Selective complexity and adaptive mortuary behavior

Abstract

Trends in human history are increased cultural complexity and social differentiation and marked beginnings, endings, reversals, and turns and twists at different scales (1). Within these trends, the creation of social groups and communities is an active process that involves cultural pluralism, ideology, negotiated identity, economy, the built environment, and mortuary expression. In most societies, death implies passage from a visible, living state to an invisible, buried one. This is not the case with the ancient Chinchorro society of the coastal Atacama Desert of north Chile and south Peru. In PNAS, the observations reported by Marquet et al. (2) on the mortuary practices of this society allow us to better understand the cultural processes and environmental conditions that connected human history, cognition, and ideology to reproduce small-scale maritime communities through repeated encounters with the artificially mummified cadavers of the dead. Organic matter such as the human body is naturally well preserved in the extremely arid environment of the desert. As presented by the authors (2), mummified remains were deliberately placed in shallow, visible graves with few offerings, and continuously removed and manipulated for interaction with the living. The Chinchorro society practiced two types of mummification: natural and artificial. Natural preservation involved burial in the ground, where the body was desiccated and preserved. Cadavers were artificially mummified and evidently socially distinguished by painting them red and black, coating them with mud, or bandaging and cording them with plant material. For practical purposes, natural desiccation was sufficed to preserve bodies: artificial treatment was preservation overkill. Marquet et al. (2) argue that the artificial treatment appeared in times of increased marine resources and fresh groundwater between approximately 7,500 and 4,500 y ago. This abundance led to a growth in the human population and thus the increase in the dead, as well as the appearance of new technologies, including mummification and tools for resource procurement. Throughout this period, visible burial sites built up across the coastal landscape, which led to more interactions between the living the dead. These increased encounters formed part of the cognitive map of people’s daily lives and played a central role in the making of the Chinchorro culture and the emergence of social complexity.