Introduction

Approaches to mortuary remains have been debated by Western archaeologists, and their research foci have shifted from processual archaeology's reconstruction of social organization to post-processual archaeology's understanding of ritual practice (Pearson 1999). I view these two approaches as mutually complementary methods for the analysis of mortuary data. On the one hand, processual archaeological approaches regard the quantity and quality of grave furnishings as direct or indirect manifestation of social patterns, especially of social rankings (e.g., Binford 1971; Peebles 1971; Saxe 1970; Tainter 1973). On the other hand, post-processual approaches argue for contextual archaeology, which hypothesizes that the participation of survivors in funeral rites may have contributed to patterns in mortuary practice (e.g., Hodder 1982a, 1982b). A careful analysis of depositional processes in archaeological records, with attention to the ritual activities involved, can provide great insight into both the symbolic meanings of burial patterns and the relationships between the living and the dead in the ritual context (Barrett 1988: 30–41; Thomas 1991).