Animais como psicopompos nas sepulturas do Sítio Arqueológico Justino? (Canindé de São Francisco — Sub-região de Xingó — Sergipe, Brasil)

Abstract

The sub-region known as Xingó in the town of Canindé de São Francisco, in the State of Sergipe (Northeastern Brazil), has several important archaeological sites, among which the Justino site stands out for having many traces of the ancient populations who occupied it. In this area faunal remains found in human tombs (numbers 119 and 166) were analyzed on the basis of their morphological characteristics and funerary context and identified, respectively, as the Galictis cuja species (Molina, 1782) (tomb 119), a mammal of the Mustelidae family, and a bird of prey of medium size (tomb 166), with characteristics similar to an adult of the Falconidae family. A study of the human burials in the region of Xingó, where whole animals were buried indicates a symbolic ritual context associated with practices of human and animal burial. This grouping raises the possibility of establishing an analogy with what is found in the anthropological literature on South America, which refers to cases with similar characteristics in Peru (Huaca del Sol and Huaca de la Luna complex), where animals served as guides to the realm of death, ones which, in that context, are known as psychopomps. This practice especially involved the common use of the fauna of different species associated with human burials, and even the iconography of such sites speak of these human-animal relationships in pre-Columbian funerary contexts.

Keywords

• Archaeology
• Brazil (Thesaurus)
• zooarchaeology
• psychopomps
• Justino Archaeological Site
• human burial (authors ´ keywords)