Ancestor Shrine

So, I made one. Made one what, you say? Well, in this post I alluded to making an ancestor shrine (also known as a butsudan, or kamidana, however these terms are what the Japanese use to refer to the shrines; I'm not sure of the Chinese terminology). I actually made it a while back for Chinese New Year earlier in February. I brought my mom down with me to Chinatown to spot out all the things that we would need: statues of Fu Lu Shou, paper money, and incense. After going to every store in Chinatown, we managed to find everything we needed for the shrine and for dinner. The porcelain statues of Fu Lu Shou are incredibly expensive, but we managed to get a decently priced set. Anyway, we went home and I found some old pictures of my deceased relatives and put them in a frame. Here's a photo of what it looks like:

The photo on the left is of my bak-gung who was the first to come to Canada. The photos on the left are of his wife, my gung-gung and my other bok-bok. The cups are offerings of water, and the red wrappers are lucky candy to ring in the New Year. There was also offerings of oranges and pomelo on the mantle. Before placing the incense on the shrine, you light it, hold it between your hands which are pressed palm-to-palm and bow three times. The ancestors were offered their dinner before everyone else, and special settings were laid out for them. Next, paper money was burned so that the ancestors will be prosperous in the afterlife. Because they were fed and taken care of, it is expected that their spirits will watch over us.

The experience was pretty special to me because I live very far away from most of my family. As a child, I spent every single summer for a number of years in Toronto with my cousins (I have a modest 15), aunts, uncles and grandparents. My cousins are like my brothers and sisters, my aunts and uncles like secondary parents, and grandparents are always very special. Being older, things change and it's hard to get out there to see them; everyone is older and has a busy life, but we try to see each other nonetheless. Putting together this shrine made me feel more connected to my family back in Toronto, knowing that my por-por is doing the same ritual for the same reasons as us. Not only did this make me feel a little bit more connected to my Chinese roots, it also made me realize how important it is for many people to do these things. How important it is for people to have the statues, the pictures, the incense and the offerings. How material expression can change over time or context, yet still play the same basic role. It's not because these things are nice things to have, it's because they have meaning and can evoke a sense of social or spiritual connectiveness to a group (like kin). And even though I cannot visit my grandfather's, or great-grandparents' graves, we have our way to always remember and pay respects to those who take care of us.

The Politics of Being Dead

I'm still pretty hung up on the politics of cemeteries. What we have seen with the examples of the Black cemetery in Ontario, as well as the Black slave cemetery found in New York during the 1990's, and many cases of found Indigenous remains is a power relation played out between the more "dominant" population of European-descent and a minority population who have been racialized. In a society where people believe everyone are supposedly equal, and in Canada where multiculturalism is enshrined in our constitution, there seems to be some pretty contradictory views about just whose cultural traditions should get recognition over others.

In North American "Western" society, continual growth and development are the order of the day. It seems as though everything needs to be bigger, better, more developed, and not only that but also faster as well. As mentioned before in my previous blog post, sometimes during construction Indigenous cemeteries or archaeological sites are found. So in the developer's mind the question might be when does a cemetery (or other types of habitual-use, or other archaeologically important sites) become unimportant, or void of their meaning? Or, as Erin brought up last class, when is it appropriate to re-use spaces? I really think it's important to know the context of who we're asking about because it really depends on the people who once used the site.  For some, it is important for bodies to remain in tact for them to be corporeally whole in heaven. For others, disturbing ancestral remains might mean that their spirits have been relinquished and perhaps disrespected, and thus may act upon the living until the problem is rectified. Who is anyone to tell anyone else that what they believe is wrong?

This power dynamic can affect how people view cemeteries/burials, and the beliefs about when it is appropriate to disturb burials. The often talked about process of creating "otherness" also can be played out through through the decisions that are made of what happens to remains once they are exhumed. As I've written before, I think that a divestment of decision making power and a mutual respect for different cultural traditions, especially historically marginalized ones (like African Americans or Aboriginal peoples for example) is really important. It is important because we live in a population with a very mixed and diverse ethnic makeup, but also it is important to begin to repair any historically (or contemporary) tumultuous relationships between conflicting groups. Perhaps there could be creative solutions to some of these "issues" once the typically marginalized group's concerns gets taken seriously and are treated with respect. I would argue that any people who are pushing for development at all costs need to be more willing to budge and compromise on these issues as well.

