THE BODY AND THE ANCESTOR: COMPARING EVIDENCE OF INDIVIDUAL BIOGRAPHY AND SOCIAL REPRESENTATION AT PARACAS NECROPOLIS

Summary

Until recently, our understanding of Paracas Necropolis was based on objects divorced form their contextual data. Research in archives and museum collections has allowed us to re-link object with context, and a complete restudy has been carried out for some gravelots. In these cases, systematic bioanthropological observations have provided more reliable and more detailed information on the persons at the center of the mortuary bundle. Age and biological sex have been re-evaluated based on current methods. Therefore, observations of funerary practice and the garments, tools and weapons that adorn one or more display layers can be more usefully interpreted as expressions of gender identity and social status. Information on diet, health and habitual activities of the deceased individual can be compared with the symbolic expressions of identity in ritual contexts and the layered construction and reconstruction of an ancestral personage. We will evaluate the ways in which information on the life of each person coincides with or contradicts a social model based on the effigy later constructed around their body.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• From Foragers to Empires: Recent Research on the South Coast of Peru

Keywords

Spatial Coverage