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<< Other Photo Pages >> Conchalito - Ancient Village or Settlement in Mexico

Submitted by bat400 on Thursday, 18 March 2010  Page Views: 5657

Pre-ColumbianSite Name: Conchalito Alternative Name: El Conchalito
Country: Mexico Type: Ancient Village or Settlement
Nearest Town: Conchalito
Latitude: 24.144375N  Longitude: 110.342216W
Condition:
5Perfect
4Almost Perfect
3Reasonable but with some damage
2Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site
1Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks
0No data.
-1Completely destroyed
no data Ambience:
5Superb
4Good
3Ordinary
2Not Good
1Awful
0No data.
no data Access:
5Can be driven to, probably with disabled access
4Short walk on a footpath
3Requiring a bit more of a walk
2A long walk
1In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find
0No data.
no data Accuracy:
5co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates
4co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map
3co-ordinates scaled from a bad map
2co-ordinates of the nearest village
1co-ordinates of the nearest town
0no data
3
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Conchalito
Conchalito submitted by Creative Commons : Bahia La Paz beach Creative Commons photo by Charles Chandler (Vote or comment on this photo)
The Conchalito site is known for double inhumation in their burial areas. The semi-nomadic group marked burials with beds of shell for the remains, and a specimen shell as either a grave good or marker. After the remains had partially decayed, the body was removed, disjointed, and returned to the grave.

This cultural practice occurred approximately 2300 years ago, but the burial technique continued after the Spanish conquest. Researchers from the National Institute of Anthropology and History have used historic recordings of this practice to deduce that religious significance was common to the pre-Hispanic people, just as the archaeological remains show the continuity of the burial practice.

The site has also revealed stone tools such as projectile heads, knives, and fishing harpoons, as well as food remains of seed, edible plants and shells of mollusks.
The location given is only approximate.

Note: More information on Unique 'Double' Burial Custom in Pre-Hispanic Mexico. See comments.
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"Conchalito" | Login/Create an Account | 10 News and Comments
  
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The Conchalito - El Conchalito by Andy B on Friday, 10 September 2021
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El Conchalito is an archaeological site located in the south of the California peninsula , in the city of La Paz , capital of the Mexican state of Baja California Sur . The importance of El Conchalito lies in the fact that it is a site with a high concentration of pre-Hispanic burials corresponding to the Pericú people , which disappeared in the 17th century after the arrival of the Jesuit missions to the California peninsula.

More at
https://second.wiki/wiki/el_conchalito
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Re: Evidence suggests some Mexicans dug up graves, dismembered bodies and reburied by Andy B on Friday, 10 September 2021
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Strange burials dominate the archaeological site of El Conchalito on La Paz Bay (shown here) in the Mexican state of Baja California Sur. Ancient people lived at the site starting at least 2,300 years ago, and 57 of their dead have been found in shallow graves lined with seashells.

Some of the skeletal remains were found intact, laid to rest on their backs or curled on their sides. But a substantial number were discovered dismembered. For example, the body of one 30- to 35-year-old man was found with most of his spine, his hip and ribs detached from his neck and put in front of his face, wrote Alfonso Rosales-Lopez and colleagues in a 2007 article in the journal Pacific Coast Archaeological Society Quarterly. One of his arm bones had been shoved through his skull.

Apparently, the ancient people who lived at El Conchalito developed a tradition in which they buried their dead intact and later exhumed them and split the skeletons in half at the waist by twisting, pulling and cutting with stone tools. The lower half of the body was then put on top of the upper half, according to the PCAS Quarterly article. Usually the sectioning was quite neat, but sometimes the procedure failed and the bones ended up in a messy pile. The tradition may have been related to the belief that without this postmortem process, the dead might come back to life, Lopez and colleagues wrote.

11 Famous Places That Are Littered with Dead Bodies
http://www.livescience.com/55609-famous-places-with-dead-bodies.html
[ Reply to This ]

Skeletons Shed Light on Ancient Mesoamerican Burial Rituals by Andy B on Friday, 10 September 2021
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The pair were found buried on top of one another, their faces turned towards each other with the legs flung backwards. An archaeologist strolling along a beach in Baja California Sur has stumbled upon two skeletons whose remains shed new light on ancient burial rituals from Mexico. Conchalito beach, where the remains were found, is an archaeological treasure trove with at least 60 burial sites.

