The Peoples of Lagoa Santa

HUMANITIES ARCHAEOLOGY y The peoples of Lagoa Santa Human burial sites in Minas Gerais reveal a succession of customs from 10,000 to 8,000 years ago Maria Guimarães PUBLISHED IN SEPTEMBER 2016 Lapa do Santo, a rockshelter in the midst of the Cerrado savannah, appears to have been an important center for rituals associated with death 100 z JULY 2017 LAGOA SANTA KARst MG Lapa do Santo . n opening in the face of a steep cliff in the midst of the Cerrado savannah in . the Lagoa Santa region of Matozinhos the Brazilian state of Minas Confins AGerais has presented archeologists, bi- Airport ologists and anthropologists with a sur- . prising revelation. The cave, a rockshel- . ter known as Lapa do Santo, was once Lagoa Archeological Santa an important center for funerary rituals, sites in caves as revealed by the excavations described Cities in an article published in the Antiquity journal, one of the most prominent pub- lications in that field. The cave housed complex burial patterns featuring dismembered corpses arranged according covered human bones alongside those of to precise rules, revealing a succession of large animals in a cave in Lagoa Santa, very distinct cultures during a period— setting in motion a tradition of excava- approximately 10,000 years ago—that tion that made it one of the most long- had previously been considered to be lasting archeological regions in Brazil. homogeneous. “The greatest benefit was Five years later, during his master’s re- in discovering these cultural changes search under Neves, Strauss observed over time, which for some reason no one some order in the apparent confusion at had noted before,” says André Strauss, a the site: what appeared to be a meaning- Brazilian archeologist and visiting pro- less jumble of bones did, in fact, follow fessor at the University of Tübingen in a pattern. “It’s difficult to perceive the Germany, a doctoral candidate at Ger- subtleties. The burials are very complex.” many’s Max Planck Institute, and the “This was made possible because Wal- article’s lead author. The study goes be- ter reversed the usual order of the field yond the deaths themselves and provides procedures,” Strauss notes. Brazilian ar- a glimps of who these people were and cheology, he says, generally focuses on how they lived. artifacts, and only calls in specialists in Strauss felt that there was something human fossils when bones are found. special about this place during his first “Many skeletons are damaged in the pro- year in the geology program at the Uni- cess.” Neves has been analyzing human versity of São Paulo (USP). He went on evolution in the Americas since 1988, his first field expedition in 2005 as an in- conducting a case study in this region. tern for bioanthropologist Walter Neves In his projects, bioanthropologists coor- of USP’s Biosciences Institute (IB-USP). dinate the excavation, document every- “I was at the bottom of a two-meter- thing they find, and rely on specialists to deep trench, digging and sifting through analyze the artifacts—in the case of Lapa what I found.” It was from that vantage do Santo, the stone fragments and tools point that Strauss became fascinated made of bone, such as spatulas, chisels with the potential discoveries to be made and, on rare occasions, fishhooks. there and decided that he wanted to do In the cave, the walls of which are something other than focus on skull decorated with relief drawings indica- measurements and search for signs of tive of fertility rituals (phallic images), coexistence with large animals, known the findings were striking. Strauss, Neves as megafauna. That was the focus of the and their colleagues identified three dis- IO DE PAIVA DE IO C research conducted in the 19th century, tinct periods of human occupation, the MAURI when Danish naturalist Peter Lund dis- oldest from 12,700 to 11,700 years ago. PESQUISA FAPESP z 101 Between 2001 and 2009, they exhumed and analyzed 26 human burials dating Successive cultures back to approximately 10,500 and 8,000 Burial patterns have changed over time years ago, which revealed a variety of funerary practices never before discovered in the lowlands of South America. These practices were described in an article in Antiquity and a second article of which André Strauss was the sole author, published in the January-April 2016 issue of Boletim do Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi. “There were highly sophisticated funerary practices in the Andes,” says Neves, “but the previously studied Chil- ean mummies are more recent than the material found in Lapa do Santo”. An- other distinction is that the cave in Minas Gerais contains no funerary offerings, while