Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-02T01:08:53.467Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Patterning in Death in a Late Prehistoric Village in Pennsylvania

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Jacob W. Gruber
Jacob W. Gruber*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Temple University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

At the Mohr site, a Shenks Ferry Village on the lower Susquehanna River, 98 burials were excavated. These exhibited various features which are ascribed to cultural demands: location in the village, position of body, grave goods, etc. One of these features was the alignment of the body with the head to the east in such a manner as to suggest that the exact alignment was a function of season of interment. This paper completes the record of the mortuary patterns at this site based upon a description of the total population of the dead. Earlier descriptions, based upon incomplete materials, were presented at the VIIth International Congress of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences in Prague in 1966 (Gruber 1970) and at the American Anthropological Association Meeting in 1966. The position of these burials conforms to scant ethnographic data on the basis of which a putative cultural identification with the Shenks Ferry component and the southeastern Siouan groups is strengthened.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , January 1971 , pp. 64 - 76
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1971

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Cadzow, Donald A. 1936 Archaeological studies of the Susquehannock Indians of Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania Historical Commission Publications, 3.Google Scholar
Gruber, Jacob W. 1967a Ethnological needs for archaeological reconstruction: a Late Woodland example. In Iroquois culture, history and prehistory, edited by E. Tooker, pp. 109–113. New York State Museum at Albany.Google Scholar
Gruber, Jacob W. 1967b Horatio Hale and the development of American anthropology. Proceedings of the A merican Philosophical Society 111:5–37.Google Scholar
Gruber, Jacob W. 1969 Excavations at the Mohr site. Yearbook of the American Philosophical Society 1968: 589–590.Google Scholar
Gruber, Jacob W. 1970 Habitation patterns at the Mohr site. (MS) Paper delivered at Society for Pennsylvania Archaeology, April, 1970.Google Scholar
Gruber, Jacob W. n.d. A late burial complex in Pennsylvania. Proceedings of the VII International Congress of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences, Prague. (in press).Google Scholar
Hale, Horatio 1883 The Tutelo tribe and language. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, No. 21:1–47.Google Scholar
Heisey, Henry, and Witmer, J. P. 1964 The Shenk’s Ferry people: a site and some generalities. Pennsylvania Archaeologist 34:8–34.Google Scholar
Henry, Jules 1964 Jungle people. Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Hickerson, Harold 1960 The Feast of the Dead among the seventeenth century Algonkians of the upper Great Lakes. American Anthropologist 62:81–105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoffman, Bernard 1964 Observations on certain ancient tribes of the northern Appalachian province. Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 191: 193–245.Google Scholar
Johnson, Walter 1912 The orientation of graves, In Byways in Britich archaeology: 243–267. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kinsey, Fred 1970 The Murry site. MS paper delivered at Society for Pennsylvania Archaeology, April, 1970.Google Scholar
Erbs, Charles 1968 Burial patterns in the Canadian arctic. Paper presented at Society for American Archaeology meetings 1968.Google Scholar
Erbs, Charles 1969 The significance of age, sex, and the time of burial in the interpretation of Thule Eskimo burial patterns. Paper presented at Society for American Archaeology meetings 1969.Google Scholar
Michelson, Truman 1919 Notes on Fox mortuary customs and beliefs. 40th Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology 1918–1919, pp. 351–496.Google Scholar
Miller, Carl F. 1957 Reevaluation of the eastern Siouan problem with particular emphasis on the Virginia branches-the Occaneechi, the Saponi, and the Tutelo. Anthropological Papers #52, Bulletin of the Bureau of American Ethnology 164:115–211.Google Scholar
Speck, Frank G. 1910 Yuchi. In Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico Vol. 2, edited by F. W. Hodge. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 30: 1003–1007.Google Scholar
Speck, Frank G. 1935 Siouan tribes of the Carolinas as known from Catawba, Tutelo, and documentary sources. American Anthropologist 37:201–225.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Speck, Frank G. 1942 The Tutelo spirit adoption ceremony: reclothing the living in the name of the dead. Pennsylvania Historical Commission.Google Scholar
Sturtevant, William 1958 Siouan languages in the East. American Anthropologist 60:738–743.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tooker, Elisabeth 1964 An ethnography of the Huron. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 90.Google Scholar
White, Marian 1967 An early historic Niagara frontier Iroquois cemetery in Erie county, N.Y. Res. and Trans. N. Y. Archaeological Society, 16:1–67.Google Scholar
Witthoft, John 1959 Ancestry of the Susquehannocks. In Susque-hannock miscellaney, edited by John Witthoft and Fred Kinsey, pp. 19–60. Pennsylvania Historical Commission.Google Scholar
Witthoft, John, and Farver, S. S. 1952 Two Shenk’s Ferry sites in Lebanon County, Pa. Pennsylvania Archaeologist 22:3–32.Google Scholar
Witthoft, John, and Kinsey, Fred, (editors) 1959 Susquehannock miscellaney. Pennsylvania Historical Commission.Google Scholar