Role in Archaeology
The importance of grave goods in archaeology cannot be overestimated. Because of their almost ubiquitous presence throughout the world and throughout prehistory, in many cases the excavation of every-day items placed in burials is the main source of such artifacts in a given prehistoric culture. However, care must be taken to avoid naive interpretation of grave goods as an objective sample of artefacts in use in a culture. Because of their ritual context, grave goods may represent a special class of artifacts, in some instances produced especially for burial. Artwork produced for the burial itself is known as funerary art, while grave goods in the narrow sense are items produced for actual use that are placed in the grave, but in practice the two categories overlap.
Grave goods in Bronze Age and Iron Age cemeteries are a good indicator of relative social status; in a 2001 study on an Iron Age cemetery in Pontecagnano Faiano, Italy, a correlation was found between the quality of grave goods and Forensic indicators on the skeletons, showing that skeletons in wealthy tombs tended to show substantially less evidence of biological stress during adulthood, with fewer broken bones or signs of hard labor.
Read more about this topic: Grave Goods
Famous quotes containing the words role in and/or role:
“Language makes it possible for a child to incorporate his parents’ verbal prohibitions, to make them part of himself....We don’t speak of a conscience yet in the child who is just acquiring language, but we can see very clearly how language plays an indispensable role in the formation of conscience. In fact, the moral achievement of man, the whole complex of factors that go into the organization of conscience is very largely based upon language.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)
“My role in society, or any artist or poet’s role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.”
—John Lennon (1940–1980)