an integrated analysis of pre-hispanic mortuary practices

Southern Illinois University CarbondaleOpenSIUC

Publications Department of Anthropology

6-2004

An Integrated Analysis of Pre-Hispanic MortuaryPractices: A Middle Sicán Case StudyIzumi ShimadaSouthern Illinois University Carbondale

Ken-ichi ShinodaNational Science Museum, Tokyo

Julie FarnumMontclair State University

Robert CorrucciniSouthern Illinois University Carbondale

Hirokatsu WatanabeTerra Information Engineering Company

Follow this and additional works at: http://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/anthro_pubs© 2004 by The Wenner‐Gren Foundation for Anthropological ResearchPublished in Current Anthropology, Vol. 45, No. 3 ( June 2004) at 10.1086/382249

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of Anthropology at OpenSIUC. It has been accepted for inclusion inPublications by an authorized administrator of OpenSIUC. For more information, please contact [email protected].

Recommended CitationShimada, Izumi, Shinoda, Ken-ichi, Farnum, Julie, Corruccini, Robert and Watanabe, Hirokatsu. "An Integrated Analysis of Pre-Hispanic Mortuary Practices: A Middle Sicán Case Study." ( Jun 2004).

http://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu?utm_source=opensiuc.lib.siu.edu%2Fanthro_pubs%2F8&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=PDFCoverPages

http://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/anthro_pubs?utm_source=opensiuc.lib.siu.edu%2Fanthro_pubs%2F8&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=PDFCoverPages

http://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/anthro?utm_source=opensiuc.lib.siu.edu%2Fanthro_pubs%2F8&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=PDFCoverPages

http://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/anthro_pubs?utm_source=opensiuc.lib.siu.edu%2Fanthro_pubs%2F8&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=PDFCoverPages

http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/382249

mailto:[email protected]

369

C u r r e n t A n t h ro p o l o g y Volume 45, Number 3, June 2004� 2004 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved 0011-3204/2004/4503-0004$3.00

An IntegratedAnalysis of Pre-Hispanic MortuaryPractices

A Middle Sican Case Study1

by Izumi Shimada,Ken-ichi Shinoda, Julie Farnum,Robert Corruccini, andHirokatsu Watanabe

Recent debate has raised serious questions about the viability ofthe social and ideological reconstruction of prehistoric culture onthe basis of mortuary analysis. In recent years bioarchaeology hasgained considerable prominence, underscoring the fact that death,burials, and associated mortuary practices are multifaceted phe-nomena shaped by biological, social, ideological, and taphonomicfactors. Few studies attempting social reconstruction through mor-tuary analysis, including those of a bioarchaeological character,have adequately addressed this multidimensionality. This studyshows that social, ideological, and bioarchaeological reconstructioncan be productively pursued through tight integration of a multi-tude of approaches and perspectives set within a long-term re-gional study. Focusing on two large 1,000-year-old Middle Sicanshaft tombs on the north coast of Peru, it integrates analyses ofmitochondrial DNA, inherited dental traits, developmental health,diet, placement of interred individuals and associated grave goods,and data from ground-penetrating radar surveys. Overall it showsthat these tombs reflected the broader social organization and werepart of a planned elite cemetery and that the overlying monumen-tal adobe mound served as the physical focus of ancestor worship.

i z u m i s h i m a d a is Professor of Anthropology at Southern Illi-nois University (Carbondale, IL 62901, U.S.A. [[email protected]]), specializing in Andean archaeology. ken-ichi shinodais a senior research physical anthropologist at the National Sci-ence Museum in Tokyo. jul ie farnum is Assistant Professorof Anthropology at Montclair State University. robertcorruccini is Professor of Anthropology at Southern IllinoisUniversity. hirokatsu watanabe is the senior ground-pene-trating-radar specialist at Terra Information Engineering Company,Yokohama. The present paper was submitted 31 iii 03 and ac-cepted 29 x 03.

[Supplementary material appears in the electronic edition of thisissue on the journal’s web page (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/CA/home.html).]

1. Relevant archaeological field and laboratory work between 1990and 2002 was conducted with the generous support of research

Human burials, with their tangible and intangible com-ponents, are shaped by the interplay of numerous factors,and therefore they provide a wide range of informationand insight about cultures, populations, and their envi-ronments, depending on the analytical perspective oneadopts. Indeed, recognition of the multivariate and in-formative character of the conception and treatment ofdeath has led to many anthropological studies. Hertz(1960[1909]) offered a sophisticated theory on the collec-tive representation of death that focused on the triadicinterplay among the dead/soul, the corpse/burial, and theliving/mourners (Metcalf and Huntington 1991). Formuch of the twentieth century, however, archaeologistsfocused on the material aspects of death—burials and,in particular, their associated furnishings. Burial exca-vations were commonly motivated by the search forwell-preserved decorated artifacts in presumed sealed,synchronous context. They served primarily as the basisfor stylistic dating and determination of cultural affili-ation. This vision of burials was basically static, com-partmentalized, and object-centered. Osteological re-mains, rituals and symbolism, and the living remainedlargely unexplored.

In an effort to redress the atheoretical and underde-veloped character of mortuary archaeology, Binford(1971) offered the general proposition that treatment indeath was primarily determined by one’s social positionin life and that sociopolitical complexity and mortuaryelaboration were positively correlated. Much of his ar-gument rested on findings from his cross-cultural studyof 40 historical and modern societies. Concurrently, Saxe(1970) proposed a body of testable theory (i.e., eight hy-potheses) regarding the degrees of concordance betweenmortuary practice and social structure in three ethno-graphic settings. These two complemented each otherand have since come to be called the Saxe-Binford hy-pothesis or the “representationist” position (Brown 1971;1995a:393; 1995b:10).

This position provided the theoretical underpinningfor a generation of mortuary studies that directly or in-directly promoted a positivist vision of social evolutionand presumably the predictable correlation between ma-

grants to Shimada from the Heinz Foundation (1999), the NationalGeographic Society (1999, 2001), the Shibusawa Ethnological Foun-dation (1990–94, 1995–97), and the Wenner-Gren Foundation forAnthropological Research (2001). Many colleagues and students as-sisted us in the fieldwork that yielded our burial samples. In par-ticular, we thank Victor Curay, Carlos Elera, Kazuharu Mine, JorgeMontenegro, Melody Shimada, Rafael Vega-Centeno, and UrselWagner. Kazuharu Mine and Bin Yamaguchi offered us valuableosteological observations. Corruccini received a summer researchfellowship from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, for hisdental-trait analysis. We thank Robert Benfer and William Duncanfor their assistance in making silicon molds and their dental stonecasts, respectively. Tooth sampling by Shinoda and Shimada in Peruand laboratory analysis by Shinoda at Saga Medical School weresupported by a grant-in-aid for scientific research (2000–2004) fromJapan’s Ministry of Education, Science, Sports, and Culture. R. C.Sutter kindly allowed us to cite his unpublished papers. Finally, forhelpful comments on earlier drafts, we thank Haagen Klaus, Theo-dore Schurr, and Melody Shimada. Troy Case assisted with com-pilation of some references.

370 F current anthropology Volume 45, Number 3, June 2004

terial remains and social structure. Determination of thesocial correlates of mortuary treatment through mea-surement of energy expenditure (e.g., Tainter 1978), forexample, seemed to offer a clear conception of the per-tinent cause-effect relationship and operational ease butleft one wondering how energy expenditure could befully measured, what was really being measured, andwhether nonmaterial factors had any significance at all(cf. Braun 1981, Cannon 1989). This and other mortuarystudies of the same era focused on deceased individuals,material attributes, and the evolutionary complexity oftheir societies.

The underlying premise of a correlation between fu-nerary treatment and social complexity was soon chal-lenged (e.g., Hodder 1980, 1982). O’Shea (1984) pointedto the muddying effects of factors such as formation pro-cesses and sampling. Even the reliability and compara-bility of the ethnographic data that underlay the Saxe-Binford hypothesis came to be questioned (e.g., McHugh1999, Morris 1987). In response to criticism from bothwithin and outside the representationist camp, impor-tant tests and refinements of the hypothesis were made,for example, in the case of Goldstein’s (1980) elaborationof Saxe’s (1970:119) hypothesis 8 regarding the mainte-nance of formal cemeteries by corporate groups.

More recent efforts by postprocessualists to broadenour perspective on mortuary practices to encompass rit-uals and symbolism are largely a reaction to the per-ceived failure of the representationists to acknowledgetheir primary role. Postprocessualists have forcefully ar-gued that burial practices are contingent upon many non-material factors and that a strong and lasting tie betweenthe living and the dead may express itself in diverseways; social status is seen as the variable and negotiabledimensions of an individual’s kinship and political back-ground, as well as lifestyle and economic basis (ParkerPearson 2000:33, 83). They maintain that burials do notsimply or necessarily reflect sociopolitical structure butrather provide opportunities for the living to create andmaintain that structure. Here, living survivors are seennot as passive conformists to traditional funerary cus-toms but as knowledgeable social actors capable of pur-suing an agenda that may diverge from those customs;in other words, mortuary practices are seen as malleableand dynamic social constructs that may disguise the so-cial position and relations of the dead and be more in-formative about the living (e.g., Parker Pearson 1982,Shanks and Tilley 1982). In fact, burials should not beassumed to have been the exclusive loci of social rep-resentations. Ceremonies that were physically detachedfrom and performed before or after the interment (e.g.,feasting) may well have been the primary focus of socialand symbolic display, if not material investment (e.g.,Goldstein 1980, Trinkaus 1984). Concurrently, gravegoods have come to be seen as tokens of respect or af-fection or even reflections of the political motives of theliving rather than or in addition to social status markersand possessions of the dead. Thus, there has been a ten-dency in recent decades to see mortuary analysis as ameans of identifying social or ethnic memories, identi-

ties and boundaries, symbolism and cosmology (e.g.,Cannon 1989; Dillehay 1995; Pader 1982; Parker Pearson1982, 1993; Shanks and Tilley 1982, Tarlow 1999).

At the same time, this genre of mortuary analysis,though often thoughtful and inspiring, has its own meth-odological and theoretical weaknesses and challenges.McHugh (1999:16) considers the main difficulty to bethat of distinguishing purposeful ideological manipula-tions from other cultural behavior or natural processesthat would produce the same kind of material remains.In this sense, it is understandable that insightful mor-tuary studies of this genre have often been focused onwell-documented social contexts in historical Britain(e.g., Cannon 1989, Parker Pearson 1982, Tarlow 1999)or built on the application of presumed universal dual-istic oppositions such as sacred/profane and female/male(e.g., Hodder 1984, Shanks and Tilley 1982). Other thanthe importance of contextual analysis, these highly var-ied case studies do not offer general methodologicalguidelines for, for example, investigating the symbolicdimension of nonliterate, pre-Hispanic mortuary prac-tices. Recognition of the lasting bonds between the deadand the living and of the wide range of settings in whichmortuary rituals and related social displays may takeplace implies that the boundaries for such contextualanalysis should be expanded. How one draws appropriateboundaries for such contextual analysis remains vague.

Advocates of these two positions remain quite farapart, although they have arrived at similar conclusionsand efforts at rapprochement (e.g., Morris 1991, Trinkaus1995) have narrowed the gulf. In addition, a series ofcritical assessments of the representationist position ac-tually have had the effect of highlighting its merits.Though the degree and nature of the correspondenceamong ideal and practiced social structure and mortuarytreatments can be quite variable (e.g., Bloch 1971, Ucko1969), it has been shown to be applicable to complexsocieties with institutionalized social and economic in-equalities such as the Moche, Middle Sican, and Chimuon the north coast of Peru. In these societies, upper-class“groups . . . attempt to preserve the status quo of in-herited rights,” for example, by constructing monumen-tal tombs that may serve as reminders of their powerand endurance (Brown 1995b:393–95; see also Ucko1969:270).

The processualist-postprocessualist debate has alsohad the long-term beneficial effect of dispelling naiveexpectations of facile social reconstruction through mor-tuary analysis and instilling a more sophisticated un-derstanding of the multiple factors (particularly rituals,symbolism, and the living as an active agency) and pro-cesses that structure mortuary patterns. It has also re-minded us that burials are not the exclusive focus orlocus of social representation and display—that mortu-ary rituals may take place prior to and after intermentof the deceased near and/or away from the burial site.Further, the debate has driven home the point that bur-ials and associated mortuary practices embody a varietyof coded messages left by the living regarding the de-ceased and their society and culture and that interrela-

shimada et al . Pre-Hispanic Mortuary Practices F 371

tions between the living and the dead in specific histor-ical and social contexts are largely responsible for theobserved variation in mortuary practices. Finally, thoughneither of these competing schools has adequately ad-dressed analysis of the physical remains of the dead, en-coded within these remains is valuable information con-cerning the life history and lifestyle of the individualthat must be considered together with the other lines ofevidence considered above.

Methodologically speaking, decoding these messagesrequires, first, an understanding of regional social andhistorical contexts and patterning. This understandingis critical for countering problems stemming from therelatively small and/or skewed samples of excavated bur-ials that the archaeologist commonly confronts. In es-sence, a productive mortuary study should be set withinsustained, broadly conceived regional research. Such re-search organization has been advocated (e.g., Beck 1995,Brown 1995b, Buikstra 1977, Milner 1984) but rarely im-plemented. Second, the importance of studying both ac-tual burials and associated mortuary rituals, both pre-and postinterment, necessitates examination not only ofgraves but also of their broader contexts, including as-sociated cemeteries, altars, and settlements. Third, bur-ial samples should be large and diverse enough to ap-proximate the biological and social variability within thesynchronous regional population. Lastly, a balanced ex-amination of the biological and nonbiological aspects ofthe deceased (i.e., a multivariate approach) is needed (e.g.,Buikstra 1977, McHugh 1999, Parker Pearson 2000, Robbet al. 2001), including a determination of how diagenesisor postmortem alteration and biological and/or culturalpractices account for the observed variation in the sam-pled burials.

Recognition that human remains are a veritable mineof information concerning the biological and social fac-tors and processes of the deceased and the living under-writes the last point and the surging interest in bioar-chaeology. This field has become a major alternativeresearch path to social reconstruction based on excavatedburials. Bioarchaeology is typically concerned with re-lationships between skeletal biology and behavior andlifetime events at the individual level and between bi-ological patterns and the influence of cultural institu-tions and lifestyles at the population level (e.g., Boyd1996, Larsen 1999).2 Relevant institutions and lifestylechoices include religious customs and various forms ofsocial inequality. In other words, a broadly conceivedbioarchaeological study can effectively contribute to thereconstruction of social, religious, and other dimensionsof a given culture. In fact, a generation ago Buikstra(1977) offered a model of bioarchaeological research or-ganization that pointed to this potential, which has re-mained largely unrealized.

2. The current use of the term “bioarchaeological” diverges fromthat of an earlier era, when it denoted the study of preserved animaland plant remains from archaeological deposits for information onpast human diet and subsistence, both the natural and the anthro-pogenic environment, and other related topics (Clarke 1972).

Aims and Hypotheses

Using our case study of pre-Hispanic mortuary practices,this paper demonstrates how a comprehensive social andreligious reconstruction may be achieved through abroadly conceived bioarchaeological study nested withina broader, long-term regional project. Our study is builton a relatively large, synchronous burial sample that rep-resents much of the regional social spectrum, in-depthunderstanding of relevant regional historical and socialcontexts, elucidation of pre- and postinterment ritualsettings, and close integration of a multitude of analyt-ical perspectives and specialists in all phases of field andlaboratory work.

The present study aimed to elucidate (1) the biological,social, and cultural relationships among the 34 inferredcommoners and elite individuals excavated from twolarge 1,000-year-old shaft tombs and five small pit gravesfrom the monumental temple of Huaca Loro at the Mid-dle Sican capital of Sican, situated within the Poma Na-tional Historical Sanctuary in the mid–La Leche Valleyon the north coast of Peru; (2) the factors and processesthat affected the life histories of these individuals; and(3) the religious and symbolic significance of thesetombs, both individually and collectively.

A primary hypothesis guiding our research was thatthere was, in general, except for sacrificial burials, aninverse relationship between the distance of a giventomb from a sacred locus (i.e., a temple) and the socialimportance of the interred individual in life: the higherthe status, the closer the tomb to the temple (Shimada1995, Vreeland and Shimada 1981). Related to this hy-pothesis was our expectation that there was a generalpositive correlation between the inferred social statusand the quality of life of the individual as measured byosteological indicators of diet and health. Another work-ing hypothesis was that there was a planned Middle Si-can elite cemetery under and around the Huaca Loro andthat its north-south axis played the symbolic role of sep-arating deceased members of complementary moieties.In other words, we inferred that elite individuals interredin the cemetery were socially cohesive and geneticallyrelated. The last hypothesis is, in essence, a variant ofSaxe’s hypothesis 8. These hypotheses were formulatedlargely on the basis of our earlier study of looted tombs(Carcedo and Shimada 1985, Vreeland and Shimada1981).

In addition to excavation of the aforementioned shafttombs and the inferred “ritual space” around the templeand ground-penetrating radar (hereafter GPR) surveys ofthe same area, our approach integrated independent anal-yses of (1) the distribution, composition, materials, tech-niques, and styles of the associated grave goods, (2)mtDNA, (3) inherited dental traits, (4) developmentalhealth and dietary indicators, and (5) postinterment ta-phonomic processes.

This paper first explains the context of our study andthe sample and goes on to examine multiple lines ofevidence. The final portions of the paper discuss major


Fig. 1. The northern north coast of Peru, showingsites mentioned in the text.

findings emerging out of systematic comparisons ofthese lines of evidence and their methodological and the-oretical implications. We will show that, while our bur-ial sample illustrates the general applicability of theSaxe-Binford hypothesis, a series of ritual and symbolicconsiderations before, during, and after the intermentwas integral to the complex internal and external organ-ization of the shaft tombs. A comparison of archaeolog-ical and biological lines of evidence suggests that thelayout and contents of one tomb in fact reflected MiddleSican social reality in having members of two distinctethnic groups buried in symmetrical opposition. Further,the same comparison effectively underscores the vari-able, context-specific expressions of status and role andthe related difficulty of defining social status on the basisof the limited material attributes of funerary contexts.

Archaeological and Cultural Contexts

The Sican (a.k.a. Lambayeque) is an archaeological cul-ture centered in the extensive Lambayeque region of thenorthern north coast of Peru (fig. 1) that emerged around750–800 c.e. after the political demise of the northernMoche (a.k.a. Mochica). It remained viable until ca. 1375c.e., when the Chimu intruded from the south and con-quered it. Its roughly 600-year span is divided into threeperiods based on major cultural changes documentedthrough excavations of stratified sites and over 100 as-sociated radiocarbon dates. The Early, Middle, and LateSican periods are dated 750/800–900, 900–1100, and1100–1375 c.e., respectively. The Middle Sican repre-sents the florescence of the culture, when its state-levelpolity established dominance over a 400-km stretch ofthe coast from the Chira Valley (and perhaps the Tumbez)in the north to the Chicama in the south. Its interactionsphere extended to the central coast of Ecuador to thenorth, the Maranon River drainage to the east, and Pa-chacamac on the central coast of Peru to the south.

The capital site of Sican in the mid–La Leche Valley,shaped like a T, contained a dozen monumental moundseither covered or surrounded by tombs. Huaca Loro, atruncated pyramidal mound (ca. 80 # 80 m and 35 mhigh) with a 150-m-long multilevel North Platform ex-tending due north from the mound body, formed thewestern edge of the Great Plaza (ca. 500 # 250 m) (fig.2). Most of these mounds were built between 950 and1050 c.e. Atop them were temples with impressive col-onnades and offerings (Spondylus princeps shells, bun-dles of arsenical-copper sheaths, and/or human sacri-fices) in enclosed ceremonial precincts decorated withpolychrome murals of religious iconography (Shimada1981, 1990, 1995). Inferred craft workshops, storage fa-cilities, and elite residences surrounded these mounds,and extensive commoners’ residential settlements en-circled the perimeter of the capital.

Only the characteristics of the culture that are directlypertinent to this paper are described here (for a fullercharacterization, see Shimada 1990, 1995, 2000). Amongits distinguishing features was the production of arsen-

ical-copper and gold alloys on a scale heretofore unseenin Peru (e.g., Cleland and Shimada 1992, Shimada 1994a).Metals permeated all facets of the culture, and differ-entiated access to different metals apparently served asa marker of social status, with arsenical copper beingavailable to commoners and elite alike, ≥10-karat cop-per-silver-gold alloys (tumbaga) and gilt copper to thelow-echelon elite (Shimada 1994a, 1995; Shimada, Gor-dus, and Griffin, 2000), and high-karat gold alloys to thehigh-echelon elite only. The marked social differentia-tion in Middle Sican culture is clearly represented inceramic and metal models of an elaborately dressed per-sonage carried on a litter by four bearers in simple cloth-ing (e.g., Sawyer 1975:46, fig. 55; Shimada, Gordus, andGriffin 2000:30, fig. 2.1). The bearers are shown with earspools and simple headgear. Other artistic representa-tions depict men without these ornaments. The poly-chrome murals that decorated formal adobe structures(e.g., Alva and Alva 1983) and other artistic expressions(e.g., Carcedo 1989, Carrion 1940) show the most elab-orately attired individuals largest and in the highest and


Fig. 2. Isometric reconstruction of Huaca Loro with the locations of excavated and inferred shaft tombs.

most central locations. These lines of evidence indicatethat the Middle Sican culture had a marked social hi-erarchy consisting of at least three levels and that ob-served material variation reflects these social differences.

