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Remarks on the Prone Burial Position in China and North America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2017

Robert F. Heizer
Robert F. Heizer*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley, California
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Extract

Some ten years ago Dr. Herrlee Glessner Creel in his Studies in Early Chinese Culture discussed briefly the four Shang period burials (Nos. 18.2, 18.3, 18.4, 18.S) excavated at Anyang in 1929. The unusual position of the skeletons (lying fully extended on the face) intrigued the Chinese archaeologists of the National Research Institute, and they made inquiries about parallels elsewhere. All their queries drew blanks, and their conclusion therefore was that this burial posture was unique and had never been recorded in the literature prior to 1930. More recently Li Chi has treated these four burials in greatest detail, and of them he says, “As far as can be determined, these four instances [of prone burials] in China are unique in the world.“

In October, 1938 after reading Dr. Creel's Studies, I wrote to him and described the prone (or as we call them, ventrally extended) burials of the Early Central Cali-. fornia culture horizon and sent a photograph of one such interment. This information apparently was not communicated farther by Dr. Creel, judging from Li Chi's printed article of more recent date.

Type
Facts and Comments
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 13 , Issue 3 , January 1948 , pp. 249 - 250
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1948

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References

1 H. G. Creel, “Studies in Early Chinese Culture,” Studies in Chinese and Related Civilizations, No. 3, Baltimore: American Council of Learned Societies, 1937, pp. 140 ff.

2 It was so recorded in 1923, by Jones, Philip M., “Mound Excavations Near Stockton,” University of California, Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology, Vol. 20, Berkeley, p. 121 Google Scholar.

3 Li Chi, “The Prone Burials of Anyang.” In “Studies in the Anthropology of Oceania and Asia Presented in Memory of R. B. Dixon.“ Papers of the Peabody Museum, Vol. 20, pp. 134-48, Cambridge, 1943.

4 Since published in American Anthropologist, N. S., Vol. 41, No. 3, 1939 and in Bulletin, Sacramento Junior College Department of Anlhrofology, No. 2, 1939. Photographs of one of these burials occur in Life Magasine, December, 1939, and in the 1938 Encylopaedia Britannnica Book of the Year, p. 46.

5 Ssu-Yung, Liang, “The Lungshan Culture: a Prehistoric Phase of Chinese Civilization, Proceedings of the Sixth Pacific Science Congress, Vol. 4, pp. 69–79, Berkeley, 1940 Google Scholar.

6 These are discussed at length in my Archaeology of Four Early Central California Horizon Sites, MS at the University of California, Berkeley.

7 Waldo R. Wedel, “Archaeological investigations at Buena Vista Lake, Kern County, California,” Bulletin, Bureau of American Ethnology, No. 130, 1941, p. 88, Plate 15.

8 Rogers, D. B., Prehistoric Man of the Santa Barbara Coast, Santa Barbara, 1929 Google Scholar.

9 Vaillant, G. C., “Excavations at Zacatenco,” Anthropological Papers American Museum of Natural History, Vol. 32, Pt. 1, 1930, p. 188, Map 1Google Scholar; “Excavations at Ticoman,” Ibid., Pt.2, 1931, pp. 423-4, Maps 1-2; “Excavations at El Arbolillo,” Ibid., Vol. 35, Pt. 2, 1935, pp. 168 ff.

10 H. G. Creel, op. cit., fn. 6, p. 141, “ … the sweeper caste in India uses prone burial at present, to keep trie ghost from walking.”

11 Kroeber, A. L., “Disposal of the Dead,” American Anthropologist, N.S., Vol. 29, No. 3, pp. 308-15, Menasha, 1927CrossRefGoogle Scholar.