Huaca Amarilla, a unique Andean grave site dedicated to burials of foetuses, newborns, infants and young children from the 9th to the 15th century CE (Sechura Desert, Peru)

Dausse L.; Dufour E.; Lefèvre C.; Cagnato C.; Gutiérrez B.; Vásquez S.; Goepfert N. · Bulletins et Memoires de la Societe d'Anthropologie de Paris (2022) · DOI: 10.4000/bmsap.9660

Resumen

The Huaca Amarilla site, in the Sechura Desert in northern Peru, has yielded a singular burial complex from between the 9th and the 15th century CE. It comprises 112 immature individuals (70 from excavated funerary contexts and 42 identified from scattered remains) whose estimated ages at death were between 24 weeks of amenorrhea and 7 years, plus a single adult. The selection of a reliable method to estimate the age at death of the buried population is crucial for studies of the relationship between the living and the dead that aim to document the place of young individuals in Lambayeque-Sicán, Chimú and Inca societies. The tradition of carefully burying foetuses, perinatals, infants and children around a platform near a domestic area raises the question of the relationships, over several centuries, of the site’s inhabitants with their deceased children.

Instituciones: Universidad Nacional de Trujillo