Saturday January 9, 1999 at the University Museum.
Dr Karen Stothert, "8000 Years of Mortuary Ceremonialism in Coastal Ecuador"
Although the excavation of human remains is controversial in the United
States, the study of ancient cemeteries is an important aspect of prehistoric
research in Ecuador. The excavation of a very early, preceramic cemetery
on the Santa Elena Peninsula has resulted in the creation of a cultural
icon (the Lovers of Sumpa) and the construction of a major regional
museum. In this lecture Stothert discussed, and illustrated with
slides, what has been learned from the excavation of
mortuary features, and how the burial of the dead and the worship of
ancestors was an key theme in the cultures of ancient Ecuador.
In her work, Dr. Stothert has found that mortuary ritual activities
have served as a cultural focus for Ecuadoran beliefs about life, death
and fertility. On the Santa Elena Peninsula, many of the traditions
coming from the ancient rituals of exhumation, wrapping and
reburying of the dead for placation and reverence of ancestors have continued
to influence mortuary practices right through the conquest
until the present day. Today, one can find unbaptised children buried
beneath the regional style of houses on stilts, as well as
ancestral skulls and bones within the houses for protection from storms
and other evils. On Todos Santos, the traditional family prepares
an early morning feast for the dead, with a handwoven tablecloth
reminiscent of grave wrappings and tradionally made corn tortillas.
The archeological record of mortuary practices has been divided into
six stages of development from 8000 BCE until 1550 CE. Changes of
numbers of bodies and their positions in graves are indicative of these
periods, as are the inclusion of differing grave goods. Throughout
the changes, there was found continued evidence of ritual exhumation and
reburial. Dr. Stothert has noted that following the "first contact"
with European diseases, there were at least some mass burials of
the excessive numbers of dead in the region.
Today, many of the old practices are dying out, and Dr. Stothert is
hopeful that the regional museum she helped to begin on the Santa Elena
Peninsula will continue to record and preserve these rituals.
Karen Stothert has a Ph.D. in anthropology from Yale and has carried
out field work in Peru and Bolivia, but for more than 20 years has focused
her research on the southwest coast of Ecuador where she has carried out
both archaeological and ethnographic research. She described the
preceramic Las Vegas culture, and more recently has been working on
ceramic period sites. She is interested in material culture, burial
customs, the origins of agriculture, and shamanism, art and ideology .
Recently she was instrumental in the design and building of a major
regional museum which celebrates history and ethnic identity on the Peninsula
of Santa Elena. This year she is a Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington
(writing a book called "Feeding the Dead: An Archaeology of the Coast of
Ecuador").