MORTUARY RITUALS AND THE SUTTEE AMONG MAPUCHE CHIEFDOMS OF PAMPA-PATAGONIA. THE DOUBLE HUMAN BURIAL OF CHIMPAY (ARGENTINA)

DE JONG, INGRID;; SERNA, ALEJANDRO; MANGE, EMILIANO; PRATES, LUCIANO

Latin American Antiquity

Latin American Antiquity

Lugar: San Diego; Año: 2020 vol. 32 p. 838 - 852

1045-6635

This paper discusses a Mapuche indigenous mortuary context of the nineteenthcentury from middle valley of the Negro River (northern Patagonia, Argentina)characterized by a double burial of a man and a woman. The articulation betweenarchaeological and ethnohistorical data allows us to hypothesize that the burial is theresult of the funeral ritual of a man with a certain political and military hierarchy (cacique or capitanejo ) and that the corpse of the woman would have beeninhumated as the result of the sacrifice of one of his wife in order to accompany theman in his trip to the Allhue Mapu or ?land of souls?. The interpretation of this siteleads to contextualize it in the existing knowledge about the suttee practice in thePampas and Norpatagonia during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Weconclude that this case would be the result of burial ritual known as suttee that thisevent happened between the last decades of the indigenous autonomy (1850-1880)and the first decades after the state conquest of their territories (1880-1900).