Burial cairn taxonomy and the mortuary landscape of Rocky Point, British Columbia
Date
2010-01-13T22:51:54Z
Authors
Mathews, Darcy
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Abstract
Prior to European contact, the Straits Salish people. an ethnolinguistic group centred on present day Victoria in southwestern British Columbia, built a distinctive form of grave. The burial cairn and mound. a phenomenon occurring 1500-1000 years before present, consist of an arrangement of rocks and soil placed over the deceased. The Rocky Point site is the largest remaining intact site of this kind on southern Vancouver Island. I hypothesize that the external attributes of these burial features - their location and shape - are important signifiers of the social identity of the person buried within. Patterns in burial cairn morphology are identified with a cluster analysis. The geographical placement of the resulting feature types is subject to a GIS-based spatial analysis. The resulting model is interpreted through a humanistic model of social theory, addressing underlying social structures that culminated in the creation of the Rocky Point cemetery.
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Keywords
cairns, burial, British Columbia, Vancouver Island