Beyond the Ancestors: New Approaches to Andean "Open Sepulchers"

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Beyond the Ancestors: New Approaches to Andean "Open Sepulchers"" at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Spanish chroniclers stated that prehispanic Andean populations put more care into the construction of their sepulchers than their own houses. These sepulchers, collective tombs in which the dead were deposited allowing postmortem access for the living, are an integral part of Andean highland landscapes. They vary in both location and construction: whether positioned above- or belowground, partially or completely constructed, or situated within natural cave formations. Yet what all these monuments have in common is their geographic ubiquity in the highlands, ranging from the north of Peru to the north of Argentina. They have been given various names according to variations in typology (chullpa, machay, pucullo), but all can be gathered under the term “open sepulchers.” Based on ethnohistory, open sepulchers have long been interpreted through the lens of ancestor veneration. However, despite their prevalence, it is only recently that they have been systematically excavated. Over the last two decades, the application and integration of archaeological methodologies and scientific techniques have uncovered new information regarding these monuments. With this symposium, we aim to gather recent research on open sepulchers in order to understand and interpret their variations, meanings, and functions over time and across the geography of the Andes.