Archaeologists working in the Titicaca Basin have discovered a mortuary used by ancient Bolivians to strip the skin from the remains of the dead. It appears they used calcium oxide – a substance more commonly known as quicklime – to to dissolve these bodies down to the bone. 
 
 The mortuary site, a religious complex known as Khonkho Wankane, was a space used by ritual specialists to process human remains. Corpses were cut into pieces and then cleaned and curated using the quicklime, which was procured by heating limestone. The quicklime, when exposed to air, covered the bones in calcium carbonate, or lime plaster. By boiling body parts in pots of quicklime, the flesh and fat became easier to remove from the bones. 
 
 This would have been quite dramatic, and an indelible part of the mortuary ritual itself. As the researchers write in their study: 
 
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 The reaction produced by adding quicklime to water is a violent one, where heat is produced and gas is released. This would have been quite an impressive sensory experience. Modern indigenous communities in Bolivia conceptualise smoke, gas and mists as ways in which offerings are transmitted to the supernatural realm. Similarly, the visceral, gaseous process of cleaning human remains to produce plastered bones may have conveyed the deceased to the otherworldly realm. 
 
 So why did they do it? Traci Watson from USA Today explains: 
 
 The end product of that grisly work: relics that could easily be carried on the road by people who lived in the region more than a thousand years ago and seem to have had both a reverence for the dead and a highly unsettled lifestyle. The process created "portable ancestors for a mobile population," said study co-author Scott C. Smith, an archaeologist at Franklin & Marshall College. The discovery shows "the dead still played an active and important role in the lives of the living." 
 
 As the researchers themselves put it, "The evidence suggests that during a time of heightened movement and circulation, Khonkho Wankane was propelled to prominence in part because of a ritual process of preparing human remains for a mobile agropastoral population." 
 
 Excavations at the site yielded a number of clues, including 1,000 teeth and small bones sheathed in a thin layer of white plaster, mostly from the feet and hands. The discovery of small blocks made from a white, chalky substance — likely the remnants of quicklime — indicated that the substance was used at the mortuary. The archaeologists also found body parts coated with the plaster, including a piece of skull, and an intact skeletal hand and foot. 
 
 Check out the scientific study at Antiquity. And be sure to read the entire USA Today post. 
 
 
 
 Images: Scott C. Smith 
 
 ||||| The discovery of an ancient site in the Andes where bodies were cut up and defleshed so the relatives of the deceased could carry pieces with them. This photo shows the remains of a hand that was likely de-fleshed with quicklime over 1,000 years ago. (Photo: Scott C. Smith) 
 
 An ancient mortuary where bits of human corpses apparently were defleshed and cleaned to yield easy-to-carry pieces has been discovered in the foothills of the Andes Mountains in South America. 
 
 Inside the mortuary's stone-and-adobe walls, ritual specialists boiled body parts in pots of quicklime to help strip tissue off the bones, researchers believe. 
 
 The end product of that grisly work: relics that could easily be carried on the road by people who lived in the region more than a thousand years ago and seem to have had both a reverence for the dead and a highly unsettled lifestyle. 
 
 The process created "portable ancestors for a mobile population," said study co-author Scott C. Smith, an archaeologist at Franklin & Marshall College. The discovery shows "the dead still played an active and important role in the lives of the living." 
 
 Nothing terribly exciting was expected from the patch of earth that Smith and a colleague began excavating a decade ago in western Bolivia at a religious complex called Khonkho Wankane. 
 
 The spot where the researchers were digging was a good distance from Khonkho's sunken temples, which at the time were thought to be the focal point of the site. 
 
 But the unpromising ground yielded a spectacular find. 
 
 Smith and his colleague, Maribel Pérez Arias of the University of Pittsburgh, gradually uncovered a circular building whose floor was strewn with a rich and puzzling variety of objects. There were nearly 1,000 teeth and small bones, mostly from the feet and hands and most sheathed in a thin layer of white plaster. There were plaster-coated ceramic pots and plaster-coated tools made from llama bones. 
 
 And there were small blocks made of a white, chalky substance. Researchers had identified similar blocks found at nearby sites as crucibles or molds for metalworking. But tests showed the white blocks at Khonkho are probably quicklime, made by heating limestone. 
 
 A quicklime-water blend has a notable property: It can help remove the tissue and fat from bones. Pérez has seen such a mixture being used in Bolivia to prepare skeletons for medical training. Exposed to air, the mixture turns into a white plaster. 
 
 Inside the mortuary, the researchers found a number of body parts coated with just such white plaster, among them a piece of skull, an intact set of hand bones and an intact set of foot bones. Outside the mortuary, carvings on a stone pillar depict a human with defleshed ribs. 
 
 The discovery of an ancient site in the Andes where bodies were cut up and defleshed so the relatives of the deceased could carry pieces with them. (Photo: Scott C. Smith) 
 
 Taken together, the artifacts suggest that bodies were taken apart at the site, partially stripped of flesh and then cleaned in lime water inside the mortuary, which was in use for perhaps 400 years. The big bones were then borne away from the site, the researchers argue. 
 
 The find is reported in the current edition of Antiquity. 
 
 The dead were a prominent part of life in other nearby communities, Smith says, and were even taken out of their tombs for rituals and political consultations. 
 
 The people who stopped at Khonkho were itinerant llama drovers whose way of life made it impossible for them to live close to burial sites. The evidence suggests they took their dead on the road instead. 
 
 The new report is "intriguing," said Deborah Blom of the University of Vermont, who has done research in the region, including at Khonkho. She notes that there's evidence from earlier and later sites in the region that people defleshed the remains of their ancestors. 
 
 It's "likely," she said via e-mail, "that llama caravaneers would want to bring their deceased with them, perhaps for burial elsewhere. … The dead were very much a part of life in ancient South America." 
 
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– Those who lived in what is now Bolivia more than 1,000 years ago likely wound up at the end of their days in what USA Today calls an "ancient mortuary." There, the morticians of their day dissected the bodies and boiled the various parts in pots of quicklime, which dissolved the flesh and left "plastered bones" in place. Archaeologists theorize that the nomadic population of the day then took the larger bones with them—"portable ancestors for a mobile population," as one of the researchers from Franklin & Marshall College tells the newspaper. The find suggests that "the dead still played an active and important role in the lives of the living." The ritual of the boiling may have been significant in itself, notes io9, citing this passage from the study: "The reaction produced by adding quicklime to water is a violent one, where heat is produced and gas is released," write the researchers. "This would have been quite an impressive sensory experience," and one that may have invoked an "otherworldly realm." Those who lived in this region of the Andes Mountains back then were on the move much of the time, but it appears that the site of the "mortuary," called Khonkho Wankane, gradually became more and more important because of this end-of-life ritual. (Click to read about how other ancients used flour to predict the future.)