Burial Practices in the Lagoa Santa Region

Abstract

In reconstructing the life of past populations, human burials are highly informative of symbolic and ritual behavior. In eastern South America, however, skeletal remains dating to the early Holocene are rare, precluding the proper study of their ritual dimensions. Lagoa Santa region in central Brazil is an important exception, as hundreds of well-preserved early Holocene human skeletons were recovered throughout 170 years of research. Here, I present a critical review of the history of discoveries of human remains in the region starting with the first interventions of Peter Lund in the first half of the nineteenth century. New excavations in Lapa do Santo starting in 2001 have revealed an elaborated setting of mortuary behavior in Lagoa Santa. Between 9.4 and 9.6 cal kyBP, the reduction of the body by means of mutilation, defleshing, tooth removal, exposure to fire, and possibly cannibalism, followed by the secondary burial of the remains according to strict rules, became a central element in the treatment of the dead. In the absence of monumental architecture or grave goods, these groups were using parts of fresh corpses to elaborate their rituals, showing this practice was not restricted to the Andean region at the beginning of the Holocene. Between 8.2 and 8.6 cal kyBP, another change occurred, whereby pits were instead filled with disarticulated bones of a single individual without signs of body manipulation, showing that during the early Archaic, Lagoa Santa was a region inhabited by dynamic groups that were in constant transformation over a period of centuries.