Reconstruction of the Panorama of Prehispanic Mummification in Colombia from Carbon-14 Dates

Abstract

With the aim to generate an overview of Prehispanic mummification in Colombia as a funerary practice and to stablish a chronology for this mortuary treatment and the specific practice of the masked mummies, a radiocarbonic datation of 24 mummies was performed. This analysis was conducted in mummies lacking context from the Laboratory of Physical Anthropology in the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in collaboration with the Laboratorio Nacional de Espectrometría de Masas con Aceleradores (LEMA), Instituto de Física (IF), at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. All the dates obtained were after year 0 in the Calendar age, which earliest range initiates in 425 AD. The latest dates are from the late period between the XV and XVI centuries, some getting into the Contact and Conquist period. Four individuals are dated around the time frame between the XI and XII AD centuries, this locates them in the Early Chibcha period.

Keywords: Mummification, datation, bioarchaeology, context, chronology.