People in the Chincha valley of Peru threaded the spines of the dead onto wooden rods around 500 years ago, a mostly-unknown practice only recently documented by archaeologists.
It may have been an attempt to restore the bodies of the dead during the European colonization, according to a study by the researchers who unearthed 192 examples of such spines. They include the remains of children.
A carbon dating of the reeds used to string the spines together puts the practices in a relatively narrow period of time, around 1450 to 1650 CE, which spans the end of Inca rule and the start of European colonization.That period was rife with political uncertainty for the Chincha valley, a sliver of greenery surrounded by a punishing desert on the coast of the Pacific.
"The dates coincide with this incredibly turbulent period of famine and epidemics, and of course, the Europeans coming in and trying to install a new social order. This behavior is happening in that context," said Bongers.
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