Prior to the initiation of the Sican Archaeological Pro-ject in 1978, understanding of the Sican culture had beenlargely limited to the style and iconography of lootedfunerary objects (e.g., Larco 1948, Zevallos 1971) and un-tested inferences based on oral dynastic histories re-corded in the sixteenth century c.e. (e.g., Kosok 1965,Trimborn 1979). The first seven seasons (1978–84) of theproject were directed toward elucidation of the regionalpaleoenvironment, natural resources, chronology, andsettlement pattern and Sican economy and technology(e.g., Cleland and Shimada 1992, Craig and Shimada1986, Shimada, Epstein, and Craig 1983). Various Sicanresidential and craft production sites were excavated,yielding some two dozen Sican commoner burials. Thefollowing three seasons (1985–89) focused largely on theorganization and workings of the site of Sican (e.g., Cav-allaro and Shimada 1988, Shimada 1990). Excavationsatop and around monumental adobe platform mounds atSican revealed their ceremonial and elite character. Thisearly work provided us a firm grasp of the regional his-torical and social contexts for the present study. Buildingon this comprehensive background knowledge, in 1990we began the systematic excavation of burials and as-sociated ritual settings for an investigation of Sican so-cial organization and religion (e.g., Shimada 1995).

The Burial Sample

Many earlier studies of pre-Hispanic mortuary practiceshave been limited by skewed samples that failed to rep-resent all segments of society. Brown (1995a:403; alsoMcHugh 1999:16) points out that “a major problem inthe Andes is how to recover representative burial sam-ples for social analysis. False pictures of vertical statusdifferentiation can be created by integrating parts of cem-eteries that happen to have survived.” Realisticallyspeaking, however, a representative sample of any ar-chaeological population is nearly impossible to obtainwithout knowledge of or access to the entire population(Drennan 1996:86). The Poma Sanctuary and the site ofSican in particular have been badly affected by a longhistory (1930s to 1970s) of intensive grave looting withheavy earthmoving machines and organized labor gangs(e.g., Pedersen 1976, Valcarcel 1937). Middle Sican shafttombs, with their quantities of gold and other commer-cially valuable grave goods, were systematically targetedand looted, and locating intact tombs, particularly thoseof the elite, posed a serious challenge. However, theknowledge gained from our prior systematic study ofgrave looting in Poma (Vreeland and Shimada 1981, Car-cedo and Shimada 1985) and occasional excavations ofburials at various Sican sites in the region (e.g., Farnum2002, Shimada 1990) effectively guided our burial ex-cavations at Sican between 1990 and 1997.

Our aim was to collect a large, synchronous burialsample representing as much of the regional social spec-


table 1Archaeological Contexts of the Sampled Individuals

Archaeological Site Number of Burials Cultural Affiliation Location (Valley)Approximate Date

(c.e.)

Elite shaft tomb (EastTomb), Huaca Loro,Sican

5 Middle Sican Mid–La Leche 1000

Elite shaft tomb (WestTomb), Huaca Loro,Sican


Commoner burials,North Trench,Huaca Loro, Sican


Commoner burials,East Sector, HuacaLas Ventanas, Sican


Elite tomb, South Sec-tor, Huaca Las Ven-tanas, Sican


Dedicatory burialsatop Huaca LasVentanas, Sican


Dedicatory burialsatop Huaca Rodil-lona, Sican


Commoner burials,multicraft work-shop, Huaca Sialupe

9 Middle Sican Lower La Leche 1000

Commoner burials,habitational-craftworkshop site,Huaca del PuebloBatan Grande

9 Middle Sican Upper La Leche 950–1100

Commoner and eliteburials, Huaca CaoViejo east face (ElBrujo complex)

50 Provincial Sican Lower Chicama 900–1200

trum as possible. We collected a securely dated sampleof some 50 Middle Sican burials at Sican ranging fromcommoners to the highest-echelon elite (table 1; Farnum2002:74–75, table 4). Most of these burials were exca-vated around and under the monumental temple ofHuaca Loro, which had escaped the full brunt of thelarge-scale looting mentioned above. These burials, to-gether with those documented at Sican and at nearbysites by our project (e.g., Shimada 1990, 1995) and others(e.g., Alva 1986, Bennett 1939, Klaus 2003; Narvaez1995a, b; Pedersen 1976), allow a tentative characteri-zation of Middle Sican funerary treatment in Poma andthe surrounding Lambayeque region. Three basic burialpositions coexisted: flexed and laid on a side, seated withlegs crossed, and extended with the head to the east orsouth. The first two positions may face any of the car-dinal directions except north. The seated position seemsto have been the norm for the elite, though our sampleis very small (four). At Sican, Middle Sican burials arefound atop, under, around, and between the major plat-form mounds. Outside of the capital, burials are typicallyfound in simple shallow pits in stabilized dunes and insubfloor pits in residences or workshops. The shape andsize of pits vary, but they are usually rectangular orsquare and rarely exceed 2 m in any one dimension. With

the exception of the large, deep shaft tombs at Sican,graves were simply dug in the ground with little or nomodification. The presence of an in situ ash-charcoaldeposit atop or just next to some burial pits suggests thata small fire was lighted at the end of or after theinterment.

A shaft tomb, as defined here, has a square or rectan-gular vertical shaft extending at least 5 m below thepresent surface. Shallow, narrow troughlike marks pre-served on the walls of shaft tombs indicate that variednumbers of workers using arsenical-copper tools wereinvolved in the digging. A roofed burial chamber, some-times with wall niches or lateral chambers, is situatedat the bottom of the shaft. Shaft tombs vary from about1 m to as much as 14 m on a side, and their maximumdepth may exceed 15 m.

huaca loro east tomb

The two Middle Sican elite shaft tombs that are the focusof this study, the East and West Tombs at Huaca Loro(fig. 2), were excavated in 1991–92 and 1995–96 respec-tively. The contents and their organization are brieflysummarized here (for additional details, see Shimada


1995, Shimada, Gordus, and Griffin 2000, Shimada andGriffin 1994).

The East Tomb was placed at the corner formed by thenorth base of the Huaca Loro and the east base of theNorth Platform. The tomb mouth was originally coveredby the basal terrace (ca. 2 m thick) of the mound. Belowthe caved-in roof, the 3 # 3-m burial chamber at thebottom of the 11-m-deep shaft contained five individualsand ca. 1.2 tons of diverse grave goods. There were sevenniches of varying size in the four surrounding walls, withniche 1 on the east wall being the largest and serving asa major repository of semiprecious stone beads, tum-baga, and other grave goods. Within the chamber, gravegoods were arranged concentrically and superimposed inlayers on, around, and beneath the cinnabar-coveredbody of the principal personage, a robust male some40–50 years of age.

At the top of this heap of grave contents was thesemiflexed body of a 12-to-15-year-old youth (indeter-minate sex) on a partially disassembled litter. Near thelevel of the litter base, at the mouth of a north wall niche,were a juvenile ca. 5 years of age (indeterminate sex) anda rectangular box containing more than 60 major orna-ments and ritual paraphernalia, mostly of high-karatgold. The level below contained 14 bundles of cast ar-senical-copper implements placed along the edges of theburial chamber, three large piles of tumbaga sheet scraps,and two large piles each of whole Spondylus princepsand Conus fergusoni shells. Objects were grouped to-gether by category and wrapped with or separated byorganic mats covered with tumbaga sheets.

Below these objects was the body of the principal per-sonage, which was placed near the center of the floor.The body was flanked on the north and south sides bya pair of gloves over a meter long covered with gold foil.The right glove held a gold cup. The principal personagewas dressed in full regalia and painted with cinnabarfrom head to toe. Though the body had been compressedby the weight of fill, it was evident that it had beencarefully arranged in a seated and inverted position. Thehead, however, was detached from the body and rotated180� so that it was right side up and facing west. A largegold mask covered the face, which also had a gold noseclip and a pair of gold ear spools.

Accompanying him were two women placed on thenorthwest corner of the floor. They were both gracileand about 30–35 years of age and showed fronto-occipitalskull deformation3 similar to that of the principal per-sonage. Their high social status is suggested by gold or-naments on clothing that has long since perished.

huaca loro west tomb

The West Tomb was situated opposite the East Tombacross the north-south longitudinal axis of the mound(fig. 2). Predicted by our guiding hypothesis regarding aplanned elite cemetery under and around the mound, its

3. This type of deformation is believed to have resulted from bindingthe infant’s head to a flat cradleboard (Verano 1997b, Weiss 1962).

presence was detected by GPR surveys in 1994 and 1995.The tomb was a complex, two-tiered, nested construc-tion—a tomb within a tomb—that contained 24 individ-uals (fig. 3).

The 10 # 6-m antechamber lay 12 m below the surfaceand had 10 wall niches and 12 small, rectangular subfloorpits. Two of the niches near the northeast corner con-tained young adult females with accompanying gravegoods, as did the nearby pit burials. One central niche(niche 6) contained a 12–13-year-old boy with annularcranial deformation.4 The remaining 7 niches werelargely empty. The subfloor square and rectangular pitswere laid out in two symmetrically opposing groups ofsix each on the north and south sides of the central cham-ber. Each pit contained one or two skeletons—in somecases, literally crammed in—of young adult women(mostly 18–22 years), a total of nine for each group. Thetwo resultant groups of nine women each are hereafterreferred to as the North and South Women. Each womanwas accompanied by a handful of ceramic vessels, tex-tiles, arsenical-copper objects, and/or other grave goods.Some of these women were found to be missing one ormore terminal phalanges and accompanied by brokenand incomplete ceramic vessels. In some burials, boneswere disarticulated to a degree difficult to account forby postdepositional shifting. For example, the entireright arm of burial 7 was found under the left side of thevertebrae. In addition, small, ovoid empty puparia, pre-sumably of muscoid flies (see Faulkner 1986), were foundin direct association with burials 9 and 14. Much of thefloor, including most of the pits, was covered with largepainted cotton cloths and gilded tumbaga sheet metal.Near the northeast corner, two adult camelid skeletonswere found.

The 3 # 3-m central chamber descended 3 m to a depthof 15 m and had symmetrically opposing niches on thenorth and south walls. Its roof was composed of at leastthree layers of woven mats supported by wooden beamsand east and west walls covered with painted cottoncloth. This chamber was reserved primarily for the prin-cipal personage and his grave goods. The personage (bur-ial 1), a robust man ca. 30–40 years of age with a seriouspuncture wound on his pelvis, was placed at the centerof the mat-lined floor in a cross-legged, seated position.He wore full regalia that included a large tumbaga mask,an elaborate head ornament, and a pectoral of a silveralloy plate with semiprecious stone inlays. His head wasthoroughly covered with cinnabar paint and faced west.

A diverse range of grave goods surrounded this per-sonage, including the remains of nine rolls of strip cloth,two wooden staffs, and four decorated ceramic vesselscompletely covered with tumbaga sheets (Shimada, Gor-dus, and Griffin 2000). There were also the heads andarticulated feet of at least 25 camelids of various age-groups (Shimada and Shimada 1997). Another majorcomponent of the grave goods was at least 111 of thecrude handmade miniature clay vessels known widely

4. Annular deformation results from compression of the craniumwhen it is wrapped with cloth strips (e.g., Weiss 1962).


Fig. 3. The symmetrical distribution of the 24 individuals in the niches, antechamber, and central chamber ofthe West Tomb. B, burial; P, pit.

on the north coast as crisoles. Over 50 of them wereclustered atop a bed of clay, while the rest were scatteredon other parts of the floor.

Flanking the principal personage, an adult woman wasplaced in each of the two symmetrically opposing niches.The cross-legged and seated woman in the south niche(burial 20) had cinnabar paint on her face, wore a shellbead pectoral, and was accompanied by numerous ce-ramic vessels. In contrast, the north-niche woman (burial24) was without grave goods, tightly flexed and buriedbeneath a large cluster of shell beads and a basket con-taining some two dozen tumbaga ornaments and ritualparaphernalia.

additional burials

Five additional burials were excavated in 1995 in theNorth Trench, ca. 30 m north of the East Tomb. GPRsurvey in 1994 had suggested the presence of a large shafttomb there. The area was excavated to test the hypoth-esized inverse relationship between the social status of

the deceased and distance of the tomb from the HuacaLoro temple—that the burial(s) there would be lower instatus. Our excavation revealed a cluster of five com-moners’ burials in either fully extended or semiflexedposition associated with ceramics that were stylisticallyidentical to those in the East and West Tombs (i.e., earlyMiddle Sican, ca. 1000 c.e.).

For our analysis of mtDNA and developmental healthindicators, we included 16 additional Middle Sican bur-ials from the Sican capital and 9 each from the outlyingsites of Huaca del Pueblo Batan Grande and Huaca Sia-lupe, some 13 km east and 22 km southwest of the HuacaLoro, respectively. The former sample consists of 2 sac-rificed individuals atop the Huaca Las Ventanas plat-form, 4 superimposed commoner burials below the prin-cipal ramp of the same mound (East Sector), 7lower-nobility individuals from a large (15 # 15 m atthe top and 12 m deep) half-looted tomb some 150 msouth of the same mound (South Sector), and 3 sacrificedindividuals inside the cubic-meter-sized “sockets” forthe columns that supported the roof of the temple atop


Fig. 4. Pottery from the West Tomb. A, Middle Sicanreduced ware bottle associated with a South Woman;B, Mochecoid bichrome pottery associated with aNorth Woman.

the Huaca Rodillona (e.g., Farnum 2002, Shimada 1995).Additionally, 50 individuals from a provincial Sican-af-filiated population buried on the east slope of the HuacaCao Viejo at the El Brujo site in the lower ChicamaValley, some 175 km southeast of Sican, were examinedby Farnum (2002).

Analyses and Their Results

burial placement and associated gravegoods

In ferreting out the social and symbolic significance ofthe excavated burials, the symmetrical opposition of theNorth and South Women in the West Tomb especiallycalls for our attention. Who were these women, and whywere they grouped in this manner? What was their re-lationship to others buried in the tomb?

Important social, biological, and/or symbolic relation-ships among the West Tomb individuals are alluded toby the arrangement of their bodies and associated arti-facts, particularly textiles. For example, the juvenile(burial 2) in niche 6, the youngest individual and the onlymale in the antechamber, was carefully positioned sothat his cinnabar-painted face looked directly toward theonly other male in the tomb, the principal personage inthe central chamber 3 m below (fig. 3). Placed at differentelevations along an imaginary line of sight between themwere a cluster of 11 whole Spondylus princeps shells,badly corroded tumbaga objects, and hematite lumps.Though the juvenile had no associated grave goods, thisarrangement suggests that he had special importance tothe principal personage. The same arrangement is seenin the East Tomb, where a youth of the same age, alsowith cinnabar-painted face, was carefully placed atop thelitter to look straight at the principal personage about ameter below.

A special relationship between the South Women andthe principal personage is strongly intimated by a clothstrip (ca. 30–35 cm wide) that descended from the south-west sector of the antechamber floor and along the south-west corner of the central chamber to wrap the principalpersonage’s headdress and upper torso. No comparableconnection by cloth strips or any other means was foundin the northern half of the central chamber. This suggeststhat the separation of the North and South Women ac-curately reflects some significant differences betweenthem. The style of the associated pottery is importantin this regard. The North Women are predominantly as-sociated with vessels that show a strong affinity to theearlier Moche style, such as bichrome stirrup-spout bot-tles and sculptural effigy jars (fig. 4). In contrast, theSouth Women are found with typical Middle Sican ves-sels such as gray or black single-spout bottles and jarswith press-molded decorations (fig. 4). The principal per-sonage and the south-niche women were both accom-panied by Sican-style vessels. The north-niche womenwere found in fetal position with no grave goods. Thespatial segregation of the Mochecoid and Sican ceramics

is further reinforced by the presence of a painted clothon the north side of the antechamber floor. A processionof warriors carrying war clubs, shields, and trophy headsdepicted in black lines in profile is highly reminiscentof the earlier Moche style. No such painted cloth occurson the south side of the antechamber.

Technical analyses of ceramic vessels from the tombsalso generated data relevant to our research interests. Forexample, Mossbauer spectroscopic analysis of samplesof ceramics associated with the antechamber women in-dicates that many of these vessels had been scarcely fired(Shimada et al. 2003a). The black or gray finish resultedfrom smudging, not chemical reduction or penetrationof carbon into the vessel walls. These vessels belie thetechnical capability of Middle Sican potters and suggestthat they were hastily or expediently made for intermentin this tomb. Middle Sican potters produced large quan-tities of glossy black vessels fired in a reducing atmo-sphere at temperatures of ca. 800–900�C (Shimada andWagner 2001). Neutron-activation analysis and thin-sec-tion petrography of the same samples revealed that theywere quite homogeneous and indistinguishable from the


paste used at the contemporaneous ceramic workshop atHuaca Sialupe (Shimada et al. 2003a, b). While the work-shop concurrently produced diagnostic Middle Sican ves-sels, the majority of its products were Mochecoid instyle, including exactly the same kinds of vessels foundin the West Tomb.

Other grave goods appear to have been prepared muchcloser to the West Tomb. Crisoles found on the centralchamber floor were all crudely handmade and left un-decorated and unfired. As a result, many of them haddisintegrated. Further, the partially used clay mixture onthe same floor had the same texture and composition asthe crisoles, indicating that they had been made insidethe chamber during the interment process.

mtdna analysis

The question of possible biological relationships amongthe sampled individuals was addressed by mtDNA andinherited-dental-trait analyses. In particular, mtDNAanalysis can be done rapidly through automated sequenc-ing to provide reliable, specific data for making infer-ences and building models about past kinship structures,relationships among diverse social and cultural groups,and population movements that often elude traditionalarchaeological approaches (see, e.g., Renfrew 1998, 2000;Schurr 2000) and, for lucid explanations of its underlyingprinciples and premises, as well as potential and limi-tations, Kaestle and Horsburgh 2002, Paabo 1999, Stone2000, and Sykes and Renfrew 2000).

The facts that mtDNA is abundant in cells and ma-ternally inherited, does not undergo genetic recombi-nation, and undergoes mutation at a relatively high fre-quency (perhaps 20 times faster than in nuclear DNA)all contribute to the relative ease with which geneticrelationships and ancestry can be defined (Sykes andRenfrew 2000). However, problems caused by the deg-radation and contamination of the minute quantities ofextracted mtDNA and the difficulty of assembling a largenumber of coherent, well-documented, and dated skel-etal remains are pervasive and serious (e.g., Kaestle andHorsburgh 2002, Renfrew 1998, Stone and Stoneking1999). These problems help to account for the scarcityof informative and reliable mtDNA studies to date inthe Andes and elsewhere. Practitioners are making ef-forts to collaborate so that samples from the same in-dividuals can be analyzed independently by more thanone laboratory (e.g., Kaestle and Horsburgh 2002) to en-sure the authenticity of analytical results. From an ar-chaeological point of view, however, this is not alwaysfeasible, since well-preserved teeth or bones are oftenscarce and the excavators, for various reasons, tend toforbid the extraction of multiple samples from eachburial.

For our study, mtDNA extracted from a single well-preserved tooth from each excavated Sican burial wasanalyzed by Shinoda using a combination of restriction-fragment-length polymorphism (RFLP) haplotype and D-loop sequence methods. D-loop is the fastest-changingand thus most variable segment of mtDNA. Tooth en-

amel forms an effective natural barrier to exogenousDNA contamination, and DNA from teeth appears tolack most of the inhibitors of enzymatic amplificationfound in ancient DNA (Woodward et al. 1994). ExtractedDNA was amplified by a process called the polymerasechain reaction. When the amount amplified was not suf-ficient, a second chain reaction was performed for thenext direct sequencing step in D-loop amplification.Where several ambiguous positions were observed in thesequencing data, the next DNA cloning step was per-formed. Suspected false positive results stemming fromcontamination with contemporary DNA (Lawlor et al.1991) and other questionable data (e.g., Kolman and Tu-ross 2000) were excluded (for additional details see Shi-mada et al. n.d.a).

The nucleotide base sequences in the D-loop regions of28 individuals were established. Not all sampled teethyielded sufficient materials for reliable sequencing. Thebase sequences in 192 base pairs of DNA were determined,and mutations were observed in 24 portions (table 2).These individuals can be classified into 17 haplotypes.While haplotypes refer to distinct DNA sequences definedin the D-loop, haplogroups correspond to major lineageclusters of similar haplotypes. It is generally agreed thatmost of the mtDNA of native Americans can be tracedto one of four maternal lineages (designated as A, B, C,and D) well established for the ancient founders of NewWorld populations (Schurr 2000, Schurr et al. 1990) andthat these lineages can be defined by three RFLPs and a9-nucleotide-base-pair deletion.

Nine haplotypes were identified among 17 individualsfrom the Huaca Loro West Tomb. Three additional hap-lotypes occurred among individuals from the East Tomband the North Trench. Those from Huaca Las Ventanas,Rodillona, and Sialupe were found to have five additionalhaplotypes. Fifteen of these haplotypes belonged to oneof the four haplogroups (A–D) identified thus far amongSouth American aboriginals, but the remaining two didnot belong to any of these haplogroups. While we cannotassume that all of the sequences obtained are derivedfrom ancient human remains or reliable, we cannot read-ily dismiss the two haplotypes in question as inauth-entic.5 Haplotypes in addition to the well-known oneshave been identified among contemporary and pre-Co-lumbian Amerindians (e.g., Easton et al. 1996, Ribeiro-

5. Haplotype 5 (burials 10, 13, and 14 in the Huaca Loro West Tomb)may have resulted from exogenous contamination. This haplotypeoccurs among modern Koreans and Ainus and matches that of Ka-zuharu Mine, the Japanese physical anthropologist who handledthe West Tomb human remains in the course of his osteologicalexamination in 1997. At the same time, various dental morpho-logical studies (e.g., Scott and Turner 1997, Turner 1985, Sutter2003) suggest that ancient migrants originating in northeasternAsia and characterized by sinodonty (complex root and crown formsand high frequencies of incisor shoveling and double shoveling)populated much of South America, particularly its northwesternportion, and other studies point to a shared genetic basis of Ainusand Amerindians (e.g., Miura et al. 1997). Given that our researchinto pre-Hispanic Andean population genetic variability and dis-tribution is still in its infancy, it is prudent to remain open-mindedon the subject.

shim

ad

ae

ta

l.

