Radiocarbon Dating of Pre-Columbian Peruvian Funerary Bundles of the Chancay Culture

Abstract

The article presents the results of the absolute dating of 31 pre-Columbian funerary bundles excavated on the Cerro Colorado site located in the northern part of the Peruvian Central Coast, where the Chancay culture developed in the last centuries before the Spanish invasion. The typical custom in this region was to wrap the dead with textiles and a vegetal material, by which the bundle was created. The funerary bundles of the Cerro Colorado differed in terms of the complexity, quantity and quality of the materials used (especially textiles and metal ornament). Before our project, there was not a single radiocarbon (14C) date for an undisturbed Chancay tomb, which made it impossible to understand the temporal dependency between the elaborated, standard, and modest bundles. Our results finally shed light on their proper chronological position, also demonstrating that the most elaborate bundles were created between the 13th and 15th centuries.

La cronología absoluta de los fardos funerarios de la cultura Chancay del cementerio de Cerro Colorado, Huacho

“…El estudio fue conducido en Poznań Radiocarbon Laboratory en Poznań, Polonia, con el método de AMS (la descripción detallada del procedimiento en Majchrzak et al 2021). Los resultados fueron calibrados con el programa OxCal 4.2, con el empleo de la curva de calibración SHCal13.…”

“…Edad calibrada con la probabilidad de 95.4 % -la datación absoluta AMS del fardo, a base de la tabla 1. (Fuente:Majchrzak et al 2021).…”