Landscape, bodies and historical trajectories: funerary practices of the southern Cajón Valley (North-western Argentina, 6000-1300 BP).

CORTÉS, LETICIA INÉS

Exeter

Seminario; Research Seminars 2015. Department of Archaeology, University of Exeter; 2015

Department of Archaeology, University of Exeter

Landscapes are the outcome of dwelling. Both relational and processual, landscapes are going through constant change in the interaction of human experience and social life. Practices of body disposal are inseparable from the landscape, both being configured and configuring everyday paths, places and tasks. Within this framework I will present some of the diverse ways in which the bodies of the dead have been disposed in La Quebrada locality, southern Cajón Valley (North-western Argentina), for over 5000 years.Ethnographical and etnohistorical accounts from the Andean region serve to this purpose in encouraging a locally-informed understanding of the perceptions of matter, life and death. While acknowledging the dangers of any direct analogy, Andean ?traditional? worldview provides a necessary framework to be included in the interpretation of past funerary rituals and practices, which cannot be fully understood from solely Western perspectives. It is argued that the sensorial character of certain materials and natural discontinuities in the landscape was one of the resources used to define the funerary sphere within the practice of dwelling. Also, evidence shows that the dead were not only deposited but also transported, travelling across the landscape and moving with the living. In this sense, contexts that involve the presence of human remains could be understood as "material statements", that is, non-discursive ways of expressing the quality of death from the meanings associated with certain matters and ways of body treatment.