The Funerary or Nonfunerary Human Assemblages from the Initial Series Group at Chichen Itza

Summary

This is an abstract from the "New Perspectives on Ritual Violence and Related Human Body Treatments in Ancient Mesoamerica" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Human skeletal assemblages from Chichen Itza and its surrounding regions are complex, which makes Chichen Itza a prime location to study mortuary practices. The complexity stems most likely from Chichen Itza’s multicultural relationships with other groups not only within the Yucatán Peninsula but throughout Mesoamerica. Despite having knowledge of the intricacies of their mortuary practices, domestic funerary systems are unknown at Chichen Itza due to the scarcity of excavations of domestic areas. However, excavations in the Initial Series Group, in which we expected to uncover domestic funerary practices, revealed nondomestic funerary patterns that show hardly any ancestral treatment of the dead, which makes us question about the wares about Chichen Itza’s ancestral motivated practice. For this study, the archaeological context of the interments of the Initial Series Group was compared with, 283 individuals from Chichen Itza, and systematically examined through bio-vital profiles, segments selections, and spatial analysis. These analyses reveal defleshing, flaying, artificial fragmentation, cremation, and roasting among the nonfunerary assemblage of the Initial Series Group.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• New Perspectives on Ritual Violence and Related Human Body Treatments in Ancient Mesoamerica

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32191