of Prehistoric Social Systems JOSEPH A, TAINTER ‘There are a variety of ways in which a review might be writen. ‘Organization of research ina chronological framework is one possibility: iscussion of substantive results of research would he another. The pres tent review wil follow a different cours. In eld in whieh the Iterture detaing substantive results has proliferated consider fsanized chronologically, or as alistng of esearch res tedious. More important, such approaches might not yield a cleaepietare ofthe strengths and weaknesses of the concepts and analytical methous “nderlying research, This review i primarily orented toward a discussion ofthese later topes. Among the paints to be discussed are the extent 10 which diferent concepts of the socal significance of mortuary remains, nd the analytical methods that derive from these concept, may be ex ected to augment our ability to stdy socal variation and change the $rchacolopcal study of mortuary practices does ot ulimately contribute to the general anthropological study of socal change. then our research ‘may ultimately prove to be of limited interest. This review is, then, ot Concerned so much withthe past accomplishments uf mortuary studies, Ss th the present and the future, With these pints in mind, iis hoped that the present review will show thatthe study of mortuary practices currently aspires to increasingly objective and quantitative methods of analysis 0 concepts that are increasingly sensitive to the recognition of hhow mortuary remains may refect social phenomena, and to explicitvaluation of concepts and methods by reference to ethnographic mor- tary systems MORTUARY PRACTICES: BASIC CONCEPTS “The conceptual framework that underlies the use of mortuary data for social inference has been set forth hy Saxe (1970) and Binford (1970) ‘Sane’ approach uses elements of anthropological roe theory developed. by Goodenough (196), Goodenough has developed ase of terms defining {lements of soci interaction that have archaeological implications. ‘Goodenough’s term social Identity corresponds to what otherwise right be called a social status, Examples of social identities might be chet br eommonef, professor or fladent, mother or mother’s brothers’ daugh {er and the like. When two or more ientties engage ina proper social, Felaionship, this is termed an identity relationship. The parties to social Felationship donot usualy interact in terms of only one social identity at time. An individual might manifest the identities of faculty advisor rend. find coauthor. al inthe course of single interaction. Not all identities that a person could manifest are appropriate foreach interaction. The Composite of several socal entities selected as appropriate fora given Interetin is termed the individual's social persona forthe interaction, “The kind of sovial persona that a person may manifest for an interaction will be determined by the organizational characteristics of the social System. Hence, a set of sci personae will reflec, and contain inform Ton about, the organizating principles of a particular society (Saxe 1970.7). Knowledge ofthis fact i useful for archaeological inference. In Societies organized on differing level of complet, social identities will, ‘ary as tothe momber of identity relationships that itis possible fr them to have. In egalitarian societies infants will have few socal identities, ‘whereas adults wll have acquired many-Drawing on this principle, Saxe (G9908) points out that, archaeologists find infants buried in a manner {ackeating 2 social persona larger than that possessed by some adults, principle of social ranking by birth is probably indicated, With this aay of eoncepis derived from role theory, Saxe proceeds 10 formulate a comprehensive approach othe analysis of mortuary dats, We ‘hal have occasion to discuss Sane's Work at many points in this review. Ethnographic confirmation for concept relating fo mortuary practices is enue for archaeology. Sexe (1970) and other practitioners (Tater To1Sh; Goldstein 1976, Vek 1978) have devoted considerable efor 19 this area. But perhaps the most important survey of ethnographic mor {ary procedures is that of Binford (197) In this ease the word “impor- wonees 107 tans sed oot simply because Binford as consulted» substantial body coppers, fh bie th sl ‘nfm beyond serious contention the argument (il sed skeptical Some) a arity in morary pactces mt be unerto trms tary inthe form and orpaiation of socal systems, notin erm ‘ot normative modes of behavior Binfrd sett t0 test the following ‘wo proposions: (0) hat shee shoul be ih dere of amorhin belween the compet ofthe atu sttre nosis system and @) the compleny of tmortaryceremonisinm at regandsdifereisted text of persons ceapying iret sats postions," an) that “there should be Strong comespondence between he aturof the dimensional sharacte i+ tice serving arte base for afferent moruny treatment and the eX pected ertera employed for stats diterentiaion among sets Fangs ona sale fom snp to compen (197 I18-19, Repbroing this Ins proposition, infordwgucs hatin an chnograpicsovcy we should fed int among egaltaran buntrs and gatherers age and cox should Commonly serve as tases for moray distinction, whens among more amplen societies of agicuturasts socal poston (earying inet ently age, sex and subgroup afilation