Feasting on People: Eating Animals and Humans in Amazonia
Abstract
A problem of particular concern in the literature on animistic systems is the status of hunting and food consumption in societies whose ontology is not founded upon a distinction between humans and animals. If animals are people, how can one distinguish between everyday eating and cannibalism? Commensality is a vector for producing kinship among humans, a mechanism which depends on the transformation of the animal prey into an object devoid of intentionality. Indigenous techniques for desubjectivizing prey are based on a specific conception of the person that is not reducible to a simple body‐and‐soul dualism. A new theoretical formulation for this partibility sheds light on warfare and funerary anthropophagy in Amazonia.
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More recent sources of information for cannibalistic behaviour in South America come from ethnographic evidence as well as direct observations by anthropologists.
“More recent sources of information for cannibalistic behaviour in South America come from ethnographic evidence as well as direct observations by anthropologists (Fausto, 2007;Forsyth, 1983;Whitehead, 1984).”
From The Archaeology of Cannibalism: a Review of the Taphonomic Traits Associated with Survival and Ritualistic Cannibalism (2025) · cites this paper as Fausto, 2007
It is common for groups that engage in funerary endocannibalism to also practice warfare-related exocannibalism, with both forms embedded in symbolic and ritual frameworks.
“In fact, it is common for groups that engage in funerary endocannibalism to also practice warfare-related exocannibalism, with both forms embedded in symbolic and ritual frameworks12–14,64.”
From Evidence of neolithic cannibalism among farming communities at El Mirador cave, Sierra de Atapuerca, Spain (2025) · cites this paper as [13]
Cites
The Gender of the GiftProblems with Women and Problems with Society in Melanesia
Strathern, M. (1988) · University of California Press · doi:10.1525/california/9780520064232.001.0001 · Cited by 2,931 · see citing works
Strathern, M. (2019) · University of California Press (orig. 1988) · doi:10.1525/9780520910713 · Cited by 1,338 · cited 2× · see citing works
“In Amazonia, there seems to be a constitutive tension between the provisory unity of the person and its fragmentation into two different modes of plurality: the dual and the multiple (Strathern 1988, 274–80).”
BackgroundConsuming Pity: The Production of Death among the Cashinahua
McCallum, C. (1999) · Cultural Anthropology · doi:10.1525/can.1999.14.4.443 · Cited by 31 · see citing works
<i>DIVISION OF ANTHROPOLOGY</i>: ENDOCANNIBALISM AMONG THE AMAHUACA INDIANS*
Dole, G. (1962) · Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1111/j.2164-0947.1962.tb01432.x · Cited by 22 · see citing works
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Saladié, P., & Rodríguez-Hidalgo, A. (2017) · Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory · doi:10.1007/s10816-016-9306-y · Cited by 47 · see citing works
Bello, S. M. (2025) · Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory · doi:10.1007/s10816-024-09676-3 · Cited by 9 · see citing works
“More recent sources of information for cannibalistic behaviour in South America come from ethnographic evidence as well as direct observations by anthropologists (Fausto, 2007; Forsyth, 1983; Whitehead, 1984).”
Saladié, P., Marginedas, F., Morales, J. I., Vergès, J. M., Allué, E., Expósito, I., Lozano, M., Martín, P., Iglesias-Bexiga, J., Fontanals, M., et al. (2025) · Scientific Reports · doi:10.1038/s41598-025-10266-w · Cited by 3 · see citing works
- Authors
- Fausto, C.
- Corresponding author
- Fausto, Carlos
- ORCID
- Fausto, Carlos
- Venue
- Current Anthropology
- Publisher
- University of Chicago Press
- Published
- 2007-08
- Volume
- 48
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 497-530
- ISSN
- 0011-3204 (ISSN-L)
- 1537-5382
- OpenAlex
- W1483030609
- Cited by
- 303
- References
- 4
- Citations by year
- 2026: 11 · 2025: 25 · 2024: 12 · 2023: 11 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 16 · 2020: 24 · 2019: 18 · 2018: 28 · 2017: 12 · 2016: 19 · 2015: 15 · 2014: 7 · 2013: 17 · 2012: 28
- FWCI
- 68.61
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Current Anthropology (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Anthropology › Anthropological Studies and Insights
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History › Amazonian Archaeology and Ethnohistory
- Social Sciences › Cultural Studies › Posthumanist Ethics and Activism
- Keywords
- animism, cannibalism, commensality, kinship, personhood, hunting, dietary intake, war, funerary practices, Amazon basin, body-soul dualism
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