Archaeology

This thesis endeavours to lay the groundwork for a foundational understanding of the expression of shamanism in female burials in the Pre-Columbian Americas. By examining five mortuary characteristics in the context of female shaman burials, male shaman burials, and standard female burials from Pre-Columbian North, South, and Mesoamerica, this work has developed a methodology to discern patterns of similarity and difference between these burial types. These characteristics include age, pathology, burial position, burial setting, and grave goods. The utilization of this methodology in three case studies illustrate its effectiveness in discerning shamanic identity from burials and their defining features. Because the relationship between burial characteristics and the determination of shamanic identity is rarely fully articulated, another main aim of this work is to address how archaeologists differentiate shamanic burials from others. As is often required in the study of prehistoric or pre-Contact religion, ethnographic and historical accounts are used to supplement these contemporary Pre-Columbian comparisons and to build an interpretation of shamanic identity based solidly in fact and evidence. By weaving together comparisons between the mortuary characteristics of contemporary sacred and profane burials with relevant ethnographic and historical analogy, this thesis created an effective methodology for discerning the manifestations of female shamanism in mortuary contexts.

Many interpretations have been applied to ship symbolism in Scandinavian mortuary contexts, the most common of which describes the ship as a vessel to transport the dead from one world to the next. However, many of these interpretations fail to address the role of the ship in the context of cultic practices described in contemporary literature. Through an assessment of literary sources and archaeological evidence present in ship burials, stone ship settings, and picture stones, this paper aims to address these interpretive gaps, making a case for ancestral referencing and veneration as well as necromantic ritual in ship-themed burials. I do not attempt to disentangle ship symbolism from the concept of travel, but rather argue that mortuary ships allow the dead the freedom to depart from and return to the world of the living.