Art as an affecting presence: infant funerary urns in pre-Hispanic northwest Argentina

Abstract

This article asks how art makes society, investigating the ways art objects were used by past peoples to shape and to give expression to emotions. Archaeology reveals a rich diversity of images and objects used by people as part of processions, performances, dances, or feasts. Reflecting enormous variation, art evoked wide-ranging sensory experiences, some of them powerfully affecting, transformative, and lasting in their impacts. Employing Armstrong's notion of the ‘affecting presence’, the author considers how archaeologists might reconstruct past emotions. A case study involving decorated burial urns from northwest Argentina during the Regional Developments Period, AD 950–1430, is explored in detail to consider the figured world of infant burial and mourning.

Keywords:

• art
• emotion
• northwest Argentina
• archaeology
• mortuary practices
• urns

Acknowledgements

I thank Mónica de Lorenzi, Mirta Santoni, Miguel Xamena, and Antonio Mercado for support for the fieldwork in Argentina. The Ministerio de Educación y de la Cultura, Provincia de Salta, the Museo de Antropología de Salta, and the Museo Arqueológico de Cachi granted permission and provided logistical assistance. Kevin Lane co-directed the Borgatta excavations, and Emma Pomeroy analysed the skeletal remains. I gratefully acknowledge funding from the British Academy, McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, and Churchill College. For comments on earlier drafts, I thank Ben Cartwright, Tim Earle, and John Robb. Two anonymous reviewers provided substantial and very helpful comments.

Notes

1. Textiles were an additional medium for symbolic elaboration and communication. Since the soils are acidic, fragments of cloth are rarely recovered from archaeological sites in this region.

2. Adults, in contrast, were buried outside the residential enclosures, either in patios, under pathways, or in earthen mounds (DeMarrais 2004).

3. Emma Pomeroy, who analysed the skeletal remains from the Borgatta pot burials, estimates the ages of buried individuals (ranging from 33 weeks in utero to 5 years [+/– 8 months]); many were about 18 months of age. She observes that the remains of children older than 5 years old may have been too large for urn or olla burial.

4. Adult burials at Borgatta, investigated by Julia Burtenshaw, also suggest wide variation in their locations, grave goods, and the numbers of individuals included.

5. Infant death may also represent a sacrifice, which has different implications for mourning and bereavement. In the absence of data from Borgatta that allows us to distinguish between these possibilities, it is suggested that moderately high rates of infant mortality from natural causes are a plausible explanation for most infant deaths.

6. Included in the vessels were fragments of textiles, mica, obsidian, ceramics, ochre, and, in some cases, remains of seeds and other plant remains.