DISCUSSION

Although the Malibu Historic cemetery shows a significant number of individuals oriented to the south, the majority continue to be oriented in a westerly direction, west and southwest, as at Medea Creek.  Undoubtedly, a westerly orientation of the head was intentional.  Ethnographic data, largely based on the notes of John P. Harrington, suggest why this should be so.  The following excerpts are not intended as an exhaustive compilation of references to the westerly direction, since these have appeared elsewhere in both summary and detailed form (Blackburn 1975a; Hudson and Underhay 1978; Haley and Wilcoxon 1999).  Instead they serve to highlight the connection between west and death.  Bracketed comments are mine.

Said dead went to the west.  Did not go to Pt. Concepcion.  No ghosts or anything about Pt. Concepcion as far as he [Fernando Librado Kitsepawit] has ever heard (Haley and Wilcoxon 1999:217).

[From Fernando Librado Kitsepawit] husiyalinane alkulul.  Said this when buried a person.  It means "those that travel to the west," referring to the soul.  Sang it.  Ventureño… (Haley and Wilcoxon 1999:219; cf. Blackburn 1975a:97-98).

Unquestionably, cardinal directions were extremely significant in Chumash ritual behavior.  ... Cardinal directions are also mentioned repeatedly in descriptions of various ceremonies ...the earth was symbolized in the west by the body of people gathered to watch the rituals (Hudson and Underhay 1978:41-42).

Venus in the west as the Evening Star was perhaps recognized as Slo’w -- the wot [chief] over the Land of the Dead and the eagle who knew what was to be.  He was an all-important celestial being connected with death and after-life in the spirit world, and was a source of great supernatural power  (Hudson and Underhay 1978:97).

As a ghosts’ road, the Milky Way’s path across the sky intersected with various places where mythological beings dwelled. ...The fall and early winter Milky Way spanned the sky from north-east to west, and marked the time of ritual observance which honored Sun and (probably at about three-year intervals) the recent dead. ...The climax came when the sun, “bringer of death”, set on the western horizon within the Milky Way and below Altair -- the symbolism of life and death was complete (Hudson and Underhay 1978:125).

Therefore, the association between the sun and the name of the pole at 'Iwayiki is not incidental, and may have applied widely to the pole erected at shrines to the dead.  There was a broad consensus among Harrington's consultants that their ancestors placed the land of the dead in the west, a belief shared with some neighboring peoples who spoke other languages (Haley and Wilcoxon 1999:218).

While there are disagreements as to the details of the soul’s journey, via Point Conception or not (Erlandson et al. 1998; Haley and Wilcoxon 1997, 1999), it is virtually always to the west.  It seems reasonable to infer that heads are oriented toward the west during burial because the land of the dead is toward the west and that death in general is associated with the west.  Previously at Medea Creek, the westerly burial orientation was interpreted as an association with the setting sun (King 1969:36).  However, the ethnographic data above further associate the setting sun and the west with death.

For the case of Malibu, we might also speculate that because the ocean is in a southerly direction, and the spirit travels across the ocean to the land of the dead, head orientations tend to also fall in the southern category more often.  Variation might also be introduced by the changing compass location of the setting sun between the summer and winter solstices.  Indeed, the winter solstice -- also the time of the annual mourning ceremony -- is when the sun sets in its most southerly location.  More than likely, though, there is more meaning embedded in the compass orientation of the head than just the location of the land of the dead.  The dominant burial in both cemeteries is typified by the westerly orientation, with a flexed position, lying on either the right or left side.  Chi-square analyses of other attributes of the burials (flexed, extended, left side, right side, age, sex, etc.) found that when the burials deviated from a westerly head orientation, that other attributes deviated as well.  In both cemeteries, non-westerly burials were significantly associated with variations such as lying on the left side and/or being unflexed (Green 1999:127-135).  Apparently intentional, the meaning of the non-westerly burial is particularly enigmatic.  For that matter, in the case of westerly orientations, why the head should preferably be pointed in the direction that the spirit of the deceased will take seems intuitively obvious, but certain articulation remains elusive.  In fact, there are no ethnographic or historical indications that point to more specific interpretations.  Indeed, it is interesting to note that a westerly burial orientation was apparently unknown to both early observers and ethnographers, both in terms of burial practices and cemeteries (Green 1999:87-98).  It is only in archaeological contexts that the westerly burial orientation is revealed.

Comparable excavation data for the time period of the Malibu Historic cemetery is strikingly different.  In 1964, the Mission La Purisima cemetery, in use from ca. 1812 to 1834, was excavated.  Burials, the majority of which were likely Chumash, were uniformly oriented with heads to the east, extended on the back, and without grave goods (Humphrey 1965), i.e. European in most every respect.  In light of this type of mortuary data, it is all the more remarkable that a cemetery with such a traditional form as that of the Malibu Historic cemetery was founded and used during a time of such transition.  Its very existence is testimony to how entrenched mortuary behavior can be and the persistent nature of Chumash ritual and beliefs.  Aided perhaps by their central political importance and their relatively distant location from either coastal (San Buenaventura) or inland (San Fernando) missions, the villagers of Malibu seem to have pursued a private burial ritual that remained largely unchanged in terms of body treatment.  This archaeological pattern suggests a degree of cultural continuity with respect to burial practices, before and after contact, and likely an associated continuity in belief system with respect to the location of the land of the dead in the west.