should more requ Bethe basis for dsinctons la moray treatment Bford knowledge that his ethnographic imple is ot ely stv tured and sere some operational prolens. For example. sae i tot possible to deetly measure socal complexity from the elinoaraphic literature, this was done indety by noting means of subsistence. Bin ford bases this procedure on the “general accepted conestin beeen forms of subsistence production and roca complexity" (1971:1, Sub Sltence mode was grouped nto four ealegorie: huners and gaheres ‘iting sorcaortits, sete nga, and psorait Despite tis poles the este obaned were meaning Binford considered he flowing points to be stacy demonstrate "the moet of ceaios af the soc preora commonly he eognice In soe dmg of esse persona boneed nes) nD Binford concludes: “These findings permit the generalization that the form and structure which characterizes the mortuary practices of anysociety are conttioned by the form and complexity of the organizational Characteristics ofthe society itself” (1971:29, PROBLEMS IN THE INTERPRETATION OF MORTUARY REMAINS. Ina discussion which suggested that archaeologists should be cautious inthe interpretation of mortuary remains, Ucko (1969-273) noted a case lthich he refered fo a8 "an archacologs's nightmare.” The Ashanti Totlow a genera rule that an interred body should not face the village. But Some Ashanti soy that immediately afler Burial the body turns ise round to face the vag, Some, but not all, Ashanti cope with this Cilemma by placing the Body facing the village. knowing that i wll turn itself around to the covrect orientation. “The game of "archacolgist's nightmare” is an easy one to play with cthnographic data. Consider the following example from western Aur sala “Te yne iver ert hve nein cat fing te bones fata hee ‘Th s,s, an shaler tas, col oe, ai re paced once abc p peta ae sone paso Thebes eee elas as tet apc by hehehe Aber ene inrd the ane he een el ied aie, The ad RSS hen ate ie Ams sk pat ude the toe wh cme ‘eS ty it alangro, A woman sl suid ore ple here ‘Boa srt (Dance 10) ‘Tere ae many posible reactions to such ethnographic cases, Pethaps the easiest would Beto simply shake our heads, mutter something unre Pestable. and conclude that interpretation of mortuary remains is impos Ute Such a reaction i, unfortunately, not unknown inthe archseolo- {al profession The goal of any science, however, sto make sense out of Seeming chaos, to find the common factors linking apparent diversity None of the persons whose work is reviewed inthis chapter have ever lstmed, or amplied, that the analysis of mortuary remains is simple, Staightforvards or easy. The versity of approaches that have been ‘Scveloped for mortuary analysis clearly indicate the contrary. Ifthe factors conditioning mortuary ritual, and its archaeological preservation, fre complex, this circumstance should nt be thought of a8 a detriment, ‘ut rae ss an opportunity. To suagest hat complexity of mortuary ital renders burial data inscrutable is to suggest that we ignore an prowsrome wonmuany exacrces 109 ‘opportunity to understand a major component of the archaeological ree: ont ‘Any listing of ethnographic “archacologs's nightmares” wil clearly indicate that the form ofa mortary ritual sa complex interplay of rt, Soeial, and environmental factors, The archaeological transformation of ‘mortuary remains adds yet another level of uncertainty to attempts a ‘modeling past societies. The Hterature reviewed inthis chapter concen: ttates on the socal dimensions of mortuary practices, Perhaps one cf ‘jam tbe voiced is thatthe other Factors that condition mortuary prac tices ought tobe teuted ax systematically as have social dimensions. For thoteatchaeologsts who ae primarily concerned with the nature of past societies, the advantage of systematic treatment of the ritual and environmental aspects of mortuary practices would be the potential for {iscriminating, in archaeological dat, those varables that genuinely re fect socal factors. Toa degre, this canbe accomplished within the state of our present knowledge, But not to sufficient degree as (0 warrant ‘complacency that the problem has been solved ‘The archaeological transformation of mortuary ritual provides further ightnares, All archaeologists with anthropological taining are familar with examples of people who bury their deadin tres. i vers, at sea. and So forth although there are sound reasons (tobe discussed shortly) for believing archecological remains to reliably refect the sci information communicated through mortuary ritual, nevertheless the archaeological recovery of mortuary remains clearly presents 2 sampling problem. At tempts to characterize prehistoric societies fom mortuary remains re ‘quire that we obtain information about all kinds of burial practiced in a Society, This is obviously impossible in many cases. Rather thaa nd this ‘discouraging litation, we might see it asa genuine opperunity. There ‘may well be pattems in the exten to which mortuary remains are mot Fecoverable afchacologically. Similarly, it may be possible to aban pos: ‘ve information fom such negative conditions as absence of burials. For ‘example, the extent to which certain age or sex classes are absent from an frchacolopial mortar popalation may rect sgncan social factors, ‘We shall see later in this review