Pre-H

ispanic

Mortu

aryP

racticesF

379table 2Segregating Sites in the Control Region of mtDNA

Archaeological Site and Haplotype

Consensus Sequence

n Haplogroup

16209

16212

16217

16223

16231

16233

16243

16256

16261

16263

16280

16284

16287

16290

16291

16295

16304

16311

16319

16324

16325

16362

16391

16399

T A T C T A T C C T A A C C C C T T G T T T G A

Huaca Loro West1 . . C . . . . T . . . . . . . . C . . . . . . . 1 B2 . . . T . . . . . . . . . T . . . . A . . . . . 3 A3 . . . . . . . . . . . G . . . . . . . . C . A . 2 D4 . . . . C . . . T . . . . . . . . C . . . . . . 1 B5 C . . T . . . . . . . . . . T . . . . C . . . . 3 Other6 . . . T . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 C7 . G . . . G . . T . G . . . . . . . . A . . . G 4 Other8 . . . T . . . . . . . G . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 D9 . . . T . . . . . . . . T T . . . . A . . . . . 1 A

Huaca Loro East and North10 . . C . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 B11 . . C . . . . T . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 B12 . . . . . . . T . . . . . . . . C . . . . C . . 3 D

Huaca Las Ventanas1 . . C . . . C . . C . . . . . T . . A . . . . . 2 B2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . T . . . . A . . . . . 1 A3 . . . T . . . . . . . . . T . . . . . . . . . . 1 A

Huaca Rodillona 1 . . . T . . . . . . . G . . . . . C . . . . . . 1 DHuaca Sialupe 1 . . C . . . . . . . . . . . . . C . . . . . . . 1 B

note: The 24 segregating sites observed are shown as differences from the human consensus sequence. The base number of each site in the control region is assignedby the reference sequence (Anderson et al. 1981). Dots indicate a match to the reference sequence. The number of individuals for each sequence type (n) and haplo-group are shown at the right of each sequence.


Fig. 5. Distribution of maternally related individuals in the West Tomb as determined by mtDNA analysis.Burials represented by the same shape (solid black triangle, square, circle, and diamond) are related. Open cir-cles are individuals who are unrelated to anyone in the tomb.

Dos-Santos et al. 1996). It is clear that founding haplo-groups other than the four currently known were oncepresent in the New World, and it is likely that the pro-portion of haplotypes not belonging to the four majorhaplogroups in ancient populations is much greater thanin contemporary indigenous populations. Thus there re-mains the strong possibility that the majority, if not all,of the haplotypes obtained from the Sican sample areauthentic.

Perhaps the most significant result of the mtDNAanalysis is the documentation of four distinct maternalkinship ties among 12 women and the bipartite spatialdistribution of related individuals in the West Tomb (fig.5). In addition, the North and South Women were char-acterized by two mutually exclusive sets of haplotypes.In other words, the north versus south groupings ofwomen had a kinship basis that crosscut the antecham-ber/central-chamber distinction. Difficulties in repro-ducing the experimental results of the East and WestTomb principal personages precluded an anticipatedmtDNA comparison between these two key figures. Twoburials from Huaca Las Ventanas were shown to be ma-ternally related. No other definite kinship ties were iden-tified among the 28 individuals.

inherited-dental-trait analysis

Dental characteristics are an informative source of datafor establishing differences between populations and ge-netic segregation within lineages (e.g., Alt and Vach1995, Kelley and Larson 1991, Scott and Turner 1997).Studies of dental and other traits have also helped in thenonspatial assessment of possible biological kinshipwithin cemeteries (Alt and Vach 1992, Alt et al. 1996).Accordingly, inherited dental traits of the Huaca Lorosample were analyzed by Corruccini for possible familialclusters that might correspond to the observed archae-ological and mtDNA patterning. The Huaca Loro samplewas well suited to this analysis in that many teeth werewell preserved, largely because of the presence of manyyoung adults with minimal wear. Additionally, giventhat dental traits are inherited from both maternal andpaternal sides, we were interested in the degree and na-ture of the correspondence between the mtDNA resultsand those of this analysis (Corruccini, Shimada, and Shi-noda 2002). We anticipated some discrepancies betweenthem because of the different processes of inheritanceinvolved but hoped that the dental-trait analysis would


Fig. 6. Odontological Euclidean distances betweennine recognized groupings or individuals in the Eastand West Tombs. The minimum distance of 0.71 wastaken out as “background noise.” Only relativelysmall distances (0.60 or less) indicate major linkagesaccording to similarity.

add more depth and breadth to our understanding of thegenetic relationships among the sampled individuals.

Dental stone casts were prepared from silicon moldsof maxillary and mandibular arches taken in Peru. The23 dental traits (see Corruccini and Shimada 2002:116)were taken largely from published studies (e.g., Turner,Nichol, and Scott 1991) and scored using the best-pre-served side. On the basis of archaeological data, the sam-ple was partitioned into nine groups: (1) West Tomb prin-cipal personage, (2) niche 6 juvenile male, (3) south-nichewoman, (4) north-niche woman, (5) eight South Women,(6) eight North Women, (7) five North Trench individ-uals, (8) East Tomb principal personage, and (9) EastTomb juvenile and two women.

Statistically significant variation emerged in the sam-ple (fig. 6) that corresponded to the spatial groupings andcohesiveness defined independently by mtDNA, burialplacement, and artifact analyses. A notable finding wasthe relatively small intrasample variance among theSouth Women and among the five North Trench indi-viduals. The biological proximity within each of thesetwo groups is derived from the shared strong develop-ment of various traits, including maxillary incisor shov-eling and canine tubercles.

Another major finding was that the North Womenwere, biologically speaking, quite distinct from all othergroups in the sample. At the same time, these womenwere relatively and consistently quite heterogeneousamong themselves, in notable contrast to the SouthWomen, who were internally closely related. As antici-pated, the results for the women in the central-chamberniches were consistent with the pattern found in theadjacent groups of women; the south-niche woman wasbiologically close to the South Women, while the north-niche woman was distant from all other individuals inthe sample.

Particularly important to the testing of the hypothesisof an elite cemetery was the nature of the relationshipbetween the East and West Tomb principal personages.The analysis showed that they were more closely relatedto each other than to any of the other individuals andgroups in the sample. Greater genetic closeness betweenthese two principal personages is therefore suspected butis of reduced statistical certainty because of antemortemtooth loss.

Yet another pairing that is worth noting is the rela-tionship between the niche 6 male juvenile and the WestTomb principal personage. Though the relatively smallraw (size) distance between them suggests some specialrelationship, other calculated coefficients (e.g., shape-vector distances) do not decisively demonstrate any spe-cial affinity.

dietary and health indicators

A major concern of our integrated study was the devel-opmental correlates of social differentiation. Well-pre-served individuals, particularly those grouped by inferredsocial status in the East and West Tombs, were examinedto evaluate the role of social status and environmental

influences on developmental health. Nonspecific indi-cators of stress were used as criteria for evaluating therelationship between physical observations and thehealth of the individual.

The patterns observed in the stress indicators wereused to determine whether there was a relationship be-tween developmental health and the social status in-ferred from access to metals. Our expectation was thatpreferential developmental health would have been en-joyed by the Sican elite, whereas those of lower socialstatus would have manifested more pathologies relatedto malnutrition and disease caused by poor sanitation,crowded living conditions, inadequate access to re-sources, and other social factors. Sican developmentalhealth was compared with that of individuals at otherpre-Hispanic Peruvian sites studied using the samemethodology (table 3; see Farnum 2002 for the completedata sets).

One indicator, cribra orbitalia, is identified by porosityof the orbitals of the frontal bone. It is associated withan iron metabolic imbalance, which may be caused bylow dietary iron intake and/or parasitic or other infection(Ryan 1997). The severity of cribra orbitalia, scored byosteological standards (Buikstra and Ubelaker 1994), in-dicates that the North Trench individuals had the moresevere cases. The percentage of individuals affected var-ied considerably by social group. Twice as many of theNorth Women than of the South Women were affected.Cribra orbitalia was absent in both principal personagesand in the remaining East Tomb individuals. Apparently


table 3Stress Indicators by Social Group

ContextAge

(years)

# EnamelHypoplasias/

Anterior TeethPresent

% CariousTeeth/ # of

Teeth Present

DistalHarris Lines

Left Tibia

DistalHarris LinesRight Tibia

% CribraOrbitalia

CribraOrbitaliaSeverity

%PoroticHyperostosis

PoroticHyperostosis

Severity

Rodillona 21 � 3 0.2 � 0.2 14 � 10 6 � 0 3 � 0 0a 0a 33 1.0 � 0.0Batan Grandeb 25 � 2 0.3 � 0.2 11 � 5 – – abs abs 100c 1.0 � 0.0c

Loro principals 44 � 2 0.3 � 0.3 3 � 3 – – 0 0 100 0Loro East (adults) 26 � 3 0.3 � 0.3 2 � 2 – – 0 0 0 1 � 0Loro East (total) 20 � 4 0.4 � 0.2 5 � 4 – – 0 0 40 2 � 1El Brujo (adults) 30 � 17 0.3 � 0.4 13 � 13 – – 23 1.0 � 0.5 87 0.9 � 0.3El Brujo (total) 22 � 18 0.4 � 0.5 14 � 18 – – 30 0.9 � 0.4 44 0.9 � 0.4El Brujo (juveniles) 1.5 � 1 0.4 � 0.8 abs 1.1 � 0.5 0.7 � 0.7 46 0.8 � 0.3 57 0.9 � 0.7Loro South Women 24 � 2 0.6 � 0.2 11 � 4 1.4 � 0.7 0.6 � 0.4 22 1.8 � 0.3 80 1.4 � 0.2Ventanas South 22 � 2 0.7 � 0.3 11 � 4 – – 0a 0a 100 2.0 � 0.6All Sican capital 23 � 1 0.7 � 0.1 9 � 1 – – 27 1.8 � 0.8 68 1.4 � 0.6Loro North Trench 22 � 2 0.8 � 0.2 14 � 3 – – 0c 0c 67 1.0 � 0.0Batan Grande 24 � 1 0.8 � 0.5 10 � 4 – – abs abs 100c 1.0 � 0.0d

Loro North Women 21 � 1 0.9 � 0.2 4 � 2 3 � 1.2 1.2 � 0.6 40 2.3 � 0.3 60 1.2 � 0.2Ventanas East 25 � 2 1.4 0d – – abs abs abs abs

aOnly two individuals scorable.bWithout burial 27.cOnly one individual scorable.dOnly one individual.

anemia was not a chronic problem for the entire Sicanpopulation and was most likely overcome by social buf-fering or variation in childhood diet. Comparisons be-tween Sican and other pre-Hispanic Peruvian sites in-dicate the ubiquity of cribra orbitalia throughoutprehistory. The frequencies of individuals affected in Si-can are about the same (28% for the individuals fromEast and West Tomb and 23% for the site of Sican) asthose in Preceramic and Initial Period sites on the centralcoast (Farnum 2002).

Another indicator, porotic hyperostosis, is similar tocribra orbitalia and appears to manifest itself at age 2–3years or older. High percentages of porotic hyperostosisaround the suture lines were seen in the majority of in-dividuals in our sample, including both principal per-sonages, and may be associated with the fronto-occipitalcranial deformation that was common in the sample.

Harris lines in bone form when there is a disruptionand subsequent resumption of cartilage growth and os-teoblastic activity in bone growth. Harris lines weremore common in the North Women than in the SouthWomen; the data did not permit comparisons of Harrislines among the remaining groups. There is little com-parative information available on Harris lines in pre-His-panic Peru (e.g., Williams 1987).

Curiously, there was no difference in adult stature be-tween the North and the South Women (table 4). Draw-ing on the findings of Leatherman, Carey, and Thomas(1995) on stature and modernization in Peru, we inferthat the more stressed North Women attained compa-rable adult stature through an extended growth periodand/or increased velocity of the adolescent growth spurt.

Growth-arrest defects in enamel apposition, enamelhypoplasias, can be linked clinically to over 100 possibledisease conditions and/or dietary deficiencies (e.g., Hill-son 1996). Almost all of the sampled individuals exhib-

ited enamel hypoplasias, which suggests a great deal ofchildhood stress due to either diet or infections. Theoverall frequencies for the Sican were, however, lowerthan those observed for other pre-Hispanic Peruvian pop-ulations (Farnum 2002). The frequencies per anteriortooth were plotted from lowest to highest by socialgroup. The North Women and the North Trench indi-viduals both had high frequencies of enamel hypoplasiasand more chronicity (repeat events indicating seasonalstress) than the other groups.

Dental caries were also fairly common. Nine percentof all teeth at Sican were affected by carious lesions. Thisfinding is consistent with expectations of caries rates inpre-Hispanic agricultural populations (Turner 1979). Thehighest-status individuals (the two principal personagesand the rest of the East Tomb individuals) and the NorthWomen had the lowest number of dental caries. Cariesfrequencies were also lower in the North Women thanin the South Women. This difference was unexpected;the North Women were expected to have higher cariesfrequencies because they had more of the enamel hy-poplasias and anemia that are usually associated withhigh maize consumption and malnutrition (Goodman1994).

Differential tooth wear patterns along gender lineshave been noted elsewhere (Peterson 2002) but are dif-ficult to assess in our burial sample because it is pre-dominantly young women who showed minimal dentalwear.

All of the individual remains were examined for trau-mas related to combat or warfare. Possible cases of suchtraumas were seen only in the high- and low-level eliteat Huaca Loro and Huaca Las Ventanas South.

In summary, the main trends presented here indicatethat social status did play a large role in exposure orresponse to developmental stress. The basic trend of su-


table 4Average Stature of Moche and Sican Individuals bySex (cm)

Group

Heighta

SourceMales Females

MochePacatnamu 158 147 Verano (1997a)El Brujo 160 147 Verano (1997a)Sipan 162 157 Verano (1997b)

SicanEl Brujo 159 155 This workHuaca Loro 162 156/157b This work

aCalculated according to Trotter and Gleseri (1958).bNorth and South Women, respectively.

perior developmental health for the higher-status indi-viduals appears to be confirmed for individuals from theEast Tomb and various high-status individuals from theWest Tomb. A more complete understanding of Sicandevelopmental health in regional/synchronic contextwas achieved by comparing the data from the Sican cap-ital with those from the 50 individuals excavated at Hu-aca Cao Viejo. The Huaca Cao Viejo nonspecific stressindicators and adult stature (159.0 cm males, 155.0 cmfemales) match those of the elite at Huaca Loro (161.9cm males, 156.7 cm females). They do not seem to havebeen burdened nutritionally by their association with theMiddle Sican culture. Overall, the Sican individualsshowed more variation in developmental health by socialgroup than by location (center versus periphery).

excavations at the great plaza and gprsurvey

Examination of tomb distribution and its broader con-texts was critical to testing the hypothesis that the EastTomb was part of a planned elite cemetery and eluci-dating the associated mortuary rituals and processes. Ac-cordingly, paralleling our burial excavations, we con-ducted test excavations and GPR survey of Huaca Loroand its surrounding area, including the Great Plaza andthe adjacent Huaca Las Ventanas and Huaca El Moscon.

The 1990 excavation of the Plaza close to the east baseof the Huaca Loro revealed the presence of a small rec-tangular altar with in situ burnt juvenile human bonesand associated sherd-lined and covered “canals” (ca. 20# 12 cm wide and deep). These canals, which closelyresemble the one documented atop the Huaca El Corteca. 1 km to the east, are suspected of having being usedfor ritual libations (Shimada 1986). In another area of thePlaza some 100 m to the north were large adobe-linedhearths with camelid and other food remains, numerousfragments of Middle Sican serving dishes, and some fineblack bottles (Montenegro and Shimada 1998, Shimadaand Shimada 1997), suggesting public feasting. Nearby

were neatly ordered rows of whole adobe bricks that werebeing dried or stockpiled for future use.

The 1997 excavations revealed the presence of othersmall adobe platforms in the Plaza and an inferred metalworkshop near the east base of the Huaca Loro NorthPlatform. A stone hammer and crucible fragments, tinygold flakes, and extensive heat-discolored areas attest toprecious-metalworking.

GPR survey of the Great Plaza, including the area sur-rounding and atop the Huaca Loro, was conducted in1994, 1995, and 1997. GPR allows the detection of di-verse features, speedy, nondestructive prospecting oflarge areas, and the pinpointing of possible excavationloci without extensive exploratory excavation. The dry,flat, relatively homogeneous eolian and/or flood depositsat the site were ideally suited to large-scale GPR appli-cation and the detection of deeply buried archaeologicalremains (for details see Shimada and Watanabe 1995,Clark 1996, Conyers and Goodman 1997).

The 1994 and 1995 GPR surveys located the WestTomb and other inferred shaft tombs. The 1997 surveyand accompanying test excavations provided the best ev-idence to date of the presence of at least three intactshaft tombs beneath the Huaca Loro (fig. 2). In 1995 and1997, radar detected the same subsurface structure, ca.3–4 m on a side and over 10 m in depth, beneath a thick,homogeneous layer at the northwest corner of themound. Our test trench revealed that the homogeneouslayer corresponded to the mound’s solid basal platformca. 4 m below the modern surface. This platform wasunderlain by 1-m-thick compacted artificial fill. At thebottom of the fill we encountered two burials of youngadults (not excavated) accompanied by fine early MiddleSican pottery. These burials rested atop a thick intrusivesoil that extended well under and below the basal plat-form. GPR inspection at the bottom of the trench (ca. 5m below surface) indicated that the inferred shaft de-scended 8–10 m.

The 1997 survey also took advantage of a deep gullycut by the historic 1983 El Nino rains from the centertop of the Huaca Loro to the east base. The gully haddeepened and expanded rapidly when adobe chamberswith the sand and other loose fill that made up much ofthe volume of the mound were breached. The surveyresults corroborated our test excavation findings, in-cluding the presence of thick fill over the natural sub-stratum and a basal platform. More significant, they re-vealed what appeared to be a large square adobe chamber,ca. 11 m on a side and 18 m high, with relatively loosefill at the center bottom of the mound and a deep shaftreaching perhaps some 10 m below its base, well intothe natural substratum (fig. 7). The shaft preceded all ofthe mound construction. In other words, the Huaca Lorooverlay and sealed an inferred central shaft tomb.

Discussion

The multitude of analytical perspectives brought to bearin our study effectively corroborated each other to yield


Fig. 7. GPR image of the core of the Huaca Loro, revealing a deep subsurface structure beneath it. 1, naturalmatrix; 2, compacted foundation fill; 3, top of foundation fill; 4, outline of mound; 5, outer adobe structure; 6,inner adobe structure; 7, contour of area eroded by El Nino rains; 8, sandy fill; 9, adobe chambers with loosefills; 10, inferred central tomb.

a coherent and comprehensive understanding of MiddleSican mortuary practices and associated rituals, sym-bolism, and architecture. They also allowed us to testour inferences regarding status differentiation and skel-etal biology as well as to refine our thinking regardingthe nature, strength, and complexity of the bond betweenthe deceased and the living. Finally, they pointed to themultiethnic composition of Middle Sican society.

biological, social, and ethnic identities andrelations

Given the large number of women interred in the WestTomb, it is tempting to describe them as having beensacrificed en masse to accompany the male elite person-age. However, definitive physical evidence for their sac-rifice is scant (e.g., Verano 2001). In fact, missing pha-langes, insect pupae, notable disarticulation, andincomplete ceramic vessels that cannot be explained bypostinterment taphonomy indicate that at least somewomen in the antechamber were either secondary bur-ials or mummified and curated prior to interment in thistomb, a process that Millaire (2002:172) calls “delayedburial.” Faulkner (1986:146) notes that “sarcosapropha-gous flies are among the first insects to arrive” at anavailable body during the initial stages of decay and pu-trefaction and that maggots will feed on moist parts for

about two to three weeks. Preinterment mummificationand curation have been suggested for Moche burials atMoche (Millaire 2002:172) and Sipan (Donnan 1995:172;Verano 1997a), Early Sican and Middle Sican burials atSan Jose de Moro (Nelson 1998), and burials in shafttombs of the last 1,500 years of prehistory of the Colom-bia-Ecuador border region (Doyon 2002).

In spite of the above insights, we are still left with thebasic questions who these women were and why theywould have been curated or reburied. Spanish colonialdocuments, particularly wills, offer an interesting per-spective on these questions. They attest to the rights andprivileges as well as obligations of the indigenous leaders(kurakas) of the immediately preconquest north coast.Ramırez (1996:15) points out that kurakas’ rank andstatus was directly correlated with the numbers of theirsubjects and their skill in managing human resources.Though they had power over the life and death of theirsubjects, “the obligations between ruler and ruled weremutually reinforcing and interdependent” (Ramırez1996:21). The kuraka had the responsibility of takingcare of widows among the people whom he governed,for example, by having them serve him in his court ascooks or weavers, but they were expected to accompanyhim to his grave (Ramırez 1998:224; personal commu-nication, 1998). This reciprocal relationship raises thepossibility that some if not many of the women in the


antechamber were widows who had been cared for bythe principal personage of the West Tomb in life and thuswere buried to serve him in death, perhaps after mum-mification and curation of their bodies if they prede-ceased him.

