Time in the reproduction of mortuary practices Koji Mizoguchi Introduction By concentrating on static patterns, we tend to forget the flow of time through which various human practices were conducted. The archaeological study of mortuary practices is no exception. In their attempts to come up with social categories, whether they are straightforward reflections of social organization (e.g. Saxe 1970) or ideological construc- tions (e.g. Shennan 1982), the normative, processual and post-processual archaeologies have all failed to appreciate the role of human practices which shaped their material evidences in the reproduction of social structures. By social structures T mean the ways in which relationships between people, and between people and material categories, are held together over periods of time (Giddens 1984: 16-28). Ifwe are to appreciate the importance of human practices through time, not only in the study of mortuary practices but also in the study of archaeology in general, we must accept that all human practices are situated in unique time/space contexts (e.g. Giddens 1984: 110-44). People are never free from the consequences of what they did prior to their current action. Repeated action through time is *routinized’ and constrains people's freedom to conduct new actions. Material conditions, such as architectural structures, materialized as the consequences of previous decisions, also limit the range of freedom in the choice of subsequent actions. However, at the same time, these constraining elements can also be manipulated by people as ‘resources’ to conduct their actions (on the concept of resources’ see Giddens (1984: 33 and 373)). The archacology of British Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age mortuary practices (from the late third millennium to the early second millennium cal. BC) has followed the general trend in mortuary archaeology, The presence of articulated skeletal remains in so-called ‘individual burials’ covered by round mounds (commonly called “barrows’) gives the impression that we can easily ‘read off the social positions of the dead by examining the different ways in which they were treated, Human practices which shaped the character of this evidence through time, and their role in the reproduction of social structures, have largely been ignored (for exceptions see Barrett (1988b: 38-9; 1990) and ‘Thomas (1991)). In what follows, [will attempt to realign the dominant axis of the mortuary archacology. of the period by studying the role of time-and memory in the reproduction of Late World Archaeology Volume 25 No.2 Conceptions of Time and Ancient Society © Routledge 1993 (043-8243/93/2502/223 $3.00/1224 Koji Mizoguchi Neolithic and Barly Bronze Age burial practices.in. Yorkshire. As Petersen (1972) has shown, contrary to the common image of individual burial as the dominant form of burial in the British Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, there are numerous examples in which the remains of more than two individuals were deposited in one grave pit (Petersen 1972; Burgess 1980: 298, fig. 7.1). In some cases such specific memories as the position of the body, the direction of the head or the age/sex of that primary interment appear to have been preserved over a period of time and recalled when the secondary interment was deposited. Why and how was the memory preserved over a period of time and recalled, and what role did this ‘remembering’ play in the reproduction of social structures? How was the time which elapsed between the deposition of the primary interment and the secondary interment manipulated? There appear to have been some ‘rules’ by which the deposition of different categories of the dead was conducted in different time/space locales (on the notion of locale, see Giddens (1984: 116-22)). These principles also seem to have been enacted at grave pits later covered by mounds almost throughout our period of investigation. What kind of ‘social time’ (Gurvitch 1964; Shanks and Tilley 1987: 130-1) was created/recreated through such repeated enactments, and what role did those enactments play in the constitution of social life? Although recent writers have emphasized the importance of studying different constructions of time (Shanks and Tilley 1987: 126-36), archaeologists have so far failed to find convincing cases in which the relationship between time, human practices and consciousness can be examined, The data discussed in this paper appear to remedy the situation. This study attempts to answer these questions by investigating the nature of the interconnections between human practices and time. It suggests the importance of studying time and human practices for the theoretical development of the study of archaeology in general, and of mortuary archaeology in particular Material and the framework of analysis Despite the fact that the majority of the available data concerning Late Neolithicand Early Bronze Age burial was collected by antiquarians such as William Greenwell (e.g. 1877) and John R. Mortimer (e.g. 1905), Yorkshire has been a focus of British Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age mortuary archaeology thanks to the favourable soil conditions which preserved the skeletal remains in good condition, and the monumental publications by these excavators (ibid.). Although neither Greenwell nor Mortimer ever attempted to investigate the locations of graves and burials in a manner which allows their re- examination, their recording of the contents of individual grave pits (e.g. the sex of the skeletons and the artefacts