"You can't have your cake and eat it, too."

The Importance of Decolonizing Archaeology

So, we while Erin was sick on Tuesday we watched a movie called "Speakers for the Dead" which brought to light some very interesting perspectives about race issues. The contention was surrounding a black cemetery that had its gravestones buried by a farmer who wanted to clear the land for his potato patch. In an attempt to find more of the tombstones, an excavation of the area was proposed, but some of the residents did not want it to proceed. The Caucasian descendents of the area felt that digging in a cemetery is not only morally contentious, but also may have some legal ramifications to it as well. There may have been some other reasons why they didn't want the tombstones to be found that may have had to do with the denial of their ancestral heritage: some of the people may not have wanted to discover that they may be from African descent. This is something that I found really interesting because we don't see this stance from the "mainstream" when it comes to Aboriginal cemeteries.


There have been many incidences where Aboriginal peoples remains have been unearthed from an ancient burial ground during urban development. However, instead of being respectful to the Aboriginal descendants and the fact that the area is a cemetery for the ancestors of the area, it becomes a bane to the urban developers. The media portrays Aboriginal peoples as being in the way of development because they don't want the remains of their ancestors disturbed or to have buildings built on top of them. Which, I would argue is pretty justifiable -- I'd imagine that most people wouldn't want a condo built on top of their great grandparents, or grandparents. Of the more recent examples (and close to home), is in the Musqueam First Nation which just so happens to be in a prime real estate area in Vancouver. Since the area was not owned by the Musqueam, construction was underway in the Marpole Midden area (despite its recognition as a National Historic Site) when human remains were unearthed. The Musqueam were not impressed, did not want construction to continue, and wanted a land swap to protect the area. Deals fell through and the First Nation began protesting the development. So what kind of reactions do the "mainstream" have? Here's a few examples of comments made online that have been taken from my class notes from ANTH336 last semester:

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JGetStarted: “It's an old garbage dump folks not a "sacred site". If there are bones in there you have to ask the question. If I was buried in a landfill I'd have to ask just how sacred were my remains to my family/group?”

Dammrite: “How long are we going to continue to tolerate tolerate this garbage ? (This time over literal garbage)...Think these people are far more interested in the "sacred" money than the "sacred" remains.”

DirtyMariner: “Cut them off. No more tax breaks or land claims. In what other society has a defeated people had such a stranglehold on taxpayers? Money and handouts aren't fixing native problems. Neither is respecting their right to shut down half a city because of a 3 thousand year old landfill. The only time 80% of these people leave home is to protest something or vote on something that will give them more money."

These remarks reflect the colonial mindset that many people share when it comes to Aboriginal concerns. It also reflects the severe lack of knowledge that the "mainstream" have about not only Indigenous issues, but also of Aboriginal rights. What a lot of people may not know is that the majority of British Columbia was not ceded by treaty nor by force, and that Aboriginal rights are protected by the constitution. Because of all the contentious issues between land rights, and cultural heritage, it is important for archaeology in British Columbia to be decolonized. Essentially, the power dynamic needs to shift to the hands of the Aboriginal peoples who have occupied this land long before us settlers arrived. That's not to say that archaeology in BC should not continue, but it should continue working closely with First Nations, with the hopes that many First Nations will have archaeology experts of their own so that they will be able to have a greater degree of control over what kinds of sites get disturbed, or what kind of cultural history they feel is appropriate to excavate.
 

I think I've alluded to my fur collection previously, but I didn't elaborate much. I mostly don't mention it because people still find it a bit taboo to own fur, but the large majority of my collection is vintage. For this reason, I have a growing interest in taxidermy. I have two taxidermied deer heads from the 1920's, and I wondered how they have lasted this long and still look lifelike. In fact, the oldest taxidermied animal is a 17th century rhinocerous at the museum of Florence. I have not seen it, but, I would really really like to. Anyway... naturally I thought, "why don't people get taxidermied?" Wouldn't it last longer than embalming, and be less of a maintenance problem?


Well, I'm a fan of VSauce, and came across this video which answered my questions.



