How to Make an Inca Mummy: Andean Embalming, Peruvian Science, and the Collection of Empire (original) (raw)
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The Hospital of San Andrés (Lima, Peru) and the Search for the Royal Mummies of the Incas
2007
The fate of the mummies of the Inca kings following the Spanish conquest of Peru has been the focus of more than a century of historical and archaeological research. Several lines of evidence indicate that five of the royal mummies were deposited in the Hospital of San Andre´s in Lima in 1560. In this work, we summarize what is currently known concerning the fate of the royal Inca mummies as well as the results of a recent ground-penetrating radar survey and an archaeological testing program that we conducted on the hospital grounds. The excavations revealed the location of the hospital’s first cemetery, the remains of a nineteenth-century fountain, an early colonial trash pit, and, most intriguingly, a vaulted structure. While we did not find the royal mummies, the historical research and archaeological fieldwork yielded new information on the history of the San Andre's compound and life in Lima during early colonial times.
Global Journal of Archaeology & Anthropology, 2019
This contribution has the purpose of presenting a set of material evidences linked to mortuary practices from Inca times recovered in Esquina de Huajra and Pucara de Tilcara archaeological sites. This in order to ponder the role of funerary practices in the social life of loca populations under Inca control. The presented contexts refer to diverse practices pointing at the great variability regarding the treatment of the deceased during Inca times, allowing to analyze the new socio-political context established in Quebrada de Humahuaca. The funerary practices registered refer to a strong tradition linked to the cult to the ancestors, probably rooting from pre-Inca moments. As in other Andean cases, these manifestations could have responded to beliefs associated with the regeneration of crops and productive cycles in general. The role of the deceased in strengthening the collective memory and the meaning of traditions shared throughout time is also relevant.
History of Anthropology Review, 2017
This piece explores an exhibit at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago whose lack of study is particularly notable, given the extraordinary real estate and notice it claimed in anthropology’s exposition space: a reproduction of the coastal Peruvian “Necropolis” of Ancón, which organizers billed as “probably the largest burying ground, either pre-historic or modern, in the world." Excavated and mounted by George A. Dorsey (1868-1931)—Franz Boas’s later rival and a student of the fair’s anthropological coordinator, Harvard’s Frederic Ward Putnam—its presentation of upwards of fifty wrapped and unwrapped mummy bundles shown as if in the process of excavation apparently “attracted more attention than any exhibit in the [anthropological] building." The Ancón display was essential to what Boas, Putnam, and others believed was the anthropological exposition’s core mission at the Fair: offering a ‘Pre-Columbian’ baseline against which white American society—and supposedly disappearing Northern Native Americans—could be judged. To do so, Dorsey had spent time, effort, and Putnam’s money to excavate burial grounds that Peruvians—elite and indigenous—had long dug and interpreted for themselves. The Peruvian “Necropolis” and its bundles filled with bodies and artifacts were the basis for Dorsey’s subsequent Ph.D. in anthropology, which was the very first awarded to an American in the United States, and the first awarded at Harvard. It also became the gold standard for what Putnam proposed as a “new scientific practice” for archaeological collection and excavation, in which the indigenous dead were not collected separately from their works and tools, but with them, to reconstruct lives less comparable to those of Europe. This apparently epistemic shift in how anthropology approached its historical and non-European subject was as informed by the very nature of Peruvian mortuary practices—in which each interment was an archive of the living—as by ethnological debates in Cambridge, or expanding American settler colonialism.
