Posible trauma perimortem y lesiones infecciosas en un entierro múltiple complejo procedente del sitio Chenque I

LUNA LEANDRO; ARANDA, CLAUDIA; BERÓN, MÓNICA

Necochea, pccia. de Buenos Aires

Otro; Tercer Encuentro de la Asociación de Paleopatología en Sudamérica (PAMinSA III); 2009

Laboratorio de Ecología Evolutiva Humana, UNICEN

Palaeopathological lesions observed in burial # 16 from Chenque I site (Lihué Calel National Park, La Pampa province, Argentina) is described and discussed. This site is a cemetery recurrently used by hunters-gatherers during the late final Holocene. The Minimum Number of Individuals estimated up to the moment is 216 for the excavated portion of the site (about 25 %). Burial # 16 is a funeral package that consisted of five primary subadults of both sexes and between birth and one year-old, closely associated to a 30-39 year-old male that presents dismemberments in several anatomical portions (three sections of the vertebral column and the disarticulation of upper and lower limbs), following a mortuary practice named disposition. A layer of 227 beads forming part of the bundle of the package was also identified. This poster focuses on the analysis of the subadults, several of which present two distinctive characteristics. On the one hand, they show different degrees of periostitis, which is especially important because the prevalence of this pathology in the rest of the individuals of the site is extremely low. On the other, evidence of possible perimortem trauma in several subadult skulls, in the form of depressions and osseous subcircular fractures, with secondary derivative lines, was also identified. As the probable existence of practices of infanticide in the site was previously suggested, one of the possible interpretations would be that the deaths of these subadults were intentional in order to include them in the mortuary package of the adult.