Relational bodies: affordances, substances and embodiment in Chinchorro funerary practices c. 7000–3250 BP. (December 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Montt, Indira; Fiore, Dánae; Santoro, Calogero M.; Arriaza, Bernardo
• Is Part Of: Antiquity. Volume 95:Number 384(2021)
• Page Start: 1405
• Page End: 1425
• Publication Date: 2021-12
• Subjects: Atacama Desert coast -- Chile -- Chinchorro -- hunter-gatherer-fishers -- embodiment -- funerary art -- mortuary ritual; Archaeology -- Periodicals; Antiquities -- Periodicals; 930.05
• DOI: 10.15184/aqy.2021.126
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0003-598X

Abstract

Abstract: Abstract : Funerary art has the body as its main material component, expresses responses to death and offers insight into relationships between the living and the dead. Chinchorro hunter-gatherer-fisher societies along the Atacama Desert coast provide a key example of such connections, having developed one of the world's oldest-known systems of post-mortem body transformation ( c . 7000–3250 BP). A study of 162 modified Chinchorro bodies identifies diachronic changes in these practices, including a decrease in internal stuffing—adding invisible contents that created corporeal volume—and an increase in external body treatment that created visible features. The authors propose that such manipulation was a meaningful form of social embodiment designed to construct a collective identity.