The Art and Archaeology of Bodily Adornment

Studies from Central and East Asian Mortuary Contexts

Sheri Lullo, Leslie Wallace, Sheri A. Lullo, Leslie V. Wallace, Sheri Lullo, Leslie Wallace, Sheri A. Lullo, Leslie V. Wallace

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781351268301
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Social Sciences

The Art and Archaeology of Bodily Adornment examines the significance of adornment to the shaping of identity in mortuary contexts within Central and East Asia and brings these perspectives into dialogue with current scholarship in other worldwide regions.

Adornment and dress are well-established fields of study for the ancient world, particularly with regard to Europe and the Americas. Often left out of this growing discourse are contributions from scholars of Central and East Asia. The mortuary contexts of focus in this volume represent unique sites and events where identity was visualized, and often manipulated and negotiated, through material objects and their placement on and about the deceased body. The authors examine ornaments, jewelry, clothing, and hairstyles to address questions of identity construction regarding dimensions such as gender and social and political status, and transcultural exchange from burials of prehistoric and early historical archaeological sites in Central Asia, China, Korea, and Japan.

In both breadth and depth, this book will be of interest to students and scholars interested in the archaeology, art, and history of Central and East Asia, as well as anyone interested in the general study of dress and adornment.

1Introduction

Dimensions of personal adornment

Sheri A. Lullo and Leslie V. Wallace

Inquiry into the significance of personal adornment, along with dress, in the ancient and modern worlds by now constitutes a well-established field of study, particularly for material from Europe and the Americas. Personal adornment for this volume is inclusive of ornaments of the body (belts, various forms of jewelry, such as earrings or pendant necklaces, and beads) and the hair (including hairstyles, pins, and headdresses), many of which functioned visually against or alongside clothing to contribute to constructions of the social body. Current studies of personal adornment and dress are characterized by broad interdisciplinarity, combining perspectives spanning anthropology, history, art history, sociology, and philosophy. For example, the long-established series, Dress, Body, Culture, which commenced in 1997 and is published by Bloomsbury (formerly Berg), gathers a range of titles that offer multi-disciplinary approaches to the contextualized examination of the clothed body, with studies focused on specific cultures, time periods, and sartorial phenomena, as well as theoretical explorations of the topic.

Despite the inclusion of titles from various regions of greater Asia in the Dress, Body, Culture series (for example, Cliffe 2017; Hume 2013; Wu 2009) and a growing number of other publications on adornment and dress in Asia (for example, Lullo 2016; Lingley 2010, 2007; Vicary & Vollmer 2010; Finnane 2008; Nelson 1998; Ebersole 1998), contributions from scholars studying this region are still quite limited, and more often focused on later historical periods or the present. Moreover, rarely have efforts been made to compile in a single publication the research of scholars of Asia whose work has been concerned with body adornments (for an exception, see Hiltebeitel & Miller 1998). This is one of the principle reasons why studies and perspectives from Asia are so often left out of ever-complex conversations about the multifaceted importance of the dressed body. This volume, therefore, represents a preliminary attempt to contribute material from Asia to such scholarly exchanges. Specifically, the essays that follow bring prehistoric and early historical material from Central and East Asia to the growing discourse on dress and adornment across the ancient world (for example, Orr & Looper 2014; Loren 2010; Colburn & Heyn 2008; Gansell 2007; Green 2007; Cleland, Harlow & Llewellyn-Jones 2005; Marcus 1993; Barnes & Eicher 1992; Clark 1986).

The contributed chapters in this book are written by archaeologists and art historians who examine material and visual culture relating to personal adornment from Central and East Asian mortuary contexts, including articles used to adorn the body in death and representations of adorned bodies in two and three dimensions. While the volume itself was conceived first, most of the authors (Bausch, Gerhart and Linduff, Laursen, Lullo, Nelson, Rubinson, Tanizawa, and Wallace, with the addition of Gina Barnes) gathered together in the summer of 2016 to present their preliminary research at the seventh worldwide conference of the Society for East Asian Archaeology (SEAA), held at Boston and Harvard Universities.

The research work for this volume covers a wide geographic and temporal range: It includes, from west to east, late 1st century BCE and early 1st century CE sites along the ancient Oxus River (present-day Amu Darya River) from regions of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Afghanistan; 3rd- and 2nd-century BCE Xiongnu burials from the Trans-Baikal region of Eastern Siberia; protohistoric and early dynastic materials (ca. 3300 BCE to 4th-century CE) from central, eastern, and northwestern China; mounded tombs of the early rulers of the Silla state (early 1st millennium CE) in Korea; and prehistoric and protohistoric contexts across Japan (3400 BCE to 6th-century CE). Approaches for individual case studies vary and are often determined by the fragmentary nature of the archaeological record and surviving archaeological, visual, or textual materials. All authors, however, utilize published archaeological information to consider the multiple ways ornamentation and adornment have functioned to define and gather social and (multi)cultural identities in mortuary contexts.

