TY - JOUR
TI - Corpse treatment in a Late Formative bell-shaped pit at La Laguna, Tlaxcala, Mexico
AU - Borejsza, Aleksander
AU - Hernández, Lourdes Rocío Couoh
AU - Guzmán, Mauro de Ángeles
AU - Lesure, Richard G.
AU - López, Isabel Rodríguez
TI - Corpse treatment in a Late Formative bell-shaped pit at La Laguna, Tlaxcala, Mexico
AB - A bell-shaped storage pit in central Mexico was converted in the fifth century BC into a repository for human corpses. It was used sequentially to place and later selectively remove the remains of at least four adults. The concomitant addition of fill has separated the different funerary gestures with unusual clarity. We use the piece-plotting of individual bones and other pit contents, osteological and stratigraphic analysis, and ceramic refitting to formulate hypotheses regarding the sequence in which different corpses and offerings were placed in the pit, disarticulated, dispersed, and otherwise modified upon reentry, or removed from the pit altogether. We try to reconstruct the logic of the ritual sequence by applying four simple interpretive principles in order to distinguish between a “tomb” and a “charnel” scenario. We conclude that reentry and bone removal were anticipated, and that the pit was used recurrently in the early stages of a prolonged and complex mortuary ritual. Comparisons with other contexts of the Middle and Late Formative lead us to briefly consider the relevance and possible meaning of double burial and the use of certain bones as relics or as raw material to be shaped into artifacts. Some of these practices were probably related to the importance of ancestors in the belief system. Bell-shaped pits were a convenient receptacle for letting corpses decay in a controlled fashion, but the form and function of features used in mortuary rituals do not map onto each other in simple ways.
VL - 2024
IS - Vol. 92 (2024)
PY - 2025
SN - 0015-573X
C1 - 2199-5915
SP - 5
EP - 46
DO - 10.4467/21995923FQ.24.001.21033
UR - https://ejournals.eu/czasopismo/folia-quaternaria/artykul/corpse-treatment-in-a-late-formative-bell-shaped-pit-at-la-laguna-tlaxcala-mexico
KW - ancestors
KW - Formative
KW - Mesoamerica
KW - mortuary ritual
KW - multiple burial