Fragmentary and dispersed: Preadult personhood and social memory in a Southeast Asian forager cemetery

Bioarchaeological analyses of preadults provide a wealth of information about past lifeways and social structures, including aspects of personhood. However, studies of personhood and childhood in archaeological hunter-gatherer (or forager) contexts remain limited, particularly for Southeast Asia. Here, we explore aspects of personhood and the lived experiences of preadults at Con Co Ngua, an early seventh millennium BP sedentary hunter-gatherer community in northern Vietnam. We approach this analysis by way of our knowledge of skeletal representation, grave construction, body positioning, corpse manipulation (including extensive mutilation of certain individuals), and the integration of previous research into lifeways and environment. The results of our analyses provide support for a degree of differential preadult mortuary treatment, primarily manifested through body treatment and positioning. However, interpretations of these treatments are complicated by the highly fragmented and disaggregated nature of the majority of preadult burials. We contend that the comparatively more dispersed and fragmentary nature of the preadult burials at the site is caused by intentional human action at the site, rather than differential preservation or recovery biases, and such apparent biases may actually stem from deliberate human intervention. That is, socially appropriate mortuary treatments regarding constructions of personhood, social memory, or collective identity may have led to the dispersal of preadults throughout the mortuary contexts of the site. More broadly, the mortuary evidence from Con Co Ngua supports the conclusion that all of those buried at Con Co Ngua were bestowed some degree of personhood by their community, as demonstrated through the inclusion of all in the cemetery, from foetuses to elderly adults.