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

• Autores: Indira Montt, Dánae Fiore, Calogero M. Santoro, Bernardo T. Arriaza
• Localización: Antiquity, ISSN 0003-598X, Vol. 95, Nº 384, 2021, págs. 1405-1425
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • 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.