ANTH 390B Dr.

Jalh Dulanto
Fall 2010 Office: Asbury Hall 205E
T 7:00-9:50 pm Office Hours: W 9 am 5 pm
JSC 101 Email: jalhdulanto@depauw.edu
Phone: *4529

THE ANTHROPOLOGY AND ARCHAEOLOGY OF DEATH:

(STUDY CASES FROM THE PRE-HISPANIC, COLONIAL, AND
CONTEMPORARY CENTRAL ANDES)

Cuzco, the capital of the Inca Empire, sometime in AD 1533. Aided by thousands of natives, the
Spanish conquerors, led by Francisco Pizarro, have taken the Inca capital just a few days ago.
One of the Indian captains helping the Spanish is about to propose to an Inca princess. He
approaches Francisco Pizarro asking for support. He hopes that having one these bearded taken-
for-gods men at his side will impress the princess family. Francisco Pizarro commissions his
cousin, the young Pedro Pizarro, to accompany the Indian Captain. Thirty years later, while
writing his memoires, Pedro Pizarro clearly remembered what happened that day. To his great
surprise the Inca lord to whom he asked for the princess hand was not a living person but a dead
one the mummified body of a man who passed away years before the arrival of the Spanish to
Cuzco.

More than a century of archaeological research has shown that what the Spanish observed in
Cuzco in the XVIth century was just an example of a long tradition of practices surrounding
death in the Central Andes. Several millennia before the Inca the Chinchorro of the south coast
of Peru and the north coast of Chile were mummifying their dead and revering the objects
manufactured in this way as their living ancestors. This course is about the history of these
practices their origins and trajectory- within the broader picture of the Central Andean long
historical process the economic, social, political and ideological changes that took place in this
area over the last few millennia.

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Objectives
This course has three objectives: first, to sketch a history of the practices surrounding death in
the Central Andes; second, to locate these practices in relation to general archaeological and
ethnological discussions of theories about practices surrounding death; and third, to present
some of the methods and techniques archaeologists use to study this type of practices in the
Central Andes and around the world.

Organization
After reviewing the theories, methods and techniques used by archaeologists to study death, and
sketching Central Andean culture history and political and economic processes from the
colonization of the New World to the Spanish Conquest, we will spend the rest of the semester
discussing in detail a selection of archaeological, ethnohistorical, and ethnographic studies of
practices surrounding death in indigenous communities of the Pre-Hispanic, Early Colonial, and
Contemporary Central Andes. The four cases we are going to analyze are: The Chinchorro
Mummies of Northern Chile (c. 7000-1000 BC), The Nasca Trophy Heads (AD 200-550), The
Burial Theme of Moche Iconography (AD 200-750 BC), and The Royal Mummies of Inca
Cuzco and the Capacocha of the Inca Provinces (AD 1400-1535). We will use these case studies
as an opportunity, not only to illustrate the diversity in time and space of the practices
surrounding death in the Central Andes, but also to discuss some general sociological and
anthropological topics that archaeologists, ethnohistorians, and ethnographers address through
the study of mortuary beliefs and practices.

Required Texts
Parker Pearson, M. (2008). The Archaeology of Death and Burial. Texas A&M Press.

Supplementary readings will be posted in Moodle (see schedule below).

Exams and Grading

Blog + Posts 30% According to the class schedule.
Midterm 20% October 14, 2010 @ 10:00 pm.
Presentation 10% According to the class schedule.
Final Paper 30% According to the academic calendar.
Class participation 10% All the semester.

Blogs, Posts, Presentation

Creating, maintaining, and presenting a blog devoted to a topic of the anthropology and
archaeology of death will be your main assignment for this semester.