Given just how many people participated in the Chicago Columbian Exposition of 1893, it is understandable that historians have used the well-documented presence of a manageable few individuals to illuminate the experiences of the crowd. But sometimes the exemplary are so bright that they wash out the wider experience. In terms of the history of anthropology, for example, Franz Boas has become central to our accounts of the field at the World’s Fair, despite his own protests that he thought that his collection of biological and cultural materials from the Pacific Northwest were poorly represented (Cole, 1995 [1985]). There is, therefore, much gained by expanding our frame, to consider less lasting lights at the anthropological Fair, whose contributions illuminate anthropology’s multiple pasts in a way that helps us move beyond genealogies of its future. This piece explores one exhibit whose lack of study is particularly notable, given the extraordinary real estate and notice it claimed in anthropology’s exposition space: a reproduction of the coastal Peruvian “Necropolis” of Ancón, which organizers billed as “probably the largest burying ground, either pre-historic or modern, in the world” (Anonymous, 1894). Excavated and mounted by George A. Dorsey (1868-1931)—Boas’s later rival and a student of the fair’s anthropological coordinator, Harvard’s Frederic Ward Putnam—its presentation of upwards of fifty wrapped and unwrapped mummy bundles shown as if in the process of excavation apparently “attracted more attention than any exhibit in the [anthropological] building” (Moorehead, 1984: 20). This was fitting, given that the Ancón display was essential to what Boas, Putnam, and others believed was the anthropological exposition’s core mission at the Fair: offering a ‘Pre-Columbian’ baseline against which white American society—and supposedly disappearing Northern Native Americans—could be judged.To do so, Dorsey had spent time, effort, and Putnam’s money to excavate burial grounds that Peruvians—elite and indigenous—had long dug and interpreted for themselves. The Ancón exhibit therefore helps us reckon with how past scholarship, materials, and lives from the Global South, and not just North American intellectual and cultural currents, shaped this signal moment in American anthropological history.It also helps us re-blaze the path towards anthropology’s more contextualized, less universalizing future without falling into assumptions of its role in American colonialism, at home and abroad.
The social life of death : mortuary practices in the North-Central Andes, 11th-18th centuries
2014
For many societies, the world of the dead reflects the world of the living. Studies of mortuary practices are a fundamental way for scholars to research ancient societies, rituals and belief systems. This thesis examines the transformations in funerary practices in the North-Central Andes from AD 1000 to 1799, a period covering both the Inca and Spanish colonisations. This research demonstrates how historical events, political actions and manipulation can affect the habitus of a society. By studying the ways that people treat their dead, scholars can track changes in the social and cultural practices of ancient groups. This research has a multi-disciplinary approach that combines archaeological and ethnohistorical data. It investigates the ideology related to the use of tombs, within a framework of changing social organisation. By drawing on the existing archaeological and historic reports, a unique database has been created which catalogues the tombs of the Ancash highlands in a sy...
PLoS ONE, 2014
The paleopathological, paleoradiological, histological, molecular and forensic investigation of a female mummy (radiocarbon dated 1451-1642 AD) provides circumstantial evidence for massive skull trauma affecting a young adult female individual shortly before death along with chronic infection by Trypanosoma cruzi (Chagas disease). The mummy (initially assumed to be a German bog body) was localized by stable isotope analysis to South America at/near the Peruvian/ Northern Chilean coast line. This is further supported by New World camelid fibers attached to her plaits, typical Inca-type skull deformation and the type of Wormian bone at her occiput. Despite an only small transverse wound of the supraorbital region computed tomography scans show an almost complete destruction of face and frontal skull bones with terrace-like margins, but without evidence for tissue reaction. The type of destruction indicates massive blunt force applied to the center of the face. Stable isotope analysis indicates South American origin: Nitrogen and hydrogen isotope patterns indicate an extraordinarily high marine diet along with C4-plant alimentation which fits best to the coastal area of Pacific South America. A hair strand over the last ten months of her life indicates a shift to a more ''terrestric'' nutrition pattern suggesting either a move from the coast or a change in her nutrition. Paleoradiology further shows extensive hypertrophy of the heart muscle and a distended large bowel/rectum. Histologically, in the rectum wall massive fibrosis alternates with residual smooth muscle. The latter contains multiple inclusions of small intracellular parasites as confirmed by immunohistochemical and molecular ancient DNA analysis to represent a chronic Trypanosoma cruzi infection. This case shows a unique paleopathological setting with massive blunt force trauma to the skull nurturing the hypothesis of a ritual homicide as previously described in South American mummies in an individual that suffered from severe chronic Chagas disease.
2019
This research explores the relationship between mortuary practice and sociopolitical change among a collection of communities incorporated into the Inca Empire. I conducted this work in the Chincha Valley of central Peru, an area controlled by a complex polity known as the Chincha Kingdom in the Late Intermediate Period, or LIP (AD 1000 – 1400). During the Late Horizon (AD 1400 – 1532), the Chincha Kingdom fell under the rule of the Inca Empire. In this study, I investigated a dense, well-preserved distribution of graves in the middle Chincha Valley. Using methods from archaeology, GIS, and Bayesian statistical modeling, I examined the nature and development of local mortuary practice in the mid-valley from the LIP to the Late Horizon and recorded over 500 well-preserved graves that cluster into 44 mortuary sites. These sites vary in layout and have two distinct grave types that differ in architecture and use: above-ground and subterranean graves (chullpas) and subterranean cists. Radiocarbon data indicate continuity, change, and innovation in tomb use and treatment of the dead through time. I argue that these diachronic mortuary patterns were products of negotiations among indigenous groups and the Inca. Mid-valley peoples manipulated the remains of their dead to produce new deceased persons before and during their incorporation into the Inca Empire. They dynamically reconfigured the ways relationships among the living and the deceased were performed, thereby transforming their sociopolitical landscape in the face of imperial conquest. This study provides support for a model of mortuary practice as an interface through which interactions between complex societies and expansionist empires occurred.