More at
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Skeletons-Shed-Light-on-Ancient-Mesoamerican-Burial-Rituals-20180418-0033.html
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The Dead at El Conchalito: Ancient Burial Practices by Andy B on Friday, 10 September 2021
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The Dead at El Conchalito: Ancient Burial Practices on La Paz Bay, Baja California Sur, Mexico
Alfonso Rosales-López, J. Eldon Molto, and Leticia C. Sánchez García

This paper examines the ancient burial patterns of El Conchalito, a multi-component archaeological site on La Paz Bay, Baja California Sur, Mexico. Well-preserved human skeletal remains and associated grave goods provide valuable insights into Pre-Columbian mortuary behavior. The variability of funerary rites identified at El Conchalito may have been prototypical for interment methods, belief systems, body preparation, arrangement of the body in the grave, and other mortuary customs that were practiced by Indian peoples of the Cape Region, including participants of the renowned Las Palmas Culture. IntroductionThe Las Palmas Cult

PDF:
http://www.pcas.org/assets/documents/TheDeadatEla.pdf
[ Reply to This ]

Conchalito - Ancient Corpses Ritually Dug Up, Torn Apart, Reburied by bat400 on Thursday, 18 March 2010
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Coldrum submitted a National Geographic article on the Site and findings:

According to the first known evidence of "double burials," ancient people in what is now Mexico routinely dug up decomposing bodies and took off their arms, legs, and heads, then reburied the bodies, new research shows.

Indigenous peoples of the Cape Region of Baja California Sur (see map) practiced these double burials for about 4,500 years, from about 300 B.C. to the 16th-century A.D, when Europeans first arrived in the region, anthropologists say.

To the native groups, death was "a motionless, painful state, from which the living could free" the dead by sectioning the limbs, physical anthropologist Alfonso Rosales-Lopez said in an email translated from Spanish."

Since 1991 Rosales-Lopez has examined more than a hundred of the double burials along the southern coast of Baja California and is currently working on a paper describing the practice.

Double burials appear unique to the Cape Region, said Don Laylander, senior archaeologist with the archaeological consulting firm ASM Affiliates and co-editor of The Prehistory of Baja California: Advances in the Archaeology of the Forgotten Peninsula.

Rosales-Lopez's research also offers some new insight into the culture of Mexico's ancient native peoples, Laylander said.

For instance, the double burials and the shells and bones found at the sites certainly point to a culture that emphasized ceremony and were seminomadic, Laylander, who was not involved in the research, noted via email.

That's because the artifacts suggests the people did not abandon their settlements forever—they had an obligation to revisit and protect their dead, project leader Rosalez-Lopez said.

Not much more is known about the culture, Laylander said. The Cape Region groups became culturally extinct more than two centuries ago, he added, and there are few modern ethnographic accounts of them.

As for Rosales-Lopez's interpretations as to why the bodies were torn apart, Laylander said those conclusions are only "speculation."



For more, see news.nationalgeographic.com.
[ Reply to This ]

Re: Conchalito by Anonymous on Thursday, 28 January 2010
The GPS coordinates given put this site in an established neighborhood less than a kilometer from my apartment and within the city limits of La Paz, BCS, Mexico! I'll do some "digging" and see what I can find (pun intended).
[ Reply to This ]
    Conchalito location by bat400 on Sunday, 31 January 2010
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    Anon - Please, any additional information on location would be very helpful. The location I gave was extremely general - based on reading the linked papers and the use of Google maps.
    [ Reply to This ]
    Re: Conchalito location by davidmorgan on Sunday, 31 January 2010
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    The pcas.org article says it's here: 24.144375, -110.342216
    but the grave with the seashells in the photo looks like it's on the beach next to the sea.
    [ Reply to This ]
      Re: Conchalito location by bat400 on Monday, 01 February 2010
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      Hmmm... I've changed to the location you cited.
      The map in the paper highlights the entire north facing beach front.
      The text indicates both a low lying area often covered by the sea at high tide and a higher area. My guess would be the modern road is well above the tide mark. So the burials could be both near the modern road, and then down to the waterfront.
      [ Reply to This ]

Evidence suggests some Mexicans dug up graves, dismembered bodies and reburied them. by bat400 on Monday, 25 January 2010
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Archaeologists have found evidence that pre-Hispanic groups in Mexico's Baja California peninsula dug up their decomposing dead, dismembered the bodies and then reburied them.

A report by the National Institute of Anthropology and History says Indians at the Conchalito site apparently did that to release the dead from what they considered a state of suffering.

The report says many of the 157 graves studied since 1991 show evidence of the practice. The graves date from about A.D. 300 to the 1500s.

Archaeologist Alfonso Rosales-Lopez said Tuesday that bodies were dug up after a few months, once decomposition loosened joints enough to allow for dismemberment.



For more see the Associated Press story, and Mexico's INAH. One of the papers can also be found at http://www.pcas.org/documents/TheDeadatEla.pdf.
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