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 Think of this blog as a research project. You will have to form a group of 4 students and
choose one of the four case studies I have selected for this course. You have to send me
an email with the list of students in your group and the first, second, and third choices of
topics before September 09, 2010. Topics will be assigned on a first-sign, first-served
basis. This means that if your first choice has already been chosen, I will assign you your
second choice, and so on.
As a group you are responsible for researching the topic you have chosen, and creating
and maintaining a blog about it during the semester. This blog is a semester project. You
have to update this blog with posts at least once every two weeks (see the class schedule
above for dates). By the end of the semester you should have at least six posts per group.
However, extra posts are welcome. Each post should be around 1 page long. Do not
worry about the appearance of the blog for the first post. You can always improve it later.
However, the appearance of the blog will be taken into consideration at the end of the
semester.
Posts should not be devoted to one single area of the world. Although the four case
studies are cases from the Andes, they can be compared with other cases from around the
world. For example, the case of the Chinchorro mummies, can be compared with other
cases of mummification from Egypt, Japan, China, etc. The case of the Nasca Trophy
Heads can be compared with cases of head hunting and the taking of other body parts as
trophies from the Philippines, North America, etc. The idea is that you focus on the more
general topics of mummification, head hunting, etc.
Blogs will be graded taking into consideration mainly the quantity and quality of the
posts. Quality of the posts will be measured in terms of its relevance to understand the
current situation of the selected topic. However, creativity in communicating the content
of the post is highly encouraged. A combination of writing, sound, and video in the posts
is expected. Besides the posts your final version of the blog should also include at least
10 links to different resources available on internet about the selected topic.
The instructions on how to create and maintain a blog are available at
https://www.blogger.com/start. If, after reading the instructions, you still need help,
please let me know with time.
As a group you are also responsible for presenting your blog to the class once during the
semester. You have to prepare a 30 minute presentation and expect at least 15 minutes of
questions and answers between you and the rest of the students.
Presentations will be graded taking into consideration how well you work together as a
group, how well you summarize and present the information to the class, and how well
you get the discussion going.

Midterm
The midterm will be an in-class 3-hour exam. You should expect two essay questions. One
question will be about the readings covered during the first half of the semester. The other
question will be about the topic you have chosen for your blog and final paper. You should
expect questions that will help you think about how to tackle the blog, the presentation, and the
final paper.

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Final paper
The final paper is a research paper about the topic you selected for your blog project. You have
to summarize what you have learned about the topic in question. In contrast, to the blog, which is
a group project, the final paper is an individual project. For the final paper you have to focus on
the case study from the Central Andes you have chosen and compare it with the cases from
around the world you have dealt with for the posts. The final paper should be somewhere
between 10-20 pages long without taking into account tables, figures, notes, and bibliography.
(Letter Size, double space, Times New Roman 12 pts, and 1 margins).

COURSE SCHEDULE
Week Topic / Readings
Week 01
Week 02 Aug 31 Lecture / Discussion
The Archaeology of Death

Parker Pearson, M. 2000. Chapter 1: Learning From the Dead. Pp. 1-20.
Appendix: Excavating Human Remains. Pp. 198-204.
Chapman, R. and K. Randsborg. 1981. Approaches to the archaeology of death.
In The Archaeology of Death. Chapman, R. et al eds. Cambridge: Cambridge
University press. Pp. 1-24. (Optional / Recommended).
Molleson, T. 1981. The archaeology and anthropology of death: What the bones
tell us. In Mortality and Immortality: The Anthropology and Archaeology of
Death. Humphreys, S. C. and H. King eds. New York: Academic Press. Pp. 15-
32.
Harke, H. 1997. The nature of burial data. In Burial and Society: The
Chronological and Social Analysis of Archaeological Burial Data. Jensen, C.K.
and K. H. Nielsen. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press. Pp. 19-28.
Week 03 Sep 07 Lecture / Discussion
The Anthropology of Death

Parker Pearson, M. 2000. Chapter 2: From Now to Then: Ethnoarchaeology and

Analogy. Pp. 21-44.
Bartel, B. 1982. A historical review of ethnological and archaeological analysis
of mortuary practice. In Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 1:32-58.
Palgi, P. and H. Abramovitch. 1984. Death in crosscultural perspective. In
Annual Review of Anthropology 13:385-417.
Brown, J. 1995. On mortuary analysis With special reference to the Saxe-
Binford research program. In Regional Approaches to Mortuary Analysis Beck,
L. A. ed. New York: Plenum Press. Pp. 3-28.
Carr, C. 1995. Mortuary practices: Their social, philosophical-religious, and
physical determinants. In Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 2 (2):
105-200.

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 Week Topic / Readings
Week 04 Sep 14 Lecture / Discussion
The Body.

