While doing research on Medieval Japan I noted that the elite had a real lack of grave goods. Unlike the European "princes," all decked out in beads and rare goods, these elites had no such classifier attached to them. If one randomly stumbled across a Medieval Japanese grave in the course of their excavation and had no knowledge of what to expect from the culture, would they have thought they were doing with samurai, noblemen, and even imperial dead? Would the lack of goods lend them to not calling these graves "princes"? Now the main reason for the lack of grave goods is the Buddhist religion that was prominent at the time. The practice of separating oneself from material culture was a big part of achieving enlightenment, and thus the dead did not need goods to be passed on with them. I wonder how many other, now dead, religions have felt this. Could there be "impoverished princes" miss classified because their graves did not show enough grandeur?
To set the elite apart from the laymen in Medieval Japan, richer coffins and mortuary markers were used. If any of this was intact for our hypothetical archaeologist to find, maybe he (or she) could elicit some difference between it and a layman. But what if he does not find a layman's grave, then he has no comparison to look against. This may not be an improbable thought. It seems the lower class, at the time, was left to their own devices and would have to settle for the woods, or less designated areas. This means they may not be with in a bounded cemetery to make a comparison with. So if you only have elite to work with, how do you say anything about the common man, or even recognize that something is missing?
It seems to be that this all means that archaeology is a messy and complicated field. But then that is what makes it so fascinating to read about and discover.
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