Abstract
Throughout much of the pre-Hispanic Andes, bioarchaeological and iconographic evidence shows that the decapitation, dismemberment, and display of human heads were important aspects of ritual practices. Researchers have debated about the social identities of these decapitated heads—were they revered local ancestors, non-local enemies captured in raids or war, or locals injured in distant combat partially repatriated for home burial—answers which have distinct implications for understanding the motivations and social contexts of this practice. We describe trophy-taking and trophy-making from the Uraca cemetery in pre-Hispanic Arequipa, Peru. To determine whether these trophies were locals, we employ radiogenic isotope analyses (87Sr/86Sr, 206Pb/204Pb, 207Pb/204Pb, 208Pb/204Pb) of tooth enamel from 37 individuals (25 non-trophies and 12 adult male trophies). To understand the degree of childhood mobility that occurred and whether that differed between individuals who became trophies and those who did not, we also examine 87Sr/86Sr, 206Pb/204Pb, 207Pb/204Pb, 208Pb/204Pb in paired teeth from infancy/early childhood and middle childhood of 18 individuals (8 non-trophies and 10 trophies). Results show that 20% of the non-trophies and 75% of the trophies were non-local relative to modeled local 87Sr/86Sr and mean (± 2 SD) of lead isotope values. Intra-childhood differences show that the individuals who became trophies experienced more childhood mobility than non-trophy individuals. This suggests Uraca’s external interactions and mobility were structured by violent intergroup raids and warfare throughout the region. Ongoing analyses will extend Uraca’s residential isobiographies to adolescence and late-life, refine the expected range of isotope ratios in the region, and clarify the extent of Majes Valley mobility during the mid-first millennium CE.
Highlights
Throughout humanity’s history, the performance of violence and violence-related ritual behavior has been profoundly structured by the social identities of the attackers, the attacked, and the audience witnessing violent acts
We examine the geographic origins of decapitated heads interred with combatants in the burial community of Uraca in pre-Hispanic Arequipa, Peru, in order to determine whether they were taken in the context of the violent inter-community raids Bowman describes or some other type of community ritual—if the former, how might the circulation of these heads have defined appositional social identities between individuals and groups, while linking communities into networks of violent exchange? We use a combination of strontium (87Sr/86Sr) and lead
Local and Non-local Origins for the Uraca Trophy and Non-trophy Subsamples We report 55 87Sr/86Sr results from infancy/early childhood and middle childhoodforming tooth enamel from 37 individuals—6 females or probable females, 2 subadults whose sex could not be estimated, 13 males or probable males, and 12 trophy heads, all of which were young to middle adult males (Table 3)
Summary
Throughout humanity’s history, the performance of violence and violence-related ritual behavior has been profoundly structured by the social identities of the attackers, the attacked, and the audience witnessing violent acts. Whether carried out in public or in private, or as a means to achieve ritual or logistical outcomes, violence can be a performative act that derives its meaning from the culturally embedded and historically contingent circumstances of violence (Pérez, 2012; Riches, 1986; Whitehead, 2004, 2007). Violence is a way to create and express social identity and group organization (Whitehead, 2007: 59); outsiders are often defined as those against whom violence can be legitimately directed. The outsider is “integral to the production of group identity” (Whitehead, 2004: 69), so that violence against outsiders often structures social identities and organization within and between communities (Clastres, 1998). According to Bowman (2001: 42), identity politics can be shaped by physical violence—social identities within and beyond a community are configured and reconfigured by forming “borders which enclose an ‘I’ or a ‘we’ and (violently) excluding...others.” As one example of how these differences are embodied, drawing on Clastres (1998) and Harrison’s (1993) examinations of war in small-scale societies in the South American Amazon, Bowman (2001: 34-35) demonstrates how men’s war cults generate a “crystallization of sociality out of what had previously been larger networks of interaction” by shifting intergroup relationships from cooperative, mutually dependent exchange, to antagonistic exchange of “bellicose rhetoric, raiders, and cut off heads.”
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