At cœn the Chincha Valley in Peru, human vertebrae dating back to the Inca period were found strung on reeds. Archaeologists propose a new hypothesis to explain the reason for these achievements.
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Funerary practices in human beings depend on cultures, they sometimes include rites of several days, which could formerly be accompanied by sacrifices of animals and human beings as well as by the construction colossal funerary monuments. The care given to the body could involve surgery and chemical treatments, for mummification or with the aim of preserving relics. The treatment of the bodies could more generally symbolize the passage from one state to another, make it possible to claim territories and express socio-political relations.
Heads were taken as trophies and moved to Nasca and Wari during the first millennium AD.
After the burial of a person, the reworking of his remains remained a rarer practice or at least, little observed by the archaeologists, with the exception of certain cultures and regions of the world such as the Andes. Between the years 100 and 800 AD, the skeleton hands were excavated for offering in other places and heads were taken as trophies and moved to Nasca and Wari during the first millennium AD. inca period (1400 to 1532 AD), human remains were also used as trophies, such as the skulls carved into cups and drums covered in human skins.
Decomposing vertebrae to reconstitute the bodies
In recent years, archaeological digs in the Chincha Valley, 200 kilometers south of Lima, Peru, have unearthed human vertebrae strung on stalks of reeds. These remains are mostly found in large, elaborate tombs known as chullpas. Radiocarbon dating places these “skewers” of vertebrae between the years 1532 and 1825 AD.
Archaeologists have so far proposed several hypotheses to explain the existence of these sticks of vertebrae. Among these are the facilitation of the transport of the remains of dead people far from their community, the making of trophies, symbols of power, the representation of certain individuals, in particular during ceremonies. A recent article published in the newspaper Antiquity proposes a new hypothesis concerning the development of these vertebrae strung on reeds.
The authors indeed suggest that these achievements were carried out in order to reconstruct the bodies of the deceased after the looting that took place during the colonial period. This period also generated epidemics and episodes of starvation among chinchas, whose population went from more than 30,000 heads of families in 1533 to 979 in 1583. Some 81% of the vertebrae on the rods belong to adults (>20 years old) and in most cases the vertebrae were threaded while they were in an advanced stage of decomposition (the complete decomposition of soft tissue in such environment lasts from a few weeks to a few months) and does not show any cut marks.
Moreover, the majority of vertebrae arrangements do not follow an anatomical order. These observations allow the authors to suppose that the chosen vertebrae were already disarticulated before being strung on the reeds. This practice could have been carried out following the destruction of tombs by the colonists who thus altered theintegrity of the human body, one of the pillars of Andean societies.
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