900-Year-Old Burial of Woman in a Canoe Uncovered in Argentina

About 900 years ago , a woman between 17 and 25 days previous died and was inhume near the innovative border of Chile and Argentina . But unlike other people buried nearby , she was entombed in a canoe .

The discovery — detail of which arepublishedin PLoS ONE — push the practice of ritual canoe burial farther in the south in South America than was antecedently known . The archaeological squad suspects it was a emblematic agency of helping the at rest travel to the hereafter .

“ At first we did not understand what we saw , since it was something nameless for Patagonian Argentina , ” allege Alberto Enrique Pérez , an archaeologist at the Universidad Católica de Temuco in Chile and the study ’s lead source , in an e-mail to Gizmodo . “ We were pleasantly surprised . ”

An illustration of Individual 3, who was buried about 880 years ago.

An illustration of Individual 3, who was buried about 880 years ago.Illustration: Pérez et al., PLOS ONE 2022

The canoe burial emerged during archeological site between 2012 and 2015 at Newen Antug , an archeologic site in the Patagonian foothills . The site sits on the outskirts of San Martín de los Andes , across the street from some hotels . Newen Antug is about half a air mile from a lake , which the subject area authors think may be link up to the symbolic burial method .

The woman is call Individual 3 ; two other human bodies were antecedently found at the same website . Those remains are more recent , dating to around 1482 CE , and they were not buried in canoes .

The dating method give these dates with an uncertainty of + /- 50 years . Pérez believes the people were killed by the Spanish based on their dismemberment , and if so , that would set them in the latter one-half of the particular date stove .

An illustration of the Mapuche method of crafting dugout canoes with fire.

An illustration of the Mapuche method of crafting dugout canoes with fire.Illustration:Pérez et al., 2022, PLOS ONE, CC-BY 4.0

Individual 3 go out to about 1142 CE — before the Spanish arrive in South America — and she was between 17 and 25 years old when she died , though the investigator are n’t certain what ended her life . A large jug was placed next to her headspring . Though much of the canoe ( or wampo ) around the body had rotted away , virtually 600 fragments of wood still remained .

face at the shard under a microscope , the team set that the wood was Chilean cedar , and some of it was charred . That lends credenza to the premise that it was once a canoe , as historical accounts detail Indigenous South Americans making dugout canoes by burning aside the home Mrs. Henry Wood . Though the pattern is well - be intimate in Chile , this is the first evidence of it in Argentina . It ’s also the southernmost have intercourse canoe entombment in South America .

“ historic origin refer more to burials in wampo or trolof [ wooden canoes ] among virile individuals , but that is more recent , ” Pérez said . “ The Newen Antug find may show that it was a more far-flung drill amongst both gender . ”

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The canoe burial is thought to symbolize the ocean trip the at rest takes to their ultimate resting lieu . Ship interment on land were vernacular in other cultures as well , perhaps most magnificently among the Vikings .

Since the ancestors of the Indigenous Mapuche people of Chile and Argentina often inhabit shores , the subject authors conceive the ancient fair sex ’s canoe burying may be tied to the importance of water in her life .

But any connectedness between this charwoman and the two individuals bury nearby some 200 old age later is unclear , for now . But the squad hop that the recent discovery exhort more investigation of the ancestors of innovative Mapuche people and their civilization .

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