Formative Period (Other Keyword)
1-17 (17 Records)
The Altica Project, that began in 2014, is an important step in addressing the limited problem-oriented research at Formative sites in the Basin of Mexico for over two decades. Altica is the earliest-known settled village in the Teotihuacan Valley and one of the only first-farming village sites in the Basin of Mexico that has not been engulfed by the urban sprawl of Mexico City. Despite its small size and remote location, Altica was an important piece in Early and Middle Formative exchange...
Architecture and Urban Transformation in Formative Central Mexico: New Findings from the Tlalancaleca Archaeological Project, Puebla (2017)
Tlalancaleca was one of the largest settlements before the rise of Teotihuacan in Central Mexico and likely provided cultural and historical settings for the creation of Central Mexican urban traditions during later periods. Yet its urbanization process and architectural traditions remain poorly understood. Our research over the last five field seasons indicates that Tlalancaleca was urbanized during the Middle Formative period (ca. 650-500 BC) and experienced large-scale urban transformations...
Beginning of Camelid breeding during the Formative period at the Pacopampa site, Peru. (2017)
Our research on faunal remains from the Pacopampa and the Kuntur wasi sites has shown that Camelid breeding began during the Late Formative period (800 – 500 BC) in the northern highlands of Peru. However, motives for the introduction and usage of these animals remain obscure. We conducted multi-disciplinary analyses of the camelid remains from the Pacopampa site to investigate breeding and utilization patterns of these animals. The Sr and O isotope values from tooth enamel showed that 17 of 18...
The Best of All Worlds: Exploring exchange and interaction with Nicoyan, Caribbean Costa Rican and Panamanian societies at the Southern Costa Rican site of El Cholo. (2015)
Recent work at the mid to late Formative site of El Cholo reveals that from at least the 3rd century AD, occupants of this mound complex interacted with Costa Rican Caribbean watershed social groups as well as western Panamanian Chiriquí societies. Evidence also demonstrates contact from as far north as the Guanacaste Nicoya region in place by the 10th or 11th centuries AD. Further analysis of the site suggests that interaction was likely initially predicated on trans-cordilleran ethnic and...
Contextualizing the Art: Excavations at Oxtotitlán Cave, Guerrero, Mexico (2016)
This paper presents findings from the 2014-2015 field seasons of the Urban Origins Project at Oxtotitlán cave in Guerrero, Mexico. Collaborative archaeological methods at the Quiotepec-Oxtotitlán site resulted in extensive survey, preliminary mapping, and excavations at the cave and in the surrounding area. Excavation units were placed in association with the murals, at the mouth of the rockshelter in the northern part of the cave complex, and in the botanical garden within the protected...
Death and the Origin of Enduring Social Relations (2017)
Knowledge of Formative Period Mesoamerican archaeological sites often comes from narrow windows into buried sites. One feature has been a partial exception to this rule: burials. Groups of Formative Period burials, often accompanied by objects, have been recovered in many parts of Mesoamerica. Using models of mortuary treatment that saw burials as reflecting individual identity, burials provided one of the first ways researchers could examine the emergence of stratification within these...
Dwellings and Corporate Groups in Montegrande, Jequetepeque Valley, Peru: A Household Study of Social Differentiation (2015)
This research takes two kinds of analytical unit, dwelling and hypothetical corporate group, to analyze and compare spatial relationship between the east and west sectors in Montegrande, a Early Formative site locates in Jequetepeque Valley, Peru. The map-based analysis reveals different changing pattern during the two phases of occupation. The primary result shows that east sector went through a significant transition from phase 1 to phase 2 in the configuration of corporate group and in the...
Early Urbanism in Central Mexico: Preliminary Results of the Tlalancaleca Archaeological Project, Puebla (2015)
Tlalancaleca was one of the largest settlements before the rise of Teotihuacan in Central Mexico and likely provided cultural and historical settings for the creation of Central Mexican urban traditions during later periods. Yet its urbanization process as well as socio-spatial organization remain poorly understood. This paper presents preliminary results of mapping, ground survey, surface collection, manual auger probe, and test excavations, which were carried out over the three seasons of...
