Mortuary behaviour in subadults: children as active social actors in hunter-gatherer societies of the Centre of Argentina

BERÓN, M., ARANDA, C. Y L. LUNA

International Journal of Childhood in the Past

Oxbow Books

Año: 2012 vol. 5 p. 51 - 69

1758-5716

Children are scarcely represented in the prehistoric burial sites of high mobility hunter-gatherers. Anyway, their visibility and presence in the archaeological record is highly significant to understand patterns of residence, life way, social hierarchies and mortality tendencies. This issue is specially important considering their representation in cemeteries and related to mortuary behaviors. Chenque I site is a prehispanic cemetery from Western Pampas in Argentina, where subadults are highly represented. In this paper, several archaeological topics are discussed from different analytical perspectives. Social hierarchies, mortality patterns and the social role of childhood in these societies are some of these topics. The representations of childhood in multiple burials, in which the cause of death is clearly interpersonal violence, are also analyzed. While biologically immature, juvenile people played active and important social roles in war and conflict during the Final Late Holocene in the Centre of Argentina.