Yale Archaeology Lecture – Richard Lunniss (Universidad Técnica de Manabí)

“The Burial Program at Salango, Ecuador, in the Very Early Regional Development Period”

Dr. Richard Lunniss, of the Universidad Técnica de Manabí, Portoviejo, Ecuador.

Religious responses to natural disasters are an emerging focus of archaeological study in the Andean region and elsewhere. A case in point is Salango, a sacred center of the coast of Ecuador that lay on the margin of an area severely impacted by a volcanic ash fall deriving from an eruption in the highlands 300 km to the east. Dating to the end of the first millennium BC, this event occurred just as the Late Formative period Engoroy traditions were beginning to be replaced by those of the Regional Development.  It was itself followed by a brief but rather complex burial program that emerged directly out of Engoroy ritual at Salango, though with significant reconfiguration and the incorporation of novel and occasionally extraordinary practices. With a predominance of infants and evidence of generalized malnutrition and/or disease, the buried dead reflect the human cost of the disorder provoked by the ash fall. The burial program itself is interpreted as an elaborate attempt on the part of the local religious leaders to reestablish order in the face of catastrophe. The nature of this response differs greatly from that of later and more famous north Peruvian coastal societies such as the Moche and Chimú who apparently resorted to various forms of human sacrifice as offerings to appease the spirits.

Sachem #105
Yale University
New Haven, Connecticut
April 5, 12:00 PM

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