NEW H/C "Beyond Death" Chinchorro Mummies Ancient Chile Peru Daily Life 6,000 BC

Description

Beyond Death: The Chinchorro Mummies of Ancient Chile by Bernardo T. Arriaza, Foreword by John W. Verano.
DESCRIPTION:
Hardcover with Dust Jacket: 176 pages. Publisher: Smithsonian Institution Press; (1995).
Thousands of years before ancient Egyptians mummified their dead elite, the South American Chinchorros performed elaborate mummification rituals for deceased members of every level and age of their society. The Chinchorros are exceptional for the sheer number of known mummies, nearly two hundred, and the variety and complexity of their mummification techniques. Although first discovered in 1917, the Chinchorro mummies are little known throughout the world and most literature about them is in Spanish. In “Beyond Death” Bernardo Arriaza brings to light these unprecedented remains, offers new interpretations of Chinchorro mortuary practices, and reconstructs this culture’s daily life of 8,000 years ago.
While this early South American society left no written record describing their customs and concept of death, the mummified remains provide clues to their culture. The Chinchorros lived as fishermen on the Pacific Coast of Northern Chile and Southern Peru for millennia. While they did not have ceramics, woven cloth, or metal tools, the early Chinchorros developed a complex process of skinning, eviscerating, and reconstructing a body so that it has remained preserved for 8,000 years. Arriaza details three distinctive styles of mummification in addition to bandaged mummies: the earliest “black mummies” coated with manganese paste; the “red mummies” coasted with red ocher; and the mud-coasted mummies of the latest period.
Arriaza describes the clothing, simple ornaments, and everyday tools that accompanied the bodies, and he speculates that people who concentrated so much energy in caring for their dead must have had a strong belief in the afterlife. Drawing on evidence from archaeology, biology, and Andean cosmology, Arriaza discusses the Chinchorro notion of death, their supernatural beliefs, and their daily life. He identifies certain health problems; recurrent ear irritations, intestinal parasites, osteoporosis, and arthritis, and ties these to the maritime diet, high fertility rate, and lifestyle. By closely “reading” the mummified remains, he characterizes the society as sedentary, nonviolent, and egalitarian.
The Chinchorro mummified their dead, regardless of sex or age, including even stillborn babies. The mortuary ritual was used not as a sign of wealth or political power, as in later imperial cultures, but as an act of love and ancestor worship. In “Beyond Death”, Arriaza focuses attention on the oldest known culture that practiced artificial mummification and he demonstrates that mummies can provide innovative scientific means of exploring the social and biological life of long-vanished peoples.
CONDITION: New, never read.
PLEASE SEE IMAGES BELOW FOR SAMPLE PAGES FROM INSIDE OF BOOK.
PLEASE SEE PUBLISHER, PROFESSIONAL, AND READER REVIEWS BELOW.
PUBLISHER REVIEW
:
REVIEW: Drawing on evidence from archaeology, biology, and Andean cosmology, the author discusses the Chinchorro notion of death, their supernatural beliefs, and their daily life. Focuses attention on the oldest known culture that practiced artificial mummification. The author, Bernardo T. Arriaza is an assistant professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and an adjunct researcher at the University de Tarapaca, Chile.
PROFESSIONAL REVIEW
:
REVIEW: Comprehensive study of 282 examples permits classification, description, and interpretation of mummification techniques and of details of health, diet, technology, settlement, and society between 5000 and 1700 BC. Argues that mummification was invented in Arica-Camerones region to insure continuity of life in the context of environmental uncertainty.
READER REVIEW
:
REVIEW: I have to admit to a fascination with mummies that dates to when I first saw one at the Chicago museum as a child. I remember purchasing a slender volume at that time about mummies and their preparation, making myself a young “expert” on the subject. Over the years I have had the opportunity to see and read about other types of mummiform bodies including the wonderful collection of Pharonic aristocracy at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and the Inca collection in Lima, Peru. I’ve read with interest the discovery of the Chalcolithic Tyrolean mummy, Otzi the Iceman, of Jaunita and her “siblings” abandoned on the peaks of the Andes, and of the Tarium mummies of the China deserts.
The Chinchorro mummies of Chile are an even earlier group of preserved human remains with which I was only vaguely familiar by virtue of a mention of them on an educational program on TV. Arriaza’s book elaborates on the subject in considerable detail. It discusses their accidental discovery, their place in the history of South America, the methods of their creation, and of considerable interest to me as a nurse, their health as a population. A wonderful and informative book with riveting photographic plates.
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