Mortuary Practices and Cultural Identity at the Turn of the Sixteenth Century in Eastern Tennessee

Sullivan, Lynne P.; Harle, Michaelyn

doi:10.5744/florida/9780813034263.003.0012

Cited by 8 publications

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“…This suggests that the community was corporately structured, or community‐based, not hierarchical. This may indicate that the community of Holliston Mills possessed cultural practices and lifestyles distinct from other late Mississippian communities in the region (Franklin et al, ), which is consistent with the diversity of Dallas phase cultural identities (Sullivan & Harle, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 58%

“…Toqua is a Dallas site with evidence of fluid social roles and horizontal power relationships highly similar to Holliston Mills. Ethnohistoric evidence from the Cherokee, which are the most relevant ethnographic analogues for Dallas societies (see Lloyd, ; Sullivan & Harle, ), suggests that women engaged in generalized foraging, domestic (e.g., pottery production), and agricultural labor throughout the year, with participation in field labor stretching from young to old ages. Men engaged mainly in specialized, seasonal agricultural and hunting and fishing labour (see Lloyd, ).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Applying the Index of Care to the Mississippian period: A case study of treponematosis, physical impairment, and probable health‐related caregiving from the Holliston Mills site, TN

Zuckerman

Kamnikar

Osterholtz

et al. 2019

Intl J of Osteoarchaeology

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Bioarchaeologists and palaeopathologists have recently turned their attention towards one critical aspect of the study of the history of disease: health‐related caregiving. In response, an approach, the bioarchaeology of care, and, within it, the web‐based Index of Care (IoC) have been developed to enable the identification and interpretation of past caregiving. Here, we apply the IoC to Burial 86, a young adult (18–25 years) female from the late Mississippian period, Dallas cultural phase Holliston Mills site (40HW11; ca. ad 1348–1535), TN. Burial 86 exhibits pathologies specific to treponematosis. They also exhibit a suite of pathologies indicative of physical impairment, including a varus angular deformity in the right tibia that is potentially the result of a malaligned pathological fracture. Following the IoC, we determine that Burial 86 probably experienced moderate clinical impacts on several domains (e.g., musculoskeletal system) with various functional impacts on essential activities of daily living. This means that Burial 86 likely had a disability and likely received caregiving, though it is impossible to determine if the care was efficacious. That care was provided likely reflected the community of Holliston Mills' more egalitarian socio‐political structure, which was unusual for the late Mississippian. It may also reflect Burial 86's agency, the presence of adequate resources at the site, as indicated by high frequencies of high status mortuary artifacts, or a combination of these factors. The mortuary program for Burial 86 does not indicate that they were marked as being different—in status or other social categories—than other community members. This study highlights how bioarchaeological evidence can be used to explore the downstream effects of chronic infections, such as treponematosis, throughout the body and across the life course, and the opportunities for health‐related caregiving in past societies that these processes can potentially create.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 58%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Applying the Index of Care to the Mississippian period: A case study of treponematosis, physical impairment, and probable health‐related caregiving from the Holliston Mills site, TN

Zuckerman

Kamnikar

Osterholtz

et al. 2019

Intl J of Osteoarchaeology

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“…Corpse disposal included primary inhumation (in flexed, semi-flexed and extended positions) within plazas, in mounds, in stone box graves, or under house floors, as well as the use of charnel houses, typically with corpse defleshing and then secondary bundle burial within accretional mounds (Boyd and Boyd 1991;Dunham et al 2003;Gold 2000Gold , 2004Johnson et al 1994;Reeves 2000, pp. 81-82;Speck 1939;Stojanowski 2010, p. 118;Sullivan and Harle 2010). In short, no known Native American burial tradition included a grave form similar to or including the secondary shaft typifying the traditional vaulted burial.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

“They Laid Planks ‘Crost the Coffins”: The African Origin of Grave Vaulting in the United States