I know we were talking about it a couple of weeks ago, but I also think that plastination is really interesting. It's curious that donated bodies, once modified, actually become own-able property. What if the owners of the exhibit wanted or needed to sell the exhibit for financial reasons? Are they then allowed to sell individual bodies for profit? Is there a potential loophole, as Michael suggests, to donating your body for plastination, and in turn buying the plastinated corpse legally?


One of the things that I worry about plastination is the processes that it undergoes. If we're talking making a minimal impact on the environment, well, making plastic pollutes the environment. These bodies would not be able to be interred because they will not decay, and who knows about the toxicity levels in the preservation method. I guess that long-term preservation is probably not the most important thing for the environmentally-conscious individual.

Oh honey, doo doo doo do do do

So, there's this book by a journalist named Mary Roach called Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (2003) that I had been entertaining myself with over the past summer. I know it's not an academic text, but it has some pretty interesting things in it about some things that happen to cadavers. Anyway, in one of the chapters called "Eat Me," she mentions an Arabic practice described by a 16th century Chinese naturalist Li Shih-chen. Li describes a practice where a man in his 70's or 80's would voluntarily donate their bodies for medicinal use. The men were described to exclusively eat and bathe in honey, and then exclusively excrete the substance; death would soon ensue, and their corpses would be sealed in stone coffins filled with honey (Roach 2003:221-222). Their coffins would be sealed for a century, and then re-opened to be ingested as a form of medicine to heal broken limbs; however, Li was admittedly unsure of whether or not this practice was actually true (Roach 2003:222). The end result was reputedly a "mellified man," or "human mummy confection."

I began to think more and more about the anecdote and the process. If isn't true, then where would Li get his ideas from? Was it some type of cultural misunderstanding or mistranslation? I'm assuming Li had never visited Arabia to find out for himself if he was unsure of the veracity of the claims. And the "mellifying" process sounds like a pretty dedicated process, as it is said to take 100 years to procure the remains into medicine. If it were to be true, wouldn't there be there be some sort of mention in any kind of Arabian medicinal text? I couldn't substantiate any claims of the claims by researching 12th century Arabic medicine, and I couldn't find any academic research on the topic. There does not seem to be any type of evidence that this process was ever practiced at all, aside from Li's description in the Chinese Materia Medica.

Is it possible to mummify, or "mellify" a person using honey? Hypothetically, if it were true, how do people ingesting the human-derived medicine justify eating another human being? What kinds of views about the dead did the people eating them for medicinal use hold?

Apparently, eating dead mummified humans was in fact a thing. From the 16th to the 18th century, Europeans were eating mummified human flesh as medicine (Gordon-Grube 1988:406; Roach 2003:222). The mummies were not those entombed, but artificially created through a process of soaking a corpse in various substances and then dried out (Gordon-Grube 1988:406). The best cadavers to produce medicinal mummies were said to be mainly criminals -- people who have been hung or suffocated. Did this allow people to break the cannibalism taboo? My first thoughts are that people may have justified eating human remains perhaps from a combination of exoticitization, dehumanization and based on the recommendation of medical expertise. People may have disconnected the fact that the medicine they were ingesting were once living and breathing people, and not a deceased loved one that was to be memorialized.

Gordon-Grube, Karen

2003 Anthropology in Post-Renaissance Europe: The Tradition of Medicinal Cannibalism. American Anthropologist 90(2):405-409.

Roach, Mary

 2003 Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

So I know I was supposed to write about this a week or two ago but I got busy, and I still think it's an interesting topic. What do I want to do with my body when I pass? For the past few years, I have been toying with the idea of donating my bones for teaching use. My interest in skeletal anatomy rose upon taking a forensic anthropology class at Camosun, and was subsequently deepened after taking the osteology course at UVic. (I plan on taking the forensic osteology course at some point as well.)

Anyway, the reason why I want to donate my body to use as a tool is because real human bone is becoming a fewer and a more expensive resource for post-secondary institutions to acquire. There is a difference between learning skeletal anatomy using real human bone and casts. Casts do not show every foramina and fossae very well and since every human skeleton is different because of human variation, certain features on bones differ greatly from one individual to the next. I have become really grateful to the nameless individuals that I come into contact with on a regular basis (since now I'm TAing the forensics class at Camosun). Some people try to distance themselves from the human remains that they handle and the fact that they came from real individuals. I, however, seek to find the humanity within the skeletons: these people were alive and breathing at one time, they had eyes and muscle and tissue attached to these bones.

