Not Everyone Is Laid To Rest

There are many different traits and characteristics of Moche funeral rituals. One would argue that there was a system that both the men and women worked by when burying the dead. For example the dead were usually buried in an extended supine position with their hands by their sides. Often the body was wrapped and carefully placed in a cane coffin or cane tube. People of the Moche society often buried certain goods such as food, ceramics, containers, etc along with the corpse. Although most graves were simple, some graves were more elaborate than others and featured more precious and exotic materials. Another custom of the funerary practices of the Moche was to bury people according to status and their roles throughout their lives.
In most cases the body of the deceased was buried shortly after the death. Recently, many archeologists have been forced to question whether all corpses were buried within a short time of their death. Archeologist John Verano faced this battle when analyzing a grave site at Santuario de Sipan in which he discovered that five of the skeletons had been dead for a period of time before they were finally laid to rest. Out of these five corpses, three of them were adolescent women, who Verano claims had shifted inside of their coffins prior to or during the burial ceremony. Because of this shift, Verano was led to believe that the bodies of these women had already begun to decompose by the time that their final burial ceremony took place. In addition to these three women, there were many other burials at this grave site in Sipan that suggested that there was a delay in the actual burial of the body. Another way in which Verano was able to realize that burial of a corpse had been delayed was by insect pupae and fly eggs. The presence of the pupae said that there was time for the corpse to be contaminated and/or tampered with. Quiet often the sex of the deceased that had a delayed burial was women.
One may be led to ask the question of what were the cause and the reason for the delay of the burial of many of these women. There are an abundance of different possibilities about why most of these delayed burials belonged to women. In addition to reasons such as someone dying far away from home, or during a time in which the weather was just too bad or wet to appropriately bury someone, archeologist have come up with other hypothesis of why women had delayed burials. For example Verano encountered a grave site in which a cotton sash was found around the neck of the corpse indicating that the women was probably strangled and a human sacrifice. Along with the sash around her neck, the woman was buried with no cloth wrapped around her and she was laid in a cramped position. Many of these traits suggest that she was a voluntary or involuntary sacrifice to accompany the male in the tomb with her.
Another way in which human bodies were manipulated in Moche graves was by the reopening of the graves. There are several reasons why graves of both men and women were said to be re-opened. For example some graves were re-opened years later in order to renew offerings. Recently an archeologist uncovered a grave site in which a woman who was buried in Moche III, her grave was re-opened in Moche IV and many of her offerings were renewed. She was also accompanied by the corpse of a man. The fact that it is common to find that a grave has been re-opened speaks to the way that the Moche perceived the dead and after-life. To the Moche, the grave is not just a sight for a decaying corpse, but it is a resting place for an ancestor that should be well groomed and respected.