Irene Mounds Mortuary Material Accompaniment Data

In the dissertation titled "Interactions with the Incorporeal in the Mississippian and Ancestral Puebloan Worlds," the author analyzed the Irene Mounds Mortuary Material Accompaniment data set in an examination of the performance of mortuary ritual at the Mississippian period Irene Mounds site. The analysis of mortuary accompaniments and the larger consideration of mortuary ritual were designed to understand the identities of the spirits of the dead in Mississippian period villages of the Georgia Coast and in Protohistoric era Zuni villages. Please see the dissertation for details about the analysis and analysis procedures: http://core.tdar.org/project/380979.

The Irene Mounds Mortuary Material Accompaniment data set was analyzed to evaluate if the living placed rare, unique, and/or noticeably symbolically-charged objects in burial features or near to burial features in association with remains of the deceased. The analysis consisted of basic descriptive statistical assessments, and qualitative analysis of contextual patterns.

The Irene Mounds material accompaniment analysis results and discussion are presented in the dissertation's Chapter 5 "Mississippian Landscapes of Memorialized Dead on the Georgia Coast: Irene Mounds Site." Descriptive statistics that summarize results are presented in Tables 5.11, 5.12, and 5.13.

The Irene Mounds mortuary material accompaniment data set that is curated here includes two data sheets: 1) a summary sheet, and 2) raw data. The summary sheet contains demographic data and provenience data for each burial, and records whether each burial did or did not include mortuary accompaniments. The raw data records the presence/absence of different artifact types in each burial. It also contains a field for notes.