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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 August 2021

Indira Montt ,
Dánae Fiore ,
Calogero M. Santoro  and
Bernardo Arriaza
Indira Montt*
Affiliation:
Instituto de Alta Investigación, Universidad de Tarapacá, Chile
Dánae Fiore
Affiliation:
Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Técnicas, Asociación de Investigaciones Antropológicas, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina
Calogero M. Santoro
Affiliation:
Instituto de Alta Investigación, Universidad de Tarapacá, Chile
Bernardo Arriaza
Affiliation:
Instituto de Alta Investigación, Universidad de Tarapacá, Chile
*
*Author for correspondence ✉ indiramontt@gmail.com
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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.

Keywords

Atacama Desert coastChileChinchorrohunter-gatherer-fishersembodimentfunerary artmortuary ritual
Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 95 , Issue 384 , December 2021 , pp. 1405 - 1425
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Antiquity Publications Ltd.

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