Fashioned Selves

Dress and Identity in Antiquity

Megan Cifarelli

• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781789252552
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

The study of dress in antiquity has expanded in the last 20 years, evolving from investigations of costume and ethnicity in ancient art and texts and analyses of terms relating to textiles and their production, to broader studies of the social roles of dressed bodies in ancient contexts, texts, and images. This volume emerges from Approaches to Dress and the Body sessions at the Annual Meetings of the American Schools of Oriental Research in 2016 and 2017, as well as sessions relating to ancient dress and personal adornment at the Annual Meetings of the Archaeological Institute of America in 2018. Following the broad notion of dress first presented in Eicher and Roach-Higgins in 1992 as the "assemblage of modifications of the body and/or supplements to the body, " the contributions to this volume study varied materials, including physical markings on the body, durable goods related to dressed bodies in archaeological contexts, dress as represented in the visual arts as well as in texts, most bringing overlapping bodies of evidence into play.Examining materials from a range of geographic and chronological contexts including the prehistoric Caucasus, Iran, Mesopotamia, Syria and the Levant, the Aegean, Greece, the Roman world and Late Antique Central Asia, this volume takes as its starting point that dress does not simply function as a static expression of identity or status, inscribed on the body to be "read" by others, but is a dynamic component in the construction, embodiment, performance and transformation of identity.

Part One

Funerary selves

Chapter 1

Fashioned identity in the Şərur Valley, Azerbaijan: Kurgan CR8

Jennifer Swerida and Selin Nugent

Abstract

Of the Middle Bronze Age (MBA, 2400–1500 BCE) burials excavated in the Qızqala cemetery of Naxçıvan, Azerbaijan, the remains found in kurgan CR8 provide an exceptional representation of the mortuary identity of the adult male interred within. The Dərələyəz Mountains surrounding the Şərur Valley were a culturally charged landscape on which both the living resident mobile pastoralists and the mortuary monuments to their ancestors coexisted and negotiated their shared community identity. Through detailed examination of the location and contents of kurgan CR8, this paper demonstrates how the mortuary setting and dress of a single elite member of the Qızqala community were fashioned by funerary participants to represent the identity of the interred. Such constructed mortuary identity may be crafted to perpetuate or alter how the deceased is remembered by the surviving community. The fashioning of mortuary identities thus serves as a means of negotiating the larger community identity and social organization. By integrating perspectives drawn from the funerary structure, goods, and human remains of kurgan CR8, this paper balances the fashioned identity of the interred with the current understanding of the broader MBA society in the South Caucasus.1

Introduction

The recognition and attempted reconstruction of past identities as represented through dress – the collection of materials worn on and modifications made to the body – has long been a subject of archaeological discussion (see Meskell 2001; Joyce 2005; Sørensen 2007). Recent studies have emphasized the dynamic, pluralistic roles that identity plays in social organization and cohesion (see Hutson 2008; MacSweeney 2011; Maldonado and Russell 2016). This is especially true of identity as expressed in mortuary contexts, where deceased individuals are represented not only by dress materials worn on the body but also by those surrounding, housing, and commemorating the body (i.e. clothing, personal adornments, grave goods, and the burial structure/monument). Through mortuary celebration and revisitation, the identities of deceased individuals become part of a community’s memory of its own collective identity (Porter 2002; Chapman 2003; Fowler 2013). Yet, the aspects of the deceased’s identity that are reflected in mortuary contexts are often selectively chosen by survivors to fashion the ways in which that individual and the individual’s relationship to survivors live on in community memory. Since mortuary dress/contexts are often the best sources of preserved information on the identities of past individuals and the communities to which they belonged, the challenge faced by archaeologists is to untangle the social meanings and influences behind each element of fashioned mortuary identity.