As with studies for Europe and the Americas, for which early examinations of the clothed body (which often comprises personal adornment) occupied a subset of art history and were primarily concerned with tracing the history of dress and reconstructing the fully costumed body for specific cultural contexts and time periods (Cleland, Harlow, & Llewellyn-Jones 2005, p. xii; Entwistle & Wilson 2001, pp. 1–2), much of what has been published about personal adornments for Asia is primarily descriptive. Such publications are numerous and, at times, encyclopedic in format, and can be found published in languages appropriate to each context (for example, see Inoue, Tsuyuki, & Seki 2008; Nara Joshi Daigaku 2008; Sun 2008 [1990]; Hamamoto 2004; Gao 2001; Hua 2001). Personal adornment in Asian contexts has also been highlighted through museum exhibitions, and the accompanying catalogs have provided useful data and inspiration for further study (Lingley 2007; So 1995; White & Bunker 1994; Castile & Shangraw et al. 1992). These resources serve as a valuable supplement to detailed archaeological reports and references to adornment in the textual record (where available), thus enabling the more focused explorations of what it meant to adorn the body in specific ways (both in life and in death), as provided for the first time in the following chapters.

One of the principal aims of this volume is to offer case studies from Asia that contribute to existing discursive models on adornment in the ancient world. First and foremost, the authors consider the sociocultural meaning of dress and adornment as a visual language for communicating information such as status and affiliation. Summaries of the development of approaches to dress and adornment abound in current scholarship outside of Asian Studies (ex., Lee 2015; Orr & Looper 2014; Entwistle & Wilson 2001). Our perspective draws partly from early analytical inquiries that approached dress as a kind of language. Semioticians of the 1950s and 1960s saw components of the dressed body as a system of signs to be comprehended akin to verbal communication (ex., Barthes 1983). Spearheaded by the work of Joanne B. Eicher and Mary Ellen Roach-Higgins (Roach & Eicher 2007, 1965; Barnes & Eicher 1992), anthropologists developed and refined these linear and abstract structuralist perspectives in two essential ways that form the core approach of contributors to this volume. First is a consideration of the particular social and cultural frames of the dressed body. In other words, social codes for dressing are culturally determined, and it is only from within those domains that we can begin to understand differentiation of adornment to reflect or determine, for example, one’s social or political role, worth, and rank (see, for example, Miniaev, this volume). This is especially significant when considering contexts of cultural exchange. Many of the authors in this volume (Nelson, Tanizawa, Rubinson, Gerhart and Linduff, Wallace, and Laursen) deal with burials of individuals living at the interstices of disparate yet conversant cultural traditions. Examination of the layering or combining of cultural references through adornment is asserted here as a central means to understand how individuals negotiated identity in the face of difference.

Second is a consideration of the body. For all of the cultures addressed in this volume, the “body” was a clothed body, and thus inherently social. Yet merely considering social dimensions of garments or headpieces without reference to a body effectively renders these components of material culture as static referents to various facets of identity (Lee 2015, p. 23; Entwistle & Wilson 2001). Where possible, consideration of not just what was worn, but how it was worn, and how different components of appearance communicated messages in dialogue with each other and with the active body in particularized contexts has also served as an important contribution to our understanding of the dressed/social body (see Gerhart & Linduff, Wallace, and Laursen). Moreover, mindful of the fragmentary nature of the archaeological record, authors attempt to adopt a more humanistic approach to the data, imagining subjects not simply as male and female social actors following prescribed codes, but as men and women who had the ability and agency to make conscious choices about how they presented themselves to the world. That stated, where relationships between archaeologically sexed bodies and culturally constructed notions of gender are still uncertain, authors default to the terms “male” and “female.”

Given the above emphasis on culturally specific, yet multi-vocal clothed bodies, this volume also addresses the important roles that objects and processes of adornment play in the particular arena of mortuary contexts, and as part of flexible and fluid displays of identity in death. Authors approach the data with caution, mindful of the funerary context in which adornments were deployed and arranged, a setting that in many cases speaks more to the discourse of identity construction than to actual practices in life (Green 2007, p. 286). Still, reference in this introduction to the “social body” points to an awareness that bodies arrayed in burials were often composed according to both sociocultural and ritual standards but may also have served as occasions for challenging such norms. Moreover, where discussion shifts to the dressed body in life, supporting evidence is offered (ex. Laursen).

The evidence presented in each chapter is often suggestive of the multi-dimensional significance of adornments, but we have chosen to frame these chapters around three different perspectives that overlap with issues relevant to cultural contexts across the ancient world: (1) those that challenge gendered and overly simplistic interpretations of articles of adornment in the archaeological record; (2) those that highlight the complicated, but central, role of adornment in contexts of cross-cultural contact and exchange; and (3) implications of understanding adornments as part of a larger assemblage forming the clothed body.

