Through the Lens of the Dead: Theory and an Integrated Archaeology of Cremation in the Southern Brazilian Highlands

Cremation is a complex funerary practice, combining technological, biological, and social phenomena in a fiery transformation, intersecting the body and society. Improvements in our understanding and analysis of physical and chemical heat-induced changes in the body have enabled us to tackle questions from dating to funerary practice and mobility. However, analytical work often lacks contextualisation within funerary archaeology and archaeological theory. Likewise, funerary archaeology sometimes fails to integrate data from the most direct evidence of past people: their remains.Following calls for an “archaeology of cremation” to interpret ritual, social and technological aspects, I propose a holistic framework for analysing burned human remains from archaeological sites. Placing humans at the centre of an interdisciplinary model linking theory, methods, and evidence from bioarchaeology, funerary taphonomy and bioanthropology with forensic science, chemistry, biology, social anthropology.The framework is applied to evidence from mound and enclosure complexes across the southern Brazilian highlands, where funerary practices focused on cremation emerged from the turn of the second millennium AD. Current hypotheses focus on the implications for migration, power, status, and society. Few are based on human remains, presenting an opportunity to apply the framework from recovery to analysis.Integrated planning commenced pre-excavation, with excavation conducted using archaeothanatological principles followed by advanced methods to analyse primary level heat-induced change in bone structure and composition, including FTIR-ATR, XRF, digital colour quantification, digital imaging and SEM. All the data is integrated with evidence from archaeology, ethnography and ethnohistory to offer a comprehensive interdisciplinary insight into society across the southern Brazilian highlands during the second millennium AD. While other interpretations have focused on inequality, aggrandising strategies, differentiating powerful ‘male leaders’, and territoriality, this paper aims to leave paradigm-focused interpretations behind and test each in the context of a funerary process focused on cosmology, ritualisation, community, and integration. Keywords: Cremation; Burned Bone; Funerary Taphonomy; Bioarchaeology; Archaeological Theory