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• Multidisciplinary study of red pigment in an Andean mortuary landscape. • Human remains and artifacts in graves bear cinnabar- and hematite-based pigments. • Article contributes a model of red pigment production and use. • Red pigment application changed the ontological status of the dead. • Red pigment contributed to construction of social difference and group identity. In the Chincha Valley of southern Peru, pigmented human remains and grave goods were found in over 100 large and accessible mortuary structures associated with the Late Intermediate Period (1000 – 1400 CE), the Late Horizon (1400 – 1532 CE), and the Colonial Period (1532 – 1825 CE). We characterize 38 red pigment samples, reveal their potential sources and how they were processed and applied to human remains, and determine the demographic profiles of pigmented individuals. Results suggest that cinnabar- (HgS) and hematite (Fe 2 O 3)-based pigments, likely from local and nonlocal sources, were mixed in water and applied to skeletonized and disarticulated individuals of different age and sex categories. We interpret red pigment application to human remains as part of a prolonged process of social dying that transitioned the ontological status of the dead and contributed to the development of social difference and group identity. Multidisciplinary research designs are ideal for studying red pigment practices, which are activities concerning the production and use of red pigment that range from procurement to the treatment of the dead. Here, we advance a methodology integrating archaeometric, archaeological, and bioarchaeological analyses with anthropological theories of personhood and social dying to investigate red pigment practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three field seasons of exploration along the Río Alto Madre de Dios in Peruvian Amazonia have yielded a fauna of micromammals from a new locality AMD-45, at ∼12.8°S. So far we have identified the new primate described here as well as small caviomorph rodents, cenolestoid marsupials, interatheriid notoungulates, xenarthrans, fish, lizards and invertebrates. The site is in the Bala Formation as exposed where the river transects a syncline. U-Pb dates on detrital zircons constrain the locality's age at between 17.1 ± 0.7 Ma and 18.9 ± 0.7 Ma, making the fauna age-equivalent to that from the Pinturas Formation and the older parts of the Santa Cruz Formation of Patagonian Argentina (Santacrucian). The primate specimen is an unworn M1 of exceptionally small size (equivalent in size to the extant callitrichine, Callithrix jacchus , among the smallest living platyrrhines and the smallest Eocene-Early Miocene platyrrhine yet recorded). Despite its small size it is unlike extant callitrichines in having a prominent cingulum hypocone. Based on the moderate development of the buccal crests, this animal likely had a diet similar to that of frugivorous callitrichines, and distinctly different from the more similarly-sized gummivores, Cebuella and C. jacchus. The phyletic position of the new taxon is uncertain, especially given the autapomorphic character of the tooth as a whole. Nevertheless, its unusual morphology hints at a wholly original and hitherto unknown Amazonian fauna, and reinforces the impression of the geographic separation of the Amazonian tropics from the more geographically isolated southerly parts of the continent in Early Miocene times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]