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Mortuary Practices, Social Development, and Ideology in Precolumbian Puerto Rico

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

L. Antonio Curet  and
José R. Oliver
L. Antonio Curet
Affiliation:
University of Colorado at Denver, Department of Anthropology, Campus Box 103, P.O. Box 173363, Denver, CO 80217-3364
José R. Oliver
Affiliation:
Institute of Archaeology, University College London, 31-34 Gordon Square, London. WC1H OPY, United Kingdom
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Abstract

Mortuary practices rank among the best sources of archaeological data from which to infer social organization, ideology, religious beliefs, and to a certain extent, the political structure of past societies. This essay (1) reviews mortuary practices among prehistoric groups of Puerto Rico, (2) proposes a possible sequence of changes through time, and (3) presents explanations that account for the observed changes. Aside from evident correlation with broad cultural developments, changes in mortuary practices can be understood best in the context of parallel developments in social, political, and economic complexity. We argue that in Puerto Rico a shift in mortuary practices from burying dead relatives in centralized cemeteries to the disposition of the dead in domestic contexts was strongly related to a shift from largely kin-based societies to the ranked organization of cacicazgos (chiefdoms). Particularly, we conclude that the shift in social organization from emphasis on extended descent groups that acted as corporate groups to nuclear households reflects a strategy utilized by the emerging elite to dismantle and reorient previous communal institutions. This shift was accomplished through the monopolization, by the emerging elite, of the tenets surrounding the cult of the ancestors to create a legitimizing ideology.

Abstract

Abstract

Las prácticas funerarias se encuentran entre los recursos más productivos utilizados por los arqueólogos para inferir formas de organización social, religiosa, e ideológica e incluso la estructura política de las sociedades prehistóricas. Este ensayo (1) revisa la evidencia de las prácticas mortuorias de las sociedades precolombinas de Puerto Rico, (2) establece una posible secuencia de cambios a través del tiempo y (3) propone una hipótesis que explica dichos cambios. Además de la evidente correlación entre los cambios en prácticas funerarias y las transformaciones culturales en general, dichos cambios deben examinarse en coordinación con los desarrollos paralelos de complejización a nivel social, político y económico. En este trabajo se argumenta que, en Puerto Rico, el cambio en prácticas funerarias de enterrar a los parientes en cementerios centralizados a disponer de ellos dentro del contexto doméstico está íntimamente relacionado a la transformación de sociedades esencialmente basadas en la organización de parentesco a sociendades complejas cacicales. Particularmente, concluimos que el cambio de una organización social basada en los grupos de descendencia extendidos a una basada en el grupo doméstico nuclear refleja la estrategia utilizada por la elite emergente para desmantelar y reorientar las instituciones comunales. Sugerimos que esto se llevó a cabo a través del monopolio de las creencias relacionadas al culto de los antepasados para crear una ideología que legitimice el poder cacical, por parte de la elite emergente.

Type
Articles
Information
Latin American Antiquity , Volume 9 , Issue 3 , September 1998 , pp. 217 - 239
Copyright
Copyright © Society for American Archaeology 1998

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