The Gillespie Paper: Difference Between Individuals, Personhood, And
The Gillespie paper makes a point to differentiate between the terms of individuals, personhood, and agency. To Gillespie, an individual refers to a biological organism (Gillespie 2000: 74). Personhood are the characteristics that society collectively ascribes to an individual, it bridges the gap between individual and group. Agency encompasses the rights and duties that an individual has in a group, the capacity they have to be able to make choices about their life. It is important to Gillespie to have clear terminology when talking about this issue because applications of this theory can be used in studies of current political economy and social change (Gillespie 2000: 73). She also aimed to dispel the problematic bias of using Western societies
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definition of individual to analyze the past, creating a divide between the individual and holism. In order to fix this, the concept of individual needs to be redefined in terms of the context. By looking at Mayan archeology, she discussed how only focusing on the western definition of “individual” does not tell the whole story of Mayan personhood. In order to explain the complexities of social roles, personhood and agency need to be discussed when talking about an individual. For example, after death, the individual is no longer living, but their personhood still is. By only focusing on the individual, it is saying that the identity is condensable to death (identity ceases when individual dies) but in the case of ancestors, this is not true. This shows that there is something more that defines identity besides just the individual. This is whether the social constructions of the individual come into play. Kin groups, achieved and ascribed statuses, individual identity, and more all determined how a Mayan burial would look. By using the socially prescribed concepts of agency and personhood in Mayan culture, it is is easier to contextualize archaeological findings. These concepts are also seen in the Torres-Rouff and Knudsen paper when using osteobiography.
While they are approaching the concepts slightly differently, the ideas stay the same: identity is not condensable to death. Since archaeologist work with an incomplete sample, it is a hard to tell how much information is missing. The Torres-Rouff and Knudsen paper provided interesting insight as to what ethnicity and being foreign mean. A mortuary ritual will not encompass all of ones identity, so archaeologists need to be careful with the inferences that they are making. In their osteobiography, they discovered a foreigner assimilating into a new society (Torres-Rouff 2007 :248). He appeared to be eating the same as everyone else, indicating equal status. His burial and osteobiography indicated that he had assimilated into the culture. This raises questions about the personhood and agency of this individual. Since he had assimilated into a new culture, he was assigned different personhood and agency. While there is no way to know exactly how he was treated, his health indicates that he was not likely discriminated against. This also shows the adaptability of personhood, while the individual did not change, his personhood and agency did as he was under a new social
construct. As discussed on a surface level above, there are many different techniques that are used to examine rank and status in archeology, and based on the past, I think that there is going to be expansion in the way archeology is done. There are several approaches from which this topic can be studied, and it becomes more holistic the more lines of evidence that are used. There are the natural science methodologies such as cranial modification, dental wear, biodistance data and strontium isotope testing to name a few. As well as more humanistic and theoretical perspectives such as how a person is buried, what/who they are buried with, where a person is burial and more. I personally am relatively optimistic about archaeological advances. Archeology as a field is relatively new and it has grown rapidly in the short time that it has been recognized. The historical track of archeology make me hopeful about the future. Having roots in antiquity and classification, followed by a scientific overhaul, moving into mostly humanities based theories with post processualism, and coming into a balance of all three of these with processual plus ideologies leaves room of archeology to grow. Couple that with the rapidly increasing technology available and it is hard to predict what is yet to come out of archeology. While it may not be apparent yet what information could potentially become available to the field of archeology, I still think it is incredibly important to continue to theorize as well as use experimental archeology in order to continue to discover things about the past.
definition of individual to analyze the past, creating a divide between the individual and holism. In order to fix this, the concept of individual needs to be redefined in terms of the context. By looking at Mayan archeology, she discussed how only focusing on the western definition of “individual” does not tell the whole story of Mayan personhood. In order to explain the complexities of social roles, personhood and agency need to be discussed when talking about an individual. For example, after death, the individual is no longer living, but their personhood still is. By only focusing on the individual, it is saying that the identity is condensable to death (identity ceases when individual dies) but in the case of ancestors, this is not true. This shows that there is something more that defines identity besides just the individual. This is whether the social constructions of the individual come into play. Kin groups, achieved and ascribed statuses, individual identity, and more all determined how a Mayan burial would look. By using the socially prescribed concepts of agency and personhood in Mayan culture, it is is easier to contextualize archaeological findings. These concepts are also seen in the Torres-Rouff and Knudsen paper when using osteobiography.
While they are approaching the concepts slightly differently, the ideas stay the same: identity is not condensable to death. Since archaeologist work with an incomplete sample, it is a hard to tell how much information is missing. The Torres-Rouff and Knudsen paper provided interesting insight as to what ethnicity and being foreign mean. A mortuary ritual will not encompass all of ones identity, so archaeologists need to be careful with the inferences that they are making. In their osteobiography, they discovered a foreigner assimilating into a new society (Torres-Rouff 2007 :248). He appeared to be eating the same as everyone else, indicating equal status. His burial and osteobiography indicated that he had assimilated into the culture. This raises questions about the personhood and agency of this individual. Since he had assimilated into a new culture, he was assigned different personhood and agency. While there is no way to know exactly how he was treated, his health indicates that he was not likely discriminated against. This also shows the adaptability of personhood, while the individual did not change, his personhood and agency did as he was under a new social
construct. As discussed on a surface level above, there are many different techniques that are used to examine rank and status in archeology, and based on the past, I think that there is going to be expansion in the way archeology is done. There are several approaches from which this topic can be studied, and it becomes more holistic the more lines of evidence that are used. There are the natural science methodologies such as cranial modification, dental wear, biodistance data and strontium isotope testing to name a few. As well as more humanistic and theoretical perspectives such as how a person is buried, what/who they are buried with, where a person is burial and more. I personally am relatively optimistic about archaeological advances. Archeology as a field is relatively new and it has grown rapidly in the short time that it has been recognized. The historical track of archeology make me hopeful about the future. Having roots in antiquity and classification, followed by a scientific overhaul, moving into mostly humanities based theories with post processualism, and coming into a balance of all three of these with processual plus ideologies leaves room of archeology to grow. Couple that with the rapidly increasing technology available and it is hard to predict what is yet to come out of archeology. While it may not be apparent yet what information could potentially become available to the field of archeology, I still think it is incredibly important to continue to theorize as well as use experimental archeology in order to continue to discover things about the past.