Davidson

2012

Int J Histor Archaeol

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Grave vaulting, a vernacular burial form common in nineteenth and early twentieth century America, consists of a simple primary grave shaft at the bottom of which is dug a smaller secondary shaft or niche within which the body or coffin is placed. Typically loose boards are then placed over the secondary shaft to offer protection from the soil coming into direct contact with the body or burial container. This tradition is documented through historical accounts and hundreds of excavated graves through a survey of 86 historic cemetery investigations. Although its cultural origins have been previously unknown, this study argues that the vaulted burial form in the United States is likely of African origin. An extensive ethnological survey of historical and modern cultures throughout the continent of Africa, from 1602 to the mid twentieth century, documents both the vaulted grave form and its variations. Correlating this African cultural practice to its use in the United States demonstrates a hitherto unrecognized creolization of Euroamerican mortuary tradition with African roots, and its corollary, the retention of an African mortuary tradition by those of African descent.

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“…There is also reason to suspect that Dallas phase communities varied intraregionally between primarily ascribed or achieved status (e.g. Betsinger, ; Chapman, ; Sullivan & Harle, ; Vogel, ). Hence, the Dallas phase sample should be compared with and without the mound‐interred component.…”

Section: Materials Methods and Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Subsistence and Settlement Correlates of Treponemal Disease: Temporal Patterns in Pre-Columbian East Tennessee

Smith

Betsinger

2013

Int. J. Osteoarchaeol.

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After ca 1000 BC, coinciding with the transition to sedentism, tertiary stage treponemal disease apparently becomes osteologically pervasive in pre‐Columbian North America. However, varying interobserver treponemal disease diagnostic thresholds, sampling error and the possibly ecosensitive nature of the pre‐Columbian nonvenereal treponemal disease variants (i.e. yaws and treponarid) prevents subsistence‐settlement pattern from becoming a reliable predictor of treponemal disease prevalence. This is particularly true of later prehistory with the transition from horticulture to intensive, maize‐based agriculture. To address whether treponemal disease visibility does vary across this specific subsistence‐settlement threshold, subadults (4+ years of age) and adults from 11 late prehistoric sites (N = 997) from the same geographic area of East Tennessee were sampled for the presence of treponemal disease. Six sites (N = 279) primarily date to the Late Woodland period (AD 700–900) and culturally belong to what is referred to as the Hamilton mortuary complex. The sample is archaeologically characterised as horticulturalist with presumably a dispersed farmstead or hamlet settlement pattern. Six sites (N = 718) date to the Late Mississippian (AD 1300–1550, Dallas phase) and are maize‐intensive agriculturalists with a large, aggregate village settlement pattern. The sites were examined using three different levels of treponemal disease diagnostic confidence. Treponemal disease raw frequency does indeed differ across the levels of diagnostic confidence between the total Late Woodland horticulturalist sample (4.3–5.5%) and total Late Mississippian maize agriculturalist sample (5.4–6.5%). The meaning is complex as the Dallas phase sample may have a socially segregated elite; the mound‐interred (1.8%) relative to the village‐interred (6.1–7.4%) exhibited significantly fewer cases of treponemal disease. Tentatively, treponemal disease visibility does appear to co‐associate with sedentism and perhaps (if the mound‐interred Dallas individuals are elites) also aggregated settlement. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Mortuary Practices and Cultural Identity at the Turn of the Sixteenth Century in Eastern Tennessee

Cited by 8 publications

References 0 publications

Applying the Index of Care to the Mississippian period: A case study of treponematosis, physical impairment, and probable health‐related caregiving from the Holliston Mills site, TN

Applying the Index of Care to the Mississippian period: A case study of treponematosis, physical impairment, and probable health‐related caregiving from the Holliston Mills site, TN

“They Laid Planks ‘Crost the Coffins”: The African Origin of Grave Vaulting in the United States

Subsistence and Settlement Correlates of Treponemal Disease: Temporal Patterns in Pre-Columbian East Tennessee

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