that such a negative condition #8 the absence of formal cemeteries is Very informative characteristic, Tn short, the complexity of mortuary ritual, and the problems of ar- hacologicl analysis, shouldbe viewed as opportnities rather than de. ‘iments, Such a view does not imply that analysis of mortuary remains ‘may be considered simple procedure, There are goad reasons believe that common factors condition the socal dimensions of mortuary’ tv a varying cultural contexts. However, these common factors are ofa highly abstract nature; their archacological application wil vary with each ease110 dover a rarer being considered. Thus, the concepts tobe discussed here shoul! not be taken as a foo! kt for archaeological interpretation, but rather as a base for deriving interpretive principles appropriate for each individual case ‘THE SIGNIFICANCE OF MORTUARY DATA ‘To evaluate the usefulness of mortuary data for social modeling, (Wo criteria may be discussed, These are the range of socal information that may be derived from mortuary remains, and the reliability of burial data as indicators of socal phenome. ahs discussion of the archaeological application of role theory, Saxe (1970:6) noted that the occasion of death will iqvolve an interaction between the deceased person and many of the persons with whom he oF she had engaged in identity eelatonships during life. It ean be seen then ‘hat death and mortuary’ ritual cll forth a Tuller representation of an individua's various social identities than does any ogeasion during He Hence, the archaeological record of mortuary ritual should contain a stealer range of information about the social identities presen in a past, ‘oviety than does any other catepory of information. Additionally. since individuals acquire socal identities by virtue of membership inthe sue tural parts or components ofa social system, mortuary ritual wll simul neously convey information about the nature of past society. Indeed, to the extent 0 which a mortuary population contains individuals who held ‘membership in the various components of a society, that mortuary pop lation can be expected to reflect the structure of the extnet society (ainter 1977670). There does not appear to be any other category of ftchasological data for which this claim might be 80. confidently 8 vance. (Given that mortuary ritual has such potential for extensive representa- tion f social phenomena, we must consider whether archaeological mor: {wary remains wil reliably reflect the formation conveyed though mor- ‘wary tual. Tis, of course, isthe question continuously raised by the skeptics and critics of social modeling. Deriving an answer to this ques- tion will involve discussion af topics that will igure prominently in lter sections ofthis review. Much of Saxe's work deals with the application of formal analysis to rmortvary data, an approach pioneered by Brown in the middle 1960s (but ‘not published until 1971. Formal analysis technique used to evaluate find display the combinations of mortuary atuibutes found in a mortuary ‘domain: Such combinations of attributes are often displayed as a branch jing diagram, of Key, as shown in Figure 4.1 memsrome wonruany omacrcgs 411 =< te Ste a rs apn na igure 41. Key agra of parece, ‘The ey in Fur 4. is a pret te, A perfec te isan abso tend str in that he decison mae ny one contra et Ge sample, whether the person ments oma or casual etme saat, ‘aly press the coices waa insubcquentcontatses Thos S person's tobe dspoed a casa, te qutin aftr the copie shoul be pblcy dpisyedis applica Tasca, the nen hace eo prescbed is whether the dps soul be on lan nn at So lay, diosa in a forest redondatly emphasizes the at tha dy aso nd and wat eared ut aay. een solar coast (os perfect tie sa prfct paradigm, Ina pertest paradigm all abuts are indspendent. Chace of one witute doc sot Presb o it sutveqentcotat set Hence he rednncye eto A pect prndign i lasiated in Figue “Teshntues for measuring whether ey represents 4 Ue oF & paralgm are availble onthe Bld of information theory. Inu stustionee [Ro OSS of complete nonredundansy all atbutes combine wih al others; there SS complete randoms In organization. In nformation theory, thi 4 Shsaton of maxim enon) Ina sco hig redundancy, te com tions atrbutes ae highly determined; here sigh organization and i eons Sof dine vier Ky repens ee or 4 rag me measure ts degree of e087 ne ctuaton of maximum entropy all atibutes will combine randomly with all tne. I the numer of pssBie combinations (ermed sf seat) i denoted a 8. then the situation of complete randomness wil te expresed ae Sa Cu CK where C eepresents the numberof different values each attribute may taker (la Figures 41 and 4.2, there are two values foreach atibute, with the exception of the atibute Deceased person.) The value S wil ndiate the maaimum numberof possible burial modes and might be refered 02s Se "The amount of information in Sau can be measured as E = 108 Snax Here E will represent the maximum entropy possible ina key mrowsroncwomuanr acnees 113 ‘To measure actual entropy we tabulate the number of burial modes (or signifeata) actually observed. This will be referred 10 a8 Sy The entrory of Su Wil be (6 = lots Ss where eis a measure of actual enteopy. ‘Relative entropy (RE) is measured as RE = clk And conversely, to measure redundancy (R) we