Parental Grief and Mourning in the Ancient Andes

Baitzel, Sarah I.

doi:10.1007/s10816-017-9333-3

Cited by 8 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…Although we cannot yet say to whom these additional crania belonged, nor do we yet fully understand the extended funerary program at Salango (including the deposition of other infants without extra crania, stone figurines, and mortuary goods reflecting influence from multiple regions), it is clear that people manipulated heads and juvenile burials in important ways during this time. Isolated heads in South America were and are symbolically important (Arnold and Hastorf 2008; Weismantel 2015), and deceased children were often given special mortuary treatment (Baitzel 2018; Blom and Couture 2018). The extra crania included with infant burials at Salango may represent an attempt to ensure the protection of these “presocial and wild” souls.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The isolated heads of children are less common (Tung and Knudson 2010). Deceased children were often given special mortuary treatment to protect their presocial and wild souls (Baitzel 2018; Blom and Couture 2018; Toyne 2018). By treating deceased children in unusual or symbolic ways, people created and controlled their universes—given that children's souls, in particular, acted as benefactors to the living (van Kessel 2001) and affected agricultural production, human fertility, and seasonal patterns of rain (Allen 1988).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Unique Infant Mortuary Ritual at Salango, Ecuador, 100 BC

et al. 2019

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The human head was a potent symbol for many South American cultures. Isolated heads were often included in mortuary contexts, representing captured enemies, revered persons, and symbolic “seeds.” At Salango, a ritual complex on the central coast of Ecuador, excavations revealed two burial mounds dated to approximately 100 BC. Among the 11 identified burials, two infants were interred with “helmets” made from the cranial vaults of other juveniles. The additional crania were placed around the heads of the primary burials, likely at the time of burial. All crania exhibited lesions associated with bodily stress. In this report, we present the only known evidence of using juvenile crania as mortuary headgear, either in South America or globally.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

Unique Infant Mortuary Ritual at Salango, Ecuador, 100 BC

et al. 2019

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“…Communities of practice (Lave & Wenger 1991;Roddick & Stahl 2016a;Wenger 1998) offer a compelling framework for examining the dynamic, emergent and heterogeneous relationships between people, objects, places and knowledge that constitute ritual practice. At the same time, a growing awareness of emotions and sensation in the past (Baitzel 2018;Baxter 2020;Fleisher & Norman 2016;Nilsson-Stutz 2020;Tarlow 2012) and studies in the psychology of memory and learning (Conway 2005;Holland & Kensinger 2013) offer important insights into learning through mortuary practice.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning About Death and Burial: Mortuary Ritual, Emotion and Communities of Practice in the Ancient Andes

Baitzel¹

2022

CAJ

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Mortuary rituals are conservative and transformative. As practices of hands-on and conceptual learning, memory making, and inter-generational knowledge transfer they take place within Communities of Practice, where emotionality and temporalities shape learning about death, interment, and commemoration. Drawing on mortuary, ethnographic, and archaeothanatological evidence, this paper explores how inhabitants of the provincial Tiwanaku site Omo M10 (eighth–twelfth centuries ce) in southern Peru experienced and learned death and burial. The reconstruction of three stages of funerary ritual—body preparation, interment, and remembering—represents distinct episodes of bundling. During each stage, increasingly more diverse participants, materials, spaces, and activities differentially shape episodic memory formation and knowledge transfer. I propose that coming to understand the constituent participants, practices, and knowledge of mortuary ritual as emergent and heterogeneous Communities of Practice has important implications for the interpretation of synchronic and diachronic mortuary variability.

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Early Medieval English Childhood and Grave Goods: Mortuary Symbols of Emotion, Affection and Parenting?

Crawford

2024

Contributions to Global Historical Archaeology

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Parental Grief and Mourning in the Ancient Andes

Cited by 8 publications

References 48 publications

Unique Infant Mortuary Ritual at Salango, Ecuador, 100 BC

Unique Infant Mortuary Ritual at Salango, Ecuador, 100 BC

Learning About Death and Burial: Mortuary Ritual, Emotion and Communities of Practice in the Ancient Andes

Early Medieval English Childhood and Grave Goods: Mortuary Symbols of Emotion, Affection and Parenting?

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