Investigating mortuary sites: the search for synergy - Sosna - 2010

This paper explores the divergent points of view about research in mortuary studies. This strategy serves to elucidate often unconscious assumptions about proper research and goals in scientific practise. In mortuary studies, tensions arise from the very nature of the mortuary archaeological record, which offers multiple lines of evidence that can be studied by various scholars using various methods. A scholar is exposed to a multi-evidence world where one has to put together several pieces of a puzzle to produce a meaningful interpretation of past societies. The critical problem is how to find a balance among divergent interests of various disciplines and put together the pieces produced by different methods and sometimes even epistemologies. The discussions in this paper map the tensions among the scholars and disciplines. It is argued that despite the problems that arise from the tensions among the scholars and disciplines, interdisciplinarity facilitates the production of novel and more valid knowledge about past societies.

Keywords

Archaeology - Bioarchaeology - Funeral - Interdisciplinarity - Mortuary studies

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