Movers or Moved? An Iso-histological Approach to the Postmortem Movement of Prehispanic Maya Human Remains

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Integrating Isotope Analyses: The State of Play and Future Directions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Death was not the end for many members of Prehispanic Maya communities (250 BC–1560 AD). Indeed, the inclusion of human remains in structures that continued to function indicates that the dead (or their significance to the living) maintained social if not biological vitality. Although there is also ample evidence that Maya people re-entered burial contexts in the past, displacing human remains in the process, researchers assume that isotopically nonlocal people from such contexts were movers during life. The possibility that they were moved after death remains understudied yet has significant implications for understanding past migration processes. The innovative iso-histological approach therefore integrates isotopic and histological analysis to distinguish between Maya movers during life and those moved after death. This will refine current isotopic interpretations of Maya migration processes in the past, as the sociocultural motivations underpinning each of these behaviors differed. This approach will also shed light on body treatments among the Prehispanic Maya that would have facilitated the movement of human remains (e.g., excarnation, bundling). Importantly, this research is not limited to Maya archaeology but offers a framework for applying the iso-histological approach for assessing the posthumous movement of human remains in other archaeological and forensic contexts.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)   •
• Integrating Isotope Analyses: The State of Play and Future Directions

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38243.0