associated with them) can be accepted as fairly reliable (Gibbs 1989). As stated above, because articulated corpses had been deposited with artefacts, it has always been tempting to investigate their status in life, yet mortuary practices would have been conducted for the living and their society (Barrett 1988b). These corpses could neither participate in their own funerals, nor could they speak for themselves: they could only express some message through the interpretations of the participants in their funeral. In that sense, the corpses would have been like portable artefacts, carrying bundles ofTime in the reproduction of mortuary practices 225 symbolic meanings (Mizoguchi, in press). Different memories were attached to cach corpse by different individuals. The dead person’s mother, father, brothers, sisters and children would all have had different memories according to their personal relations with the dead person during their life-time. From this point of view, the funeral in which these memories were mobilized without a dead person’s consent must have been the occasion at which specific relations between individuals were reaffirmed or even challenged through the re-examination of their relationship to the dead. The treatment of the dead, such as the positioning of the body, can be thought of asa material residue of such acts, Keeping these points in mind, the sex and the position of the corpses from individual grave pits have been studied. It should also be noted that people are never free from their past actions, The memory traces (Giddens 1984: 45-51, 377) of how the dead were treated on past occasions not only would have constrained the way in which the dead were treated, but also would have been drawn upon to carry out strategic actions. In that sense it is worth considering whether the way in which the primary interment was deposited affected the way in which the secondary interment was treated, for this would allow us to investigate the manner in which memory traces constrained or enabled future actions. From this point of view, the relationship between the primary and secondary interments of multiple burials has been given particular attention Observations In examining the contents of the central grave pits of 104 reliably recorded burial mounds from the region the following patterns were observed: 1, In the graves with single burials (Table 1), nearly 50 per cent of the deposits consist of adult males. The burials of an immature individual (infant or juvenile) and an adult female follow (29 per cent and 15 per cent respectively). In the graves with multiple burials (Table 2), the primary interment of an adult male was most frequently followed by the secondary interment of an adult female. Less commonly, the primary interment of an adult male was followed by the secondary interment of an immature individual, or by the secondary interment of another adult male. Although there are many other patterns, those in which an adult male appears as the primary interment account for over 50 per cent (19 examples) Table 1 Interments in the single burial graves. Pattern No. of cases % Adult male 32 (47.8) Adult female 10 (14.9) Immature 19 (28.8) Cremation (adult male) 1 as) Cremation (adult female) 1 as) (Cremation (immature) 3 (45) Total 66226 Koji Mizoguchi Table 2 Interments in the multiple burial graves. Key: primary interment —> secondary interment. Pattern No. of cases Adult male + adutt mate Adult male — adult female Adult male — immature Adult male > adult (indet. sex) G0) Adult female > adult female (3.0) 3 (10.3) 8 4 1 1 Adult female immature 1 G0) 1 Il 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 (27.6) (13.8) Adult female > adult (indet, sex) G.0) Adult female + immature —> immature G0) Adult (indet. sex) — adult male G0) Adult male cremation > (immature) G0) Adult male + cremation (adult of indet, sex) G0) Adult male cremation G0) Adult female — cremation G.0) Immature > cremation (adult male + adult female) 0) Immature + immature — cremation (adult of indet. sex) a) Cremation (immature) + cremation (adult of indet. sex) 0) Cremation = adult female 3.0) Cremation — immature (female) G.0) Total 30 Table 3 Interments in the double burial graves. Pattern No. of cases Adult male + adult male 1 (12.5) Adult male + immature 1 (2.5) Adult male + adult female 2 (25.0) Adult female + adult (indet. sex) Immature + immature Adult male + cremation (adult male) Adult female + cremation (immature) Total 8 3. Inthe double burial graves (Table 3), due to a small sample size, no ‘dominant’ pattern can be discerned. 4. The study also considered the direction of the head and the position of the primary and secondary interments in the individual grave pits (Fig. 1). The majority show either the same head direction as the first burial or faced in exactly (or almost exactly) the opposite direction (13 out of 15 examples in which the head direction of both the primary and secondary can be identified). ZzTime in the reproduction of mortuary practices 227 Discussion The maintenance of mortuary practices over a period of time From these observations, the following points can be made: a. ‘The corpse of an adult male was preferably deposited on the bottom of the grave pit. Adult females and immature individuals were in that sense subordinate, and were mostly deposited in a secondary position (Tables 2 and 3) b. A specific memory of the position in which s/he was deposited, as well as a general memory of the sex and age of the primary interment, appears to have been recalled when the secondary interment was created (Fig. 1). 