Memorializing Mortality

With this course and (thankfully!) this blog coming to an end, it is time to reflect on what has been learned/realized and to voice my thoughts on a subject one last time.  First of all, if there is one thing this course  has made me realized it is my own mortality.  Coming into the Archaeology of Death, I was aware we would be discussing burials, and grave goods of those looooooooooooooooooooooooooooong gone.  However, as the course went on, my Grampa was in and out of the hospital and my dog aged and has only a few years left.  And, of course, with my many illnesses of my own, I realized my own imminent demise. 

I've always been a worrisome person.  I always think of the worse case scenario, and I always freak out.  I don't know why this course resonated with me so much or made me so depressed.  I think it might have something to do with the surrounding possibility of death to more than one of my loved ones.  Also, I think that it might have something to do with university opening my mind and me getting older and realizing that my dog isn't going to end up at some farm, running free.  I believe it's because I'm old enough know to have formed bonds with people and to remember them, and the concept of losing them would break my heart.  That and I'm too young to leave this world, I have so much more living to do.

Now, a quick ending to this blog.  Is how we remember the dead enough?  In tragedies like the Holocaust, is a memorial statue or wall really enough?  When a family member dies, is a gravestone enough?

My stance on this is still up in the air.  I lost a very dear family friend a few years ago and I'm still not over it (probably because I saw him only a few days before it happened for the first time in years).  I couldn't bring myself to go to the funeral and I haven't forgiven myself for that.  He died in an avalanche, doing what he loved most, and all that is left to remember him is a tombstone.  I feel that most people who have contributed something to society or loved something so much should have a scholarship or a foundation of some sort set up in their name.  I do know this: when I die, I want a scholarship set up in my name for women who want to go to school away from home who have good grades (like me), who are passionate about sports (like me), and who have no financial support from any family (like me).

Eat My Feelings and Drown My Sorrows

This week in class we discussed funerary feasts.  All this talk about food made me, almost, completely forget about death and focus on my grumbling tummy.  One thing that I pondered this week was that our class seems to view these feasts as something that only happened in the past, AND, that funerary feasts were like a party to celebrate the dead.

This got me thinking about what happens in our current period when someone dies.  Now, unfortunately, I have been to more funerals in my short 20 years of life then all of my friends put together.  These funerals were both for friends and family.  Since neither side of my family is religious in any way, shape, or form, our funerals have been rather simple: just a wake.  When my Dad's dad passed away, all we had was a wake at my Nana's house.  This entailed just a few close friends and family, sitting around the house, discussing my Grumpa's memory, and eating.  Now, we weren't feasting, just snacking on some finger foods.

I see eating as a way of dealing with grief rather than a celebration of someone's life or passing.  I find that people, whether the loss is a death or something as silly as a break up with a boyfriend/girlfriend, we tend to eat our feelings and drown our sorrows in alcohol (at least that's the motto I adopted after my first breakup...I was too young at funerals to be "experimenting" with alcohol).  I've also noticed (especially on TV shows) that when someone in the neighbourhood dies it is customary to bring the spouse/family of that person casseroles or other meals, so that they don't have to cook.  Sometimes people are too grief stricken to feel an appetite so this throws off my whole theory.  I'm still sticking with my theory of people eat when they are depressed because I've seen it happen so many times, with many different people, in a variety of depressing situations.

A Little Less Than Kin, A Little More Than Kind

First of all, yes I purposely reworded the quote from Hamlet for my title.  Second of all, this week's topic is about kinship and for the first time since I've started this blog I'm going to deviate from the prompts given in class.  The topic of kinship brings me back to the Anth 200 class I was in last semester.  In the tutorial for that class, we learnt how to draw kinship diagrams.  For those of you who don't know what a kinship diagram looks like I've included a picture below that gives a pretty straight forward defintion of how to draw a kinship diagram (this photo can be found at http://www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/arts/anthropology/tutor/fundamentals/diagram.gif).  I would like to point out that "ego" is yourself.






I drew mine (in my Anth 200 class), not based on who I considered relatives, but who has been either connected to me from my mom or dad's side through blood, marriage, or sexual indiscretions that led to offspring.  I did this just to see how messed up my family is, and to see who was really related to me and by how much.  Turns out, we could be our own version of  the Springer or Maury show (since we don't really talk to each other/aren't even full blood relatives).  I'm curious as to what other people count as family.  Also, how far down the family tree do you consider relatives?  First cousins or distant cousins?  Only aunts and uncles through blood or through marriage?  If I did a kinship diagram and I took it seriously, I would probably just consider my Dad's brother and his wife and daughter, my Dad's sister, my Dad's mother and father, my Mom's mother, father, and common-law "step-father", and, even though I haven't seen or spoken to my Mom's brother and "brother" since I was little, I would probably include them on the diagram as well.  I really do wish I had one big happy family but you can't pick your family.  You can only learn to live with them or without them.

City of the Hawk

For our group presentation we are doing the Egyptian site of Hierakonpolis (City of the Hawk).  Our group is going to use Prezi to do this but for the blogging prompt this week I found a website on Hierakonpolis called "Interactive Dig Hierakonpolis" which you can find by following the link below:

http://www.archaeology.org/interactive/hierakonpolis/index.html


While this site has a ton of information and good pictures, it was really hard to navigate, thus making it hard to follow.  It also has unneccessary links at the bottom for "recipes" and "Thanksgiving"/