Facing discordant records and cultural hegemony in archaeological studies: an approach from Galician rural funerary epigraphy (1850–1940)

Abstract

SUMMARYThe following paper explores the funerary epigraphy of contemporary Galician rural societies to contextualise it within social, historical, and linguistic dynamics. This hypothesis suggests an apparently contradictory record, with diverse primary sources offering apparently conflicting versions of the same process: while funerary memorials show an absolute predominance of Castilian as the vehicular language, sociolinguistic and historical studies suggest an absolute predominance of Galician. Considering these contextual discordances, different questions arise: how are these ambiguous contexts generated? Is it a methodological problem or are they real representations of ambivalent social dynamics? How can we identify them and in what kind of social processes? Accordingly, this work develops a twofold approach: firstly, an analytical methodology that collects relevant data from epigraphic evidence is provided, aiming to expose the funerary record and identify possible contextual ambiguities in relation to other available sources. All analytical procedures will be described, and the results obtained will be presented. Moreover, a broad historical and sociolinguistic perspective is presented, with the aim of contextualising what dynamics define and explain this apparently contradictory phenomenon. Secondly, a discussion about the problems of these discordances, their relationship with the discourses of power, and their analysis from the material register has been considered. Different theoretical and methodological approaches are explored to study these ambiguous records, considering their role in different power relations. The main objective is to reflect on how we approach ambiguous records in order to provide terminological tools to understand material and social contexts entangled in power dynamics.