1 would first like to draw attention to the different timings in sending the dead of different categories to the afterworld. The corpse of an adult male was the one which was most frequently deposited on the bottom of the grave pit. The corpses of adult females and immature individuals were most likely deposited after the corpse of the adult male. It is hardly believable that their deaths always occurred naturally following the death of an adult male in a community. In that sense, the different locations for adult male, adult female and immature persons in grave pits would not have been natural but artificial, and can be envisaged to have been meaningful. This reminds us that in many of the ancestral/creation myths of tribal societies each specific sex/age group was given a specific position in the narrative structure (e.g, Hugh-Jones 1979). The pattern in our data also resembles a kind of narrative structure in which adult male, adult female and immature were given different time/space positions at individual grave pits. The dead of different categories were sent to the afterworld at different times and were deposited in different positions in a grave pit (the bottom for the primary and the middle for the secondary). This practice could have been manipulated in mapping out different positions for different persons in an idealized time/space structure shared by the members of the society. The other implication of point a) is that there is a cyclical dimension to the sequence which started with the deposition of the corpse of an adult male and ended with the deposition of the corpses of either an adult female or an immature person and was “enacted” at the central grave pit of burial mounds throughout our period of study. This diachronic cycle was embedded in the consciousness of the people by these very enactments, although one individual would not have experienced this cycle many times in his or her own life-time. Depositing particular categories of person in particular time/space locations within individual grave pits (if the depositions of the primary and the secondary interments were indeed conducted at one time (see Mortimer 1905 1 ff.) would have been an occasion on which the eycle was experienced by the individual through different sets of activities at different time/space ‘locales’. These included locating the corpse of the primary interment on the bottom of a grave pit and burying it with chalk, and then locating the corpse of the secondary interment in the filling of the grave and covering it with more chalk (on the concept of ‘locales’, see Giddens (1984; 116-22)). The experience of conducting a sequence of activities in different time/space ‘locales’ would, on the one hand, have marked the difference between the primary and the secondary interments, and, on the other, have helped to inscribe this difference in the memory traces of the228 Koji Mizoguchi 1 Adult Mate 1 Adult Female N Aklam Wold 124 Blanch 238 1 Adult Male ‘2 Adult Female Calais Wold 100 ] 1 Adult Male 2.Adult Female 1 Adult Male: 2 Adult Female Garton'Stack7e: Garton Slack 141 1 Adult Mate 1 Adult Female 2imm(int) 2Adult Female Garton slack 152 Goodmanham 99Time in the reproduction of mortuary practices 229 Adult Female Goodmanham 112 Wetwang Slack 4 2 Adult Male 1 Adult Male 2 Adult Male 3 Adult Female Staxton B10 & 11 Weaverthorpe 297 Figure I ead directions of interments in the multiple burial graves. Key: 1 primary interment: 2 secondary interment; 3 tertiary interment.230 Koji Mizoguchi Figure 2 Interments in the central grave pit of Heslerton IR barrow (after Powlestand 1986). Legend: A rearranged bones of the primary inter- ment (adult male); B the secondary interment (juven- ile); C Beaker pottery de- posited with B; D grave pit for the primary interment; E grave pit for the secondary interment. participants. In this way, the conception of a cycle behind the sequence of activities was created/recreated. This conception of time as ‘cyclical’ (Gurvitch 1964: 31; Shanks and Tilley 1987: 131) would also have reproduced a kind of ‘static and organic imaginary model of their society’ (Bloch 1989: 15), based upon specific relations of dominance between adult males, adult females and young people (on the concept of ‘relations of dominance’, see Barrett 1988) We now have to turn to the implication of point b). As the example of the central grave pit of Heslerton 1R shows, the interval between the deposition of the primary interment and that of the secondary interment was sometimes quite long. At West Heslerton (Powlesland 1986) the bones of the primary interment (an adult male) were disturbed by the burial of a secondary interment (a juvenile of indeterminate sex) (Fig. 2). According to forensie scientists, it normally takes at least five years for the tendons connecting the bones to rot away. At the same time, as far as observation 4) is concerned, it appears that the head direction and the position of the primary interment were recalled and referred to when the deposition of the secondary interment was conducted. It appears to suggest thatTime in the reproduction of mortuary practices 231 the memory of the primary interment (not only of the person’s age and sex but also how s/he was deposited), played an important role in the mortuary practices of the period. It shown in many ethnographic examples that particular knowledge is possessed by a specific interest group, often based upon age and sex. The exclusive possession of such knowledge solidifies ties among the members of a group and legitimates and naturalizes