Making the Dead Beautiful: Mummies as Art - Archaeology Magazine Archive

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Making the Dead Beautiful: Mummies as Art	December 16, 1998
by Bernardo T. Arriaza, Russell A. Hapke, and Vivien G. Standen

November is the Month of the Dead. The deceased were removed from their graves, redressed with rich garments and feathers. They gave the dead food and drink. The people danced and sang with the dead, parading them around the streets.
--Guamán Poma de Ayala
Nueva Corónica y Buen Gobierno (1615)

The 5,000-year-old remains of a woman, mummified in the black style (given a clay mask coated with black manganese) and surrounded by whalebone were recovered from the site of El Morro in downtown Arica, Chile, in 1983. (© Philippe Plailly/EURELIOS) [LARGER IMAGE]

Missionaries working in Peru following the Spanish conquest were disgusted by the Inka's worshiping the mummified remains of their ancestors. During religious festivals the preserved bodies of Inka lords would be lavishly dressed, publicly displayed, and even given cups of chicha, or corn beer, to toast each other and the living. While such practices were abhorred by the Spanish, they played an integral role in the lives of Andean people for whom death marked not the end of a life but a period of transition during which the souls of the deceased were to be cared for and entertained, easing their passage into the afterlife. In exchange for such hospitality, it was believed that they would intercede with the gods on behalf of the living to ensure fertility and good crops.

The Inka were the last in a long line of Andean peoples to preserve and display the remains of their forebears that began with the Chinchorro, a little known fisherfolk who inhabited a 400-mile stretch of South American coast--from Ilo in southern Peru to Antofagasta in northern Chile--more than 7,000 years ago.

Sometime around the beginning of the fifth millennium B.C. the Chinchorro began mummifying their dead--eviscerating the corpses and defleshing the bones. The skeleton would be reassembled, reinforced with sticks, and internal organs would be replaced with clay, camelid fibers, and dried plants, while muscles would be re-created with thin bundles of wild reeds and sea grasses. The body would then be "reupholstered" with the skin of the deceased, which would have been carefully removed and set aside. Sea lion skin was added to fill any gaps. The entire body was then covered with an ash paste and finished with a coat of shiny black manganese or, in later years, brilliant red ochre. Many of the mummies had clay masks with carefully modeled facial features and clay sexual organs, and wore elaborate clay helmets or wigs of human hair some two feet in length. So far some 282 Chinchorro "mummies" have been found at cemeteries such as El Morro, Camarones Cove, and Patillos. Of these, 149 were created by Chinchorro artisan-morticians; the rest were naturally desiccated by in the hot, dry sand of the Atacama Desert. [image]

The earliest known mummy, that of a child from a site in the Camarones Valley, 60 miles south of Arica, dates to ca. 5050 B.C. During the next 3,500 years Chinchorro mummification evolved through three distinct styles--black, red, and mud-coated--before the practice died out sometime in the first century B.C.

A diorama on view at the Museo Arqueologico San Miguel de Azapa shows the Chilean coast and the daily activities of fishermen at the end of the Chinchorro period some 2,000 years ago. (© Philippe Plailly/EURELIOS) [LARGER IMAGE]

The black style (ca. 5050-2500 B.C.), was by far the most complex. The body was completely dismembered and reassembled with all but the bones and skin replaced by clay, reeds, and various stuffing materials. A mask of clay incised with small slits for the eyes and mouth was placed over the face to give the body the impression of a peaceful slumber. In a technical sense, a black mummy, with its bone and wood inner frame, intermediate and ash paste layers, and external covering of human and sea lion skin was more like a statue than a mummy, a work of art. Today these mummies are extremely fragile due to the disintegration of the unbaked clay.