Parker Pearson, M. 2000. The Archaeology of Death and Burial. College Station:
Texas A&M University Press. Chapter 3: Reading the Body. Pp. 45-71.
Hertz, R. 1960 [1907]. A Contribution to the Study of the Collective
Representation of Death. In Death and the Right Hand, R. Hertz, ed. London:
Cohen and West. Pp. 27-86.
Van Gennep, A. 1960. The Rites of Passage. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Chapter 7: Funerals. Pp. 1-40, 146-165.
Leach, E. R. 1976. Culture and Communication: The Locic By Which Symbols
Are Connected. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 77-79.
Leach, E. R. 1977. A view from the bridge. In Archaeology and Anthropology:
Areas of Mutual Interest, M. Spriggs ed. Oxford: BAR Supplementary Series 19.
Pp. 161-176.
Douglas, M. 2003. Natural Symbols. London: Routledge. Pp. 72-92.

Blog + Post 1 due today.

Week 05 Sep 21 Lecture / Discussion
Status, Rank, and Power.

Parker Pearson, M. 2000. The Archaeology of Death and Burial. College Station:
Texas A&M University Press. Chapter 4: Status, Rank, and Power. Pp. 72-94.
Goodenough, W. 1965. Rethinking status and role: Toward a general model
of the cultural organization of social relationships. In The Relevance of Models
for Social Anthropology. Blanton, M. ed. New York: Praeger. Pp. 1-24.
Binford, L. R. 1971. Mortuary practices: Their study and their potential. In
Approaches to the Social Dimensions of Mortuary Practices. Brown, J. A. ed.
Salt Lake City: Society for American Archaeology.
Peebles, C. S. and S. M. Kus. 1977. Some archaeological correlates of ranked
societies. In American Antiquity 42(3):421- 448.
Tainter, J. A. 1978. Mortuary practices and the study of prehistoric social
systems. In Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory 1:105-141.
Saxe, A. A. 1970. Social Dimensions of Mortuary Practices. Ph.D. dissertation,
Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan. (Optional /
Recommended Pp. 1-121).

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 Week Topic / Readings
Week 06 Sep 28 Lecture / Discussion

Parker Pearson, M. 2000. The Archaeology of Death and Burial. College Station:
Texas A&M University Press. Chapter 5: Gender and Kinship. In: The
Archaeology of Death and Burial. Pp. 95-123.
Arnold, B. and N. L. Wicker. 2001. Introduction. In Gender and the Archaeology
of Death. Arnold, B. and N. L. Wicker eds. New York: Altamira Press. Pp. vii-
xxi.
Arnold, B. 2006. Gender and archaeological mortuary analysis. In Handbook of
Gender in Archaeology. Nelson, S. M. ed. New York: Altamira Press. Pp. 137-
170.
Cohen, M. and S. Bennett. 1993. Skeletal evidence for sex roles and gender
hierarchies in prehistory. In Sex and Gender Hierarchies. Miller, B. ed.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 273-296.
Crass, B. 2001. Gender and mortuary analysis: what can grave goods really tell
us? In Gender and the Archaeology of Death. Arnold, B. and N. L. Wicker eds.
New York: Altamira Press. Pp. 105-118.
Storey, R. 1999. The mothers and daughters of a patrilineal civilization: The
health of females among the Late Classic Maya of Copan, Honduras. In Sex and
Gender in Paleopathological Perspective. Grauer, A. L. and P. Stuart-Macadam
eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 133-148.

Blog + Post 2 due today.

Week 07 Oct 05 Lecture / Discussion

Parker Pearson, M. 2000. The Archaeology of Death and Burial. College Station:
Texas A&M University Press. Chapter 6: Placing the Dead. Pp. 124-141.
Renfrew, C. 1976. Megaliths, populations, and territories. In Acculturation and
Continuity in Atlantic Europe. De Laet, S. J. ed. Bruges: De Tempel. Pp. 198-
220.
Saxe, A. A. and P. L. Gall. 1977. Ecological determinants of mortuary practices:
The Temuan of Malaysia. In Cultural - Ecological Perspectives on Southeast
Asia. Wood, W. ed. Athens: Ohio State University. Pp. 74-82.
Goldstein, L. 1981. One-dimensional archaeology and multi-dimensional people:
Spatial organization and mortuary analysis. In The Archaeology of Death, edited
by Chapman, R. et al eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 53-69.
Morris, I. 1991. The archaeology of ancestors: The Saxe / Goldstein hypothesis
revisited. In Cambridge Archaeological Journal 1(2):147-169.
Chapman, R. 1995. Ten years after megaliths, mortuary Practices, and the
territorial model. In Regional Approaches to Mortuary Analysis Beck, L. A. ed.
New York: Plenum Press. Pp. 29-52.
Week 08 Oct 12 Midterm