Part I: Gender and social status

Gender and status are two of the most common facets of identity that can be understood through studies of adornment and dress (Sørensen 2006, 2000; Roach & Eicher 1965). The chapters in Part I work through some of the complex ways that these dimensions of social difference appear in the archaeological record. Early explorations of identity through appearance recognized ornaments and clothing as a kind of visual language of symbols or codes that served to communicate social messages (Bogatyrev 1971)—most readily information about gender and position or rank. For these reasons, the interpretation of gender in burials is predominantly driven by articles of personal adornment, especially where preservation of osteological and material remains are poor and/or additional visual or textual information is lacking, such as in prehistoric or less complex societies. However, the limitations that result from such interpretations are by now well heeded. To be sure, where burials can be sexed, distributions of objects that may appear to mark a deceased as male or female at times resist clear gendered distinctions (Joyce 2008, pp. 56–57; Meskell 1999, pp. 77–83). Moreover, Judith Butler’s assertion of gender as performance (Butler 1990) has underscored the complexity of gendered identity, ideas particularly relevant to analysis of archaeological contexts, where dimensions of lived experience are oftentimes difficult to access (Sørensen 2006, pp. 112–113; 2000, pp. 78 and 133).

Such is the case for burials of the Early Jōmon period in Japan, where gender figured along with a range of other facets of identity to distinguish individuals in burial. In “Adornments at Odake Shell Midden site: Perceptions of Early Jōmon hunter-gatherer gender and identities,” Ilona R. Bausch challenges assumptions that Early Jōmon ornaments, such as stone slit earrings and pendants, were markers of female fertility and male strength, respectively. She examines personal adornments recovered from the relatively well-preserved and sexed burials of the Odake Shell Midden site (ca. 3400–2900 BCE), located along the western coast of Japan’s Honshu Island. Her analysis shows that items of personal adornment can suggest more about status with regard to hunting skills or ritual identity than they do about gendered hierarchies. Particular types of ornaments may have even been gender neutral, and instead informative as symbols of protective or healing magic. Moreover, while Bausch limits her examination to the burials of the Odake Shell Midden, she notes importantly that the vast majority of items of personal adornment were recovered from other contexts of the site, which indicates that possession and display of such items may not have even been restricted to a select few. Thus, Bausch’s chapter, like recent work by others upon which she draws, reminds us that the discourse of identity construction in prehistoric, non-stratified societies may have been more complex than is often assumed. In addition, her study raises interesting questions about the roles women occupied in prehistoric cultures.

Similarly, for particular categories of Xiongnu burials, Sergey Miniaev finds that ornamental accessories did not directly relate to the gender or social status of the deceased, and instead may have acted as markers of cultural affiliation. High-ranking members of the Xiongnu 匈奴, a political confederation that dominated the eastern portion of Central Asia from the late 3rd through the early 2nd centuries BCE, were buried in large barrows surrounded by accompanying, or satellite, burials. In “Some features of ‘Xiongnu’ composite belts,” Miniaev re-examines materials from these smaller accompanying burials at the Xiongnu cemetery at Derestuj, located in the Trans-Baikal region of Eastern Siberia, Russia. Miniaev focuses on belt sets that were buried with both men and women of varying ages. For different groups living across the Eurasian Steppe, belts were typically an important element of dress and acted as a kind of “social language” communicating individual status (Brosseder 2011, p. 349). Miniaev makes the claim that, in this case, belt sets were not primarily markers of age or sex. Nor were they reflective of high status, since the burials in question were all part of the “sacrificial” graves surrounding central barrows, with richer burials accompanying the larger and more complex barrows. Moreover, the “Ordos style” animal imagery featured on the bronze belt plaques of the sets may indicate that the deceased in these smaller burials were of a different ethnic origin than individuals buried in the larger central barrows. In this case, particular items of personal adornment may have been deliberately included in such burials to assert the foreign identity of those sacrificed. Miniaev’s study presents a shift in focus from the grand barrows of privileged Xiongnu to the surrounding sacrificial burials, highlighting the ways in which adornments also served as a significant means to signal the identities of those intended to accompany leaders in death.

As with Bausch, Sarah Milledge Nelson’s chapter, “Adornments of Golden Silla,” also sheds light on the way earlier gender-biased interpretations impacted initial analysis of gold crowns and related articles of adornment buried in the great royal mounded tombs (4th to 6th centuries CE) of the ancient Korean state of Silla. Nelson revisits ma...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Figures
• Tables
• Contributors
• 1 Introduction: Dimensions of personal adornment
• Part I Gender and social status
• Part II Transcultural contexts
• Part III Assemblage
• Index