Decapitation Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

The “Lapa do Santo” is an archaeological site located in the Lagoa Santa region (central Brazil) which was excavated from 2001 to 2009 as part of a large scientific project entitled “Origins and Microevolution of Man in America: a Paleoanthropological Approach”. This project was undertook by the Laboratory of Human Evolutionary Studies of the Bioscience Institute of the Sao Paulo University and supported by the Sao Paulo State Grant Foundation (FAPESP). A total of 26 burials were exhumed, with at least five individuals directly dated between 8800 and 8200BP. These new findings have important implications for those interested in the mortuary practices of Early Holocene pre-historic groups that inhabited South America.
In this dissertation the traditional view according to which the mortuary practices of the Lagoa Santa region were characterized as simple and homogeneous is challenged. In the absence of sophisticated architecture or wealthy goods, the funerary rituals were elaborated through the use of the human body. Although other mortuary patterns are described for the “Lapa do Santo” rockshelter, it is in Pattern 1 (very well dated between 8800 and 8200 BP) that this logic is expressed in its most clear and exuberant form.
On what concern the archaeological record, this is expressed by means of disarticulated skeletons of multiple individuals, individualized skulls, bundle of bones, mandible with drills in the coronoid process, profusion of both cut marks and chopper marks, teeth extraction, selection of anatomical regions, fire exposition and ochre application. At the same time the presence of fully articulated skeletons, among which the oldest decapitation case ever reported for the New World, testify that the manipulation of the body happened while soft tissues were still present. Later on, the bones were relocated and disposed in accordance with a series of well defined rules. Through the use of parts of the human body they were reifying logical principles that most probably reflect aspects of their own cosmology. The double dichotomy among “adult” and “sub adult”, “cranium” and “post-cranium”, “diaphysis” and “epiphysis”, and “teeth” and “empty alveoli” that were expressed so clearly in those burials through different arrangements of human bones makes the adopted logic “levi-straussian” in its essence. The consistency by which those principles were expressed and the technical similarity through which they were made might suggest the existence of a group of specialized individuals.
However, after 8000 BP a drastic change on the mortuary practices of the “Lapa do Santo” site is observed. The emphasis on the peri mortem manipulation of the body is substituted by burials that can be characterized as fully secondary (Mortuary Pattern 3). Those burials are characterized by shallow circular pits with approximately 40 cm of diameter and 30 cm depth. Each pit was chaotically filled with the bones of one single individual, whose spatial disposition presented no anatomical logic, although some localized group of bones could still be in direct connection. In contrast to what was observed for Pattern 1, there was no bone or body part selection and almost every single bone of the skeletons were recovered. The long bones diaphyses were intentionally broken in its central region before the final deposition resulting in very particular breakage pattern. In some cases the graves were covered by a circular structure composed of small limestone slabs.
Such radical change on the mortuary practices of the site must reflect some type of modification in the social organization of those groups. Up to this moment, the human burials from the “Lapa do Santo” rockshelter are the only source in Lagoa Santa`s archaeological record that points to such change around 8000 BP. In the future, when other lines of evidence have been studied, it will be possible to evaluate if this change was the result of an internal reorganization of the groups already present in the region or if it reflects the arriving of a new population during the period in question.
Another important implication of the new burials found at “Lapa do Santo” rockshelter, especially on what concern Pattern 1, is that they demand a complete reevaluation of geographical and chronological dispersion of practices of body manipulation in South America. Today there is a consensus in literature that this was a pan-andine feature since Early Holocene. However, the presence of these same kinds of practices in central Brazil shows that this is a more complex scenario than once though. In the specific case of the practice of decapitation, the findings of the “Lapa do Santo” rockshelter not only expand its spatial occurrence during pre-history in thousands of kilometers, showing this was not limited to the andean region, but also show that its temporal depth was at least 4000 years greater than once believed.
At the end of this dissertation the importance of the findings of the “Lapa do Santo” rockshelter, in the Lagoa Santa region in Central Brazil, becomes clear. Through the combination of an intrinsically fascinating archaeological record, a high degree of bone preservation that reminds the Pompeii metaphor and a very meticulous field and laboratory work, “Lapa do Santo” rockshelter has great potential to become in the next decade one of the most relevant sites for those who wants to understand the mortuary practices of the first Americans.
The dissertation within this CD intends to be the first step in this direction. However, there is still much work to be done and the interpretations proposed here must be seen more as a starting point than an ending one. On the other hand, this dissertation gains importance because all the primary documentation concerning the exhumation and curation of the human remains from “Lapa do Santo” rockshelter was included within it. We hope that by doing this we can offer the academic community the necessary elements to judge, in a critical way, the implications of the new findings of this Brazilian archaeological site. In the next years these material will certainly be published in the usual journals (in English). However, it would be impossible to make all the primary documentation available. This is why we decided to send a copy of this dissertation even for those who are not Portuguese speakers and that we judged would be interested in this material. Although not ideal we believe that the graphic nature of this documentation makes this effort valuable.