén Archaeology Project directed by Dr. Arthur Demarest of Vanderbilt University. The project investigated eleven caves through a combination of surface collection and excavation. The study was divided into North and South regions reflecting the natural landscape. The North Area is comprised of tall, tower-like hills that contain the caves Hix Pec, Cueva de las Tinajas, China Ochoch, Ventana Maya, Torre Quib, and Torre Hun. The South Area is defined as a low, hilly region that is naturally separated from the large hills to the north by a swampy area. The caves investigated in the south region include Saber, CHOC-05, Ocox, and Cabeza de Tepezquintle. The analysis of recovered artifacts used a gift-giving economic framework to place cave ritual in the context of social theory. The ceramics revealed that the caves were utilized by highland and lowland Maya populations from the Middle Preclassic through the Late Classic periods. The heaviest utilization occurred during the Early Classic period, but no substantial Early Classic period populations are known in the Cancuén region. I use the works of Mauss (2000), Weiner (1992), and Levi-Strauss (1969), to argue that the Maya economy was largely dependant on obligatory ritual gift-giving transactions with supernatural beings that inhabited caves. The gods required the Maya to perform rituals continually in exchange for the gift of the world. I use the principle of mimesis, or mimicry, to explain how the physical objects left in caves were transformed into offerings to the supernatural realm through their destruction. Offerings to the prehistoric equivalent of the modern Earth Lord were the most vital transactions for the success of the ancient Maya economy because his permission must be granted to harvest the resources necessary for production, such as stone, wood, and food. Activities associated with gift-giving, such as ancestor worship and pilgrimage, resulted in the development of social relations between the ritual participants. Today, the caves continue to be imbued with sacred power for many communities in the surrounding region. The continual ritual utilization of these caves adds to the life histories of those places. This thesis is an attempt to understand a part of that history.

-pdf available by request"

H. Meller/T. Schunke, Die Ahnen schützen den heiligen Ort – Belege für Kopf- und Schädelkult in Salzmünde. In: H. Meller (Hrsg.), 3300 BC. Mysteriöse Steinzeittote und ihre Welt. Sonderausstellung vom 14.11.2013 bis 18.05.2014 im Landesmuseum für Vorgeschichte Halle (Halle [Saale] 2013) 349–361.

Scholarship of the Bronze-to-Iron Age transition in the northern Levantine littoral has traditionally stressed a major disjuncture in settlement and societal development c. 1200 BCE, concurrent with the destruction and abandonment of the Ugaritic capital at Ras Shamra. Based upon a reinterpretation of the archaeological remains at Tell Sukas, this study argues for a degree of regional continuity in cultural lineage from the mid second to early first millennium BCE, based upon the proposed identification of a previously unknown example of ancestral veneration.

This article presents an archaeological model for Levantine funerary rituals performed in the context of commingling inhumations. Using the case study of a masonry-constructed chamber tomb from Middle Bronze Age Tel Megiddo (Israel), the funerary sequence is reconstructed in three main phases: (1) pre-interment; (2) interment; and (3) post-interment. The sequential performance of funerary rituals in this shared burial space resulted in a high degree of skeletal fragmentation as previously interred corpses were moved aside to accommodate subsequent inhu-mations. However, rather than merely representing a functional aspect of burial, the repositioning of deceased bodies constituted a ritually meaningful practice that involved continuous physical interactions between the living and the dead. Drawing on theories of embodiment and methods of burial taphonomy, this article argues that mourners' close encounters with deceased bodies played a major role in transforming the status of the dead after burial. Ritualized fragmentation and in-termingling of human skeletal remains were integral components of becoming an ancestor.

In this article, it will be attempted to elaborate on a differentiation between the dead
and the ancestors from a theoretical point of view, and, upon this basis, with regard to royal contexts of the 2nd millennium BC in ancient Syria. The main questions to be discussed in this respect are the following: when does a dead person become an ancestor? And how is this reflected in funerary rituals and grave contexts? And finally, can we detect the difference archaeologically?