apply the formula R=1-RE Fora perfect paradigm R will equal 2r0, whereas for a perfect tree it wil havea vale of 1 Saxe 1970102107) “There are many implications of Saxe's application of information theory to! mortuary remains, Por the moment we shall conser only the following (Tainer 1975b-107=103). ‘Mortury rite is basically a communication system in which certain symbols afe employed to convey information about the status of the deceased. AS in any communication system, the messages generated Through mortuary ritual ae subject to noise, which may induce errors or Individuals interred in, or processed through larg, lo-roofed tombs, which served a8 the cental Feature of most mounds Level 2: Peripheral burials in smaller, log-covered graves Level 3: Burials with limestone slab inclusions Level 4: Individuals buried with locally produced sociotechnic items, ‘mort often Hopewell series potery vessels, Level $: Interment in simple subfloor graves Level 6: Individuals placed on aceretional mound surfaces. rrensrowe montuane onacrces 195 ‘The distribution ofthe population among these rank levels is shown in ‘Table 4.1. This table also illustrates the calculation of the entropy met sure for this system. The Middle Woodland rank system cisplays an entropy of I. 8354 bis. Hag fr six rank levels i 2.8496 bits, and $9 the ‘measure of amount of organization (D,) i 2.58896 ~ 1.8354) 7496. The ‘epree of organization RD.) amounts to (7396/2. 88396) 29. The mesure of rank differentiation is shown ia Table 82, For this Middle Woodland system, s() amounts 0 13.671 Such quantitative measures are most meaninafal when used fr the assessment of variation and change. In two such applications these mea sures have yielded excellent resus. Ina sty of Waodland social change in west-central Minois during the period 4.0, 200-80) there appeared ‘general derease in the structural Complexity of social systems between the Middle and Late Woodland (4.0. 400-900) periods. Also evident ate ‘wo contrasting quantitative trends: (a) decrease in both organization {amount and degree) and rank dffeentition inthe early Late Woodland petiod: and (b) a coresponding increase in these variables during later Late Woodland, just prior tothe emergence ofthe truly comple social ‘ystems characteris ofthe Mississippian period, The pattern of social ‘change evidenced by the quantitative measures significant no only for the information it discloses, bu lso Because it parallels and is confirmed ‘by nonguantitative assessments (Tainter 19750, 19773, b). Ie might be ded at this point that, if evolutionary typologies had been vised inthis study, both Middle and Late Woodland systems would have been charac terized as ranked societies (in Fred's terminology). Thus, no socal change between the Middle and Late Woodland periods would have been evident The patter of social change that was observed was evident only because of the use of quantitative messures, Tn second study these measures have been applied to two contem Rank el P ute ponte SimeFanart 7H 7a = poraneous prehistoric social systems from the Island of Hawaii. One of these (Kaloko) displays a complex rank hierarchy evidenced by both mortuary data and setlement patterns. The other (Anaehoomalu) displays 4 very ttuneated fank hierarchy with no persons of the highest rank grades. Quantitative analysis corroborates these qualitative conclusions, Sand indicates that Kaloko was characterized By preter strctural com plexity, organization, and rank diferenition (Tainter and Cordy 197) ‘A comparative study that applies the quantitative methods developed by Sane (1970) and Tainter (1975) tothe same datasets would hea use Sep in furthering mortuary studies. [MORTUARY PRACTICES: CONCLUDING EVALUATIONS. This discussion of the social dimensions of mortuary’ practices leads to 1 set of conclusions and recommendation for future archaeological re Search. Perhaps most basic isthe recommendation that investigators be ‘explicit about which dimensions ofa social system are to be monitored in ‘piven study. (It does not need to be emphasized that this sugpestion applies 10 all studies of past societies, whether dependent on mortuary Gata or not) Along with the recognition that social dimensions of interest, ‘Should be expliity stated goes the responsibility to model these dimen ‘sions in a manner that wil allow the study of social variation and change ‘The minimum tesuirement entailed by this consideration is that social imensions be modeled by cieia that are objective and eross-culturally ‘ald, For mortuary practices va analytical eniteria have been developed "hat full these requirements. These ate the spatial disuibution of mor ‘wary remain, a variable that contains information relating to corporate _roup differentiation, and eneray expenditure, an indicator of rank gra ing. A second consideration in the stady of variation and change is that rronsrone wontuany macnces 197 social dimensions be measured on true interval or ratio scales The nomi ‘al categories that are characteristic of evolutionary typologiesare simply not sensitive enough to yield the kinds of information we need for the study of social change, Two approaches to quantitative modeling of past social systems have been developed (Saxe 1970, Tainter 19756). 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