I know it may seem like an impersonal thing to do with my body, and I've talked to some people in our class that wouldn't even want their bones to be found by an archaeologist. I think that if I could help students learn about osteology the way that several nameless individuals helped me, then I think that is something worthwhile.

Goods in my grave

What kind of things would I want to be buried with? That's a tough question. I don't know if I could choose anything that I feel would properly identify who I am or what I believe in. Of course I own a lot of material things, but I don't know if I would want to be buried with them. I'm not sure if what is most important to me can be accurately represented by material objects. The things that I leave behind that I would consider important to me I would want to leave to my family to keep to remember me by. To me, material possessions would be of no use to me to be buried with them, so if someone else can enjoy whatever I may leave and have nice memories associated with those things then I would prefer to leave them.

My family and boyfriend, however, think differently. I would get buried with my sheepskin rug (I just "thrifted" it yesterday and I'm a little too obsessed with it), a poodle statue, a German shepherd statue, my vintage furs, a Montreal Canadiens jersey, and maple syrup. I supposed that would be pretty accurate, as I do love my vintage things, dogs, hockey, and Québec.

What I'd really like to take with me is something like a record of who I am, and how the people I know and love thought of me. Maybe I could take something like a flash drive containing photos and videos, but maybe in the archaeological record this type of technology may be archaic and looked over. Also, this type of technology can be pretty fragile if it encountered any weathering or damage. Otherwise I guess some of my vintage collection would have to suffice!

On discovering my cultural heritage

I'm half Chinese. Apparently it's not evident, but I am. To be honest, I don't really know all that much about Chinese culture. So, I decided to find out. Tonight I "facetimed" my aunt and uncles, and here's what they told me:

Not really much is known about how my bak-gung (great grandfather in Toisanese, a dialect closely related to Cantonese) came here, or what he did for work when he first arrived. Bak gung and his family owned property in Toisan, China before he arrived in New Brunswick in the 1920's. It is presumed that the money from being a proprietor is how he was able to come to Canada where he was charged a $500 head tax upon arrival. Shortly thereafter, he opened a restaurant and through family reunification sponsorship, my bok-bok (great grandmother), por-por (maternal grandmother), gung-gung (paternal grandfather), and their 6 children came to join my grandfather in Canada from Hong Kong in the late 1950's. It's a bit of a family rumour that they came to Canada to escape Chairman Mao, but no one is completely sure of its veracity. They came here with the intention to "Westernize." A lot of their Chinese traditions changed to adapt to a more "Western" lifestyle. Almost all of por-por and gung-gung's children who got married, married people of European descent. A lot of the knowledge of Chinese traditions and language weren't encouraged (but certainly were not frowned upon) to pass onto the next generation -- my generation. This is one of the reasons why I don't really know much about Chinese culture and traditions.

I'm in a PAAS class called "Ghosts and Spirits," and it's about the cultural relevance and roles that ghosts and spirits play within cultures with a focus on Asian cultures. Lately we've been learning about Buddhism, Taoism, and Shinto, and the importance of ancestor veneration in many Asian cultures. It is believed that ancestor spirits will take care of and watch over living family members as long as respect is paid to the ancestor spirits. One way to show respect is to have altars or shrines in their homes dedicated to past family members, and routinely have offerings of food and drink for the ancestor spirits. The shrines can be a shelf, or a cabinet, with photographs/portraits or some type of commemoration of the past family members with candles, statues, and incense amongst other things.

For some reason I couldn't stop thinking about this. Being a family-centric person, I liked the idea that your family members could look after you and participate in your life even after they were no longer of this world. Why haven't I heard about ancestor shrines before? Does my family have one? So I decided to talk to my mom to get to the bottom of things. Our conversation went something like this:

Me: "Mom!! Why don't we venerate our ancestors?"
Mom: "uhhh....what?"
Me: "Why doesn't por-por have an ancestor shrine? Why don't we venerate our ancestors?!"
Mom: "She does have one. It's that buffet hutch in their dining room."
Me: "Oh. I just thought it was a buffet hutch with random statues inside..."

