Prácticas mortuorias entre los cazadores-recolectores del canal Beagle: El caso de Shamakush entierro

Abstract

During the last years, the archaeological research of mortuary record on the Magellan- Fuegian Archipielago has increased. These studies showed that mortuary practices implied a great diversity of behaviors in connection with body treatment, burial placement, number of individuals or artifacts left by the mourners with the bodies. In this paper we focus on the analysis of a specifi c context, Shamakush burial, located on the northern coast of the Beagle Channel region. This site, dated on 620 ± 60 BP, exhibit the more elaborate and complex mortuary context due to the labor invested on the arrangement of the body and to the grave goods that accompanied the body: such as lithic points, bifacial artifacts, side-scrapers, and bone artifacts. We present the analytical procedures developed to tackle this problem and we discuss the relevance of this context in the analysis of Fuegian littoral societies.