Death: Something everyone has to face someday, something that releases various emotions and that throughout mankind created a variety of visions of how we see ourselves and what we believe in happens to us afterwards. Dealing with death and human remains, especially in a scientific context, therefore always offers challenges and careful handling. Monica Varinia Matute Rodriguez works, together with her team, Harriet F. Rae Beaubien, Maria Antonieta Cajas Castillo, Julio Alejandro Ajin Mutz and Ricardo Alberto Rodas Giron, on osteological remains from Maya communities in Guatemala. In their project, Ms. Matute Rodriguez’s and her team’s objective is the recovery of human skeletal collections from national storage facilities in Guatemala that are kept in inadequate conditions affecting their stability. The aim of their study, conservation, storage, and commemoration of the remains of past people is to integrate scientific knowledge with ancestral and oral tradition in perceptions of death and the treatment of the dead. Their project work demonstrates that, in contrast to challenges, this kind of work can also provide valuable insight into the understanding of death and the afterlife which enables them to engage in more than just what there is to the bones. We asked Ms. Matute Rodriguez and her team about the difficulties but also opportunities of her work.
"Burials are one of the most informative contexts for archaeologists"
L.I.S.A: Ms. Matute Rodriguez, you and your team are mainly involved in a scientific osteological research and documentation project concerning the mortal remains of numerous humans from various backgrounds. Could you tell us more about the reason and the necessity of your project and where the mortal remains come from? Who were these people?
Matute Rodriguez: This project arises from deep personal reflection on the course of archaeology in my country, Guatemala. Having worked in several archaeological projects in the last twenty years I am aware of the immense corpus of findings that has been recovered for more than seven decades, which currently national institutions hold and protect. As archaeologists we are dealing with the material remnants of past cultures and within that, human remains and their associated artifacts are also recovered. Burials are one of the most informative contexts for archaeologists, but in many cases the artifacts associated are treated first and the human remains tend to be stored for later if no osteologist is available. Time and funding restrictions are also factors for pushing aside the osteological studies and this situation was probably worse in the past. Therefore, there is a large number of burials with and without examination in storage. If we add to this situation the importance of ancestors and the connection with the dead for indigenous cultures, and specifically for current Maya culture now and in the past, we get practically an urge to pay attention to these bodies of knowledge. The project has the objectives of compiling existing information, producing missing information if possible, documenting, protecting, and hopefully reducing the gap between academic discipline and indigenous knowledges, while commemorating the memory of the dead. The skeletal series in storage come from various excavations throughout the history of archaeology in Guatemala. Therefore, as the rest of the team often express, we are also doing archaeology of the archaeology, so to speak. Currently, we are working in the collections from two sites located in the highlands in the departments of Chimaltenango and Guatemala, and a collection of human remains that were fortuitously found in the Department of Quiché, specifically in the Ixil area, while forensic teams were searching for victims of the internal armed conflict. Like a friend would say in a cynical, but accurate way, in Guatemala while searching for the dead you may find other dead. There is death everywhere and funerary memories to recover. Who were these people? Ancient inhabitants of this territory from whom we hope to learn more.