This inference, though quite reasonable, is difficult totest and remains speculative. It also does not accountwell for their youth or for the multiple sets of femalerelatives in the West Tomb, even with the possibility ofdelayed burials. The inference also raises the troublingand as yet unresolved question of accounting for the pres-ence of only two women in the East Tomb, which clearlyhad many more exotic items (e.g., marine shells andsemiprecious stone beads) and technically superior andiconographically richer gold objects than the West Tomb(Shimada, Gordus, and Griffin 2000). If the conspicuousconsumption of luxury and exotic goods is symbolic ofpower (e.g., Trigger 1990), the East Tomb, with its 1.2tons of such goods, represents an impressive demonstra-tion of power.

It is evident that the north–south division in the WestTomb reflects significant biological, ethnic, lifestyle, andperhaps even status differences. The relative biologicalproximity and homogeneity of the South Women re-vealed by dental-trait and mtDNA analyses suggest thatthey practiced endogamy or at the least represent somesort of kin group. The cloth strip that connected theSouth Women and the principal personage may be seenas symbolic of their membership of the same lin-eage. It is also worth noting that the basic social organ-ization of the late pre-Hispanic north-coastal population,according to ethnohistorical accounts, was parcialida-des, indigenous endogamous social groups organized byoccupational specialty and asymmetrical moieties (e.g.,Netherly 1990, Ramırez 1981). On the basis of the sym-bolic linkage and the style of the associated ceramics,we identify both the principal personage and the SouthWomen as Sican in ethnic affiliation.

The South Women, along with the two principal per-sonages and the rest of the occupants of the East Tomb,had enjoyed a healthier life than the North Trench in-dividuals and the North Women. They appear to havebeen buffered from the majority of childhood stresses byeither superior diet or some cultural factor. One relevantconsideration in this regard is the relative dietary im-portance of maize for different groups in our sample.Though macrobotanical remains show the significanceof maize in the Middle Sican diet (Shimada 1981), stable-isotope analysis of teeth would be required to resolvethis question.

There were some unexpected differences in observednonspecific stress indicators between the North and theSouth Women. Social status as defined by access to metalpredicted that the two groups should show similar re-sponses to childhood and other stresses, since they wereof the same inferred status. To the contrary, the availabledata raised the possibility that the South Women hadhigher social status than the North Women. The sym-bolic linkage between the South Women and the prin-

cipal personage implied by the cloth strip connectingthem tends to support this possibility.

This discrepancy in the status attributed to the twogroups of women highlights the limitations of our social-differentiation model, which fails to account for factorssuch as the women’s origin (local versus nonlocal),6 theaccompanying developmental environment, and the pos-sibility that one group achieved elevated social statusonly in death. The North Women’s developmentalhealth was lower than that of the South Women, yet theywere interred in an important location in the West Tomb.Our case study clearly underscores the variable, context-specific expressions of status and role and the relateddifficulty of inferring social status from the limited ma-terial attributes of funerary contexts. The integrated ap-proach offers more substantive indications of quality oflife.

The mtDNA analysis revealed the presence of two setsof maternal relatives within each of the two groups ofwomen. The related women were buried close to eachother. The dental analysis, however, presented a seem-ingly contradictory picture of biological relationshipsamong the North Women, who were quite heterogene-ous. The divergence between the mtDNA and the dental-trait data is not surprising given that two distinct pro-cesses of inheritance are involved. That the mtDNAanalysis reveals only maternal kinship should always bekept in mind. A systematic comparison of these data setsdid, however, show some concordances (Corruccini et al.2002). Individuals sharing a haplotype, hence a matrili-neage, were slightly but quite consistently more similardentally than “unrelated” individuals.

In understanding the nature of the North Women, itis more significant that biologically they are quite dis-tinct from all other groups in our sample. Together withthe fact that they were consistently associated with Mo-checoid artifacts, we suggest that they represent Mochedescendants who had been integrated into a multiethnicsociety under Sican political domination and perhapspatrilocal residence. The latter would explain the sharingby physically dissimilar women of some sort of maternalrelatedness from prior maternal habits, diluted by gen-erations of unrelated male genetic recombination. Thisinference regarding postmarital residence remains to betested, for example, through mtDNA and Y-chromosomeanalysis of subfloor burials in residences.

The emerging picture of the multiethnic constitutionof Middle Sican society found independent support frommaterials analyses of ceramics from the West Tomb. Itis noteworthy that an inferred purveyor of funerary ves-sels, the ceramic workshop at Huaca Sialupe, was situ-ated in an area of earlier Moche (final Phase V) occu-pation into which Middle Sican occupation intruded.While the artisans there produced some fine, diagnosticMiddle Sican–style vessels, their efforts were predomi-

6. To shed some light on the issue of the geographical origins ofexcavated individuals, the strontium isotope analysis of bone sam-ples of the West Tomb women and other burials is in progress atthe University of Missouri Research Reactor.


nantly directed toward the manufacture of Mochecoidceramics, suggesting that the potters were Moche de-scendants co-opted into the intrusive Middle Sican econ-omy (Shimada and Wagner n.d.). The burials excavatedat the site also suggest the persistence of traditional Mo-che funerary customs, which included placement of asmall copper piece inside the mouth (Donnan 1995) andselective removal of skeletal parts (particularly heads,hands, and feet) from primary burials for use as offeringsin other graves (e.g., Hecker and Hecker 1992, Klaus2003).

The ethnic composition of the Middle Sican territorywas likely to have been even more complex (see Clelandand Shimada 1998, Shimada and Maguina 1994). For ex-ample, Middle Sican ceramic representations of womenwearing labrets or lip plugs and distinctive coiffures and/or headgear are believed to illustrate elite members of apopulation that spoke Tallan and occupied the far northcoast at the time of the Spanish conquest (e.g., Cordy-Collins 2001, Petersen 1955). This area was integratedinto the Middle Sican dominion around 1000 c.e. Icon-ographic, technical, chemical compositional, and otherlines of evidence attest to the importance and intensityof contacts with the far north coast and coastal Ecuadorfor the Middle Sican economy and religion (e.g., Cordy-Collins 1990; Shimada 1990, 1995; Shimada, Gordus, andGriffin 2000). In fact, mtDNA data raise the possibilitythat members of the Sican elite immigrated to the Lam-bayeque region from the northern Andes (Shimada et al.n.d.).

funerary preparations and ritual

Preparation of the East and West Tombs and performanceof the associated funerary rituals required careful andcomplex planning, considerable material and labor re-sources, and time, perhaps extending to months if notyears. Various lines of evidence suggest that the body ofthe East Tomb principal personage was either naturallyor intentionally mummified and bundled (Shimada 1995:70). For example, the atlas was not found with his skel-eton (B. Yamaguchi, personal communication 1994), sug-gesting that his head had been detached prior to placinghis body upside down, perhaps after his mummification.Further, various heavy ornaments that he wore or held,such as necklaces and pectorals of semiprecious min-erals, a hip cover, and a ceremonial tumi knife, showedhardly any signs of the postinterment movement thatwould be expected from the compaction of tons ofoverlying earthen fill. In addition, digging the tomb outof the consolidated silt and clay layers and assemblingand placing grave contents are estimated to have takenat least two weeks (assuming 20 full-time workers), pro-vided that the water table remained sufficiently low forlong enough. Finally, we must consider the time andeffort involved in gathering a half-ton of tumbaga sheetscraps, nearly 500 unused cast arsenical-copper imple-ments (ca. 200 kg), and some 80 kg (i.e., hundreds ofthousands) of shells and semiprecious stone beads from

different workshops, among other items (Shimada 1995,Shimada, Gordus, and Griffin 2000).

The process of preparing the West Tomb was probablyeven longer and more complex because of the greaternumber of individuals interred (24 versus 5) and the vol-ume of soil excavated (ca. 720 versus 105 m3). Tool marksfound on the shaft walls indicate that at least five or sixindividuals were working at one time on one side of theshaft. We estimate that the digging of this tomb alonewould have taken 20 workers over two months. Oncethe central chamber and antechamber and their nicheshad been dug, three individuals and their grave goodswere placed in the central chamber. The principal per-sonage was carefully positioned near the center of themat-lined central-chamber floor, and his mask, head-dress, and gloves were placed on and around him. Othergrave goods were positioned on the mat, while paintedcloths were draped on walls.

Before the central chamber was roofed, the antecham-ber was prepared. As noted earlier, some women appearto have been bundled, mummified, and curated or ex-humed for reburial. Other women may have been sac-rificed at this stage but not immediately buried.7 Oncetheir bodies were placed in appropriate pits and buried,painted cloths and narrow cloth strips were placed onthe floor. As we have seen, one cloth strip was drapeddown into the central chamber to wrap the headdressand upper torso of the principal personage.

Shortly (perhaps a day or two) before the central cham-ber was roofed, over 111 crisoles were hastily made insitu inside it and left there, perhaps as a parting gestureon the part of funerary participants. Discussing similarcrisoles found in a terminal Moche/Early Sican tomb atSan Jose de Moro in the lower Jequetepeque Valley, some85 km southeast of Sican, Costin (1999:99) argues thatthey were “made specifically near and for the burial rit-ual” by a large number of funerary participants (non-potters) for a ritual of drinking chicha or maize beer thatconcluded the funerary rites. In essence, Costin suggeststhat crisoles represent voluntary material expressions ofthe community in which the deceased had played certainroles and established social and economic networks. Herview is based on their high degree of formal variabilityand contrasting technological similarity, their fragility,and ethnographic analogy. We concur with her assess-ment with regard to the timing and makers of the cri-soles, although their use remains to be demonstrated, forexample, through residue analysis.

The abundant camelid remains inside the centralchamber should also be considered in relation to the ex-tensive funerary preparations and rites involving manyindividuals. Together with the aforementioned evidenceof food consumption in the Great Plaza, the placement

7. The late pre-Hispanic Chimu people of the north coast observeda five-day mourning period followed by washing and interment ofthe deceased (Rowe 1948:49). Salomon and Urioste (1991:129, 131),citing preconquest Quechua folklore recorded in Huarochirı, sug-gest that the extended waiting period prior to interment may relateto the belief that the soul of the deceased left the body in the formof sarcosaprophagous muscoid flies laid in it.


of camelid feet and heads in the central chamber maybe seen as a symbolic gesture of sharing by the funeraryparticipants while fully exploiting the meat of the ca-melid (Shimada and Shimada 1997).

Even the filling of the tomb appears to have been quiteslow and deliberate. In the West Tomb, the painted clothand tumbaga sheets did not show the damage that wouldbe expected had the dirt been simply dumped in fromthe top. Further, all niches were carefully filled in andsealed with clay. In fact, given the possibility that a lapseof time was needed for the soul of the deceased to leavethe body the tomb may not have been filled in imme-diately after the placement of all the bodies and goods.The hastily made ceramics associated with the ante-chamber women contrast sharply with the ceramics as-sociated with the principal personage, which were notonly well made but thoroughly wrapped with tumbagasheet metal, reflecting the social difference and value ofceramics relative to metal (Cleland and Shimada 1998,Shimada 1994a). Though we cannot specify how long thepreparation and interment of these individuals took, theassociated ceramics all pertain to the early Middle Sican,with an estimated time range of 950–1050 c.e.8

The preceding reconstruction of funerary preparationsand rituals, though partial, suggests that there were well-established protocols and specialists in elite tomb prep-aration and accompanying funerary rites and that suchpreparations were complex and protracted. This sort ofspecialization would not be surprising given the long listof specialists mentioned in the pre-Hispanic legend ofthe Naymlap dynasty in Lambayeque recorded in 1586(Cabello 1951 [1586]). Similarities in the compositionand organization of personnel involved in funerary pro-cessions (e.g., an oval casket on a pole carried on theshoulders of two men) as represented in Moche andChimu artifacts (e.g., Castillo 2000:124–25, figs. 38–41)further reinforce this notion.

In addition, the above reconstruction reminds us thatthe presence of multiple individuals in a single tombdoes not imply the synchronicity of their death, theirgrave goods, or even their interment. Increasingly, evi-dence of postinterment visitation and alterations, suchas removal or addition of some skeletal elements and/orartifacts, has been documented for elite and commonerburials of the last 2,000 years of north-coast prehistory(e.g., Franco, Galvez, and Vasquez 1998, Hecker andHecker 1992, Klaus 2003). Together with the aforemen-tioned curation of the deceased and delayed burials, theseactivities attest not only to the complexity of mortuarybehavior but also to lasting bonds between the dead andthe living. As will be seen below, however, the prepa-ration of the East and West Tombs was only part of aneven more protracted and grander project involving a Si-can elite lineage and its ancestor cult.

8. This estimate is based on five radiocarbon assays for Huaca Loro(see Shimada 1995:191–92), including two for the West Tomb (Beta-179888, 1,010 � 50 b.p., 2-sigma calibrated date of 960–1160 c.e.,and Beta-179889, 1,080 � 50 b.p., 2-sigma calibrated date of880–1030 c.e.).

symbolism

It is evident that the internal organization of both Eastand West Tombs was carefully choreographed with spe-cific symbolic messages as well as social and/or kinshiprelationships in mind. For example, the placement of ayouth and women close to the principal personage is seenin both tombs, just as it was in the earlier Moche elitetombs (i.e., tombs 1 and 3) at Sipan (Alva 2001). It hasbeen suggested that the principal personage and two ac-companying women of the East Tomb together formeda symbolic representation of the reincarnation of theprincipal personage, that the inverted burial positionsymbolized the fetus in the womb about to be born, andthat the prone position of one of the women (burial 5)represented the act of giving birth while the other (burial4) represented a midwife (Shimada 1995:145). Intenselybright red cinnabar painted on the body of the principalpersonage is believed to have symbolized life-giving,well-oxygenated blood and the blood that often accom-panies birth.

The inverted position of the principal personage takenby itself may conjure up other symbolic messages, forexample, the deceased’s transformation into a bat (in-verted position) ready to embark on his flight to theworld of the dead (see Shimada 1995:144–46 for otherviews). Such interpretations, however, ignore the holisticcharacter of the tomb contents and organization. At thesame time, the images on the associated grave goods givethe impression of being intended to glorify the deceasedpersonage, who was likely to have been perceived as anearthly alter ego of the omnipotent central deity of theSican religion. The repousse views of an elaborately at-tired man on gold artifacts found in the tomb (e.g., thegold cup held in the golden glove) appear to representthe central personage of the tomb. The staffs and clothingshown in these representations match those found in thetomb.

The West Tomb appears to have encoded differentsymbolic messages. Its overall internal configuration,with the principal personage flanked by two distinctgroups of women, may have symbolized his real or ex-pected role in life of unifying and governing Sican andMoche populations. Further, the placement of his bodyat the bottom of the central chamber may also expressthe significant social gulf between him and the women.In other words, the horizontal and vertical dimensionsof this tomb and the myriad interrelationships amongthe interred individuals embodied not only the complexhierarchical and multiethnic character of Middle Sicansociety (e.g., McHugh 1999) but also the social obliga-tions and networks that bound it together.

Drawing on an analogy with northern Andean high-land shaft tombs, we may suggest instead that the ad-ditional depth of the central chamber symbolized accessto the watery underworld. This view invokes the conceptof the cyclical circulation of water and soul from celestialto subterranean worlds (Doyon 2002, Zuidema 1977–78).Related to this inference is the idea that the verticallayout of elite shaft tombs and their contents embodied


a widespread cosmological model that consisted of su-perimposed celestial, earthly, and under-worlds (Doyon2002). Horizontally, grave goods are said to have beenconcentrically organized according to their decreasingvalue to the earthly political economy, with the highest(gold, precious stones) at the center and the lowest (ce-ramics) at the peripheries (Doyon 2002; cf. Pader 1982).These symbolic interpretations are based heavily onnorthern Andean and Amazonian ethnographic and eth-nohistorical data. Their applicability to the Sican shafttombs under consideration is questionable given, amongother things, the notable differences in tomb construc-tion and content organization and the lack of docu-mented sharing of cosmology and political dogma by thetwo regions.

The iconography found in the West Tomb differs no-tably from that of the East Tomb. Objects that accom-panied the principal personage in the central chambernot only lacked self-images (with the possible exceptionof the repousse images on the gold cup mentioned earlier)but generally had little iconographic content. In addition,it is evident that the main theme of the preserved paintedcloths that spanned the north and south sides of theantechamber was a cosmological vision involving theSican Deity in marine settings represented by fish, shell,and anthropomorphized waves. The cloth that showed aprocession of warriors carrying trophy heads was re-stricted to the north side, as if to reinforce the sacrificialcharacter of the North Women.

Did the marine scenes and the westward orientationof the personage indicate the symbolic significance ofthe Pacific? The ceremonial gloves of the principal per-sonages of both tombs seem to salute some imaginaryentity to the west. In the case of the central chamber,hardly any grave goods that would impede the westerlyview were placed in front of the principal personage andhis gloves. The symbolic importance of the Pacific forpre-Hispanic north-coast populations is well docu-mented at least from Moche times (e.g., Carrion 1940;Shimada 1994b: 44–47). Not only was the Pacific seenas the source of all life-giving water but its offshore is-lands were regarded as resting places for the ancestorsand settings for human sacrifices and other offerings forancestors, the moon goddess, and other deities (Hoc-quenghem 1987, Kubler 1948, Netherly 1977). In thisregard, the aforementioned westerly orientation of theprincipal personages, together with their gloves and cups,may represent their veneration of the deities and ances-tors and/or their journey to join them. Considering thatNaymlap is said to have arrived from across the sea toestablish the Lambayeque dynasty (Cabello 1951 [1586]),we may suggest that the deceased leader returned to theprimordial sea from whence he presumably came.

the shaft-tomb/temple-mound complex andancestor worship

Various lines of evidence support the primary workinghypothesis that the East Tomb was part of the plannedcemetery of a Middle Sican elite lineage placed under

and around the Huaca Loro. Along with the stratigraphicsuperposition documented at the mouth of the East andWest Tombs, our GPR surveys and attendant excavationsshowed that construction of the excavated and inferredshaft tombs preceded construction of the Huaca Loro andthat the tombs were planned to encircle an inferred cen-tral one. Although two phases of remodeling have beendocumented for the temple atop the mound, systematicexamination of constructions and fill exposed by deeperosional cuts shows that the bulk of this mound, in-cluding its basal platform, was built in a single episodearound 1000 c.e. The mound sealed and protected theunderlying shaft tombs. A long, steep zigzag ramp (ca. 2m wide) gave access to a temple atop the mound (fig. 2).With a colonnade supporting its solid roof and enclosingwalls decorated with polychrome religious murals fea-turing the front-facing, standing Sican Deity (Florian1951; Kosok 1965:165; Shimada 1995:48, fig. 27), thetemple was clearly a formal setting for exclusive cere-monies. The dimensions of the mound, particularly itsheight (ca. 35 m), together with the enclosing wall at thetop, would have made any ritual performance at the tem-ple largely invisible and inaudible (Moore 1996:155–64).

Although mtDNA analysis did not shed any light onthe relationship between the principal personages of theEast and West Tombs, dental-trait analysis suggested agenetic relationship that was more likely second-order(e.g., uncle–nephew) than first-order (e.g., father–son).The symmetrical placement of the tombs and similari-ties in their facial morphology such as a high nasal archand prominent orbits (K. Mine, personal communication,1996) had already hinted at such a relationship.

We infer that the central shaft tomb below the HuacaLoro pertains to the ancestral figure of the endogamouskin group to which the principal personages of the Eastand West Tombs belonged. This hypothesis may neverbe tested, given the enormous excavation task it wouldinvolve. In fact, excavation of any hypothesized shafttomb cannot be readily realized, if for no other reasonthan the height of the water table since the El Nino eventof 1997–98.

The differences in developmental health, associatedgrave goods, and other features between the North Trenchburials and the contemporaneous East and West Tombindividuals tend to support the hypothesized inverse re-lationship between social status and distance from thesacred locus. This hypothesis requires further testing, forexample, through excavation of burials placed along dif-ferent orientations. Likewise, in spite of East and WestTomb differences, it seems premature to pass judgmenton the hypothesized separation of two complementary butasymmetrical moieties along the north–south axis of themound.

We can state with confidence, however, that construc-tion of the Huaca Loro was a corporate undertaking ofhistorical proportions based on a master plan and in-volving ancestor worship and the permanence and powerof an elite lineage. The ascent to the temple effectivelyimpressed visitors with the grandeur and sanctity of theoverall construction and, symbolically, the power of the


inferred elite lineage. The aforementioned murals helpedto establish not only the sanctity of the ritual space butalso the symbolic connection between the deity and thedeceased personages interred underneath. That the prin-cipal personages of the East and West Tombs wore masksidentical to the face of the Sican Deity further reinforcesour impression that a “divine” connection was invokedin legitimating and aggrandizing the elite that ruled Mid-dle Sican society. Interment of multiple elite individualswho had probably died at different times in a single col-lective cemetery was far more than mere body disposal;it presented a unique opportunity for the survivors todefine, if not redefine, their social identity, position, andeven history. Subsequent ritual performances at the tem-ple by the living lineage members, then, served effec-tively to reaffirm and reinforce not only their lineageidentity and unity but also three-way symbolic linkagesamong the Sican Deity, the dead, and the living. It islikely that, through these rituals, the divine connectionbetween the deity and the dead was extended and legit-imated for the living.

