The woman was on her 'final voyage.'
Up to 1,000 years ago, mourners buried a young woman in a ceremonial canoe to represent her final journey into the land of the dead in what is now Patagonia, a new study finds.
Canoe burials are well attested and are still practiced in some areas of South America, Pérez told Live Science. But because wood rots rapidly, the new finding is the first known evidence of the practice from the pre-Hispanic period."The previous evidence was important and was based on ethnographic data, but the evidence was indirect," he said.
Radiocarbon dating indicates the woman was buried more than 850 years ago and possibly up to 1,000 years ago, while her sex and age at death — between 17 and 25 years old — were estimated from her pelvic bones and the wear on her teeth, according to the study. Shells found in the grave show that her body was placed directly on a bed of Diplodon chilensis, a type of freshwater clam that was likely brought from the shores of Lake Lacár more than 1,000 feet away, the researchers wrote.
A historical report from the 1840s by the Chilean politician Salvador Sanfuentes remarked that local people"site the graves of their dead on the bank of a stream to allow the current to carry the soul to the land of souls" and that ceremonial canoes were buried as coffins to carry the dead on this journey, the researchers wrote.
The new study has great scientific importance for archaeological and anthropological research in the Patagonia region, said Nicolás Lira, an assistant professor of archaeology, ethnography and prehistory at the University of Chile who wasn't involved in the research.
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