LA AUTODEFENSA COMO RESPUESTA A LA

ruin

(AGATHA CHRISTIE 1980)

Archaeological studies specifically focusing on older individuals are rare, but this is beginning to change, especially with the changing demographics in modern society. One example comes from Welinder (2001), who discusses the process of ageing stressed in anthropological studies of elderly individuals with regard to prehistoric cemetery data. Welinder (2001: 167) appears to reflect current attitudes as he lists a schedule of negative aspects of ageing: those over 75 years have lost two thirds of their working capacity, half their physical and reaction ability, half their intellectual capacity, with further losses in eyesight and hearing; in addition, he asserts that most prehistoric women did not survive to go through menopause (Welinder 2001: 167). He also notes that these ‘losses’ are not visible on skeletal material (Welinder 2001:

167), suggesting that these conclusions, whether accurate or not, appear to be taken from anthropological data rather than examination of the remains of elderly individuals.

Welinder presents a table of burial data from differing periods ranging from the

Mesolithic to the 18th _{century, with numbers of elderly males (93) slightly more than}

those of elderly women (91) (Welinder 2001: 167-168). While he describes his dataset as ‘haphazard’ (Welinder 2001: 165), he suggests that changes in data, which point towards a substantial rise in the proportion of elderly from before the Early

Middle Ages (3-16%) to the Late Middle Ages and the 18th _{century (31-35%), reflect}

a change in cultural attitudes towards the elderly, rather than a change in the number of elderly, even though the proportion of elderly evidently increases (Welinder 2001: 166)..

Despite his approach to interpreting the data, Welinder notes that in many societies, elders enjoy prestige, influence and wealth (Welinder 2001: 171). He also considers power relations: old men control both young men and young women; old women control young women, but the relationship between young men and old women is contradictory and problematic (Welinder 2001: 171). In addition, older individuals who are incapacitated are dependent on those younger, and frequently, disabled old men are more often considered to be of less value than old women; this is possibly related to the physical strength required for masculine tasks. In addition, childless elders without close relatives may find themselves in a precarious situation (Welinder 2001: 171). He notes that this ladder of influence is not universal throughout all societies, and also not within a society (Welinder 2001: 171). While it is refreshing to see power relations discussed with regard to societal elders, and these are generalisations rather than conclusions, Welinder does not consider whether or when the power held by elderly men declines or stops.

a long life span, rather it is to be considered old by others and one’s self (Welinder 2001: 175). This then is cultural age, which, while a separate entity to osteological and chronological age is combined with them and social age to create a societal view of an individual of a certain age. Welinder (2001: 175) suggests that ‘old age may be studied as the process of growing old’, by seriating individuals from youngest to oldest, thus determining who is the oldest, osteologically and thus approximately chronologically. While seriating individuals from youngest to oldest is the basis of the method of identifying the invisible elderly outlined in Chapter Four, this thesis is attempting to understand more than ‘the process of growing’ old in seeking the social and personal meanings of increasing age.

Archaeologically, Welinder provides a brief analysis of three cemeteries, from the Middle Neolithic, Late Bronze Age and Iron Age, looking at deposition of objects with older individuals (Welinder 2001: 172-175). Largely, his findings suggest that older men receive more objects and older women fewer (Welinder 2001: 172-175). Although the meaning of such deposition is not explored, whether with regard to social status, identity or other aspect of culture, it does appear to echo his thoughts on power relations and social status outlined earlier.

Whether or not old age brings high social status, it does not necessarily translate into economic or physical security or being thought well of by contemporaries (Appleby 2010: 153). Whatever status is attained by an elderly individual, old age is likely to be but one aspect of reaching that standing; other aspects, like knowledge and experience, gender, ethnicity, kinship, class and occupation as well as the personal character of the individual and their relationship with others in their community, may be of greater or lesser importance (Appleby 2010: 152-153). In a non-literate society like early Anglo-Saxon England, the long memories of the elderly were a valuable resource in the maintenance of tradition and histories, and in their knowledge and expertise; the slow rate of cultural and technological change would have minimised knowledge obsolescence, a situation quite different from that today (Appleby 2010: 153). Individual qualities of the elderly individual – charm, knowledge, ability and presence etc – will decide whether they become that valuable resource.

Technology features in Appleby’s examination of the Early Bronze Age Franzhausen I cemetery (of the Traisental in Lower Austria). Appleby (2010: 163) notes that the distribution of feminine tools – bronze awls – suggest that female activities continue throughout ageing although feminine costume tends to decline. She also finds some connection between age-related skeletal changes and particular mortuary treatments: of six males with serious and visible pathologies, five were buried with weapons (Appleby 2011: 243). Age-related bodily changes, changes which would identify the individual as elderly to contemporaries, were compatible with somewhat restricted feminine body adornment, while weapons were restricted neither by age nor pathology (Appleby 2011: 244). In a nearby later cemetery, Gemeinlebarn F, male weapon burial became increasingly restricted by age, while age was not materially marked for women (Appleby 2011: 244). These conclusions, identifying as they did aspects of the articulation of old age, health and identity, were brought about through analysis of both osteological indicators of advanced age, including those that would have affected an individual’s appearance and movement, alongside the material culture in the grave and the relationship between these entities (Appleby 2011: 244). They tend to confirm that age is but one aspect of identity and that work or work identity, whether using awls or weapons, continues whether status changes or stays the same.

