Title

Formative Period Burial Practices And Cemeteries

Abstract

The lower Verde has an extensive, well-studied sample of human remains that spans the Late to Terminal Formative periods (400 BC- AD 250). The 156 individuals securely dated to the Late/Terminal Formative periods have been excavated or identified at six sites (Figure 4.1; see Barber 2005, 2009; Butler 2011; Joyce 1991a, 1991b, 1999; Joyce et al. 1998: Figure 1.2). Taken together, this burial sample represents domestic and public contexts, covers the entire demographic spectrum, and includes individuals of varying social statuses. Continuity and change through time in burial practices provide insight into shifting social relations as communities became increasingly hierarchical and regional political relations became increasingly centralized. The burials from the lower Verde attest to these changes and also provide information on health (e.g., Mayes et al. 2009; Melmed 2006), nutrition (Joyce 1991b; Taylor et al. 2009), human biology (Christensen 1998a, 1998b), and a variety of social and economic relations (e.g., Barber and Joyce 2007; Joyce 1991b, 1994; King 2006; Mayes and Barber 2008). Drawing conclusions about social organization using mortuary data is a complex and often problematic process (i.e., Binford 1971; Carr 1995; Chesson 2001a; Goldstein 1981; R. Joyce 1999; Meskell 1999, 2000; Saxe 1970). Our approach is based on the premise that burial practices were part of broader social relationships that encompassed the living, the dead, material culture, and the spatial setting in which human remains were located. There is considerable ethnographic, ethnohistoric, and archaeological evidence demonstrating that human interaction did not end with death in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica (i.e., Flannery and Marcus 1976; Gillespie 2001a; Greenberg 1981; Hendon 2000; Houston et al. 2006; Joyce 2000; Lind and Urcid 1983, 2010; McAnany 1995; Monaghan 1995; Urcid 2005; Vogt 1976; Watanabe 1992). As Monaghan (1995, 158) observes for modern Mixtecs, "People maintain an ongoing relationship with the dead in a manner similar to the way they maintain relationships with . . . other members of the community." The terms of social relationships altered when individuals died, but the dead continued to have responsibilities within their social networks and to affect events in the mundane world. The physical remains of deceased individuals were understood to be animate, imbued with the living essence either of a specific individual or of a collectivity to which an individual belonged (Geller 2004; Gillespie 2001b, 71; Houston et al. 2006, 57-101; Urcid 2005). The locations in which the dead were placed as well as the items adorning or accompanying their bodies could be similarly animate (i.e., Barber and Olvera 2012; Greenberg 1981; Houston et al. 2006; Mock 1998; Stuart 1998; Taube 1998). Mortuary practices thus were based on decisions made with input from and in reference to a variety of socially relevant beings. While many of these decisions are invisible to archaeology, approaching human remains and associated material culture as animate entities with agentive capacities transforms burials from the discarded physical matter of once-living people into active elements of ancient social groups. Burial location, body positioning, and grave goods were not passive reflections of identities and statuses, either of the dead during their lives or their still-living kin. Instead, burial practices emerged from the formation and reassertion of social relationships. As such, they provide insight into social groups and the terms by which these groups were defined (Chesson 2001b; R. Joyce 1999). We begin, therefore, with a detailed discussion of how human remains were emplaced by ancient people. To facilitate discussion here and enable future use of these data by other scholars, we describe burial practices by ceramic phase and by site. We briefly discuss population health and pathologies and conclude with a diachronic assessment of continuity and change in burial practices over time. A detailed examination of the burial data from the lower Verde demonstrates changing definitions of social groups, including local communities, status groups, gender categories, and age. The way in which members of different social groups interacted clearly altered over time; inequality became more openly expressed and community membership became more inclusive.

Publication Date

1-1-2013

Publication Title

Polity and Ecology in Formative Period Coastal Oaxaca

Volume

9781607322122

Number of Pages

97-133

Document Type

Article; Book Chapter

Personal Identifier

scopus

DOI Link

https://doi.org/10.5876/9781607322023.c04

Socpus ID

84920003779 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/84920003779

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