Identity can be understood as “the process by which the person seeks to integrate his [or her] diverse experiences, into a coherent image of ‘self’” (Epstein 1978). Factors such as age, gender, status, ethnicity, kinship, sexual orientation, and ideology each contribute to a person’s identity and bring with them associated behavioural expectations and social roles. Identity, as observed by Lynn Meskell (2001), Scott Hutson (2008), and others (see Meskell and Preucel 2007; Tarlow 2012; Maldonado and Russell 2016), is also pluralistic, situational, and embodied. An individual’s expressed identity may change over time and is the product of personal experience as well as physical and social surroundings. These influences contribute to an identity or identities that can be simultaneously personal and shared, ascribed and achieved, feigned and manipulated. Most important for the archaeologist, many of the nuances of an individual or community’s identity are communicated through material expression in the form of dress (see Fowler 2010; Cifarelli 2017).

However, the identity communicated through a person’s dress in burial may or may not accurately reflect the identity/identities experienced and defined by that person during life. In mortuary spaces – i.e. preparative funerary settings (crematorium, stages for washing, dressing, defleshing, etc.), spaces for depositing the body (i.e. pit, tomb, mausoleum, urn), spaces for visiting the body (i.e. cemetery, ossuary, memorial, cenotaph) – archaeologists are faced with the material remnants of the deceased’s identity as constructed by funerary participants and integrated into local mortuary traditions. The construction of mortuary identity is a central part of funerary rites that mark an individual’s transition from the world of the living to that of the dead. The significance of this process and the connection between funerary ritual and community identity/social cohesion have been discussed at length elsewhere (see Alcock 2002; Porter 2002; Van Dyke and Alcock 2003). Variations in funerary assemblage within regional tradition can be cautiously understood as reflecting the “fashioned identity” of the interred individual. The location of the burial, the size and nature of the funerary monument, the attire and personal adornments placed on the body, and the objects interred in the burial are all selected by the living. This mortuary identity may be crafted in such a way as to perpetuate or alter how the individual is remembered by the surviving community (Porter 2002; Fowler 2010; Nugent 2017; forthcoming). Thus, the construction of mortuary identities may serve as a means of effecting the larger community identity and social organization.

The Middle Bronze Age (MBA, 2400–1500 BCE) settlement and cemetery site of Qızqala is located on the northwestern edge of the Şərur Valley of Naxçıvan, Azerbaijan (Fig. 1.1). Survey, excavation, and biogeochemical studies support that the community engaged in mobile and semi-mobile pastoralism (see Ristvet et al. 2012; Hammer 2014; Nugent forthcoming). The population thus routinely traversed the hills surrounding the valley, where they also marked their landscape with monuments commemorating deceased members of the community. These burial monuments, or kurgans, are large, elaborately furnished pit burials with distinctive surface mounding (Fig. 1.2). Kurgans in the South Caucasus contain an abundance of grave goods, including ceramic vessels, bronze and lithic weaponry, and assorted fauna, that speak to the role of mobile lifestyles, warfare, and social inequalities that characterize this period. The locations and contents of the Qızqala burials reflect the social hierarchies, territorial claims, lifestyles, and identities of the interred individuals (Nugent 2017; Nugent and Swerida 2017). This paper describes the human remains and material culture found in a well-preserved burial from the Qızqala necropolis – kurgan CR8 – and, in so doing, demonstrates how the mortuary identity of a single elite member of the community was fashioned by funerary participants.

Fig. 1.1 Map of Qızqala (courtesy of the Naxcivan Archaeological Project).

Fig. 1.2 Profile view of a common MBA kurgan in the Aras River Basin.

Qızqala Necropolis and Settlement

The end of the 3rd millennium BCE marked a period of major social and economic changes across the South Caucasus. The small-scale sedentary agricultural communities associated with the Kura-Araxes cultures of the Early Bronze Age are replaced by the near disappearance of sustained occupational sites from the archaeological record in the MBA (Kushnareva 1997; Sagona 2014). This phenomenon is understood as representing the emergence of mobile and semi-mobile pastoralism (Kohl 2009).

