Human cremation in Mexico 3,000 years ago
- William N. Duncan*,†,
- Andrew K. Balkansky‡,
- Kimberly Crawford‡,
- Heather A. Lapham‡, and
- Nathan J. Meissner‡
- *Department of Anthropology, St. John Fisher College, Rochester, NY 14618; and
- ‡ Department of Anthropology, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL 62901
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Edited by Joyce Marcus, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, and approved February 22, 2008 (received for review November 10, 2007)
Abstract
Mixtec nobles are depicted in codices and other proto-historic documentation taking part in funerary rites involving cremation. The time depth for this practice was unknown, but excavations at the early village site of Tayata, in the southern state of Oaxaca, Mexico, recovered undisturbed cremation burials in contexts dating from the eleventh century B.C. These are the earliest examples of a burial practice that in later times was reserved for Mixtec kings and Aztec emperors. This article describes the burial contexts and human remains, linking Formative period archaeology with ethnohistorical descriptions of Mixtec mortuary practices. The use of cremation to mark elevated social status among the Mixtec was established by 3,000 years ago, when hereditary differences in rank were first emerging across Mesoamerica.
Footnotes
- †To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail bduncan{at}sjfc.edu
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Author contributions: A.K.B. designed research; W.N.D., A.K.B., K.C., and N.J.M. performed research; W.N.D., K.C., and H.A.L. analyzed data; and W.N.D., A.K.B., H.A.L., and N.J.M. wrote the paper.
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The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/0710696105/DCSupplemental.
- © 2008 by The National Academy of Sciences of the USA
