Exploring Lived Identities Via Bioarchaeological Analysis: Local Biologies and Social Identities of the Alamanni
Authors: Speith, N.
Conference: 41th Annual Meeting of the Paleopathology Association (PPA)
Dates: 8 April-9 January 2014
Journal: International Journal of Paleopathology
Publisher: Elsevier
Abstract:Among traditional historic-archaeological interpretations of Alamannic cemeteries, containing evidence for life and death of people in the center of early-medieval Europe after the Migration period, only one interpretation (Steuer 1982) suggests an open-ranked society in which social stratification was marked by fluidity between social statuses, achieved by individual efforts within society. Yet never substantiated by archaeological analysis, the Alamanni continued to suffer from paramount characterization as warriors, peasants, and housewives, placing elite versus non-elite within a common Merovingian and thus kingdom-configuration of social stratification. This paper advances the hypothesis of social fluidity and differentiated inequality by discussing the bioarchaeological analysis of the population of Pleidelsheim, near Stuttgart, in southwest Germany (5th - 8th c. AD; 268 individuals), presenting the analysis of palaeopathological and activity-related markers combined with a life-course approach. The prevalence of patterns of health and physical stress, trauma, and entheseal changes, combined with the analysis of other biological indicators such as stature, and noticeable differences in mortuary evidence, reveal social mechanisms that point to a strong relationship between “local biologies” (Lock 1998), i.e. interactions between individuals and their social, local and geographical environments, and differing active and social identities for males and females in this Alamannic population. The results corroborate a previously only ostensible open-ranked society and contradict commonly accepted universal interpretations of Alamannic “peasant-warriors and wives”, disclosing physical evidence for patterns of attaining and maintaining rank within Alamannic society.
Source: Manual