The documented rituals and feasting at the moundbase and in the Great Plaza may well have been directedtoward securing or reinforcing the ideological and socialintegration of the Sican public. Though the effectivenessof such efforts may be questioned, the pervasive distri-bution of well-defined and homogeneous Sican Deity andSican Lord icons attests to some success in institution-alized ancestor veneration. In many ways, the shaft-tomb/temple-mound complex described here exempli-fies what Blanton et al. (1996) have termed the “networkstrategy” for acquiring and maintaining political power.

In essence, the Huaca Loro was an awe-inspiring pieceof political propaganda, a temple for worship, and a mon-ument to the unity and continuity of the Sican Deity,the deceased, and the living. It was also a key part of theunique sacred landscape that we call the religious cityof Sican. The presence of two other pyramidal construc-tions at Sican with similar or identical architecturalforms but slightly later dates (i.e., Huaca Sontillo andHuaca Rodillona) suggests that different elite lineages atdifferent times within the Middle Sican built their owncemeteries, each capped by a monumental mound.

Tombs and cemeteries containing multiple intermentsplaced around central individual(s) that presumably mir-ror social inequality and integration through shared an-cestry and hierarchy have been widely documented inthe Andes from the Necropolis on the south coast of Peru(Tello and Mejıa 1979) to shaft-tomb clusters in the Ec-uadorian (e.g., at La Florida, Quito) and Colombian (e.g.,at Miraflores, Narino) highlands (e.g., Doyon 1989, 2002;Uribe and Lleras 1982–83).

On the north coast, several generations of local Mochelords and priests, each accompanied by an impressivearray of luxury grave goods, some kin, and his retinue,were interred in spacious, roofed burial chambers placeddeep within the solid adobe platform at Sipan in the mid-Lambayeque Valley (Alva 2001, Shimada et al. n.d.). Aninferred series of superimposed temples dedicated to an-cestor worship was built in six phases during the first

several centuries c.e. The burial platforms found in thevast royal compounds (ciudadelas) at the Chimu capitalof Chan Chan (e.g., Conrad 1982) appear to be a later,above-ground version of the Huaca Loro West Tomb.Each had a central burial chamber (presumably reservedfor a deceased king or noble) surrounded by symmetri-cally placed smaller chambers in which multiple womenwere buried (Pozorski 1971). The placement aboveground of the former appears to be a solution to the highwater table caused by irrigation up-valley.

Such cases of multiple interments placed around a cen-tral individual or individuals are commonly described asembodying pervasive and persistent ancestor worship.This interpretation, however, is typically based on thespatial arrangement of differentiated burials and a pro-jection of ethnohistorically documented Inka and earlycolonial ancestor cults (e.g., Doyle 1988, Kaulicke 2000,Salomon 1995). Ancestor cult seems too casually or toooften invoked for the available data. This is not a rejec-tion of the inference but rather a call for better substan-tiation of the claim. Many claims for ancestor cult wouldbe better described as simply a cult of the dead. Whitley(2002:119) laments the overreliance on “omnipresent an-cestors” to explain a whole range of archaeological phe-nomena. He warns of various misconceptions regardingthe ancestors and their worship and argues that “rites ofburial and rites of ‘ancestor worship’ are ritually andoften spatially distinct” (pp. 122–23). What distinguishesour claim for a Middle Sican ancestor cult is that it isbuilt on various converging lines of evidence that havenot been brought to bear on previous studies of pre-His-panic cases.

Conclusions

Over the past two decades, there have been many small-and large-scale excavations of pre-Hispanic burials oncoastal Peru, where the general aridity has favored pres-ervation of both artifactual and osteological remains.However, the information potential of burials has notoften been fully realized because many excavations havebeen focused on grave goods or conducted with inade-quate logistical and technical preparation, field and lab-oratory methodologies, and conceptual models of deathand mortuary practices. Too often burial excavationshave been reactive and mechanical, treated as secondaryto other research activities and undertaken without wor-thy research questions in mind or sufficient expertise todocument, sample, and conserve a wide range of biolog-ical and cultural features. Given the widespread focuson grave goods and reactive excavations, critical infor-mation such as the historical and social contexts of theburials have not been clearly identified prior to or evenafter excavation. If we are to treat burials as a microcosmof a given culture, then it behooves us to elucidate asmany of the factors and processes that shape them aspossible. Even the horizontal and vertical stratigraphiesof burial structures and postprimary-interment modifi-cations have been poorly documented. It is still rare to


find physical anthropologists included as integral to ar-chaeological fieldwork and subsequent analysis. Too of-ten, human remains do not receive the care required toensure their survival for analysis.

Using a unique research opportunity on the northcoast of Peru as a case study, we have illustrated theproductivity of and need for broadly conceived bio-archaeological research with a balanced examination ofthe biological and cultural dimensions of pre-Hispanicburials for insightful social reconstruction. Our back-ground investigation has suggested that Middle Sicanmortuary practices generally reflected the social statusof the deceased and/or the surviving individuals. Theintent of our study was not, however, to test the appli-cability of the representationist view of mortuary prac-tices but rather to document the complexity and persis-tence of the relationships between the funerary goodsand rituals, on the one hand, and the social and biologicaldimensions of the dead and the survivors, on the other.Systematic examination of biological data revealed theinadequacies of models of social differentiation basedstrictly on material evidence; in fact, the findings maybe seen as supporting both representationist and non-representationist modes of treating the dead (e.g., Buiks-tra 1995). The study also found the conventional viewof the dead-living articulation on the pre-Hispanic northcoast simplistic and temporally and spatially restricted.It was in fact meant to steer our attention away fromthe processual-postprocessual debate toward a holisticvision of pre-Hispanic mortuary practices that has longbeen envisioned but rarely implemented.

What distinguishes the Middle Sican shaft-tomb/tem-ple-mound complex reported here is not so much its ma-terial wealth or its scale as the breadth and depth of theinformation we have secured from a focused, sustainedinvestigation that integrates a multitude of analyticalperspectives and methods. The Middle Sican case is se-curely based on multiple lines of corroborative evidence.For productive social analysis of burials, we argue for theclose integration of complementary analytical perspec-tives and techniques such as those of artifact style anddistribution, mtDNA, inherited dental traits, and devel-opmental health and taphonomy set within a long-termresearch framework. In addition, our multifaceted anal-ysis of human remains was conducted within a compre-hensive examination of mortuary process, rituals, andsymbolism that entailed excavation of nested spatialloci, including the associated temple and plaza. Finally,our study was set within a regional project that providedus critical background historical and social contexts aswell as information for locating burials.

A securely dated burial sample that included individualsfrom all points on the social spectrum was crucial to ourstudy. However, our sample cannot be described as rep-resentative of the relevant regional population or suffi-ciently large to be informative about its demography. Thisis a rather common situation with archaeologically de-rived burial samples. Our success in elucidating some im-portant biological and social relationships is due largelyto the emphasis on burials from a coherent cemetery. It

seems that the best chance for insightful research is basedon large samples from cemeteries that are spatially andtemporally coherent.

Comments

luis ja ime castillo buttersDepartamento de Humanidades, Seccion Arqueologıa,Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru, Av.Universitaria, Cuadra 18, San Miguel, Lima, Peru([email protected]). 5 ii 04

Contrary to popular belief, archaeologists seldom en-counter royal burials, ancient buried cities, temples andceremonial centers decorated with mural art, or evenobjects made out of precious metals or decorated withcomplex iconographies. As a consequence, as Shimadaand colleagues point out, those who are so fortunate asto do so are often ill prepared to deal with the complex-ities that such contexts pose in terms of logistics, budg-ets, analytic support, and even local politics. Shimada etal. bring to the analysis of mortuary settings a state-of-the-art approach that combines traditional archaeologi-cal analysis of the stratigraphic, contextual, and artifac-tual component of elite burials with data contributed bynewly developed biological techniques. Their articlecalls attention to the vast array of possibilities for in-terpreting such settings and their costs and complica-tions, and it serves for the general anthropological com-munity as an introduction to the complex societies ofthe north coast of Peru, particularly the Lambayeque(a.k.a. Sican) culture.1

Shimada et al. argue that most of their colleagues in-terested in funerary archaeology are “motivated by thesearch for well-preserved decorated artifacts in presumedsealed, synchronous context.” It is true that Peruvianarchaeology, particularly on the north coast, has a rep-utation for producing high-status burials, but behind thisfacade of exuberance is some very high-quality archae-ology. The excavations of the royal burials of Sipan, forexample, cannot be characterized as motivated by greed.Walter Alva (2001) and his team of Peruvian archaeolo-gists not only conducted a very good excavation but alsoundertook the conservation and restoration of the arti-facts associated with the burials that culminated in theconstruction of Peru’s largest archaeological museum.

The other difficulty with funerary studies pointed out

1. “Lambayeque” is the name of the general region where this so-ciety originated, the valley, and the modern political jurisdiction,and it is the term used by the first studies of this society, those ofRafael Larco Hoyle (1948) and Jorge Zevallos Quinones (1971), andby Peruvian researchers and residents of the region today. The in-troduction of the term “Sican” by Shimada and his collaboratorshas brought confusion to the field, since it labels exactly the sameartifacts and cultural phenomena as the traditional name. AlthoughShimada claimed early on that his label referred only to the phe-nomena associated with the core of the Lambayeque realm, Lam-bayeque and Sican styles are indistinguishable.


by Shimada et al., the representativity of the sample, isin fact an obvious shortcoming of their own study. Theyclaim that most such studies are centered on extraor-dinary burials, with little being known about the totalpopulation and thus about the way in which the extraor-dinary represents the ordinary. The study discussed herefocuses on two singular burials, and I doubt that it il-lustrates the range of variability of elite Lambayeque bur-ials and that these burials are truly representative of aparticular cultural behavior. Excavation of Moche eliteburials at San Jose de Moro (Castillo 2003, Castillo andDonnan 1994), Dos Cabezas (Donnan 2001), and Sipan(Alva 2001) have shown many more similarities betweenelite burials than the formal proximity discussed here.Is this because of the singular character of the deceased?As Shimada et al. point out, singular burials must beplaced in the context of the known burials pertaining toa given culture. Regrettably, the list of excavated Lam-bayeque burials is not very long. However, since mostof the Sican archaeology has been done by Shimada andhis collaborators, at least the comparative sample hasbeen excavated under the same high standards.

Shimada et al. reject the “representationist approach”to funerary data and call upon new approaches developedby the postprocessualists. Burials are clearly not onlyconstructions that illustrate social structures and rela-tions; they encode messages in particular ways. Only adetailed understanding of the conditions of a given so-ciety permits a meaningful reconstruction of the mes-sages encoded in the construction of the funerary con-texts. Whether one pursues generalizations or adopts amore particularistic approach, it is best to employ asmany approaches as possible, combining the power ofcomparative and generalizing assumptions about socie-ties and, in this case, the construction of social meaning.At the same time, Shimada et al. remind us that a deepunderstanding of the social, cultural, and historic con-ditions of a society will allow one to read appropriatelybetween the lines. But isn’t this what we all try to do?Fortunately, Latin American archaeologists have gener-ally remained uninterested in theoretical disputes, tryingto take advantage of what is useful about each approachand recognizing that sometimes the quality of theory andthe strength of schools of thought rest upon the intel-ligence and creativity of the individuals involved.

The most interesting aspect of this research is the useof biological information in conjunction with archaeo-logical data to demonstrate the genetic makeup of pop-ulations. In the West Tomb, where two groups of womenwere found associated with two distinct ceramic assem-blages, mitochondrial DNA confirmed a hypothesisbased on artifactual differences. Several other researchteams are attempting to address questions of this kind,for example, to determine whether sacrificial victims be-longed to the same populations as the perpetrators (Ver-ano’s work in progress at Huaca de la Luna) or whetherindividuals with a particular pathology were related orsimply affected by the same disease (Cordy-Collins etal.’s [2001] work at Dos Cabezas). As strong as these newtechniques are, they depend upon asking the right ques-

tions. As north-coast archaeology progresses, the ques-tions that we pose are becoming more specific, alwaysone step ahead of the methods. MtDNA analysis is in-capable of addressing all the issues at hand. We havereached a point at which our research questions are onlybroadly answered by determination of genetic proximityor relationship to a given population; we want to knowwhether two individuals found in royal burials were fa-ther and son or brothers or whether all the priestessesfound at San Jose de Moro were related.

The Sican Archaeological Project is in many ways anexample to imitate, but it is by no means the only seriousand systematic attempt at addressing the social recon-struction of past societies on the basis of funerary data.It is entirely inappropriate to characterize other research-ers’ work as “focused narrowly on grave goods” or “re-active and mechanical” or to claim that one’s approachis the only route to understanding. Echoes of the peculiarself-confidence of early processual archeology can beheard in this otherwise remarkable study.

j . christopher dudarDepartment of Anthropology, National Museum ofNatural History, Smithsonian Institution, P.O. Box37012, MRC 138, Washington, DC 20013-7012, U.S.A.([email protected]). 13 i 04

Shimada and coworkers should be commended for hav-ing presented their long-term regional study of socialreconstruction in a concise and well-organized fashion.However, in a manuscript involving so many perspec-tives, it is almost inevitable that some elements will beinadequately explored. Their kinship analysis involvingancient DNA (aDNA) is presented without adequate hy-pothesis testing. Further, while they promote their studyas a model for integrating multiple data sources and ar-gue that this approach (which the philosopher WilliamWhewell [1840:230] called “consilience of induction”) is“rarely implemented,” such studies do exist.

Stone’s (1996) doctoral study of aDNA at the NorrisFarms site (Stone et al. 1996, Stone and Stoneking 1998)also involved a comprehensive mortuary and spatialanalysis of genetic data with associated burial inclusions.Shared mtDNA lineages in some multiple intermentssuggested relationships between victims of violence, andone lineage cluster in the highest artifact-ranking groupalso implied kinship burial practice. However, Stone ac-knowledged that a forensic-style DNA-typing approachusing short tandem repeat (STR) analysis would be re-quired for confirmation. Her results broadly indicate thatOneota society was likely egalitarian, with prestige ac-quired and age and sex as primary indicators of status.

My research on mortuary customs among Upper Ca-nadian pioneers (Dudar, Waye, and Saunders 2003, Du-dar, McKillop, and Saunders n.d.) also involved multiplelines of evidence. Ancient DNA sex identification, STRs,and mtDNA clusters were submitted to statistical anal-yses to achieve significant probabilities of genetic rela-tionships. Associated historical records supported the


conclusion of ancestor veneration through “virilocal”mortuary practice and revealed an aDNA bias created bythe disproportionate contribution of locally persistingelite families to the aggregate skeletal collections. Thisbias could easily have been misinterpreted as a foundereffect if chronological control of the aDNA analysis hadnot been established through burial phases (using time/style-sensitive material culture) and with only a cursoryexamination of regional settlement history.

These studies point to the importance of careful studyof aDNA within a broader cultural context and the ne-cessity of hypothesis testing to drive interpretation.Gould (1989:282) has cautioned that “the firm require-ment for all science . . . lies in secure testability, notdirect observation.” In the case, for example, of themtDNA sequence not belonging to a Native Americanhaplogroup that was recovered from three female burialsof Huaca Loro West and a male Japanese anthropologistwho had previously handled the remains (n. 5), contam-ination could have been discounted if additional nuclearaDNA sex identification had been performed. Since nu-clear aDNA amplification is considerably more difficultto achieve, a simple forensic-based statistic, the proba-bility of maternal kinship by chance (PrMKBC), usingmtDNA, could have been calculated in a mock scenariowith the anthropologist as a suspect leaving DNA at acrime scene. The conservative probability (with 95%confidence interval) of a chance match between the an-thropologist’s and the putative aDNA sequence is verylow, indicating contamination as the most likely source(p p 0.0066 � 0.0058 using the Asian forensic database[see http://www.fbi.gov/hq/lab/fsc/backissu/april2002/miller1.htm]). The majority of Shimada et al.’s othermtDNA sequences have never been observed. Seven ofthem appear in world databases ranging from NativeAmerica (including three matches to ancient Windoverlineages!), Africa, Europe, and Asia, but since they belongto established Native American haplogroups, they aremost likely endogenous aDNA.

When the probable contamination is removed from theWest Tomb results, it is disputable whether “the Northand South Women were characterized by mutually ex-clusive sets of haplotypes” because the majority of bur-ials have unique mtDNA sequences. The individualssharing sequences are not found in the same pits, andone cannot simply assume relationships between them;20% to 33% of modern Britons possess the mtDNACambridge Reference Sequence (Piercy et al. 1993, Rich-ards et al. 1996) but have no known common ancestry.Chance could account for whatever pattern is left, andsince shared dental traits are an unknown blend of ge-netic and environmental factors they can only indicatedifferences or broad associations.

Multiple converging perspectives support conclusionswith greater strength than conclusions derived fromfewer sources; unfortunately, in this case the whole isnot the sum of the parts. I believe that Shimada et al.have collected some authentic aDNA data, but theymust use them to test relationships rather than simplyassert them. I firmly agree with their progressive con-

clusions calling for greater cooperation between archae-ologists and physical anthropologists in the field and thelaboratory, for interpretation does begin “at the trowel’sedge” (Hodder 1999). It is an exciting time for bioar-chaeology research as more integrative bioculturallybased studies such as Shimada and coworkers’ begin tounfold.

peter kaulickeEspecialidad de Arqueologıa, Departamento deHumanidades, Pontificia Universidad Catolica delPeru, Lima, Peru ([email protected]).16 i 04

Up to the late eighties, scientifically controlled exca-vations of “rich” burials from ancient Peru were ex-tremely scarce, though myriad objects from unknownlooted cemeteries and sixteenth-century written sourceshad pointed to complex burials as a common practice.For this and other reasons (absence of legible writing,difficulties in assigning function to monumental archi-tecture, etc.) archaeologists did not develop clear con-cepts about pre-European elites apart from analogies di-rectly drawn from ethnohistorical sources. During thepast 15 years, however, a steady flow of new findings hasbeen changing this situation dramatically. This shorttime span and the resulting absence of precise presen-tations of the pertinent data for most of these contextsmean that their theoretical relevance remains largelyunclear.

With his long-term project at La Poma Shimada hasmanaged to find and excavate a series of burials, amongthese two intact complex contexts, beneath Huaca Loro.The latter is one of the huge mounds forming what Shi-mada calls the sacred city and capital of the Sican state.His GPR results in and around this mound allow him topostulate the existence of a planned elite cemetery con-sisting of five contexts located beneath the platformmound. His interest is not, however, restricted to an ex-tensive discussion of this site but aims at a theoreticalapproach to an integrated (or, in his terms, “holistic”)view of Sican society during Middle Sican times (a.d.900–1100). In order to achieve this aim, he and his col-leagues use an impressive variety of different kinds ofanalyses, stressing the particular importance ofbioarchaeology.

While it is certainly commendable to include all pos-sible kinds of data in their analyses and subsequent in-terpretations, there is the danger that with more datamore problems will arise. Analytical completeness is cer-tainly not the same as complete understanding of com-plex and ritual networks. What Shimada and his col-leagues have revealed about the composition of socialnetworks in mortuary populations has produced someimportant insights, but their interpretation is often de-pendent on contextual correlations with material items,producing the danger of some circular reasoning.

Here I would like to concentrate on what is presentedas a central hypothesis—that the mound is a physical fo-


cus of ancestor worship. Since Shimada et al.’s overall aimis the reconstruction of Sican society, ritual is often re-duced to functional interpretations as sequences of relatedactivities with somewhat speculative reflections on theirmeanings. While the buried individual retains connec-tions with the role assigned to him during his lifetime,his placement and ritual treatment are aimed at his futureand can be seen as part of a process of transformation intoa different identity. By this transformation he achievessuperior power as an ancestor that is substantial for theliving community. In order to achieve this transformation,often conceived as a dangerous voyage through the un-derworld, cycles of complicated rituals outside the tombare needed and, as Shimada shows, are indicated at HuacaLoro. The outer or public and the inner (inside the burialchamber), more private formal aspects follow strict rulesaccording to precise ritual, clear concepts, and logic. Thebest preservation is usually not found in the associatedarchitecture and its surroundings but inside the burialchamber, where the evidence for transformation is per-vasive. The West and East Tombs show that the logic maytake different but not contradictory forms. In order to un-derstand the logics of transformation, a close “reading” ofthe interrelated items (objects and human as well as an-imal bodies [real and figurative] or their parts) is of theutmost importance, as position, direction, number, color,kind of material, etc., may all have symbolic significance.The pertinent evidence in the West Tomb is to be seenin large painted textile panels and other kinds of textiles,while decorated metal and other materials predominatein the East Tomb. These topics are not fully explored toadvantage in the present paper. Finally, the interpretationof these contexts should be compared with other relatedpublic and iconographic evidence (for instance, the muralson top of Huaca Loro) (for further discussion, see Kaulicke2000).

The extremely rich evidence contained in complexburials and their connectedness with social and physicalsettings pose tremendous challenges for archaeologicalanalyses. Shimada and his colleagues are certainly rightin demanding a corresponding sophistication of analysesof mortuary contexts, and he is to be congratulated forsignificant advances. Similar analyses of complex con-texts in other comparable sites (Sipan, Huaca de la Luna,etc.) should lead to a more definite understanding of an-cient Peruvian elites in the near future.

andrew j . nelsonDepartment of Anthropology, University of WesternOntario, London, ON, Canada N6A 5C2 ([email protected]). 27 i 04

Shimada et al. have done an exemplary job of excavatingand analyzing one of the most important sites in theAndes. In this paper they seek to integrate the contextualinformation from the Sican burials with biological dataderived from the analysis of the skeletal remains. Thisapproach combines multiple lines of evidence and is cru-

cial to a more complete understanding of the site andthis cultural period.