Such relationships are not static. The construction of identity is frequently linked to age, perhaps through economic factors, the ability (or inability) to access power as well as through social relationships, and this status may wax and wane as an individual progresses through their life stages (Jenks 1996: 71 cited by; Gowland 2002: 30). Although old age is only part of his story, Halsall looks at the consequences of growing old for women in Merovingian Metz (Halsall 1996). Although, as Halsall (1996: 5) concedes, the narrative depends on limited and sometimes out of area data, as well as fragmentary written evidence, the results display some similarity to those found in this thesis. He considers that a major shift in women’s status occurs

to fifty. Fifty is also the age when a woman’s youngest child reaches ‘legal’ majority’ (Halsall 1996: 19-20), suggesting a possible cultural reason for a change in status. This change, he believes, reflects a possible reduction in the household role of a woman as she is supplanted by the next generation; this displacement is reflected in the lack of jewellery in graves, which has been passed on to those younger in years (Halsall 1996: 19).

This apparent reduction in status is considered alongside that of ageing males: when their children are grown, also between forty and sixty, they may be buried with less weaponry, but countering that, they are given the most lavish burials (Halsall 1996: 19). He concludes that the deaths of older women (probably widowed, due to differences in age at marriage between the sexes) who had not become established as a wise woman, healer or other respected position, caused few stresses in the community and thus required little funerary display (Halsall 1996-21). Gowland (2002: 302) rightly notes that the idea that the deaths of elderly women caused little stress is a concept related to present society’s attitudes; however, the concept of burial archaeology as a method to deal with the damage to the fabric of society caused by a death, although presented differently, is a similar idea to that of a ritual where memories are made and remade (as in Williams 2011: 239).

While the burial ritual may be the result of the social stresses caused by a death, it is surely not the totality. In a set of Roman British cemeteries, Cassington, Queensford Farm, Lankhills and Victoria Road, Gowland (2002: 215) noted that women over 50 years were rarely buried with items of personal adornment, but were more likely to be buried with bone combs beside their heads; the only other group likely to be buried with a comb was children aged 1-3 years. With older females being treated similarly to the under fours, Gowland suggests that these two age groups occupied similar status levels, whereas those between four and 50 who displayed feminine identity appear to be of higher status (Gowland 2002: 302-303). Gowland also notes that such status, as well as gender identity was lived relationally: a female was commemorated by parents in her youth, in marriage by her husband and in old age by her children; thus the identity displayed in the grave may not reflect status per se,

but also echo these changing relationships (Gowland 2002: 304). This aspect of burial is true of all burials: the dead are buried by the living, and the living reflect the status, including age status, of the dead.

Whereas Welinder (2001) provides a general examination of archaeology and age, Halsall (1996) examines older individuals as one part of his general analyses and Gowland (2002) and Appleby (2011) reflect on biological as well as archaeological aspects in ageing, other more narrowly focused approaches have been taken with regard to the elderly. Although chronically under-reported, elder abuse is estimated to affect between two and ten percent of the elderly population today and is likely to have occurred in archaeological populations too (Gowland 2015: 514). Gowland (2015: 517) identifies skeletal signatures of elder abuse, including repetitive fractures at different stages of healing, in the areas of the head, neck and upper extremities, and also suggests that marginal burial treatment could also be indicative. She notes that there is a sex bias in elder abuse today with older women more likely to be the victim, and provides two examples from Roman Britain where older women were both buried non-normatively and exhibited trauma indicative of elder abuse (Gowland 2015, 519-520).

Gowland (2017) continues the theme of elder abuse in the context of the archaeology

of care. She presents four examples, one historical (18th _{century) and three from}

Roman Britain, all female. While two of these cases had injuries consistent with abuse, including perimortem injuries, two were included largely because of their marginal burials. Although this pair from Watersmeet, Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, displayed severe osteoarthritis, and one individual had a healed non-united fracture of the ulna, their inclusion in this paper reflected their possible dependency, incapacity and resultant possible status reduction (Gowland 2017: 83-85). While one or both of these individuals may have suffered physical abuse, with one possibly buried alive (Gowland 2017: 85-86), there is also a distinct possibility that they suffered emotional abuse, which leaves no mark on the body, but is still greatly

Another issue primarily affecting the elderly today is dementia. Karenberg and Forstl (2006) review writings about dementia in the past which demonstrate the degree to which physicians of the Greek and Roman eras recognised the consequences of living to old age, noting that terms and aetiologies were of their time, but still recognisable. They also examine various literary sources from the past which also deal with exigencies of old age (Karenberg and Forstl 2006), but succumb to modern societal preconceptions as they suggest that ‘psychopathological manifestations of old age represented a rather marginal problem’ due to old age being a ‘rare event’ (Karenberg and Forstl 2006: 7-8).

On the other hand, Smith and colleagues (2016) reaffirm the presence of older individuals in the past, and attempt to estimate the prevalence of dementia in ancient populations. While the earliest known mentions of a case of possible

dementia dates back to the 24th _{century BC in Egypt (Karenberg and Forstl 2006) and}

although they conclude that for most of the human past the prevalence of dementia was only a fraction of 1% of the population, the fact that there were enough older people alive and contributing to their societies means that dementia is a condition that humanity has always coped with (Smith et al. 2016).