the customary practice of hunter- gatherers was to bury the dead along 10,600 to 9,700 years with their belongings. “The complexity 1 of the practices discovered at Lapa do Simple graves with no signs of manipulation of body parts manipulation. Santo resides not in the objects, but in a The two skeletons pictured are of a man and a woman high degree of manipulation of the body and the skeleton, in a very sophisticated manner,” says the USP professor. The third burial pattern, dating from FUNERARY RITUAls 8,600 to 8,200 years ago, involves nine The oldest burial pattern, dating back heaps of completely disarticulated bones to between 10,600 and 9,700 years ago, The findings arranged in circular pits with diame- included a man and a child who was ap- represent a ters of 30 or 40 centimeters and and a proximately five years old — both buried depth. of 20 centimeters. Each pit was intact. The child was placed in a seated paradigm shift fully occupied by the remains of a single position, with the legs folded and the individual. In the case of adults, the lon- knees close to the head. The open jaw, in how we ger bones were generally broken after which causes the mouth to look agape, death to allow their placement in these indicates that the pit was not completely view human small tombs. filled in. habitation in Despite so many recorded cases of dis- The removal of body parts after death memberment, there are no signs that vi- is characteristic of the following period, this area during olence in life was a common practice. between 9,600 and 9,400 years ago. This “We read the bones; everything is record- period is represented at seven burials, that period ed in them,” Strauss says. In addition, plus a few disarticulated bones, and is the bones show extremely low levels of described as the second pattern. Some of healed fractures, which are indicative of the skeletons were articulated, but had injuries sustained while the subject was missing parts. One striking case was that alive. Generally, Strauss believes that the of a man whose head appeared to have ied only removal of the flesh and going findings represent a paradigm shift in been removed hours after his death and through a drying process. Many of the how we view human habitation in the who was buried with his hands (also sev- isolated bones had also undergone treat- area during that period—the early Ho- ered, as indicated by cut marks on the ments such as burning, cutting, the ap- locene. “For a long time, the big ques- wrist bones) covering his face—one hand plication of red pigment and the removal tion was whether Luzia was the oldest pointing upwards and the other hand of teeth. In some cases, the bones of one skull in the Americas and whether it downwards, as Strauss and colleagues de- or two children were combined with the resembled Africans,” he says, referring scribed in 2015 in the PLOS ONE journal. skull of an adult, or vice-versa, in a man- to the 11,000-year-old skull described Other skeletons were completely dis- ner suggesting very precise rules for how by Neves, which redefined the way hu- membered and arranged in bundles, the burial should be carried out. Teeth man occupation in the region should be indicating that the bones were stored which had been removed were also bur- viewed (see the 50th Anniversary issue together,possibly wrapped up, and buried with the remains of a different person. of FAPESP at bit.ly/AmLuzia). “We now 102 z JULY 2017 8,600 to 8,200 years 3 9,600 to 9,400 years Shallow circular pits contained bones of a single person 2 and were covered by stone blocks Bodies were dismembered and might be buried along with parts from several people. A head arranged with its severed hands is the most striking example know that there was not just one Luzia til the 19th century.” Such is the case, for mous mammals that were believed to people in Lagoa Santa; it was actually a example, of the Botocudo Indians, who have been associated with the humans of succession of peoples who inhabited the were decimated during the colonial pe- Lagoa Santa ever since Peter Lund found region, with clear cultural transforma- riod, according to skulls stored at the Na- proof of association in a different cave in tions.” In fact, the period was approxi- tional Museum of Brazil, as maintained by the region, between 1835 and 1844. This mately 5,000 years long—a long enough Strauss, Neves and colleagues in a paper is not always the case, it would seem. period for occupation by very diverse published in 2015 in the American Jour- “They even ate rock cavy,” Neves ex- populations, even if they were, to some nal of Physical Anthropology.

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