Week 09 Oct 19 Fall Break

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 Week Topic / Readings
Week 10 Oct 26 Lecture / Discussion
Death in the Andes I: The Inka Empire at the time of the Spanish Conquest.

Salomon, F. 1995. The beautiful grandparents: Andean ancestor shrines and

mortuary ritual as seen through Colonial records. In Tombs for the Living:
Andean Mortuary Practices. Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research
Library and Collection. Pp. 315-354.
Rostworowski, M. and C. Morris. 1999. The fourfold domain: Inka power and its
social foundations. In The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the
Americas. Volume 3: South America. Part 1. Salomon, F. and Schwartz, S. B.
eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 769-863. (Optional /
Recommended).
Spalding, K. 1999. The crises and transformations of invaded societies: Andean
area. In The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas. Volume
3: South America. Part 1. Salomon, F. and Schwartz, S. B. eds. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. Pp. 904-972. (Optional / Recommended).

Blog + Post 3 due today.

Week 11 Nov 02 Lecture / Discussion
Death in the Andes II: The Inkas predecessors.

Shimada, I. 1999. Evolution of Andean diversity: Regional formations (500

B.C.E. C.E. 600). In The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the
Americas. Volume 3: South America. Part 1. Salomon, F. and S. B. Schwartz
eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 350-517. (Optional /
Recommended).
Lumbreras, L. G. 1999. Andean urbanism and statecraft. In The Cambridge
History of the Native Peoples of the Americas. Volume 3: South America. Part 1.
Salomon, F. and S. B. Schwartz eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pp. 518-576. (Optional / Recommended).
Week 12 Nov 09 Lecture / Discussion
Case Study 1: The oldest mummies of the world: The Chinchorro mummies of
southern Peru and northern Chile.

Readings (whole class):

TBA

Readings (group presenting the case):

TBA

Blog + Post 4 due today.

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 Week Topic / Readings
Week 13 Nov 16 Lecture / Discussion
Case Study 2: Headhunters of coastal western South America: The Nasca trophy-
heads.

Readings (whole class):

TBA

Readings (group presenting the case):

TBA
Week 14 Nov 23 Lecture / Discussion
Case Study 3: Women of power: From iconographic representations to funerary
remains.

Readings (whole class):

TBA

Readings (group presenting the case):

TBA

Blog + Post 5 due today.

Week 15 Nov 30 Lecture / Discussion
Case Study 4: When the dead are alive: The Late Prehispanic and Early Colonial
Mallki and/or Human sacrifices to the mountain gods: The Capac Hucha of the Inka
emperors.

Readings (whole class):

TBA

Readings (group presenting the case):

TBA
Week 16 Dec 07 Lecture / Discussion
Concluding Remarks: Death in the Central Andes Today.

Blog + Post 6 due today.

Week 17 Final Exams

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Grading Scale
A 93-100
A- 90-92
B+ 87-89
B 83-86
B- 80-82
C+ 77-79
C 73-75
C- 70-72
D+ 67-69
D 63-66
D- 60-62
F < 59

Attendance Policy
Students are required to attend all classes on time. You are allowed THREE unexcused
absences. After that, any EXCUSED OR UNEXCUSED absence will be factored into the final
grade the final grade will be dropped one-third of a letter grade for each absence. Save your
absences. You never know when you are going to need them.

Students With Disabilities

If you are a person with a disability and anticipate needing any type of academic accommodation
in order to participate in this class, please make appropriate arrangements with the Disability
Services office as soon as possible. The office is located in Harrison Hall 302, campus phone
extension 6267.

Disclaimer
Students will note that the terms of this syllabus are subject to modification and supplementation.
The professor will notify students of such changes and additions in class or via e-mail.

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