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Matrilateral relatives in the social networks of Silla local elites
Topic Started: May 29 2018, 01:23:58 PM (71 Views)
black man
The Right Hand
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Conte and Kim recently addressed a potentially interesting finding published in a Korean journal: apparently, young people were buried together with a socially high-ranking matrilateral relative. Note that the term "human sacrifice" is one of those Eurocentric terms to be avoided in the future when one excludes the discussion of certain practices in modern Europe. Similarly, certain aspects of their literature review are very much on opinions from the colonial and early postcolonial periods. But at the same time the authors go into detail to a relatively unusual extent: they address social networks, relevant Korean vocabulary and archaeogenetic findings as well...

p. 20
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(...) sunjang, the practice of retainer sacrifice in Silla, is historically attested in the Samguksagi and has been identified archaeologically in many tombs in the region administered by Silla. The appearance and increasing frequency of retainer sacrifice in Silla seems to closely coincide with the appearance of large mounded tombs and increasing differentiation between royalty in the capital and local elites in the hinterlands as evidenced by regional contrasts in the scale of tombs and the lavishness of grave goods in the 4th and 5th centuries. The practice of retainer sacrifice, which had lasted longer than 200 years, was banned by royal decree in the beginning of the 6th century, and the disappearance of the practice is reflected archaeologically as well. Shortly after the illegalization of sunjang, Silla adopted Buddhism as a state religion.


p. 23-4
Quote:
 
(...) It should be remembered that the majority of sacrificed retainers discovered in elite Silla tombs were children, adolescents, and young adults under the age of 35 (Table 2; D.-W. Kim, 2013), and mitochondrial DNA analyses (Ha, 2011) demonstrate that some sacrificed retainers shared matrilineal lineage with the main tomb occupants, suggesting that they belonged to a privileged class. (...) We believe it is most likely that conflicts were avoided through various forms of compensation provided by elite hosts of funerary ceremonies for kin and family members (...)


At this point keep in mind that there could have been different kinship systems in ancient Korean society with the most high-ranking people possibly having been bilineal. In this sense, ancient Korean societies might have been comparable with traditional Mosuo society (link to be edited in). And the introduction of Buddhist monasticism could have made it easier for powerful people to demonstrate non-warlike intentions while still accumulating wealth.

Source:
Conte and Kim 2016: "An economy of human sacrifice: The practice of sunjang in an ancient state of Korea"




So in which ways could matrilateral relatives of influencial people in Silla have been potentially important? Note that this questions concerns both the period prior to the introduction of Buddhism and the period after it.
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luxemen
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This is really interesting. Never heard of the practice before but that could just be because I'm quite ignorant when it comes to Silla culture and history...

Black Man, do you happen to know of any other culture (doesn't have to be E.Asian) that has practiced 'premature burial'? Was this ever practiced in Ancient China?
Edited by luxemen, May 30 2018, 03:25:52 PM.
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black man
The Right Hand
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^
I think, ren did relatively much literature research on such topics since he's interested in archaeology. It's very much an archaeological topic.

Apart from that, many people are aware of some very general tendencies. E.g., people 'accompanying' more high-ranking men into the graves of the latter would be typical for very hierarchical societies, in which the former were supposedly unambiguously subordinate the latter. Moreover, the rituals after the death of a 'big man' probably did not only take place because social networks had to be re-adjusted. Many different types of interactions probably took place at about the same time. E.g., they could also have been an occasion on which 'big men' and potential 'big men' tried to get rid of potential competitors.

The motif as such seems to be very wide-spread. E.g., in one episode of "The Simpsons" Mr Burns wants Mr Smithers to accompany him into the grave with Mr Smithers apparently being the subordinate person who would have been buried alive.
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