Browsing by Author "Saez, Arturo"

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    Physical Violence and Social Tension in the Atacama Desert: Osteobiography of a Woman from the Tarapaca 40 Formative Period Cemetery
    (2024) Herrera-Soto, Maria Jose; Gonzalez-Ramirez, Andrea; Diaz, Pablo; Pacheco, Aryel; Retamal, Rodrigo; Saez, Arturo; Santana-Sagredo, Francisca; Uribe, Mauricio
    Physical violence and social conflict have been widely studied in the ancient societies of the Andes. However, studies about violence are scarce for the Formative period of northern Chile (1000 BC-AD 900). Evidence from these investigations is generally interpreted as interpersonal violence, whose protagonists are mostly men. Here, we present the case of an adult female recovered from the Tarapaca 40 cemetery (Tarapaca region, Chile) displaying lesions suggestive of trauma. We reconstruct her life and death in the context of this era's social and political conditions. Results of our bioanthropological characterization, cranial trauma analysis, carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis, and recording of the funerary offerings suggest she was a local member of the Formative community buried in the Tarapaca 40 cemetery and that she suffered intentional lethal lesions. Her death is unusual because there are no previous bioarchaeological records of lethal violence against women in the Tarapaca region. The osteobiography of this woman reflects a context characterized by an increase in inequality and social complexity, whereby physical violence could be used as a mechanism of internal regulation and exercise of power during the Formative period.
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    SEXUAL POLITICS AND SOCIAL REPRODUCTION IN THE PAMPA DEL TAMARUGAL: SEX-AGE STRUCTURE IN THE TARAPACA 40 CEMETERY (BC 1000-600 AD)
    (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021) Gonzalez Ramirez, Andrea; Saez, Arturo; Herrera Soto, Maria Jose; Leyton, Lia; Miranda, Felipe; Santana Sagredo, Francisca; Uribe Rodriguez, Mauricio
    In this paper we propose explanatory hypotheses about the sexual politics that were from time to time implemented in the configuration of the Pampa del Tamarugal formative community, with the aim to contribute to the archaeological study of social reproduction. The bioanthropological collections of the Tarapaca 40 Cemetery underwent an osteological survey, designed to identify their sexual and age structure. A significant number of contextual references were recovered, and an exploratory analysis of the variation in the sex-age structure of some cemeteries in the region was carried out. The results show a cemetery with all age ranges and a 1:1 sex ratio. On a regional scale, a dichotomous distribution was observed between archaic and formative cemeteries, based on the ratio between adult women and non-adults. We propose that social relations of reproduction and sexual division of labor between the late archaic and the formative society underwent radical transformations, the most direct impact of which could be the social control of female sexuality through the establishment of a kinship-based socio-political regime.