A Franco-Italian investigation of funerary rituals in the Roman world, “les rites et la mort à Pompéi”, the plant part: a preliminary report

This paper deals with the botanical study of a family funerary enclosure located in the Porta Nocera necropolis in Pompeii (southwestern Italy). This study is part of a Franco-Italian programme investigating Roman funerary rituals. The choice of the context was due to the exceptional preservation of the archaeological features, which offered the opportunity to observe the remains of the proceedings which took place in a funerary enclosure in great detail. An adequate methodology had to be developed and a 3D recording of every single artefact or ecofact has been made. Both ground surfaces and graves provided botanical results. Those from the ground surfaces consisted mainly of fruit offering residues (especially fig and grape), while a much wider range of species was observed in the tombs, including cereals, pulses, other kinds of fruits, weeds and bread/pastry. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.     

The Materiality of Relational Transformations: Propositions for Renewed Analyses of Life-Cycle Rituals in Melanesia and Australia

ABSTRACT

This paper introduces this special issue and analyses Papua New Guinea and Australian initiation and death rituals as moments of relational transformations. Although the general argument is not completely new, it has often remained an undemonstrated statement. The paper hence focuses on the specific ways people make these changes effective and express them in their rituals. It is suggested that an invariant modus operandi is in play in which, for a relation to be transformed, its previous state must first be ritually enacted. Towards the end of the ritual, the new state of the relationship is itself publicly enacted through a manifestation of the form the relation takes after the ritual. The paper suggests that a relationship cannot be transformed in the absence of the persons concerned. The relational components need to be either directly present, such as in initiations, or mediated through objects, such as in death rituals.     

‘This Painting Becomes His Body for Life’: Transforming Relations in Yolŋu Initiation and Funeral Rituals

ABSTRACT

Among the most striking images produced in north-east Arnhem Land today are the paintings given to young boys during their first initiation ceremony (dhapi). Skilfully applied on their chest over several hours, while singing and dancing proceeds on the ceremonial grounds nearby, these body paintings act as relational matrixes which locate the initiands within a socio-cosmic web of connections. At the other end of the male ritual life-cycle, the bodies of the deceased undergo a similar process of transfiguration, as they are made to resemble the groups’ most sacred objects, seen to instantiate the powers of specific ancestral beings. In the context of these rituals, the links between clans, places, and ancestral beings are expressed by being made visible on and around the body. Pragmatically composed and displayed for all to see, I suggest that Yol?u ritual images appear as ‘matter(s) of relations’ par excellence, materialising various sets of social relationships. This paper examines the material logics behind this transfiguration process which, by turning people into ancestors, transform the relations between individuals and groups, between humans and non-human beings, and between the living and the spirits of the dead.     

‘Feeding the Caregiver’: Internal and External Relations in a Matrilineal Life-Cycle Ritual,West Gao

ABSTRACT

Due to the rule of matriclan exogamy, a West Gao father belongs to a different matriclan to that of his wife and children. During a feast known as fangamu taego, children present their father with gifts to acknowledge his care. Acting as a pivot within the sequence of life-cycle rituals in West Gao, fangamu taego provides a ritual space in which two opposed modes of relationality are brought together. During the exchanges that constitute the feast, relationships flowing internally to each matriclan are weighed against external relationships forged between matriclans. The relational interplay elaborated during fangamu taego is predicated upon ancestrally mediated relationships of emplacement with regard to a specific territory. This comes into focus during a further set of transactions instigated by the feast involving use rights in land and its organic products. The ‘matter’ of these exchanges participate in two distinct relational modes simultaneously: they both activate pre-existing internal relationships and figure as ‘terms’ in the temporary construction of external relationships. Ultimately, fangamu taego captures an interplay between the relative permanence and impermanence of different relational configurations in the West Gao lived world.     

National ceremonies: the pursuit of authenticity

Abstract

This article asks what, if any, impact national ceremonies have on the formation of national identities. Why are some ceremonies perceived as national and persistent through time, while others fail to achieve that status? It argues that national ceremonies can only be examined as specific types of situations – performances, rather than rituals – characterized by the relationship between performers and their audiences. Following Jeffery Alexander's cultural pragmatics theory, national ceremonies are seen as successful only when a performance is perceived as authentic. A ceremony's authenticity is, at best, a quality of experience among its audience. Only when the audience is transformed into willing participants through a performance's mise-en-scène can a national ceremony be seen as a ritual-like performance. The paper will conclude that the efficacy of these performances is temporary, and that even when a performance succeeds in creating a community of shared experience, that community dissolves with the end of the performance.