{
  "author": "ChronologiaOS editorial guides",
  "date": "2026-10-09",
  "department": "Deep Time & First Peoples",
  "department_id": "DEEPTIME",
  "epistemic_label": "Source guide",
  "epistemic_status": "SOURCE_GUIDE",
  "period": "5450\u2013890 BCE",
  "place": "Arica and Parinacota, northern Chile",
  "public_sources": [
    {
      "publisher": "UNESCO World Heritage Centre",
      "title": "Settlement and Artificial Mummification of the Chinchorro Culture in the Arica and Parinacota Region",
      "type": "Heritage site record",
      "url": "https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1634/"
    }
  ],
  "publication_state": "PUBLIC",
  "read_time": "3 min read",
  "sections": [
    {
      "body": "UNESCO's serial property for the Chinchorro culture joins three places, two in the city of Arica and one at the mouth of the Camarones valley. It describes marine hunter-gatherers of the hyper-arid Atacama coast, present from roughly 5450 to 890 BCE, whose cemeteries hold the oldest known evidence of artificial mummification.",
      "heading": "Start with the property",
      "source": 0
    },
    {
      "body": "The cemeteries contain bodies preserved by the desert and bodies deliberately prepared. The research record notes that mortuary practice phases need separate records: the practice changed over thousands of years, and one date range does not describe one technique.",
      "heading": "Natural and artificial, side by side",
      "source": 0
    },
    {
      "body": "A long date range for a culture is a container, not an event. Ask which cemetery, which burial, and which preparation method a particular date belongs to.",
      "heading": "Try the research habit"
    },
    {
      "body": "Why would a small coastal community invest so much in the dead for so long? Treat the question as open and note what kinds of evidence, settlement remains, middens, or burials, could answer it.",
      "heading": "A question to carry forward"
    }
  ],
  "short_title": "Why prepare the dead for seven thousand years?",
  "slug": "chinchorro-the-oldest-artificial-mummies",
  "summary": "Marine hunter-gatherers on the Atacama coast practised artificial mummification millennia before Egypt. Learn to read a long cultural range as a container, not an event.",
  "tags": [
    "Chinchorro",
    "Mummification",
    "Atacama",
    "Hunter-gatherers",
    "Chile"
  ],
  "title": "Chinchorro: the oldest artificial mummies."
}