their specific relations to the members of other groups in the community (e.g. Tonkinson 1988). What is particularly interesting in these ethnographic examples is that ‘rituals’, such as funerals, are the occasions in which knowledge is secretly given to the new members of the group (ibid. ). In these instances, knowledge is a ‘resource’, the exclusive mobilization of which gives the group a dominance over other groups which do not have access to it (e.g. Giddens 1984: 28-34). In our examples, the period of time over which the knowledge of the primary interment was preserved may now have added some additional ‘value’ to that memory asa resource. The transformation of mortuary practices through time The above account has emphasized the role played by time in mapping out different positions for different persons in an idealized time/space structure, and the value of ‘memory’ as a resource through its maintenance overa lengthy period. Particular emphasis has been given to the role of time in the ‘maintenance’ of social structures. In what follow: the focus of interpretation is shifted to the transformation of social structures and the role and conception of time in this process. Onan occasion at which the memory of a specific ancestor was recalled, there would be scope for more than one ‘interpretation’ to be put forward. Competition over dominant interpretations would have been an arena in which pre-existing authority was challenged. However, these attempts would have to be conducted by the internalized ‘rules’ (‘structures’ following Giddens (1984: 16-28); ‘habitus’ following Bourdieu (1990: 52-65)) which past human practices had created/recreated, although, at the same time, cach practice transformed these rules by strategic manipulation. From this point of view, individuals would have conceived of their actions as being basically the same as those of their predecessors, although they were unknowingly making changes in the rules (e.g. Bourdieu 1990: 52-65). A good illustration of this process of ‘unintended’ transformation can also be found in our own data-set, namely, the transformation from inhumation to cremation In classical Beaker/Food Vessel mortuary practices (Burgess 1980; 297), cremations were mostly deposited with inhumations, and were rarely the primary interment (ibid. ) One or two heaps of cremated bones were often deposited near fleshed individual corpses in single grave pits (e.g. Grave 1, Garton Slack 29 (Brewster 1980)). Whether the act of cremating individuals was conducted as an episode of the inhumation funeral is quite uncert; |, but the cremation seems to have been meaningful due to its association with the inhumation rather than in its own In our data-set, it is particularly interesting to note how inhumation was replaced by cremation (e.g. Eton 76 (Greenwell 1877: 282; Kinnes and Longworth 1985: 80); Goodmanham 86 (Greenwell 1877: 290-3; Kinnes and Longworth 1985: 82); Slingsby 144 (Greenwell 1877: 351; Kinnes and Longworth 1985: 92)). The in situ cremations are232. Koji Mizoguchi accompanied only by a Collared vessel (Urn) or an accessory cup, and may well have been chronologically slightly later than typical Beaker/Food Vessel graves (cf. Burgess 1980: 107). In these examples, a fleshed body was positioned in an identical manner to those in Beaker/Food Vessel burials, crouched on its side in a hollow or a pit, and then set alight. The act of cremating the dead became incorporated in the sequence of funeral practices spatially as well as temporally, although the mortuary rite itself maintained many of the elements of the Beaker/Food Vessel inhumation burials illustrated above. In typical late Early Bronze Age cremation practices (e.g. The Bedd Branwen period: c. 1650-1400 cal. BC (see Burgess 1980: 115-31; 313-22), the body was cremated on the pyre quite close to the pit in which the cremated remains were to be deposited (e.g Wykeham Forest Barrow I (Brewster 1973)). Here the elements of Beaker/Food Vessel inhumation practices which in situ cremation had maintained can no longer be seen Instead, the way in which the dead were transformed froma fleshed state to a skeleton was elaborated as an important part of the funeral and was made visually more spectacular. This change implies an increase in the number of people who could witness the scene in which the dead were transformed (cf. Barrett 1990: 185-6) As Barrett has suggested, the underlying logic behind the transformation from inhumation through in situ cremation to the c emation can be understood in terms ofan enhancement of the effectiveness of mortuary practices in the reproduction of power relations. It increased the number of people who could either be involved in, or this activity (ibid.). Nevertheless, this enhancement would never have been exp! intended, felt or conceived of by the individuals involved in these practices. On each mortuary occasion, intentional strategic action(s) could or would have been conducted. However, their actions were conducted by the rules (structures or habitus) which had been created and routinized through past practices, and which were, at the same time, transformed by those practices, In this way, the rules which would have been embedded in people’s consciousness would have been continuously transformed yet still conceived of as ‘unchanged’, ‘cyclical’ or ‘frozen’ ‘The gradual nature of the long-term transforma during the early centuries of the second millennium cal. BC can only be understood in terms of the relationship between the way time was conceived of by the people who participated in or