The Gillespie Paper: Difference Between Individuals, Personhood, And

The Gillespie paper makes a point to differentiate between the terms of individuals, personhood, and agency. To Gillespie, an individual refers to a biological organism (Gillespie 2000: 74). Personhood are the characteristics that society collectively ascribes to an individual, it bridges the gap between individual and group. Agency encompasses the rights and duties that an individual has in a group, the capacity they have to be able to make choices about their life. It is important to Gillespie to have clear terminology when talking about this issue because applications of this theory can be used in studies of current political economy and social change (Gillespie 2000: 73). She also aimed to dispel the problematic bias of using Western societies
While they are approaching the concepts slightly differently, the ideas stay the same: identity is not condensable to death. Since archaeologist work with an incomplete sample, it is a hard to tell how much information is missing. The Torres-Rouff and Knudsen paper provided interesting insight as to what ethnicity and being foreign mean. A mortuary ritual will not encompass all of ones identity, so archaeologists need to be careful with the inferences that they are making. In their osteobiography, they discovered a foreigner assimilating into a new society (Torres-Rouff 2007 :248). He appeared to be eating the same as everyone else, indicating equal status. His burial and osteobiography indicated that he had assimilated into the culture. This raises questions about the personhood and agency of this individual. Since he had assimilated into a new culture, he was assigned different personhood and agency. While there is no way to know exactly how he was treated, his health indicates that he was not likely discriminated against. This also shows the adaptability of personhood, while the individual did not change, his personhood and agency did as he was under a new social