The Dimensions of Status in the Burials at Spiro

Abstract

AbstractFormal analysis is employed to express symbolically the behavior associated with disposal of the dead in archaeological contexts. Key diagrams are shown to economically express the partitioning of attribute space by a series of variables coded on independently measured dimensions. The attention of this paper is to explicate the analysis of formal-structural relations among archaeological materials from Spiro, a specialized Mississippian period site in eastern Oklahoma, without resort to analogies between cultural-historical configurations. The power of the analysis is extended by direct comparison of the Spiro key with keys made on the same dimensions that are drawn from the ethnohistorical literature of two southeastern societies.