From Human Remains to Powerful Objects: Ancestor Research from a Deep-Time Perspective

TY - JOUR

T1 - From Human Remains to Powerful Objects

T2 - Ancestor Research from a Deep-Time Perspective

AU - Buster, Lindsey Sarah

N1 - © 2022 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

PY - 2022/3/10

Y1 - 2022/3/10

N2 - Family history research has seen a surge in popularity in recent years; however, is this preoccupation with who we are and where we come from new? Archaeological evidence suggests that ancestors played crucial and ubiquitous roles in the identities and cosmologies of past societies. This paper will explore how, in the absence of genealogical websites and DNA testing, kinship structures and understandings of personhood beyond genealogy may have influenced concepts of ancestry. Case studies from later prehistoric Britain will demonstrate the ways in which monuments, objects and human remains themselves created bonds between the living and the dead, prompting us to reflect on genealogy as just one aspect of our identity in the present.

AB - Family history research has seen a surge in popularity in recent years; however, is this preoccupation with who we are and where we come from new? Archaeological evidence suggests that ancestors played crucial and ubiquitous roles in the identities and cosmologies of past societies. This paper will explore how, in the absence of genealogical websites and DNA testing, kinship structures and understandings of personhood beyond genealogy may have influenced concepts of ancestry. Case studies from later prehistoric Britain will demonstrate the ways in which monuments, objects and human remains themselves created bonds between the living and the dead, prompting us to reflect on genealogy as just one aspect of our identity in the present.

KW - archaeology

KW - bereavement studies

KW - continuing bonds

KW - problematic stuff

KW - ancestors

KW - personhood

UR - https://www.mdpi.com/2313-5778/6/1/23/htm

U2 - 10.3390/genealogy6010023

DO - 10.3390/genealogy6010023

M3 - Article

SN - 2313-5778

VL - 6

JO - Genealogy

JF - Genealogy

IS - 1

ER -