The mortuary practices of various peoples can tell archaeologists a great deal about their cultures' beliefs and behavior. An examination of the archaeological evidence from burial sites of the Nasca and Moche people of pre-Incan Peru will demonstrate how such conclusions can be drawn. Burial remains are, of course, incomplete evidence -- even in terms of the ritual associated with death and disposal of the body. But the details of burial sites and the iconography of art associated with them are the only primary sources on mortuary practice. These peoples were preliterate and did not come into contact with literate groups. The only information that supplements the archaeological record is the retrospective comparison of earlier cultures with what was recorded by observers of Inca practice. But there is a wealth of information available from the early sites and the study and analysis of mortuary practice is the means by which this information is extracted. Even if the evidence is incomplete and often ambiguous, burial sites do provide the material for "postulating baselines from which to evaluate likely conditions in time and space" and these hypotheses can be tested against other available evidence (Dillehay, 1995, p. 19).
The primary questions that can be answered from the examination of burial sites is the manner in which these cultures linked the dead with the living. How they conceptualized death was also strongly related to the manner in which ritual and plain effort were associated with the burial of individuals. Variations in effort and ritual are then used to assess the nature of sociopolitical organization. In addition to ordinary burials, of whatever types or classes, it is also important to remember that in these Andean cultures the treatment of human remains varied considerably "depending on the nature and meaning of a particular human death" (Verano, 1995, p. 220). Thus archaeologists must also consider the...