conducted individual practices and the way that long-term social changes came about. This latter point can only be observed from the long-term perspective unique to archaeology yn from inhuma n to cremation Concluding remarks ‘Throughout this paper, I have tried to show that the relationship between human practice, its conditions, and the consciousness of people can only be understood by locating each practice in its unique context in time and space. The consequences of past actions, such as created environments and the memory traces of those actions, constrain the way in which practices are conducted, while at the same time they are manipulated Within this framework, time is not an empty box. Time was marked by human practices.Time in the reproduction of mortuary practices 233 The marks remain in the form of either the memory traces in the consciousness of people or the different locales materialized in a physical form. Different points in the flow of time were marked out by different sets of practices which left their material residues at different locations, such as the mortuary mounds considered in this paper. These different points, marked in time by human practices, were manipulated to signify different categories of people. Time has been shown to have added some specific value to various resources. The time elapsed between the deposition of the primary interment and the secondary interment in individual grave pits may have added a specific value of memories of the deposition of the primary interment. That memory appears to have been an ‘authoritative resource’ (Giddens 1984: 33 and 373), restricted access to which would have given an interest group, probably adult males, a means with which to legitimize and naturalize its domination over other groups, ‘The way in wi ‘h time was conceived by people is also formed through practices conducted in different time/space locales. Time, in our example, may have been thought of as ‘cyclical’ (Gurvitch 1964), and this conception could have been formed by repeatedly enacting a sequence of practices, starting with the deposition of an adult male and ending with the deposition of either an adult female or an immature person in individual grave pits. This conception of ‘cyclical’ time has been thought to help in the reproduction of atic and organic models’ in society (cf. Bloch 1989: 15). If examined from the long-term perspective which is almost exclusively available to archaeologists, those mortuary practices through which the conception of ‘static’ and ‘cyclical’ time were created and recreated themselves turn out to have been transformed Nevertheless, the way in which time was conceived in individual episodes would have been firmly ‘static’ and ‘cyclical’, because even intentional strategic actions would have had to be conducted by the rules which had been created and routinized through past practices (cf. Bourdieu 1990: 52-65). Meanwhile these rules themselves would unknowingly have been changed through practice. From this point of view, the transformation from inhumation practices to cremation practices would have resulted from the accumulation of “unintended consequences’ of human practices, including both strategic and routinized actions, These points have been made through a critical examination of one of the most important subjects in archaeology, the study of mortuary practices, which has been dominated by ‘synchronic’, ‘static’ perspectives (Chapman etal. 1981). Once the importance of human practices in shaping the characteristics of our data, and their crucial role in the reproduction of social structures is realized, time and space inevitably come to form the essential subjects of our study. Archaeologists are in a particularly privileged position in that, unlike other disciplines in the social sciences, they can work with long-term historical phenomena. Only from such a perspective can one investigate such a topicas the relationship between the conception of time, the strategic manipulation of the memory traces of past actions, and the actual transformation of social structures through time. By adopting suitable methods of interpretation and analysis, archaeologists can make a unique contribution to the debate over how to understand the relationship between time and human existence.234 Koji Mizoguchi Acknowledgements Tlike to thank John C. Barrett, Brian Boyd, Richard Bradley, Mark Edmonds, J. D. Hill, Tan Hodder, Robert Preucel, Julian Thomas and Sander van der Leeuw for their commenting upon early drafts of this paper. I particularly thank Brian for correcting my English as well, Sole responsibility for faults and shortcomings, of course, lies with me 5.4.93 Department of Archaeology Cambridge University References Barrett, J. C. 1988a. Fields of discourse: reconstituting a social archaeology. Critique of Anthropology, 7(3): 5-16. 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New York and Oxford: Berg, pp. 150-64 Abstract Mizoguchi, Ko) ime in the reproduction of mortuary practices This paper argues that the archacologist can interpret the way time was marked through human Practices and manipulated in the reproduction of relations of dominance. It is argued that this task can be accomplished by moving interpretative/analytical emphasis away from the examination of statiepatterns, and interpreting the way those variables were mobilized as symbolic resources in the. production and maintenance of social structures. These points are discussed through the study of the mortuary practices of Late Neolithicand Early Bronze Age East Yorkshire, England