Tuesday, March 8, 2011

No Coffin Should be Without One

From John Hawks, quoting this paper (emphasis mine):

Only one other ancient burial site is known for Beringia: Ushki Lake 1, in Kamchatka, Russia (34–37) (Fig. 1). Ushki Lake 1, Level 7 (Ushki L7) (~13,000 cal yr B.P.) contained an adult burial associated with bone beads in a rock-lined ochre-filled pit separated from the house structures. Ushki Lake 1, Level 6 (Ushki L6) (~12,000 cal yr B.P.) is roughly contemporaneous with USRS Component 3 and contains two unburned burials of children within two separate houses (35, 36). One child burial contained ochre, a pendant, a mat of lemming incisors, and numerous microblades and wedge-shaped cores (the second burial is undescribed) (35). Thus, the USRS burial context is more like Ushki L6 than L7.

I have informed Mrs Hickory that, before she spends the insurance money, I wish her to lay me to rest on the finest mat of lemming incisors that Siberia can produce.

And talking of John Hawks, this post will be particularly interesting to fellow glossogony buffs.

2 comments:

Vincent said...

Before following your link, I attempted to discover whether I am a glossogony buff, though you'd think that a qualification for being one would be to have heard of the word.

The OED does not recognize the word. I may return, but my beloved calls.

The Hickory Wind said...

I've always thought of it as 'glossogony', a word I sort of coined myself before I knew that linguistics had a word for it. The experts prefer 'glottogony', from the Attic form (which is quite reasonable, but I prefer the sound of the -ss-). It means the origin of language. You might have noticed I ramble on about the subject sometimes.

By the way, I 'coined' the word for a short story, excerpts of which I posted here.