As a complement to life histories authored by many researchers of Maya bones, this study narrates death histories. The latter entails detection of perimortem and postmortem changes to decedents' bodies, followed by translation of these changes' encoded meanings. Biographical analysis of body parts and the buildings in which they are situated facilitates such an endeavor. Past investigations of partibility have focused on protracted processing of noble and royal bodies as a means to reconstitute decedents' identities. Commoners' burials, however, have received far less attention. Consequently, it is difficult to determine if partible practices differ according to or transcend social class. To address this lacuna, a multiscalar frame is applied to a burial sample comprised of decedents from varied social settings in the Three Rivers region, northwestern Belize. Identification of widely shared practices related to the becoming and venerating of ancestors offers a springboard for examining particulars within patterns. Scaling down, commoner burials unearthed at the minor center RB-11 are summarized and special attention is paid to the death history of Individual 71. This decedent's intentionally fragmented body reflects general thinking about ancestors as partible and dividual persons. Yet, certain attributes of Individual 71's burial are unique to the sample as a whole, which demonstrates how social class, circumstance, and individual life history are also instrumental in the reformation of ancestorhood.

Historical and archaeological records help shed light on the production, ritual practices, and personhood of cult objects characterizing the central Peruvian highlands after ca. AD 200. Colonial accounts indicate that descendant groups made and venerated stone images of esteemed forebears as part of small-scale local funerary cults. Prayers and supplications help illuminate how different artifact forms were seen as honored family members (forebears, elders, parents, siblings). Archaeology, meanwhile, shows the close associations between carved monoliths, tomb repositories, and restricted cult spaces. The converging lines of evidence are consistent with the hypothesis that production of stone images was the purview of family/lineage groups. As the cynosures of cult activity and devotion, the physical forms of ancestor effigies enabled continued physical engagements, which vitalized both the idol and descendant group.

Towards the capstone of the European Bronze Age, in an area stretching from the Carpathians in the East to the North Sea in the West, vast cremation grave cemeteries occur that are perhaps better known as ‘urnfields.’ Today some 700 of these burial sites have come to light in the Netherlands alone. In this corner of Europe, also known as the ‘Lower-Rhine-Basin,’ these cemeteries are often characterised by vast collections of small burial mounds under which the cremated remains of decedents were buried in small shaft-like pits. In many a case the cremated remains had been put in urns first, providing these cemeteries with their very name. Though rich in numbers, urnfield graves are often described as ‘poor’ and ‘simple’ as only in rare occasions decedents were provided with grave gifts. However, when close attention is paid to the actions involved in the creation of these seemingly simple graves, they in fact reveal a richness in funerary practices that on their turn hint a complex and intricate mortuary process. This book delves into the wealth of funerary practices reflected in more than 3,000 urnfield graves excavated throughout the Netherlands in order to reconstruct the mortuary process associated with the urnfields in this particular corner of Europe. Together these graves tell interesting stories about how the dead related to each other, how plain and simple objects could be used as metaphors in the creation of relational and ancestral identities and how the dead were inextricably linked to the land.

The recent discovery of a new Iron Age mortuary stele bearing a relief image and inscription in its original archaeological context at Zincirli has great potential to contribute to a better understanding of the corpus of these Syro-Hittite monuments, several aspects of which remain enigmatic despite extensive recent study. The stele’s close affinities to the reliefs of Barrakib argue for a mid-eighth-century b.c. date and the owner’s high position in the kingdom of Sam'al. The scene represented on the stele is in many ways very typical, but some unusual features add to the previously known iconographic repertoire of these monuments. The private architectural context of the KTMW stele in Zincirli’s lower town also contributes to the reconstruction of the setting and social significance of the other steles of this type and allows a tentative comparison with the “mortuary chapels” attested for other forms of memorial in the Syro-Hittite kingdoms.

Eight seasons of excavations on the site of Tell Arbid in the basin of the Khabur River in
northeastern Syria (1997–2005) resulted in the discovery of 29 graves of MBA date. An analysis
of this set of burials indicated that a new burial rite, characterized by strong family and clan ties,
had been introduced about the beginning of the second millennium BC. Parallels for MBA burial
practices have been recorded on neighboring sites in the Upper Khabur area and in southern
Mesopotamia. Equid burials accompanied some of the human graves and it seems that the custom
saw a revival in this period once again after the EBA. Close parallels for this custom as well as other
elements of the burial practices at sites in the eastern Nile Delta and in the southern Levant are interesting
to note. The spread of similar practices can be linked with high probability to the presence
and growing political dominance of the West Semites.