Aging in Todays Society essays

Aging in Today's Society essays Mark Twain once said, Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you dont mind, it doesnt matter. Unfortunately, societies throughout the world let it matter. In todays culture, humans will go to extraordinary lengths to try and postpone the physical effects of aging. Age was once a word that society admired and respected, but modern day humanity has corrupted that viewpoint and has transformed age into something that human beings should delay and conceal. A celebrity is a perfect example of an individual in todays world that has a great degree of public fascination who does everything in their power to fight the results of aging. For example, in picture one, it shows what the celebrity would truly look like without all of the makeup and additives that are on her face. Due to her popular appeal, the need to mask all of blemishes on her face is a necessity and if she were to have no products on her face, her appearance would be characterized along the lines of horrendous. On another note, society has labeled gray hair not only as a sign of old age, but also as a sign of lifelessness. When analyzing the picture, gray hair is characterized as being dull whereas the blonde hair shows liveliness and vitality. An individuals hair color should never reflect the vibrancy they behold, but modern day society unfortunately depicts gray hair as a symbol of dullness. Author Mary Pipher exclaims how older people were once viewed as a positive, but now have been malformed to an undesirable persona. Pipher writes, Younger and healthier adults often avoid spending time around the aging because they want to avoid the issues of mortality and loss of independence (Pipher). The younger adults believe that being around older individuals will cause them to lose vivacity, which is completely ridiculous and outlandish. Pipher discusses how the media will never portray a person who shows si...

Identifying Post-Marital Residence Archaeologically

Identifying Post-Marital Residence Archaeologically A significant piece of kinship studies in anthropology and archaeology both is post-marital residence patterns, the rules within a society that determine where a child of a group resides after they get married. In pre-industrial communities, people generally live(d) in family compounds. Residence rules are essential organizing principles for a group, allowing families to build a labor force, share resources, and plan out rules for exogamy (who can marry who) and inheritance (how the shared resources are split among the survivors). Identifying Post-Marital Residence Archaeologically Beginning in the 1960s, archaeologists began attempting to identify patterns which might suggest post-marital residence at archaeological sites. The first attempts, pioneered by James Deetz, William Longacre and James Hill among others, were with ceramics, particularly decoration and style of pottery. In a patrilocal residence situation, the theory went, female pottery makers would bring in styles from their home clans and the resulting artifact assemblages would reflect that. That didnt work very well, in part because contexts where potsherds are found (middens) are rarely clear cut enough to indicate where the household was and who was responsible for the pot. See Dumond 1977 for a (fairly dyspeptic and so fairly typical for its era) discussion. DNA, isotope studies, and biological affinities have also been used with some success: the theory is that these physical differences would clearly identify the people who are outsiders to the community. The problem with that class of investigation is it is not always clear that where people are buried necessarily reflects where people lived. Examples of the methodologies are found in Bolnick and Smith (for DNA), Harle (for affinities) and Kusaka and colleagues (for isotope analyses). What seems to be a fruitful methodology of identifying post-marital residence patterns is using community and settlement patterns, as described by Ensor (2013). Post-Marital Residence and Settlement In his 2013 book The Archaeology of Kinship, Ensor lays out the physical expectations for settlement patterning in different post-marital residence behaviors. When recognized in the archaeological record, these on-the-ground, datable patterns provide insight into the societal makeup of the residents. Since archaeological sites are by definition diachronic resources (that is, they span decades or centuries and so contain evidence of change over time), they can also illuminate how residence patterns change as the community expands or contracts. There are three main forms of PMR: neolocal, unilocal and multi-local residences. Neolocal can be considered the pioneer stage, when a group consisting of parent(s) and child(ren) move away from existing family compounds to start new. Architecture associated with such a family structure is an isolated conjugal house which is not aggregated or formally situated with other dwellings. According to cross-cultural ethnographic studies, conjugal houses typically measure less that 43 square meters (462 square feet) in floor plan. Unilocal Residence Patterns Patrilocal residence is when the boys of the family stay in the family compound when they marry, bringing in spouses from elsewhere. Resources are owned by the men of the family, and, although the spouses reside with the family, they are still part of the clans where they were born. Ethnographic studies suggest that in these cases, new conjugal residences (whether rooms or houses) are constructed for the new families, and eventually a plaza is required for meeting places. A patrilocal residence pattern thus includes a number of conjugal residences scattered around a central plaza. Matrilocal residence is when the girls of the family stay in the family compound when they marry, bringing in spouses from elsewhere. Resources are owned by the women of the family and, although the spouses can reside with the family, they are still part of the clans where they were born. In this type of residence pattern, according to cross-cultural ethnographic studies, typically sisters or related women and their families live together, sharing domiciles which average 80 sq m (861 sq ft) or more. Meeting palces such as plazas are not necessary, because the families reside together. Cognatic Groups Ambilocal residence is a unilocal residence pattern when each couple decides which family clan to join. Bilocal residence patterns is a multi-local pattern in which each partner stays in their own family residence. Both of these have the same complex structure: both have plazas and small conjugal house groups and both have multifamily dwellings, so they cannot be distinguished archaeologically. Summary Residence rules define who is us: who can be relied on in emergencies, who is required to work on the farm, who we can marry, where we need to live and how our family decisions are made. Some argument can be made for residential rules driving the creation of ancestor worship and unequal status: who is us must have a founder (mythical or real) to identify, people who are related to a particular founder might be of a higher rank than others. By making the main sources of family income from outside of the family, the industrial revolution made post-marital residence no longer necessary or, in most cases today, even possible. Most likely, as with everything else in archaeology, post-marital residence patterns will be best identified using a variety of methods. Tracing the settlement pattern change of a community, and comparing physical data from cemeteries and changes in artifact styles from midden contexts will help approach the problem and clarify, as much as possible, this interesting and necessary societal organization. Sources Bolnick DA, and Smith DG. 2007. Migration and Social Structure among the Hopewell: Evidence from Ancient DNA. American Antiquity 72(4):627-644. Dumond DE. 1977. Science in Archaeology: The Saints Go Marching In. American Antiquity 42(3):330-349. Ensor BE. 2011. Kinship Theory in Archaeology: From Critiques to the Study of Transformations. American Antiquity 76(2):203-228. Ensor BE. 2013. The Archaeology of Kinship. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press. 306 p. Harle MS. 2010. Biological Affinities and the Construction of Cultural Identity for the Proposed Coosa Chiefdom. Knoxville: University of Tennessee. Hubbe M, Neves WA, Oliveira ECd, and Strauss A. 2009. Postmarital residence practice in southern Brazilian coastal groups: continuity and change.  Latin American Antiquity 20(2):267-278. Kusaka S, Nakano T, Morita W, and Nakatsukasa M. 2012. Strontium isotope analysis to reveal migration in relation to climate change and ritual tooth ablation of Jomon skeletal remains from western Japan. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 31(4):551-563. Tomczak PD, and Powell JF. 2003. Postmarital Residence Patterns in the Windover Population: Sex-Based Dental Variation as an Indicator of Patrilocality. American Antiquity 68(1):93-108.