ANTH V 1007x Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Homo Heidelbergensis, Levallois Technique, Neanderthal
4 Oct 2016
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Taboos and transgressions: rules about right vs. wrong, proper vs. improper, and how people break them. If it"s proper to put away a dead body, it"s taboo to leave it out or to be fascinated with it. Funerary caching: putting bodies in an already existing, unchanged location (cave, etc. ) Formal burial: creating a place to put bodies. Cronos compulsion: violent urges (including cannibalism) toward a dead body. Archeologists engage in cronos compulsion by excavating and studying bodies. Evidence of bringing corpse closer to living instead of burying it or putting it away. Gran dolina in spain, 800 thousand years ago: found fossils of animals and humans (h. erectus) that had been butchered (shows cut marks), suggests cannibalism. Bodo site in ethiopia, 600 thousand years ago: h. heidelbergensis (between erectus and sapiens), cranium found with defleshing cut marks (intentional), not found with rest of skeleton. Curation: cut flesh off, collected and moved skulls around.