2019
The Moche culture thrived in the north coast of Peru between the second and ninth centuries AD. While still a point of debate, many consider the Moche one of the first state-level societies in the pre-Columbian Americas. One fascinating aspect of this society is the elaborate burials, with sumptuous displays of wealth. Traditionally, scholars have envisioned Moche death as an inherent and static manifestation of hierarchy, status, and power. My dissertation moves away from such object-centered approaches, studying death and its effects as a historically and culturally situated phenomenon. My dissertation draws on extensive archaeological excavations conducted in Huaca La Capilla, a monumental adobe structure located within the Late Moche elite cemetery of San José de Moro, Jequetepeque Valley. Based on the striking similarities between the architectural enclosures discovered in this huaca and those represented in the Moche "Burial Theme," I suggest that Huaca La Capilla was one of the loci where Moche funerary performances systematically occurred. These performances constituted large public spectacles orchestrated around the physical transformation of the corpses of elite individuals and their preparation for their symbolic journey into the afterlife: a process of transformation from a human to a divine entity, of becoming ancestors. Integrating multidisciplinary methods of analysis, my dissertation presents a comprehensive study of Huaca La Capilla, its architectural layout, and its many (and still enigmatic) transformations. I examine the role of Huaca La Capilla within the dynamic deathscape of San José de Moro, providing new insights on the relationship of huacas with death, the regeneration of life, and the cosmological order in the Moche world. In the context of political balkanization that characterized the Jequetepeque Valley during Late Moche times, I argue that the participation in these ritual spectacles was a key means for the creation of political and religious subjectivities. Ultimately, this case study offers novel anthropological perspectives on how the dramatic nature of the rituals orchestrated around the burial of elite individuals (the-body-as-spectacle, sensu Foucault 1977) constituted a means through which pre-modern states were held and constantly reproduced. v ACKNOWLEDGMENT This dissertation would never have been possible were it not for the support and encouragement of a great number of institutions and individuals. My excavations in Huaca La Capilla-San José de Moro were carried out within the frame of the San José de Moro Archaeological Program, which I had the opportunity to direct from 2013 to 2016. My excavations were funded by the has been not only an extraordinary advisor but also a true father and friend during my years at Stanford. My research incredibly benefited from his thoughtful advice, inquisitive perspectives on the data, and hard-science-oriented approach. I owe John many abilities I developed during grad school. My recent fascination with dating techniques and Bayesian statistics is due vi to the influence of his remarkable contributions to Andean chronology. John always pushed me to go further and taught me to "think critically." What else can a student ask for from an advisor? I am extremely grateful to him and Rosa Rick for having always made me feel at home. I will never forget the endearing fiestas peruanas, with their respective huaynitos, celebrated at the always-welcoming Rick´s house. Lynn Meskell has been for me a constant source of inspiration and motivation throughout grad school. Lynn has always been there for me, and I am incredibly thankful to her for her continuous support. My admiration for her work is profound and my own research has been greatly influenced by her ideas and publications. Lynn´s work is a proof of how multifaceted and sophisticated archaeology can be! Lynn also introduced me to the fascinating world of heritage ethics. And although my dissertation mainly focuses on my excavations in Huaca La Capilla, I also carried out, under Lynn´s guidance, ethnographic research in different heritage communities in northern Peru. This work is the material for some of my recent publication. I will always remember the adventurous 2014 trip to Peru along with her and the great IPINCH people! Ian Hodder has been, and is, a true example to follow for any archaeologist. I feel incredibly fortunate to have had someone such as Ian on my dissertation committee. Ian´s theory classes at Stanford were truly eye-opening for me. Ian´s advices critically gave shape to my research as well as my long-term theoretical interest. I am very thankful to Ian for all his guidance during these years and for having dedicated time within his busy agenda to reading my proposals and developing with me such a memorable reading class about performance in 2015.