Social Hierarchy and Burial Treatments: A Comparative Assessment

Abstract

A study of the 55 cultures in the Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) 60-culture probability sample for which adequate data on burials exists confirms the archaeologists' notion that variation in expenditures on burials can act as a rough indication of status hierarchies. The degree of variability in cost required to infer hierarchy is, however, much greater than that assumed by some archaeologists. Minor to moderate variability in expenditures may be due to a wide variety of causes including the symbolization of small achieved differences in status, age, gender, cause of death, religious affiliation, and numerous idiosyncratic circumstances and personal and social identities. Further investigation shows, moreover, that social competition, rather than hierarchy, is the variable that is most directly being measured, and that burial treatment is only one of many choices for possible competitive display. Thus, societies with considerable differences in the cost of burial treatments always allow or encourage competition, whereas those lacking such variability in burial treatments may or may not.