Status Update

As people we are social beings that inhabit many statuses, social positions, and roles within our society. In the discipline of archaeology these statuses are studied to help reconfigure a past societies social organization. In many anthropology books like Core Concepts in Cultural Anthropology by Robert H. Lavenda and Emily a. Schultz, status is described as being either ascribed or achieved.

 In Viking society importance and social prestige was placed upon the warrior class. When an individual is born into a warrior family they are ascribed a status which is reflected in many graves.  For example in many infant Viking graves archaeologists have discovered child size weapons. Obviously these children were not warriors fighting in battles, or maybe they were, but it can be assumed if these children had lived to adulthood they would be raised into a system that would allow them to fulfill their roles as warriors. Thus, the status of being born into a warrior family in Viking society was an ascribed status because it was inescapable.

In many societies an achieved status means achievement, a rite of passage, hard work, a marriage union into a particular family, a graduation, a medal for winning a sport contest, a mother giving birth. A major example in North America is a woman like Oprah Winfry who was born into an impoverished family, graduated school, became a reporter, started a tv show and became a millionaire is an achieved celebrity status. For me, one of my major achieved statuses would be graduating from university to improve my role within society.

Traditionally all statuses are linked to family, institutions, daily life, wealth, social organization, and are unique to all societies. This can be problematic to archaeologists because a status to one culture could be irrelevant to another society. When excavating graves archaeologists must be cautious about interpreting statuses based on their own cultural biases.

If you want to look at something visual regarding status or how society is organized the people of fifteenth/sixteenth century Europe used the concept of the Great Chain of Being and applied it to everything from religious status or heirarchy to court status, to basically everything. People were organized into the Great Chain of Being, with God on the top and then ascending down a ladder with the wealthiest at the top of the chain such as the king, then his nobles, yeomen, artisans, lay people. The Church had its own Great Chain of Being with God on the top, followed by archbishops, bishops, clergy, and laymen.  People were born into these roles, into money, as a gift from God and for centuries were unable to raise themselves up the ladder.