Mar. 28
Several deformed corpses were found during recent excavations at the burial necropolis of El Trigal , a once-downtrodden community located in the Nazca province of Peru and dating to the 1st century A.D.
Members of nearby wealthier communities looking to send a message about their power may have been responsible for the mutilations, say archaeologists.
"When a dominant class appears, [it] always seeks mechanisms to impose fear. The power of an elite is exercised and maintained by means of force and fear. Mutilations can be part of those tactics to frighten.
Tombs at the El Trigal necropolis are very simple and indicate increasing poverty that coincided with the emergence, about 2,000 years ago, of the neighboring town of Cahuachi as a powerful conglomeration of upper-class aristocrats.
Most pointedly, several bodies at El Trigal—including the grave of one woman who was buried with a pair of severed legs and feet not belonging to her—showed signs of violence.
The ruling members of Cahuachi's population likely used aggressive measures to force taxation and keep their Nazca rivals in check.
The case of dismembered legs at El Trigal is not conclusive [of violence] due to its poor conservation. Are other known cases of dismemberments, mutilations and decapitations in the Peruvian Coast of this epoch
While there is nothing pretty about dismemberment, one body also found at El Trigal displayed the ultimate of symbol of power and wealth in ancient Peru: a grossly cone-shaped skull.
Finding conehead individuals at El Trigal—achieved by binding the skull with bandages from a young age–is a bit of a mystery, since it was a practice usually reserved for babies of wealthy lineage and El Trigal was a lower-class community.
"[It could be] an individual of an aristocratic lineage excluded of his/her rights, a practice of deformation independent of aristocratic lineage, or a deformation associated to certain activities" for which the child was being prepared. In this apparently violent society, children were rarely harmed in such a way.
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