The successful integration of multiple independentlines of evidence is a tall order, particularly with such acomplex context. Shimada et al. demonstrate a sophis-ticated command of the literature surrounding the anal-ysis of burial contexts and argue, successfully I feel, foran integration of many aspects of processual and post-processual theory. I am, however, a little less enthusi-astic about the presentation and integration of the bio-logical data, for reasons I will explore below.

First, however, I must correct the citation of my 1998work “Wandering Bones.” In that article I described pat-terns of preinterment mummification and curation atSan Jose de Moro (Jequetepeque Valley) for burials datingto Moche times and to a later period I called “immedi-ately post-Moche” that is now referred to as the Tran-sitional Period (Rucabado and Castillo 2003). Shimada etal. incorrectly cite this study as describing examplesfrom Early and Middle Sican times. While not mentionedin the 1998 paper, there is some evidence for preinter-ment mummification and/or curation at San Jose deMoro in Lambayeque (Middle Sican) times (see Nelsonet al. 2000 for a discussion of issues of Lambayeque/Sicannomenclature), but the degree and pattern are very dif-ferent from those of Moche times, and it is probable thatthis aspect of the funerary ritual was very different inthe two cultures.

With respect to the overall integration of the biologicaldata with this study, Shimada et al. would do well toreexamine their assumption that wealth p health, fol-lowing Wood et al.’s (1992) discussion of the “osteolog-ical paradox.” Wood et al. argue that we should considerthe possibility that the individuals in which stress ismost apparent may be the healthiest, as they recover andsurvive to show the effects. This framework might helpresolve some of the apparently unexpected results, suchas the pattern of differences between the North andSouth Women. It is certainly worthy of note that thewealth p health equation is not universally expressedin the Andes, particularly at the nearby site of Tucume.Toyne (2002) noted levels of cribra orbitalia and porotichyperostosis in the 19 females buried in the Inca periodat Huaca Larga that meet or exceed the levels cited forthe North and the South Women at Sican, and the 3males from Huaca Larga all show Harris lines and hy-poplastic defects. In addition, Cordy-Collins has reportedwidely on the pathological giants from the high-statusMoche tombs at Dos Cabezas (e.g., Cordy-Collins et al.2001).

The eternal banes of bioarchaeological research aresample size and representativeness. Shimada et al. aimto elucidate the “biological, social, and cultural rela-tionships among the 34 inferred commoners and eliteindividuals excavated” at Sican. However, they go on toclaim that “a comparison of archaeological and biolog-ical lines of evidence suggests that the layout and con-tents of one tomb in fact reflected Middle Sican socialreality.” Alas, a sample of 34 individuals from one siteand 34 individuals from nearby sites (the El Brujo ma-


terial is not integrated throughout the analysis, and thetwo dozen Sican commoner burials excavated between1978 and 1984 do not appear to have been used in thisstudy) simply cannot validly support the latter claim,especially when the samples are atomized into extremelysmall subsamples as is done in table 4 (incidentally, table4 does not include an N column, which makes the as-sessment of the figures presented extremely difficult).That the Sican sample may not be representative of theSican population at large is suggested by the fact that ithas an average age in the early twenties and only twosubadults. Clearly, cultural selection was at work in de-termining who was buried at Sican. An understandingof the “background biological variability” expressed inthe Sican/Lambayeque population is crucial for the cor-rect interpretation of all the biological data and partic-ularly the dental morphology and mtDNA data sets. Iwell understand that the “background” is extremely dif-ficult to come by, but interpretations must be attunedto their validating evidence.

While I have some concerns about interpretation andvalidation, Shimada et al. should be congratulated onbringing these data, ideas, and interpretations to the an-thropological community at large. While there is muchwork yet to be done, Peruvian archaeology is makinggreat strides in moving from a strict culture-historicalparadigm to a more sophisticated theoretical and meth-odological (including bioarchaeological) framework.

susan elizabeth ramirezDepartment of History, Texas Christian University,TCU Box 297260, Fort Worth, TX 76129, U.S.A.([email protected]). 28 i 04

Descriptions of burial practices and related beliefs forthe colonial period in the archives and the drawings ofburials by the painter who accompanied Bishop BaltazarJaime Martınez Companon on his inspection tour ofnorthern Peru in the 1780s show that members of line-ages were interred together in cemeteries or burial com-plexes consisting of ceremonial spaces or patios, ware-houses for storage of sacrificial goods, niched walls, andtombs. Burials were clustered or housed in caves or largechambers that might contain hundreds of the bundledand mummified remains of relatives, often arrangedaround the central figure of the founder. This personageusually sat atop a raised structure and wore a distinctiveheaddress and clothes. The living periodically visitedthese complexes to request health and fertility from theancestors and conduct propitiating rituals, often burningfood offerings (could this account for the ash-charcoaldeposit atop or next to some burial pits?), singing, anddancing. The callos (feet, knuckles) of sacrificed came-lids were burned at burial ceremonies as favorite foodsof the dead. People believed that they depended on thedead for life, fertility, and prosperity while the dead de-pended on them for sustenance, the next life being socrowded that there was not enough space for all to plant.

The feasting and drinking that accompanied ancestral

burial and subsequent propitiation certainly reflected thesocial status and importance of the remembered indi-vidual and his lineage and served to cement loyalties andreinforce obligations to the line and its power to attractfollowers. Important indices of the status and power ofa curaca were the number of his followers and his abilityto offer hospitality to anyone who appeared at his court.Colonial documents often refer to a chief’s female at-tendants as “widows,” and they may have included giftbrides (cementing political alliances), orphans, captivefemales, or persons entering service in their flight fromharsh economic realities or recurring ecological disas-ters. A litter, ritual paraphernalia, and a good number ofretainers were customarily buried with lords to be usedin the next life. Might not the wives and daughters ofthe defeated have served as household labor while aliveand been buried with the lord, thus accounting for thepresence in the tomb of the North Women and theirrelative heterogeneity?

Ancestor worship was a multigenerational practice.Some tombs remained open for ritual reasons, and thismay explain why there appears to have been a lapse oftime between death, burial, and the closing of the tomb.In central Andean tombs, individuals were buried in thesame chamber as their antecedents. Thus one would ex-pect an accumulation of grave goods reflecting venera-tion by different generations over time. The memoriesof commoners and nobles alike often went back ten oreleven generations.

For high-status individuals there was no difference be-tween their tombs and lineage temples or sacred ritualspaces, structures that Shimada et al. tend to separate.There is no direct testimony on a positive correlationbetween an individual’s status and the closeness of hisburial to the sacred center, but documents do show thatat both the lineage and the imperial level, the closer aperson’s kinship ties to the personage occupying the sa-cred center of the cult hierarchy, the higher that person’ssocioreligious status.

The polity under the paramount lord Jayanque (nowJayanca) had at least five administrative (socio-religious-political) levels: the curaca, his second-in-command,principales (nobles), mandones (overseers), and mandon-cillos (little overseers). Lordships passed from brother tobrother before skipping down to the next generation.This may account for the uncle-nephew (second-order)relationship suggested for the tie between the principalpersonages of the East and West Tombs.

Sicani was one of ten principales of the curaca and wasgiven, along with the curaca and three other lords, inencomienda to a Spaniard when the polity was dividedinto halves in 1534. If Sican was the dominant polity inMiddle Sican times, how did its status decline?

In the myths of the Central Andes, the founding an-cestor wandered the world, often stopping to rest atop anearby mountain where, seated, he ordered the world.Seated on a stool, the curaca was worshipped as the em-bodiment of the divine ancestor. Could the importanceof being seated to order and civilize the population ac-count for the seated position of the four elite burials


mentioned here? Might not the ubiquitous truncatedpyramids be representative of the mountains from whichthe founders and gods ruled?

The orientation of the face of the principal personagein burial 1, looking west, may indicate his watchfulawaiting of a successor god or lord coming from thatdirection. Cabello Balboa notes that the prince Naymlapcame from the sea to rule over the people of Lambayeque.

The Inca claimed to be the direct descendant of thesun god, and central Andean leaders claimed to be directdescendants of their founding ancestral heroes. Such ge-nealogical legitimacy claims accord with Shimada et al.’sconclusions that “a ‘divine’ connection was invoked inlegitimating and aggrandizing the elite that ruled MiddleSican society” and that the central personage was “likelyto have been perceived as an earthly alter ego of theomnipotent central deity of the Sican religion.”

This effort does indeed show “the breadth and depthof information . . . secured from a focused, sustainedinvestigation that integrates a multitude of analyticalperspectives and methods.” I lament that the collabo-rative interpretation of the tombs’ contents invited theparticipation of the historian last.

Reply

izumi shimada, ken- ichi shinoda, juliefarnum, robert corruccini , and hiro-katsu watanabeWashington, DC, U.S.A. 15 ii 04

We are grateful for these stimulating and informativecomments from a variety of perspectives.

Nelson informs us of significant differences in pre- andpostprimary interment treatments between Moche andpost-Moche burials. This is a topic that should be a majorconsideration for anyone who excavates burials either bydesign or by chance. Pathbreaking in this regard is thework of Gisela and Wolfgang Hecker (1991, 1992), whowere the first to document the formal, temporal, andspatial variability of these treatments on the north coast.Comparing the treatments documented among the Mo-che (e.g., Millaire 2002, Franco, Galvez, and Vasquez1998) and other cultures before and after them in differ-ent areas of the north coast (e.g., Klaus 2003, Nelson1998), one observes differences, as Nelson notes, but alsosome persistent practices (e.g., placing a copper or copperalloy object in the mouth) that may represent the “em-blemic style” associated with an ethnic group (Wiessner1983) as opposed to styles derived from status, class, gen-der, or culture (Klaus and Shimada n.d.).

With regard to the wealth p health relationship, wehypothesized a positive, not an a priori correlation be-tween them. More specifically, we were following Good-man’s (1994) hypotheses for explaining the varying fre-quencies of stress indicators in different individuals orpopulations: (1) some individuals are more susceptible

to stress; (2) early stress can damage certain systems andcause greater susceptibility to disease and stress later;and (3) differences in stress indicators are all status- andresource-accessibility-related. The majority of studiessuggest that a combination of these factors (especially 2and 3) is responsible for the uneven distribution of stressindicators and related illness in the world’s populations(see Nguyen and Peschard 2003). Trends in the healthstatus of modern people are also consistent with a modelof accumulation of health risks over the individual’s life-time (Power and Matthews 1998, Strickland and Shetty1998). This framework is useful for the interpretation ofstress indicators in both past and modern populationsand has yielded correlations between increasing amountsof stress (measured by enamel hypoplasias) and reducedlife span in several Andean populations (Farnum 1996,2002). Strong links have been found between child pov-erty/malnutrition, ill health, and enamel hypoplasias inmodern populations (Goodman 1994, Goodman et al.1992). Despite an imperfect correlation and many com-plicating factors, the wealth p health generalization(Goodman and Leatherman 1998) remains broadly ap-plicable. Therefore, it is unlikely that the osteologicalparadox can account for the systematic differences instress indicators found among the various Sican groups.

It is not surprising that the 19 “weaving women” fromTucume diverged in developmental health indicatorsfrom the South Women of the Huaca Loro West Tomb.The North Women are closer to the Tucume women,both groups perhaps representing a number of disparatepopulations, developmental histories, and environ-ments. The excavator (Narvaez 1995:93) identified themas acllas, young women from the provinces selected forservice, sometimes in distant places, by the Inca state(see, e.g., Cobo 1979[1653]:236, 245; 1990[1653]:25; Polode Ondegardo 1990[1571]:97–103). Uhle (1903:84–87) hadcorroborated these historical descriptions with his ex-cavation of acllas in the cemetery near the base of theSun Temple at Pachacamac. The possibility that theNorth Women were the Middle Sican counterparts of theacllas is worth exploring. Generally, in comparing thegroups mentioned by Nelson with those of our study wemust make a clear distinction between inherited andacquired social status. We suspect that the inferred acllasat Tucume had acquired a new high social status at anage by which many of the developmental health indi-cators had already been established. As noted earlier, ad-verse effects of stress early in development linger(Nguyen and Peschard 2003).

Nelson and Castillo have a valid point in their criti-cisms of sample size and representativeness. As wenoted, they are, in Nelson’s words, the “eternal banes”of bioarchaeology. Large numbers of burials are oftenfound when they are least expected, creating seriousproblems of documentation, analysis, and conservation,not to mention elucidation of local and regional contexts,as in the case of the more than 2,200 burials recoveredduring an emergency excavation at the Purucucho-Hua-querones Inca cemetery on the eastern edge of the cityof Lima (Cock 2002). At the same time, a problem-ori-


ented mortuary study such as ours typically finds it dif-ficult to acquire a large, representative burial sample forthe reasons we explained. As Nelson points out, the rel-atively young women in the West Tomb represent a non-random sample of Sican society.2 However, all we cando is hope that they represent some sort of typical sampleof that stratum of females. Since the excavation of theWest Tomb we have learned more about Sican burialsthrough the excavation of 12 individuals at Huaca Sial-upe (Klaus 2003) and collaborative analysis of 84 addi-tional burials excavated by members of the Bruning Re-gional Archaeological Museum at Illimo (lower La LecheValley) and Cerro Cerrillo (lower Lambayeque Valley[Klaus, Centurion, and Curo 2004]). An understanding ofbackground biological variability can realistically beachieved only through long-term regional study.

Nelson questions the adequacy of the evidence for someof our basic claims. Space limitations forced us to focuson the burials at Huaca Loro and be selective in the pre-sentation of findings. Relevant data and analysis fromother sites are presented in Farnum (2002), Klaus (2003),and an edited volume in preparation (Shimada n.d.).

Dudar points to bioarchaeological studies employingmultiple data sources that we failed to acknowledge. Thepublication by Dudar, Waye, and Saunders (2003) was notyet available when our article was written. An integratedstudy of mortuary practices entails not only integrationof multiple analytical methods and perspectives but alsoan assessment of the results in their historical and socialcontext. For those without access to written texts this canbe achieved only through sustained regional study, and,although there are welcome exceptions (e.g., Buikstra1995), this type of study is still rare. The location of theEast Tomb at Huaca Loro had been known since 1978,but we did not devise a detailed plan for its excavationuntil we felt that we had sufficient command of the re-gional Sican chronology, material culture, sociopoliticalorganization, and burial customs, as well as a proficientexcavation crew and a team of complementary specialists(see Shimada 1995:42–45, 179–81).

Dudar touches on various concerns regarding mtDNAanalysis about which we commented in the article. Whatcan be gained from ancient DNA (aDNA) analysis dependsalmost entirely on the quality of the DNA that has beenpreserved in sampled materials. Dudar, Waye, and Saun-ders (2003) were able to reach convincing conclusions re-garding the kinship relationship of burials excavated at ahistorically documented nineteenth-century cemeterybased on analyses of nuclear DNA and other genetic ma-terials preserved in excavated bones. Our study differedfundamentally from theirs with regard to the quality ofDNA sample used and the availability of textual infor-mation. Degradation of genetic materials resulting from1,000 years of interment 12–15 m below the surface made

2. The pre-Hispanic culture and associated art style called Sican inthis article is sometimes called Lambayeque. The latter is neitherthe first nor the only designation given to them. Other names in-clude Northern Chimu (e.g., Ravines 1980, Valcarcel 1937) and Eten(Uhle 1949). The reasons for our use of “Sican” are presented else-where (e.g., Shimada 1995:6–13; 2000:49).

it practically impossible for us to emulate their exemplarystudy. We were confined to analyzing mtDNA and illu-minating possible maternal linkages among sampled in-dividuals. Similarly, because the quantity of mtDNA thatcan be recovered is minute there is substantial risk ofcontamination. Since our analysis begins with amplifi-cation of extracted mtDNA by polymerase chain reaction,we must suspect that the resulting sequence data havebeen affected by some postdepositional aging. Only thosesequences that were verified by repeated experimentswere utilized, and therefore we are confident that theyrepresent authentic human sequences.

With regard to the haplotype 5 females, it is importantto recognize that we know very little about mtDNA dis-tribution for the pre-Hispanic north coast of Peru or, forthat matter, much of the pre-Columbian New World. Weincluded the haplotype 5 data in our study in the beliefthat haplogroups other than those documented for mod-ern Amerindian populations may well have existed inthe pre-Hispanic world. We still feel that “it is prudentto remain open-minded on the subject” (n. 5).

As Dudar notes, in the mtDNA D-loop region that weanalyzed for our study, many modern “Caucasians” (i.e.,Europeans and Euro-Americans) possess the CambridgeReference Sequence without having known common an-cestry. However, Amerindians and their presumed ances-tral group(s) in northern Asia do not possess this sequence,and therefore his comment seems to us inappropriate.

We do not know what factors led to the placing of oneor, alternatively, two individuals in a given pit. Pit size isapparently not one of them. The individual B6 in pit 2may have been sacrificed in situ immediately precedinginterment, while the two individuals (B9, B10) in adjacentpit 4 appear to have been brought in bundled and mum-mified. We were unable to elucidate situation-specific de-cisions or paternal relationships that may have influencedthe placement of the women in the West Tomb. We cannotassume that maternal kinship ties were the determinantas Dudar seems to suggest. Rather than focusing on thequestion of whether women with the same haplotype oc-cur in the same pits, it seems more important to note thatthe North and South Women did not share a single hap-lotype in spite of the diversity of haplotypes identifiedamong them, suggesting that these two groups were de-rived from at least two populations with distinct genetichistories. It was the matching spatial bipartitioning of ar-tifact styles that led us to suggest two distinct ethnicgroups.

We hope that the strontium isotope (87Sr/86Sr) analysisof bone samples now under way will help us to differ-entiate local from nonlocal individuals. The analysis de-termines the area-specific 87Sr/86Sr composition of bonesamples that incorporated strontium compounds throughfood and water intake (Stos-Gale 2000). Nonlocal individ-uals would be expected to be different in terms of theirhaplotypes. Our analyses of additional burial samples ex-cavated at sites in different parts of the north coast andpertaining to different time periods and archaeological cul-tures are slowly but steadily clarifying the haplotype dis-


tribution, and the expanding aDNA data bank should al-low us to carry out more detailed and conclusive analyses.

We concur with the general thrust of Kaulicke’s cri-tique of the state of mortuary analysis on the north coast.Castillo offers a more generous assessment. As Kaulickelaments, many of these tombs are inadequately docu-mented and analyzed. Commoner burials or those withfew or no associated grave goods are marginalized interms of documentation, conservation, and analysis.This reflects a narrow conception of the information po-tential of mortuary analysis as well as limited integra-tion of complementary specialists (including conserva-tors) in and out of the field and insufficient knowledgeof the regional context. Encouragingly, along with theincreasing popularity of bioarchaeology we are seeing in-creasing participation of physical anthropologists in bur-ial excavations, but more could be done to maximize theinformation potential of major tombs.

Kaulicke feels that our treatment of the ritual and sym-bolic dimensions of the Huaca Loro tombs is “often re-duced to functional interpretations.” Some correlationsbetween material and bioarchaeological evidence werefound, but each line of evidence was generated and treatedindependently; these correlations did not drive our inter-pretive effort. Echoing Pader (1982), Hodder (1980), andothers, Kaulicke also speaks of the importance of a “close‘reading’ of the interrelated items” including “position,direction, number, color, kind of material, etc.” Some ofthe relevant data and discussions have already been pub-lished elsewhere (Shimada, Gordus, and Griffin 2000, Shi-mada et al. 1999). Unfortunately, the murals preservedatop the Huaca Loro mound are limited to a few detachedand incomplete representations of the front-facing, stand-ing Sican Deity (Florian 1951), and their overall icono-graphic composition and theme can only be speculatedupon.

Kaulicke emphasizes the need to explore the processthrough which a deceased leader becomes a revered an-cestor. A thorough discussion of these topics will be partof the collection in preparation (Shimada n.d.), but wewonder whether the “complete understanding of complexand ritual networks” that Kaulicke seeks is feasible. Inhis recent book (2000:288) he recognizes the difficulty ofthe task and justifiably criticizes the analogy-based ap-proach or backward projection of ethnohistorical docu-mentation of the beliefs and ritual practices of immedi-ately preconquest times (also see Shimada 2003:90).Rather than addressing the thorny issue of alternative ap-proaches to analogy-based speculation, however, he fo-cuses on the role of ancestors and their worship in thepre-Incaic Andean world. Critical examination of the an-cestor cult that he proposes is timely and much needed,as we also argue.

In his book, Kaulicke assumes the widespread andlong-standing existence of the ancestor cult and identi-fies inferred ancestors in iconographic representations(e.g., centrally placed personages). This approach carriesthe risk of circularity and is inseparably bound to infor-mation on the Inca and their contemporaries culled fromSpanish written sources. In other words, Kaulicke’s ap-

proach to pre-Incaic mortuary practices and the ancestorcult relies on a narrow range of information and has itsown weaknesses. His approach complements our mul-tilineal, contextual approach, however, and will be ex-plored in the book in preparation (Shimada n.d.).

We are puzzled by Castillo’s comment that we “rejectthe ‘representationist approach’ to funerary data and callupon new approaches developed by the postprocessual-ists.” Nelson’s assessment of our work as a demonstrationof the importance of “integration of many aspects of pro-cessual and postprocessual theory” accurately capturesour intent. In fact, we discussed the strengths and weak-nesses of each school and argued that each has much tocontribute to the archaeological study of mortuary prac-tices. One point highlighted by the processual-postpro-cessual debate is that every interpretation is implicitly orexplicitly underlain by biases, assumptions, and theoret-ical stances, even if one is “uninterested in theoreticaldisputes.” In reality, our study rests on a belief that therepresentationist position is effectively “applicable tocomplex societies with institutionalized social and eco-nomic inequalities” such as the Middle Sican. How ourapproach is labeled is of less concern to us than demon-strating the complementary character of these two schoolsand the importance of contextualized analysis.

