Hey guys,
So I was at work today and this lady came in with her young (probably 7-8ish) daughter, the Mum asked how my holiday's were and I asked her, the little girl chimed in that hers was great because she got a fish tank. I asked her how many fish she got and she looked up at her Mum who then nodded at her, before answering that she got five but four has died so she had two left (there's some awesome little kid math for ya). I gave my sympathies and as they were walking away I heard her Mum say, you can tell people about the dead fish just not younger kids. I found this very interesting and it sparked some thoughts about how our society really does try to shelter the young from death for as long as possible. When I was young I was never allowed to go to funerals and that silly lie all parents tell their kids about how their dog, cat, bird.... went away to live on a farm when really it had died. I'm sure not all societies are like this and its interesting to think about cultural reasons for the attempt to remove children from the dead and how this represents itself in funerary practices.
Hi Krystal,
ReplyDeleteReading this post got me thinking about an interesting archaeological question/problem. I was wondering how our culture's belief that children need to be sheltered from death would appear, or likely not appear, in the archaeological record. When I think about archaeological studies I have heard of that look into cultural beliefs surrounding children and death they usually look at evidence from child burials. This makes sense considering funerary practices are more difficult to locate archaeologically than the burials themselves; but it makes me wonder about the kinds of cultural information we may be missing relying on the archaeological record alone.