Ecological Variation and Trajectories of Village Settlement in Formative Cusco (2016)
Regional surveys to the north and west of Cusco demonstrate that the earliest villages (c. 1000 BC – AD 300) are found across a wide elevation range, and in varying contexts of local ecological diversity. This paper considers the role that local resource variation and subsistence practices might have played in the long-term stability of these early communities. Using data from 131 Formative Period sites registered across a 1200 square kilometer study region, we evaluate the surrounding...
Evidence of diet and food consumption from Chavin de Huantar during the Middle and Late Andean Formative (1200 – 550 BCE) (2017)
Excavations carried out at the Wacheqsa sector at Chavín de Huantar identified archaeological contexts from the Middle Formative (1200 – 900 cal BCE) and Late Formative (900 – 550 Cal BCE). In this paper we present preliminary results of starch analysis carried on in culinary equipment (ceramics) retrieved from domestic occupations from the Middle and Late Formative periods and a large midden, originated from the discard of feasting remains during the Late Formative period. Microbotanical...
Formative mobilities: Moving through the Atacama Desert, Northern Chile (2017)
Social spheres are constituted by population movements. Mobility entails not only the circulation of material goods, but of people, collective imaginary, experiences, flows of information, and knowledge. In this paper, we examine multiple types of movements through the Atacama Desert during the Formative Period (ca. 500 BCE—700 CE). Here, mobility required displacements whose variability included pedestrian travels, the movement of large llama caravans, and the use of sea lion-skin rafts to sail...
Formative Period Interregional Interaction and the Emergence of Mesoamerican Scripts (2015)
Interregional interaction often serves as a catalyst for cultural innovation. This paper explores the effects of interaction on the development of Mesoamerican scripts during the Formative period. Current models suggest that the transition from iconography to phonetic writing involved the recontextualization of visual symbols: motifs were excised from the pictorial frameworks in which they were usually contextualized and enclosed within the emergent textual–linguistic conventions and...
Household dynamics and the reproduction of early village societies in Northwest Argentina (200BC-AD 350). (2017)
Long term evolutionary narratives on South Andean pre-Columbian history have stressed lineal processes of complexity intensification, defined by big changes on subsistence strategies, from small and egalitarian hunter gatherer groups to complex multicommunitarian chiefdoms. These changes were thought to influence or even determine the structure of household and consequently daily life of people. Nevertheless recent household archaeology studies have demonstrated that the reproduction of...
Late Formative Craft Production and Interregional Interaction at Las Orquideas, Imbabura, Ecuador (2015)
Scholars long have realized the importance of interregional interaction in Ecuadorian prehistory. While many non-local goods have been recovered that signal interregional interaction, archaeologists rarely have had the opportunity to study the contexts where the production of these artifacts occurred. The recent discovery of intact stratigraphy dating to the Late Formative in the rural barrio of Las Orquideas that includes large quantities of craft production waste will help change our...
Pottery production, circulation and exchange during the Formative period in Tarapacá, northern Chile (2016)
In the area commonly known as Pampa del Tamarugal, in the middle portion of the Atacama Desert, the valleys of Tarapacá, Guatacondo, and the oasis of Quillagua have been important spaces for characterizing the Formative period in northern Chile. In this paper, we present the results of pottery analyses from this region, comprised by samples obtained from residential and ceremonial contexts, as well as transitory sites along prehispanic routes (Fondecyt Project 1130279). The purpose of these...
The Role of Altica in Exchange and Interactions during the Early Middle Formative in Central Mexico (2017)
Interaction was important early in the development of complex societies during the Formative period in Mesoamerica. Despite its small size, Altica was integrated into Early-Middle Formative exchange networks as it obtained some ceramics, obsidian blades, and ornaments of exotic stone and exported Otumba obsidian that began to circulate widely at this this time. There likely were other early villages within proximity to the Otumba source engaged in procuring obsidian for trade to other sites, but...
Social Inequality and Polity Organization in Prehispanic Southern Andean Populations (Argentina and Bolivia, 500 BCE–1500 CE) (2023)
This is an abstract from the "To Have and Have Not: A Progress Report on the Global Dynamics of Wealth Inequality (GINI) Project" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this communication we will focus on inequality and the forms of social organization in those Andean societies that developed in northwestern Argentina and southern Bolivia during the Formative (500 BCE–600 CE), Regional Development (1200–1450 CE) and Late (1450–1550 CE) periods. Our...