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.