Les sépultures du bassin de Mexico aux phases Zacatenco et Ticomán

Abstract

For the Formative period in the Mexico Basin, burial data arise from burials excavated in different sites dating from Zacatenco and Ticomán phases (b.c. 700 – a.c. 100). Burials distribution leads us to wonder if we can restitute and understand the spatial burial organization in these societies. Even without consideration of ideology for burial practices or choices of investigated sites or part of them in the twentieth century, material data poses the problematic of the burials’ representativeness for studying the Preclassic burial spaces organization. We intend to identify burial spaces as depositional places of deaths and cultural practices in relation with death: even though the studied burials allow us to delimit burial spaces, they may not be regarded as references standing for the whole burial spaces of these societies since the basin sites periphery or the rural zones remain badly known. Nevertheless taking the scale of the whole basin to study spatial burial organization allows to reduce mentioned distortions; spaces were multifunctional, burials were distributed in the daily spaces of people: houses, patios, politico-religious platforms. If the materiality of the burial spaces was omnipresent in cities or villages and in relation with ancient everyday life, death ideology should probably have been too.