Qızqala presents significant insight on community dynamics in the MBA as both a cemetery and settlement complex (Plate 1.1). The site is composed of a walled lowland settlement within the valley and a kurgan field of over 130 tombs scattered across hilly ridge lines and clustered in highland valleys to the north of the settlement. Systematic survey identified MBA pottery scatters over an area of approximately 8–10 hectares in the hypothesized settlement zone (Hammer 2014). Based on identifiable mounding or stone circle features, the kurgan field occupies an area of roughly 100 hectares.

Within the Qızqala cemetery, kurgan CR8 is located amidst a cluster of burials in a highland valley almost directly north of the settlement. This valley system is the most direct access route from the settlement to the pasturelands in the Qızqala hills and is still frequently used by pastoralists today. It is easy to envision this space in the MBA as a culturally active landscape populated by both the living and the dead. Long after the funeral rites had taken place, the size and central location of kurgan CR8 amid this tomb field would have signified to the living members of the Qızqala community, who regularly passed through the valley, that the individual interred within was a significant member of their society.

Kurgan CR8: The mortuary materials

Over two field seasons (2015–2016) of the Naxçıvan Archaeological Project, the authors directed excavation of five clustered valley kurgans at Qızqala. These burials followed the standard kurgan composition of an earthen mound piled atop a central pit (cist) burial containing a single deceased individual and a funerary assemblage. The kurgan sizes and precise shapes vary, as does the presence/absence of a defining cromlech, or stone circle marking the burial extent. This particular kurgan group stands out among the many burials in the valley because of their proximity to each other and the interlocking cromlechs of kurgans CR7, CR8, and CR12 (Fig. 1.3).

Measuring 7.3 m, CR8 is the largest of the clustered tombs and was the first to be constructed. The kurgan is composed of a partial cromlech and a central mound of dirt and three layers of large stones. The mouth of the burial pit (c. 5.3 m) was marked by a large cap stone. The space within the unlined burial pit was furnished with mortuary goods and contained the remains of a single human (Figs 1.4, 1.5).

The interred individual was an adult male, 40–50 years old at the time of death, and was tightly flexed and placed at the western end of the oblong burial pit. Notably, this individual exhibits trauma on the right forearm that suggests interpersonal violence at the time of death. The distal right ulna has two unhealed mediolateral lacerations (2–3 mm deep, 8–10 mm wide), which are typical of defensive injuries obtained while protecting the face from a blow. The placement of the cranium was initially perceived as unusual in that it was not articulated with the post-cranial remains. The cranium was discovered within a large bowl that was positioned in alignment with the rest of the skeleton. It is probable that, at the time of interment, the bowl was filled with a perishable commodity (e.g. textiles or food offerings) and was used to prop up the deceased’s head. Over time, as materials in the burial decomposed, the skull disarticulated from the body and descended into the bowl. An alternative interpretation is that the individual’s head was disarticulated from the body prior to interment and was placed in the bowl as part of the funerary rites. However, there are no skeletal indications of disarticulation. Oxygen and strontium isotopic analysis of bone and teeth yielded values within local ranges, suggesting a lifetime spent within the vicinity of the Şərur Valley (Nugent 2017; forthcoming) (Fig. 1.6).

Fig. 1.3 Overhead view of Qızqala lowland kurgan cluster.

Fig. 1.4 Plan of kurgan CR8.

Fig. 1.5 Reconstruction of kurgan CR8 funerary preparations.

The bowl containing the cranium was one of a collection of 14 red ware bowls found lining the northern and southern edges of the burial pit (Fig. 1.7). Such bowls, decorated on the shoulder with painted black designs of three concentric hanging loops, are typical of MBA mortuary assemblages in the South Caucasus and likely played a role in funerary rites (see Rubinson 1977, fig. 5; Kushnareva 1997, fig. 41–44; Smith et al. 2009, figs 16–17). Most examples in the Qızqala co...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of contributors
• Introduction: Fashioned selves
• Part One: Funerary selves
• Part Two: Sacred fashions
• Part Three: Communal selves
• Part Four: Beyond identity