Ramirez provides welcome support for a number ofour interpretations and various thought-provoking com-ments. At the same time, we have reservations abouther (as about Kaulicke’s) comments because we questionthe extent to which ethnohistorical data on the Incasand their contemporaries can productively inform ar-chaeological studies of earlier times and different areas.Historical data can broaden or narrow the range of plau-sible interpretations to be considered. A seeming matchbetween a historical description and an archaeologicalfind may reflect a homology or a convergence, requiringcareful assessment of the relevant contextual data andadditional lines of evidence. In addition, we must guardagainst the disjunction of form and meaning (e.g., Kubler1970). Thus, without a clear indication of cultural con-tinuity and in-depth contextual understanding, we arehesitant to rely on historical information, however ex-plicit it may be. The watercolors of pre-Hispanic burialsand their grave goods in Martınez Companon y Bujanda’seighteenth-century manuscript (1978–93 [1781–89])show Chimu and Chimu-Inca (ca. 1470–1532) burialsthat are most likely ethnically distinct from those of theSicans. Nevertheless, we find Ramirez’s information andquestions stimulating and food for future thought.

Overall, we share the optimism about mortuary stud-ies expressed by the commentators and hope that ourarticle will contribute to realizing their potential.

References Citeda l t , k . w. , s . p i c h l e r , w. v a c h , w. h u c k e n b e c k ,

a n d m . s t l o u k a l . 1996. Early Bronze Age family burial


from Velke’ Pavlovice: Verification of kinship hypothesis byodontologic and other nonmetric traits. Homo 46:256–66.

a l t , k . w. , a n d w. v a c h . 1992. “Non-spatial analysis of‘genetic kinship’ in skeletal remains,” in Analyzing and mod-eling data and knowledge. Edited by M. Schoder, pp. 247–56.Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag.

———. 1995. Odontologic kinship analysis in skeletal remains:Concepts, methods, and results. Forensic Science International74:99–113.

a l v a , w a l t e r . 1986. Una tumba con mascara funeraria de lacosta norte del Peru. Beitrage zur Allgemeinen und Verglei-chenden Archaologie 7:411–21.

———. 2001. “The royal tombs of Sipan: Art and power in Mo-che society,” in Moche art and archaeology in ancient Peru.Edited by Joanne Pillsbury, pp. 223–46. Washington, D.C.: Cen-ter for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery ofArt.

a l v a , w a l t e r , a n d s u s a n a m e n e s e s d e a l v a . 1983.Los murales de Ucupe en el valle de Zana. Beitrage zur Allge-meinen und Vergleichenden Archaologie 5:335–60.

a n d e r s o n , s . , a . t . b a n k i e r , b . g . b a r r e l l , a . r .c o u l s o n , j . d ro u i n , i . c . e p e ro n , d . p . n i e r -l i c h , b . a . ro e , f . s a n g e r , p . h . s c h r e i r , a . j .s m i t h , r . s t a d e n , a n d i . g . y o u n g . 1981. Sequenceand organization of the human mitochondrial genome. Nature290:457–65.

b e c k , l a n e a . Editor. 1995. Regional approaches to mortuaryanalysis. New York: Plenum Press.

b e n n e t t , w e n d e l l c . 1939. Archaeology of the north coastof Peru: An account of exploration and excavation in Viru andLambayeque Valleys. American Museum of Natural HistoryAnthropological Papers 37(pt. 1).

b i n f o r d , l e w i s r . 1971. “Mortuary practices: Their studyand their potential,” in Approaches to the social dimensions ofmortuary practices. Edited by J. A. Brown, pp. 6–29. Memoirsof the Society for American Archaeology 25.

b l a n t o n , r i c h a r d e . , g a ry m . f e i n m a n , s t e p h e na . k o w a l e w s k y, a n d p e t e r n . p e r e g r i n e . 1996. Adual-process theory of the evolution of Mesoamerican civiliza-tion. current anthropology 26:1–14.

b l o c h , m a u r i c e . 1971. Placing the dead: Tombs, ancestralvillages, and kinship organization in Madagascar. London:Seminar Press.

b o y d , d o n n a c . 1996. Skeletal correlates of human behaviorin the Americas. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory3:189–251.

b r a u n , d a v i d p . 1981. A critique of some recent NorthAmerican mortuary studies. American Antiquity 46:398–416.

b ro w n , j a m e s a . Editor. 1971. Approaches to the social di-mensions of mortuary practices. Memoirs of the Society forAmerican Archaeology 25.

———. 1995a. “Andean mortuary practices in perspective,” inTombs for the living: Andean mortuary practices. Edited by T.D. Dillehay, pp. 391–405. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks.

———. 1995b. “On mortuary analysis, with special reference tothe Saxe-Binford research program,” in Regional approaches tomortuary analysis. Edited by L. A. Beck, pp. 3–28. New York:Plenum Press.

b u i k s t r a , j a n e e . 1977. “Biocultural dimensions of archaeo-logical study: A regional perspective,” in Biocultural adapta-tion in prehistoric America. Edited by R. L. Blakeley, pp.67–84. Proceedings of the Southern Anthropological Society 11.Athens: University of Georgia Press.

———. 1995. “Tombs for the living . . . or . . . for the dead: TheOsmore ancestors,” in Tombs for the living: Andean mortuarypractices. Edited by T. D. Dillehay, pp. 229–80. Washington,D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks.

b u i k s t r a , j . e . , a n d d . h . u b e l a k e r . 1994. Standardsfor data collection from human skeletal remains. Arkansas Ar-chaeological Survey Research Series 44.

c a b e l l o , m i g u e l . 1951 (1586). Miscelanea antartica. Lima:Instituto de Etnologıa, Universidad Nacional Mayor de SanMarcos.

c a n n o n , a . 1989. The historical dimension in mortuary ex-pression of status and sentiment. current anthropology 30:437–58.

c a r c e d o , p a l o m a . 1989. “Anda ceremonial lambayecana:Iconografıa y simbologıa,” in Lambayeque. Edited by Jose An-tonio de Lavalle, pp. 249–70. Lima: Banco de Credito del Peru.

c a r c e d o , p a l o m a , a n d i z u m i s h i m a d a . 1985. “Be-hind the golden mask: Sican gold artifacts from Batan Grande,Peru,” in Art of pre-Columbian gold: Jan Mitchell collection.Edited by Julie Jones, pp. 60–75. London: Weidenfeld andNicolson.

c a r r i o n , r e b e c a . 1940. “La luna y su personificacion orni-tomorfa en el arte chimu.” Actas y Trabajos Cientıficos del 27Congreso Internacional de Americanistas, vol.1, pp. 571–87.

c a s t i l l o , l . j . 2000. “Los rituales mochica de la muerte,” inLos dioses del antiguo Peru. Edited by Krzysztof Makowski,pp. 102–35. Lima: Banco de Credito del Peru.

c a s t i l l o b u t t e r s , l u i s j a i m e . 2003. “Los ultimosMochicas en Jequetepeque,” in Moche: Hacia el final del mil-enio (Actas del Segundo Coloquio sobre la Cultura Moche,Trujillo, 1 al 7 de agosto de 1999). Edited by Santiago Uceda yElıas Mujica, vol. 2, pp. 65–123. Lima: Universidad Nacionalde Trujillo and Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru. [ljc]

c a s t i l l o , l u i s j a i m e , a n d c h r i s t o p h e r b . d o n -n a n . 1994. “La ocupacion moche de San Jose de Moro, Jeque-tepeque,” in Moche: Propuestas y perspectivas. Edited by S.Uceda and E. Mujica, pp. 93–146. Lima. [ljc]

c a v a l l a ro , r a f f a e l , a n d i z u m i s h i m a d a . 1988.Some thoughts on Sican marked adobes and labor organization.American Antiquity 53:75–101.

c l a r k , a . 1996. 2d edition. Seeing beneath the soil: Prospect-ing methods in archaelogy. London: Routledge.

c l a r k e , j . g . d . 1972. Star Carr: A case study in bioar-chaeology. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley ModularPublications.

c l e l a n d , k a t h ry n m . , a n d i z u m i s h i m a d a . 1992.Sican bottles: Marking time in the Peruvian bronze age. An-dean Past 3:193–235.

———. 1998. “Paleteada pottery: Technology, chronology, andsub-culture,” in Andean ceramics: Technology, organization,and approaches. Edited by I. Shimada, pp. 111–50. Philadel-phia: University Museum, University of Pennsylvania.

c o b o , b e r n a b e . 1979 (1653). History of the Inca empire.Translated and edited by Roland B. Hamilton. Austin: Univer-sity of Texas Press.

———. 1990 (1653). Inca religion and customs. Translated andedited by Roland B. Hamilton. Austin: University of TexasPress.

c o c k , g u i l l e r m o a . 2002. Inca rescue. National Geo-graphic Magazine 201(5):35–40.

c o n r a d , g e o f f r e y. 1982. “The burial platforms of ChanChan: Some social and political implications,” in Chan Chan:Andean desert city. Edited by Michael E. Moseley and Kent C.Day, pp. 87–117. Albuquerque: University of New MexicoPress.

c o n y e r s , l a w r e n c e b . , a n d d . g o o d m a n . 1997.Ground-penetrating radar: An introduction for archaeologists.Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press.

c o r d y - c o l l i n s , a l a n a . 1990. “Fonga sigde, shell purveyorto the Chimu kings,” in The northern dynasties: Kingship andstatecraft in Chimor. Edited by Michael E. Moseley and A.Cordy-Collins, pp. 393–417. Washington, D.C.: DumbartonOaks.

———. 2001. “Labretted ladies: Foreign women in northern Mo-che and Lambayeque art,” in Moche art and archaelogy in an-cient Peru. Edited by Joanne Pillsbury, pp. 247–57. Washington,D.C.: Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, NationalGallery of Art.

c o r d y - c o l l i n s , a . , g . c o n l o g u e , g . g a rv i n , a . j .n e l s o n , j . m . t o y n e , a n d d . h o l d s w o r t h . 2001.Radiographic and paleopathologic diagnosis of A52 T1 B1 (anancient Peruvian giant). Poster presented to the North Ameri-can Paleopathology Association. [ajn]


c o r ru c c i n i , ro b e r t s . , a n d i z u m i s h i m a d a . 2002.Dentally determined biological kinship in relation to mortuarypatterning of human remains from Huaca Loro, Peru. Ameri-can Journal of Physical Anthropology 117:113–21.

c o r ru c c i n i , ro b e r t s . , i z u m i s h i m a d a , a n d k e n -i c h i s h i n o d a . 2002. Dental and mtDNA relatednessamong thousand-year-old remains from Huaca Loro, Peru. Den-tal Anthropology 16(1):9–14.

c o s t i n , c a t h y l . 1999. “Formal and technological variabil-ity and the social relations of production: Crisoles from SanJose de Moro, Peru,” in Material meanings: Critical ap-proaches to the interpretation of material culture. Edited byElizabeth S. Chilton, pp. 85–102. Salt Lake City: University ofUtah Press.

c r a i g , a l a n k . , a n d i z u m i s h i m a d a . 1986. El Ninoflood deposits of Batan Grande, northern Peru. InternationalJournal of Geoarchaeology 1(1):29–38.

d i l l e h a y, t o m d . 1995. “Introduction,” in Tombs for theliving: Andean mortuary practices. Edited by T. D. Dillehay,pp. 1–26. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks.

d o n n a n , c h r i s t o p h e r b . 1995. “Moche funerary prac-tice,” in Tombs for the living: Andean mortuary practices. Ed-ited by T. D. Dillehay, pp. 111–59. Washington, D.C.: Dumbar-ton Oaks.

———. 2001. Hallazgos de entierros moches. National Geo-graphic (Espanol) 8(3):58–73. [ljc]

d o y l e , m a ry e . 1988. The ancestor cult and burial ritual inseventeenth- and eighteenth-century central Peru. Ph.D. diss.,University of California, Los Angeles, Calif.

d o y o n , l e o n g . 1989. “Tumbas de la nobleza en la Florida,”in Quito antes de Benalcazar. Edited by Ivan Cruz Cevallos,pp. 51–100. Quito: Centro Cultural Artes.

———. 2002. “Conduits of ancestry: Interpretation of the geogra-phy, geology, and seasonality of North Andean shaft tombs,” inThe space and place of death. Edited by Helaine Silvermanand David B. Small, pp. 79–95. Archaeological Papers of theAmerican Anthropological Association 11.

d r e n n a n , ro b e r t d . 1996. Statistics for archaeologists: Acommonsense approach. New York: Plenum Press.

d u d a r , j . c . , h . m c k i l l o p , a n d s . r . s a u n d e r s .n.d. Space in life and space in death: Pioneer perceptions ofland and kinship mortuary custom, or Was there a “familycompact” in Upper Canada? MS. [jcd]

d u d a r , j. c., j. s. waye, and s. r. saunders. 2003. Deter-mination of a kinship system using ancient DNA, mortuarypractice, and historic records in an Upper Canadian pioneercemetery. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 13:232–46. [jcd]

e a s t o n , r . d . , a . d . m e r r i w e t h e r , d . e . c r e w,a n d r . e . f e r r e l l . 1996. MtDNA variation in the Yano-mami: Evidence for additional New World founding lineages.American Journal of Human Genetics 59:213–25.

f a r n u m , j u l i e . 1996. Multi-method approaches to diet andhealth reconstruction and estimation of ages of pregnanciesand weaning for Paloma, Peru, using Sr, Zn, and non-specificindicators of stress. M.A. thesis, University of Missouri, Co-lumbia, Mo.

———. 2002. The biological consequences of social inequalitiesin prehistoric Peru. Ph.D. diss., University of Missouri, Colum-bia, Mo.

f a u l k n e r , d a v i d k . 1986. “The mass burial: An entomolog-ical perspective,” in The Pacatnamu papers, vol. 1. Edited byC. B. Donnan and G. A. Cock, pp. 145–50. Los Angeles: FowlerMuseum of Cultural History, University of California.

f l o r i a n , m a r i o . 1951. Un icono mural en Batan Grande.Lima: Imprenta Amauta.

f r a n c o , r . , c . g a l v e z , a n d s . v a s q u e z . 1998. Desen-tierro ritual de una tumba Moche: Huaca Cao Viejo. RevistaArqueologica Sian 3(6):9–18.

g o l d s t e i n , l . s . 1980. Mississippian mortuary practices: Acase study of two cemeteries in the lower Illinois Valley. Ev-anston, Ill.: Northwestern University Archaelogical Program.

g o o d m a n , a . h . 1994. “Cartesian reductionism and vulgar

adaptationism: Issues in the interpretation of nutritional statusin prehistory,” in Paleonutrition: The diet and health of pre-historic Americans. Edited by K. D. Sobolik, pp. 163–77.Southern Illinois University Center for Archaeological Investi-gations Occasional Paper 22.

g o o d m a n , a l a n h . , a n d t h o m a s l . l e a t h e r m a n .Editors. 1998. Building a new biocultural synthesis: Political-economic perspectives on human biology. Ann Arbor: Univer-sity of Michigan Press.

g o o d m a n , a l l a n h . , g . h . p e l t o , l . h . a l l e n ,a n d a . c h a v e z . 1992. “Socioeconomic and anthropometriccorrelates of linear enamel hypoplasias in children from Solis,Mexico,” in Recent contributions to the study of enamel de-velopmental defects. Edited by A. H. Goodman and L. L. Ca-passo, pp. 373–80. Journal of Paleopathology MonographicPublications 2.

g o u l d , s . j . 1989. Wonderful life: The Burgess Shale and thenature of history. New York: W. W. Norton.

h e c k e r , g i e s e l a , a n d w o l f g a n g h e c k e r . 1991. DieHuaca 16 in Pacatnamu: Eine Ausgrabung an der nordperuan-ischen Kuste. Berlin: D. Reimer.

———. 1992. Ofrendas de huesos humanos y uso repetido de vas-ijas en el culto funerario de la costa norperuana. Gaceta Ar-queologica Andina 6(21):33–53.

h e r t z , ro b e r t , 1960 (1909). Death and the right hand.Translated by R. Needham and C. Needham. New York: FreePress.

h i l l s o n , s . 1996. Dental anthropology. Cambridge: Cam-bridge University Press.

h o c q u e n g h e m , a . - m . 1987. Iconografıa mochica. Lima:Fondo Editorial de la Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru.

h o d d e r , i a n . 1980. “Social structure and cemeteries: A criti-cal appraisal,” in Anglo-Saxon cemeteries. Edited by P. Rahtz,T. Dickinson, and L. Watts, pp. 161–69. British ArchaeologicalReports British Series 82.

———. 1982. Symbols in action: Ethnoarchaeological studies ofmaterial culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

———. 1984. “Burials, houses, women, and men in the EuropeanNeolithic,” in Ideology, power, and prehistory. Edited by D.Miller and C. Tilley, pp. 51–68. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-sity Press.

———. 1999. The archaeological process: An introduction. Ox-ford: Blackwell.

k a e s t l e , f . a . , a n d k . a . h o r s b u r g h . 2002. AncientDNA in anthropology: Methods, applications, and ethics. Year-book of Physical Anthropology 45:92–130.

k a u l i c k e , p e t e r . 2000. Memoria y muerte en el Peru an-tiguo. Lima: Fondo Editorial, Pontificia Universidad Catolicadel Peru.

k e l l e y, m . a . , a n d c . s . l a r s e n . 1991. Advances indental anthropology. New York: Wiley-Liss.

k l a u s , h a a g e n . 2003. Life and death at Huaca Sialupe: Themortuary archaeology of a Middle Sican community, northcoast of Peru. M.A. thesis, Southern Illinois University, Car-bondale, Ill.

k l a u s , h a a g e n , a n d i z u m i s h i m a d a . n.d. The endur-ing dead: A reassessment of death and burial on the pre-His-panic north coast of Peru. MS.

k l a u s , h a a g e n , j o r g e c e n t u r i o n , a n d m a n u e lc u ro . 2004. New evidence of human sacrifice in the Andes:Middle Sican ritual killing in the Lambayeque valley, Peru. Pa-per presented at the 74th Annual Meeting of the American As-sociation of Physical Anthropologists, Tampa, Fla.

k o l m a n , c o n n i e j . , a n d n o r e e n t u ro s s . 2000. An-cient DNA analysis of human populations. American Journalof Physical Anthropology 111:5–23.

k o s o k , p a u l . 1965. Life, land, and water in ancient Peru.New York: Long Island University Press.

k u b l e r , g e o r g e . 1948. “Towards absolute time: Guano ar-chaeology,” in A reappraisal of Peruvian archaeology. Editedby W. C. Bennett, pp. 29–50. Memoirs of the Society for Amer-ican Archaeology 4.


———. 1970. Period, style, and meaning in ancient American art.New Literary History 1:127–44.

l a r c o , r a f a e l . 1948. Cronologıa arqueologica del norte delPeru. Buenos Aires: Sociedad Geografica Americana.

l a r s e n , c l a r k s . 1999. Bioarchaeology: Interpreting behav-ior from the human skeleton. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-sity Press.

l a w l o r , d . a . , c . d . d i c k e l , w. w. h a u s w i r t h ,a n d p . p a r h a m . 1991. Ancient HLA genes from 7,500-year-old archaeological remains. Nature 349:785–88.

l e a t h e r m a n , t . l . , j . w. c a r e y, a n d r . b . t h o -m a s . 1995. Socioeconomic change and patterns of growth inthe Andes. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 97:307–22.

m c h u g h , f e l d o r e . 1999. Theoretical and quantitative ap-proaches to the study of mortuary analysis. British Archaeo-logical Reports International Series 785.

m a r t ı n e z c o m p a n o n , b a l t a s a r j a i m e . 1978–94(1781–89). Trujillo del Peru. 12 vols. Madrid: Ediciones CulturaHispanica.

m e t c a l f , p . , a n d r . h u n t i n g t o n . 1991. 2d edition.Celebrations of death: The anthropology of mortuary ritual.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

m i l l a i r e , j . - f . 2002. Moche burial patterns: An investigationinto prehispanic social structure. British Archaeological Re-ports International Series 1066.

m i l n e r , g e o r g e r . 1984. Social and temporal implicationsof variation among American Bottom Mississippian cemeter-ies. American Antiquity 49:468–88.

m i u r a , t o m o y u k i , m a s a h i ro y a m a s h i t a , v l a d i -m i r z a n i n o v i c , l u i s c a r t i e r , j u n t a k e h i s a ,t a t s u h i k o i g a r a s h i , e i j i i d o , t o s h i n o b u f u j i -y o s h i , s h u n ro s o n o d a , k a z u o t a j i m a , a n dm a s a n o r i h a y a m i . 1997. Molecular phylogeny of humanT-cell leukemia virus type I and II of Amerindians in Colombiaand Chile. Journal of Molecular Evolution 44 (suppl. 1):76–82.

m o n t e n e g ro , j o r g e , a n d i z u m i s h i m a d a . 1998. “El‘estilo Cajamarca costeno’ y la interaccion Sican-Cajamarca enel norte del Peru,” in Intercambio y comercio entre costa, An-des y selva: Arqueologıa y etnohistoria de Suramerica. Editedby Felipe Cardenas-Arroyo and T. L. Bray, pp. 255–96. Bogota:Universidad de los Andes.

m o o r e , j e r ry d . 1996. Architecture and power in the an-cient Andes: The archaeology of public buildings. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.

m o r r i s , i a n . 1987. Burial and ancient society: The rise of theGreek city-state. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

———. 1991. The archaeology of ancestors: The Saxe/Goldsteinhypothesis revisited. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 1:147–69.

n a rv a e z , a l f r e d o . 1995a. “The pyramids of Tucume: Themonumental sector,” in Pyramids of Tucume: The quest forPeru’s forgotten city. By Thor Heyerdahl, D. H. Sandweiss, andAlfredo Navaez, pp. 79–130. New York: Thames and Hudson.

