Ways of Death at Los Guachimontones

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Los Guachimontones was the largest site of the Teuchitlan tradition that flourished during the Late Formative and Classic periods (c. 300 BCE to 500 CE) in Western Mexico. The site exemplified the monumental architecture of the region - circular pyramid complexes and ball courts. Human burials have been excavated amongst these structures and at burial grounds used continuously throughout the site’s occupation. The burials and their human remains were examined through a bioarchaeological and mortuary archaeology lens to determine their age, sex, health, and manner of death and burial. The human burials demonstrate the variety of mortuary practices within this society, representing both ceremonial practices associated with the symbolic power of the monuments and the quotidian lives of the general population of the site. Funerary and burial practices, particularly those associated with monumental architecture, legitimated power structures at the site through the command of spiritual forces, labor, violence, and public space. This presentation will include images and a discussion of human skeletal remains.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39953.0