About 2500 B.C., black went out of fashion, perhaps reflecting a change in ideology. It is also possible that manganese became scarce. For the next five centuries the bodies were finished with red ochre, which is found in abundance near Arica. The mummification process also changed. The corpses were not totally disarticulated as they were with the black mummies. Instead, the head was removed to extract the brain while neat incisions were made on the arms, legs, and abdomen to remove muscles and internal organs, which were replaced with reeds, clay, sticks, and llama fur. After the body was filled out, incisions were sutured with human hair using a cactus spine needle. The body cavities in many red mummies show signs of burning, suggesting that they had been dried with glowing coals. With the red style also came a change in the sculpting of the clay face masks. Open mouths and eyes convey a sense of alertness rather than sleep. The open mouth may foreshadow the Inka practice of feeding and talking to the ancestors. It may have also served to ease the return of the soul should it wish to reinhabit the body.

A group of mummies excavated at the El Morro-1 site in 1983 includes two adults and three children. The adults and two of the children were mummified in the black style some 5,000 years ago. The child, at bottom, was mummified in the red style a millennium later. (© Philippe Plailly/EURELIOS) [LARGER IMAGE]

By the end of the third millennium, complex mummification had ceased among the Chinchorro and bodies were simply desiccated, covered with a thick layer of mud, and buried.

Wear and tear, especially on the black and red mummies, as well as extensive repairs and repainting, suggest that they may have been displayed in family or communal shrines or used in processions for many years before being interred in groups of four, five, or six individuals, likely related. Few burial goods were placed in the graves, but most objects present were associated with fishing--harpoons, shell and cactus fishhooks, weights, and basketry.

Why did these ancient people go to such extraordinary lengths to preserve their dead? Though we have no written records of the ancient Chinchorro, we believe that their relationship with the dead was much like that of their Inka descendants, the mummies providing that vital link between this world and the next. But these well-preserved remains may have served another purpose as well. We believe that they represent the earliest form of religious art found in the Americas.

It is not surprising that the Chinchorro mummies have not been viewed as works of art, but as an unusual mortuary expression of an early Andean people. In many cultures icons exist as part of propitiation rites rather than as items to be collected. Religious art is then the expression of the believers attempting to reach the gods. The symbolism in religious art is context-specific, often associated with mythical heroes, deities, or ancestors. However, the icon is often not as important as what it represents.

How then do the Chinchorro mummies fit this paradigm of religious art? We see the black and red Chinchorro mummies as art because of the plasticity of their shapes, colors, and the mixed media used in their creation. These statues, the encased skeletons of departed ones, became sacred objects to be tended and revered by Chinchorro mourners.

Leticia Latorre Orrego inspects the remains of an infant mummified in the black style. This mummy was exhumed from the El Morro-1 site in 1983. (© Philippe Plailly/EURELIOS) [LARGER IMAGE]

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Chinchorro mortuary practice was the democracy with which it was carried out. In contrast to the Egyptians, who mummified kings and nobility, the Chinchorro show no discrimination in age, sex, or social status in the mummification of their dead. The mummification of children is particularly fascinating, since in cultures throughout the world they receive little if any mortuary attention, especially those who never lived--the stillborn. The Chinchorro seemed to honor all human beings whether they contributed to society or not, paying particular attention to those who never achieved their potential. In the minds of the Chinchorro, life as a mummy may have been viewed as a second chance.

The Chinchorro mummies deserve much more attention than they have received from scholars, not only because they are now the oldest examples of intentionally mummified human remains, but because they are powerful artistic accomplishments of an ancient society.

Laboratory assistant Leticia Latorre Orrego of the Museo Arqueologico San Miguel de Azapa catalogs remains recovered in 1997 during the construction of a train depot in Arica. (© Philippe Plailly/EURELIOS) [LARGER IMAGE]

Bernardo T. Arriaza is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and an adjunct researcher at the Universidad de Tarapacá, Arica, Chile. He is the author of Beyond Death: The Chinchorro Mummies of Ancient Chile (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995). Russell A. Hapke, a graduate of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, is director of Branson Illustrations, Co. Vivien G. Standen is a professor and researcher at the Museo Arqueologico San Miguel de Azapa, Universidad de Tarapaca, Arica, Chile. She has extensively studied the Chinchorro mummies of the El Morro-1 site. This research was in part supported by Fondecyt grant No. 1970525 and by National Geographic Society grant No. 5712-96.