Death and postmortem destinations among prehispanic Tarascan

Abstract

The main goal of this paper is to compare historical, ethnological and archaeological data in order to improve our actual understanding of ancient Tarascan beliefs about life after death. We differentiate two main mythical spaces; one is dedicated to the most prestigious personages and the other to common people. The incineration of the body is the treatment associated with the first type of death, while inhumation tends to be linked with the second one. The last part of this work is dedicated to clarify which parts of the human being are destroyed during the dead process, which ones rest on the Earth and which ones travels to the Other World.