Death, personhood, and relatedness in the South Andes a thousand years ago

Abstract

This article examines the nature of personhood in the Calchaquí region, in the South Andes, during the second part of the Late Intermediate Period (AD 1250–1450). Through the study of the location of graves, architecture, and offerings, the authors explore the type of personhood that Calchaquí communities built and represented through the materiality of funerary practice. They claim that in this cultural and historical context, death became a realm in which relatedness was interwoven. Death, symbolically and materially, built bridges, connecting and entangling people with place and with each other. The funerary sphere was not strategically used to celebrate particular biographies and personal accomplishments, but rather it was another realm, like daily life, where individual identity dissolved into place and into the collective.