———. 1995b. “Death in ancient Tucume: The south cemeteryand Huaca Facho,” in Pyramids of Tucume: The quest forPeru’s forgotten city. By Thor Heyerdahl, D. H. Sandweiss, andAlfredo Narvaez, pp. 169–78. New York: Thames and Hudson.

n e l s o n , a n d r e w j . 1998. Wandering bones: Archaeology, fo-rensic science, and Moche burial practices. International Jour-nal of Osteoarchaeology 8:191–212.

n e l s o n , a . j . , c . s . n e l s o n , l . j . c a s t i l l o , a n d c .m a c k e y. 2000. Osteobiografia de una hilandera precolum-bina: La mujer detras de la mascara. Iconos 4(2):30–43. [ajn]

n e t h e r l y, p a t r i c a . 1977. Local-level lords on the northcoast of Peru. Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.

———. 1990. “Out of many, one: The organization of rule in thenorth coast polities,” in The northern dynasties: Kingship andstatecraft in Chimor. Edited by Michael E. Moseley and A.Cordy-Collins, pp. 461–505. Washington, D.C.: DumbartonOaks.

n g u y e n , v i n h - k i m , a n d k a r i n e p e s c h a r d . 2003. An-

thropology, inequality, and disease: A review. Annual Reviewof Anthropology 32:447–74.

o ’ s h e a , j o h n . 1984. Mortuary variability: An archaeologicalinvestigation. New York: Academic Press.

p a a b o , s . 1999. “Ancient DNA,” in The human inheritance.Edited by B. Sykes, pp. 119–34. Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress.

p a d e r , e . j . 1982. Symbolism, social relations, and the inter-pretation of mortuary remains. British Archaeological ReportsSupplementary Series 130.

p a r k e r p e a r s o n , m i k e . 1982. “Mortuary practices, society,and ideology: An ethnoarchaeological study,” in Symbolic andstructural archaeology. Edited by I. Hodder, pp. 99–113. Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press.

———. 1993. The powerful dead: Archaeological relationships be-tween the living and the dead. Cambridge Archaeological Jour-nal 3:203–29.

———. 2000. The archaeology of death and burial. Texas A&MUniversity Anthropology Series 3.

p e d e r s e n , a s b j o r n . 1976. “El ajuar funerario de la tumbade la Huaca Menor de Batan Grande, Lambayeque, Peru.” Ac-tas del 41 Congreso Internacional de Americanistas, vol. 2, pp.60–73. Mexico City.

p e t e r s e n , g e o r g . 1955. Adorno labial de oro usado por lostallanes. Revista del Museo Nacional de Antropologıa y Ar-queologıa 2:161–68.

p e t e r s o n , j . 2002. Sexual revolutions: Gender and labor atthe dawn of agriculture. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press.

p i e r c y, r . , k . m . s u l l i v a n , n . b e n s o n , a n d p .g i l l . 1993. The application of mitochondrial DNA typing tothe study of white Caucasian genetic identification. Interna-tional Journal of Legal Medicine 106:85–90. [jcd]

p o l o d e o n d e g a r d o , j u a n . 1990 (1571). Notables danosde no guardar a los indios sus fueros. Edited by Laura Gonza-lez and Alicia Alonso. Madrid: Informacion y Revistas, S.A.

p o w e r , c h r i s , a n d s h a ro n m a t t h e w s . 1998. “Accu-mulation of health risks across social groups in a national lon-gitudinal study,” in Human biology and social inequality. Ed-ited by S. S. Strickland and P. S. Shetty, pp. 36–57. Society forthe Study of Human Biology Symposium 39. Cambridge: Cam-bridge University Press.

p o z o r s k i , t h o m a s g . 1971. Survey and excavations of bur-ial platforms at Chan Chan, Peru. B.A. thesis, Department ofAnthropology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.

r a m ı r e z , s u s a n e . 1981. “La organizacion economica de lacosta norte: Un analisis preliminar del perıodo prehispanicotardıo,” in Etnohistoria y antropologıa andina. Edited by A.Castelli, M. Koth de Paredes, and M. Mould de Pease, pp.281–97. Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos.

———. 1996. The world upside down: Cross-cultural contactand conflict in sixteenth-century Peru. Stanford: Stanford Uni-versity Press.

———. 1998. “Rich man, poor man, beggar man, or chief: Mate-rial wealth as a basis of power in sixteenth-century Peru,” inDead giveaways: Indigenous testaments of colonial Mesoamer-ica and the Andes. Edited by Susan Kellogg and MatthewRestall, pp. 215–48. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.

r a v i n e s . 1980. Chanchan: Metropoli chimu. Lima: Instituto deEstudios Peruanos/Instituto de Investigacion Tecnologica In-dustrial y de Normas Tecnicas.

r e n f r e w, c o l i n . 1998. Applications of DNA in archaeology:A review of the DNA studies of the Ancient Biomolecules ini-tiatives. Ancient Biomolecules 2:107–16.

———. 2000. “Archaeogenetics: Towards a population prehistoryof Europe,” in Archaeogenetics: DNA and the population pre-history of Europe. Edited by Colin Renfrew and Katie Boyle,pp. 3–12. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for ArchaeologicalResearch.

r i b e i ro - d o s - s a n t o s , a . k . c . , s . e . b . s a n t o s , a .l . m a c h a d o , v. g u a p i n d a i a , a n d m . a . z a g o .1996. Heterogeneity of mitochondrial DNA haplotypes in pre-Columbian natives of the Amazon region. American Journal ofPhysical Anthropology 101:29–37.


r i c h a r d s , m . , h . c o r t e - r e a l , p . f o s t e r , v. m a -c a u l a y, h . w i l k i n s o n - h e r b o t s , a . d e m a i n e , s .p a p i h a , r . h e d g e s , h - j b a n d e l t , a n d b . s y k e s .1996. Paleolithic and Neolithic lineages in the European mito-chondrial gene pool. American Journal of Human Genetics 59:185–203. [jcd]

ro b b , j . , r . b i g a z z i , l . l a z z a r i n i , c . s c a r s i n i ,a n d f . s o n e g o . 2001. Social “status” and biological“status”: A comparison of grave goods and skeletal indicatorsfrom Pontecagnano. American Journal of Physical Anthropol-ogy 115:213–22.

ro w e , j o h n h . 1948. The kingdom of Chimor. Acta Ameri-cana 6:26–59.

ru c a b a d o , j . , a n d l . j . c a s t i l l o . 2003. “El perıodotransicional en San Jose de Moro,” in Moche: Hacia el final delmilenio (Actas del Segundo Coloquio sobre la Cultura Moche,Trujillo, 1 al 7 de agosto de 1999). Edited by Santiago Ucedaand Elıas Mujica, pp. 14–42. Lima: Universidad Nacional deTrujillo and Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru. [ajn]

ry a n , a . s . 1997. Iron-deficiency anemia in infant develop-ment: Implications for growth, cognitive development, resis-tance to infection, and iron supplementation. Yearbook ofPhysical Anthropology 40:25–62.

s a l o m o n , f r a n k . 1995. “ ‘The beautiful grandparents’: An-dean ancestor shrines and mortuary ritual as seen through co-lonial records,” in Tombs for the living: Andean mortuarypractices. Edited by T. D. Dillehay, pp. 315–53. Washington,D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks.

s a l o m o n , f r a n k , a n d j o r g e u r i o s t e . Translators.1991. The Huarochirı manuscript: A testament of ancient andcolonial Andean religion. Austin: University of Texas Press.

s a w y e r , a l a n . 1975. Ancient Andean arts in the collectionsof the Krannert Art Museum. Urbana-Champaign: Universityof Illinois Press.

s a x e , a r t h u r a . 1970. Social dimensions of mortuary prac-tices. Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich.

s c h u r r , t h e o d o r e g . 2000. Mitochondrial DNA and thepeopling of the New World. American Scientist 88:246–53.

s c h u r r , t h e o d o r e g . , s . w. b a l l i n g e r , y. y. g a n ,j . a . h o d g e , d . a . m e r r i w e t h e r , d . n . l a w r -e n c e , w. c . k n o w l e r , k . m . w e i s s , a n d d . c .w a l l a c e . 1990. Amerindian mitochondrial DNAs have rareAsian mutations at high frequencies suggesting a limited num-ber of founders. American Journal of Human Genetics 46:613–23.

s c o t t , g . r . , a n d c . g . t u r n e r . 1997. The anthropol-ogy of modern human teeth. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-sity Press.

s h a n k s , m . , a n d c . t i l l e y. 1982. “Ideology, symbolicpower, and ritual communication: A reinterpretation of Neo-lithic mortuary practices,” in Symbolic and structural archae-ology. Edited by Ian Hodder, pp. 129–54. Cambridge: Cam-bridge University Press.

s h i m a d a , i z u m i . 1981. The Batan Grande–La Leche Archae-ological Project: The first two seasons. Journal of Field Archae-ology 8:405–46.

———. 1986. “Batan Grande and cosmological unity in the An-des,” in Andean archaeology: Papers in memory of CliffordEvans. Edited by Ramiro Matos, Solveig Turpin, and HerbertH. Eling, pp. 163–88. Los Angeles: Institute of Archaeology,University of California, Los Angeles.

———. 1990. “Cultural continuities and discontinuities on thenorthern north coast, Middle–Late Horizons,” in The northerndynasties: Kingship and statecraft in Chimor. Edited by Mi-chael E. Moseley and A. Cordy-Collins, pp. 297–392. Washing-ton, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks.

———. 1994a. “The role of metals in Middle Sican society,” inThe illustrated encyclopedia of humankind, vol. 4, New Worldand Pacific civilizations. Edited by Goran Burenhult, pp.94–95. Sydney: Weldon Owen.

———. 1994b. Pampa Grande and the Mochica culture. Austin:Unviersity of Texas Press.

———. 1995. Cultura Sican: Dios, riqueza y poder en la costanorte del Peru. Lima: Banco Continental.

———. 2000. “Late prehispanic coastal states,” in The Incaworld: The development of pre-Columbian Peru, a.d.1000–1534. Edited by Laura Laurencich Minelli, pp. 49–110.Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

———. 2003. Review of: Ritual sacrifice in ancient Peru, editedby E. P. Benson and A. G. Cook (Austin: University of TexasPress, 2001). Latin American Antiquity 14:89–91.

———. Editor. n.d. Pre-Hispanic mortuary practices: An inte-grated study of Middle Sican burials, social organization, andideology. MS.

s h i m a d a , i . , s . m . e p s t e i n , a n d a l a n k . c r a i g .1983. The metallurgical process in ancient north Peru. Archae-ology 36(5):38–45.

s h i m a d a , i z u m i , a d o n g o r d u s , a n d j o a n ng r i f f i n . 2000. “Technology, iconography, and significance ofmetals: A multi-dimensional analysis of Middle Sican objects,”in Pre-Columbian gold technology, iconography, and style. Ed-ited by Colin McEwan, pp. 28–61. London: British MuseumPress.

s h i m a d a , i z u m i , a d o n g o r d u s , j o a n n g r i f f i n ,a n d j o h n f . m e r k e l . 1999. “Sican alloying, working, anduse of precious metals: An interdisciplinary perspective,” inMetal in antiquity. Edited by S. M. M. Young, A. M. Pollard, P.Budd, and R. A. Ixer, pp. 301–9. British Archaeological ReportsInternational Series 792.

s h i m a d a , i z u m i , a n d j o a n n g r i f f i n . 1994. Preciousmetal objects of the Middle Sican. Scientific American 270(4):60–67.

s h i m a d a , i z u m i , w. h a u s l e r , t . h u t z e l m a n n , j .r i e d e r e r , a n d u . w a g n e r . 2003a. “Early pottery mak-ing in northern coastal Peru, part 3: Mossbauer study of Sicanpottery,” in Mossbauer spectroscopy in archaeology. Edited byUrsel Wagner, pp. 107–24. New York: Kluwer AcademicPublishers.

s h i m a d a , i z u m i , a n d a d r i a n a m a g u i n a . 1994. “Unanueva vision sobre la cultura Gallinazo y su relacion con lacultura Moche,” in Moche: Propuestas y perspectives. Editedby Santiago Uceda and Elias Mujica, pp. 31–58. Trujillo: Univ-ersidad Nacional de La Libertad–Trujillo.

s h i m a d a , i z u m i , j . a . m o n t e n e g ro , w. h a u s l e r ,m . j a k o b , j . r i e d e r e r , a n d u . w a g n e r . 2003b.“Early pottery making in northern coastal Peru, part 4: Moss-bauer study of pottery from Huaca Sialupe,” in Mossbauerspectroscopy in archaeology. Edited by Ursel Wagner, pp.125–39. New York: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

s h i m a d a , i z u m i , k e n - i c h i s h i n o d a , s t e v e b o u r -g e t , w a l t e r a l v a , a n d s a n t i a g o u c e d a . n.d.MtDNA analysis of Moche and Sican populations of pre-His-panic Peru. MS.

s h i m a d a , i z u m i , a n d u r s e l w a g n e r . 2001. Peruvianblack pottery production and metal working: A Middle Sicancraft workshop at Huaca Sialupe. Materials Research SocietyBulletin 26(1):25–30.

———. n.d. Craft production on the pre-Hispanic north coast ofPeru: The holistic approach and its results. MS.

s h i m a d a , i z u m i , a n d h i ro k a t s u w a t a n a b e . 1995.GPR: Large-scale application on coastal Peru. Paper presentedat the 60th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Ar-chaeology, Minneapolis, Minn.

s h i m a d a , m e l o d y j . , a n d i z u m i s h i m a d a . 1997. Ca-melid and human offerings: A view from the north coast ofPeru. Paper presented at the 62d Annual Meeting of the Soci-ety of American Archaeology, Nashville, Tenn.

s t o n e , a . c . 1996. Genetic and mortuary analysis of a prehis-toric Native American community. Ph.D. diss., PennsylvaniaState University, University Park, Pa. [jcd]

———. 2000. “Ancient DNA from skeletal remains,” in Biologi-cal anthropology of the human skeleton. Edited by M. A. Katz-enberg and S. R. Saunders, pp. 351–72. New York: Wiley-Liss.

s t o n e , a . c . , g . r . m i l n e r , s . p a a b o , a n d m .s t o n e k i n g . 1996. Sex determination of ancient human skel-


etons using DNA. American Journal of Physical Anthropology99:231–38. [jcd]

s t o n e , a . c . , a n d m . s t o n e k i n g . 1998. MtDNA analy-sis of a prehistoric Oneota population: Implications for thepeopling of the New World. American Journal of Human Ge-netics 62:1153–70. [jcd]

———. 1999. Analysis of ancient DNA from a prehistoric Amer-indian cemetery. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Soci-ety, Biological Sciences 354:153–59.

s t o s - g a l e , z o fi a a . 2000. “Isotopes, stable (Pb, Sr): Rawmaterials and provenience studies,” in Archaeological methodand theory: An encyclopedia. Edited by Linda Ellis, pp.311–19. New York: Garland.

s t r i c k l a n d , s i m o n , a n d p r a k a s h s h e t t y. 1998.“Human biology and social inequality,” in Human biology andsocial inequality. Edited by S. S. Strickland and P. S. Shetty,pp. 1–29. Society for the Study of Human Biology Symposium39. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

s u t t e r , r . c . 2003. Prehistoric human migrations into theAndes as indicated by dentally derived biodistances. Paper pre-sented at the 31st Midwest Conference on Andean and Amazo-nian Archaeology and Ethnohistory, Chicago, Ill.

s y k e s , b ry a n , a n d c o l i n r e n f r e w. 2000. “Concepts inmolecular genetics,” in Archaeogenetics: DNA and the popula-tion prehistory of Europe. Edited by Colin Renfrew and KatieBoyle, pp. 3–12. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeo-logical Research.

t a i n t e r , j . a . 1978. Mortuary practices and the study of pre-historic social systems. Advances in Archaeological Methodand Theory 1:105–41.

t a r l o w, s . 1999. Bereavement and commemoration: An ar-chaeology of mortality. Oxford: Blackwell.

t e l l o , j u l i o c . , a n d t o r i b i o m e j ı a . 1979. Paracas, pt.2: Cavernas y necropolis. Lima: Universidad Nacional Mayorde San Marcos.

t o y n e , j . m . 2002. Tales woven in their bones: The osteologi-cal examination of the human skeletal remains from the stonetemple at Tucume, Peru. M.A. thesis, Department of Anthro-pology, University of Western Ontario, London, Ont. [ajn]

t r i g g e r , b ru c e . 1990. Monumental architecture: A thermo-dynamic explanation of symbolic behaviour. World Archae-ology 22:120–31.

t r i m b o r n , h e r m a n n . 1979. El reino de Lambayeque en elantiguo Peru. St. Augustin: Haus Volker und Kulturen Anthro-pos-Institut.

t r i n k a u s , k . m . 1984. Mortuary ritual and mortuary re-search. current anthropology 25:674–79.

———. 1995. “Mortuary behavior, labor organization, and socialrank,” in Regional approaches to mortuary analysis. Edited byL. A. Beck, pp. 53–75. New York: Plenum Press.

t ro t t e r , m . , a n d g . c . g l e s e r i . 1958. A re-evaluationof estimation of stature based on measurements taken duringlife and the long-bones after death. American Journal of Physi-cal Anthropology 16:79–123.

t u r n e r , c . g . 1979. Dental anthropological indications of ag-riculture among the Jomon people of central Japan. AmericanJournal of Physical Anthropology. 51:619–36.

———. 1985. “The dental search for native American origins,” inOut of Asia: Peopling of the Americas and the Pacific. Editedby R. Kirk and E. Szathmary, pp. 31–78. Journal of Pacific His-tory, special issue.

t u r n e r , c . g . , c . r . n i c h o l , a n d g . r . s c o t t .1991. “Scoring procedures for key morphological traits of thepermanent dentition: The Arizona State University dental an-thropology system,” in Advances in dental anthropology. Ed-ited by M. A. Kelley and C. S. Larsen, pp. 13–31. New York:Wiley-Liss.

u c k o , p e t e r j . 1969. Ethnology and archaeological interpre-tation of funerary remains. World Archaeology 1:262–80.

u h l e , m a x . 1903. Pachacamac: Report of the William Pepper,M.D., Ll.D., Peruvian Expedition of 1896. Translated by C.Grosse. Philadelphia: Department of Archaeology, Universityof Pennsylvania.

———. 1959. Wesen und Ordnung der altperuanischen Kulturen.Berlin: Colloquium Verlag.

u r i b e , m . v. , a n d ro b e r t o l l e r a s . 1982–83. Excava-ciones en los cementerios Protopasto de Miraflores, Narino.Revista Colombiana de Antropologıa 24:337–79.

v a l c a r c e l , l u i s e . 1937. Un valioso hallazgo arqueologicoen el Peru. Revista del Museo Nacional 6:164–68.

v e r a n o , j o h n w. 1997a. “Physical characteristics and skele-tal biology of the Moche population at Pacatnamu,” in The Pa-catnamu papers, vol. 2, The Moche occupation. Edited by C. B.Donnan and G. A. Cock, pp. 189–214. Los Angeles: FowlerMuseum of Cultural History, University of California.

———. 1997b. Human skeletal remains from tomb 1: Sipan(Lambayeque River Valley, Peru) and their social implications.Antiquity 71(273):670–82.

———. 2001. “The physical evidence of human sacrifice in an-cient Peru,” in Ritual sacrifice in ancient Peru. Edited by E. P.Benson and A. G. Cook, pp. 165–84. Austin: University ofTexas Press.

v r e e l a n d , j a m e s m . , a n d i z u m i s h i m a d a . 1981. Bur-ial and looting traditions at Batan Grande, Peru. Paper pre-sented at the Annual Meeting of the Institute for Andean Stud-ies, Berkeley, Calif.

w e i s s h . , p e d ro . 1962. Tipologıa de las deformaciones cefali-cas de los antiguos Peruanos, segun la osteologıa cultural. Re-vista del Museo Nacional 30:15–42.

w h e w e l l , w. 1840. The philosophy of the inductive sciences,founded upon their history. Vol. 2. London: John W. Parker.[jcd]

w h i t l e y, j a m e s . 2002. Too many ancestors. Antiquity 76:119–26.

w i e s s n e r , p o l l y. 1983. Style and social information in Kala-hari San projectile points. American Antiquity 48:253–76.

w i l l i a m s , s . 1987. Harris lines in Paloma tibiae: The effectsof sedentism on numbers of lines. MS, Department of Anthro-pology, University of Missouri, Columbia, Mo.

w o o d , j . w. , g . r . m i l n e r , h . c . h a r p e n d i n g , a n dk . m . w e i s s . 1992. The osteological paradox: Problems ofinferring prehistoric health from skeletal samples. currentanthropology 33:343–70. [ajn]

w o o d w a r d , s . r . , m . j . k i n g , n . n . c h i u , m . j .k u c h a r , a n d c . w. g r i g g s . 1994. Amplification of an-cient nuclear DNA from teeth and soft tissues. PCR Methodsand Applications 3:244–47.

z e v a l l o s , j o r g e . 1971. Ceramica de la cultura “Lamba-yeque” (Lambayeque I). Trujillo: Universidad Nacional deTrujillo.

z u i d e m a , t o m . 1977–78. Shafttombs and the Inca empire.Journal of the Steward Anthropological Society 9:133–78.

an integrated analysis of pre-hispanic mortuary practices

Documents