One of the traditions that my family had modified was the ancestor shrine. It's not a blatantly obvious shrine, and it's actually on top of the buffet hutch about 6' off the ground (and out of the reach of troublesome grandchildren). According to my aunt and uncles, it was set up for my bak-gung upon arriving in Toronto with bok-bok and gung-gung included once they passed. Although it's not really a typical shrine it does have the essential components, but I had never known it was there.

The reason why I thought I should include this in my blog is because I feel like it is almost an on-going extension to a funerary custom/practice. People die, but the spirit stays around and watches over the family, while the family continues to provide for the ancestors as well. This is an important part of daily life. I also thought materially, if ancestor shrines could indeed be thought as a funerary tradition, how they could be represented in an archaeological context. Out of context these shrines may not be necessarily thought as a funerary artifact as there is no physical body associated with it, but the spiritual function of the dead (or their spirits) is just as important to everyday life.

Me: "...Well, why don't we have an ancestor shrine?"
Mom: "Well, if you really want one you can make one."

Maybe I will, maybe I will...

So, on Friday Erin gave us a hand out where on the one side there was Ramilisonina (who worked with  Michael Parker Pearson to develop a new possible understanding of Stonehenge) in an interview being asked about the similarities between megaliths in Madagascar in comparison to Stonehenge (and the other related sites like Woodhenge and now "Bluestonehenge"). On the other side, there was a critical response by blogger Luciano Aimar speaking to this analogy that Ramilisonina and Michael Parker Pearson have made.

I didn't have as strong of a reaction to Pearson's ideas as Aimar did. I didn't have an issue with the analogy because honestly, if we knew the answers to what Stonehenge meant to the people who created it, we wouldn't have to make these analogies in the first place. It ultimately doesn't matter where the analogies originated from because they are there to shed light on different ways of seeing similar physical phenomenon as reflected in the archaeological record.  I don't believe that Pearson or Ramilisonina necessarily suggested a universality about ancestor stones; I think they were trying to give an analogy for unexplained phenomena by way of a contemporary living tradition resulting in similar material finds. What I do think we should still be cautious about is in speaking authoritatively regarding such analogies. For example,  Ramilisonina on the purpose of Stonehenge: "It was a sacred place where people came to make contact with the creator gods and the spirits of their ancestors." Was it? The way he's speaking suggest he knows that's what Stonehenge was created for, but it is just a hypothesis and I think that's where the line needs to be drawn until further evidence is found that can support, or reject such hypotheses. After all, isn't that the function of the scientific method?

Introduction

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Hi, and welcome. I’m Amanda, and I am an undergraduate student at the University of Victoria. This blog was created for an undergraduate course, “Anthropology 397: Archaeology of Death,” instructed by Dr. Erin McGuire.  The principle purpose of this blog aims to meet the goals of the course as Erin has outlined, namely, using this form of social media as a means for us students to reflect upon the concepts of the course within the context of our own lives, and what we can observe in the world around us. It can be seen as something of an opportunity for students to practice and develop our anthropological “lens” and voices that we may, or may not already know we have.

A couple years ago, I went to a ten-year reunion for my elementary school (yes, sounds a bit strange, I know), and every student in the school made a contribution to a time capsule that was opened on  “reunion day”. Our class decided to make a book detailing where each student predicted we’d be in ten years time. I wrote that I was going to have a dog, live in my own apartment, and that I was going to be an archaeologist. (This made me laugh because at the time I had my own dog, my own apartment, and I was working on my bachelor’s degree for anthropology.) My interest in archaeology, and a newfound interest in the broader scopes of anthropology unwavering, I find myself constantly reflecting upon the everyday interactions that I have, or observe, between other people, and I think it has made me a better person. I digress.

Anyhow, the title of my blog is taken from a longer quote from a French philosopher named Louis Claude de Saint-Martin: “dans la graine, la vie est cachée dans la mort; dans le fruit, la mort est cachée dans la vie” [In the seed, life is hidden in death; in the fruit, death is hidden in life]. This quote depicts the cyclical nature of life and death; death being an essential and integral part of life. I hope that through this blog I can “uncover” some of the ways death is hidden in life, and the ways life is hidden in death.