Itinerant Matters and Hybrid Objects: Research on material transfers and contact products

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Anthropological archaeology has moved beyond defining cultural geographical boundaries. Instead we understand the fluidity of territories and identities within and between geographic regions. The crossing of boundaries is often documented first through evidence of foreign products, foreign raw materials and foreign styles or practices. Another line of evidence for tracing boundaries and boundary crossings is hybrid styles or technologies. This session aims to bring together scholars spanning geographic, material and methodological specialties to discuss research on tracking and understanding the effects of interactions between different cultural or environmental worlds. The session participants will discuss transfers of knowledge, styles, technology, raw materials or material culture with a particular focus on the evidence and methods for recovering and interpreting this evidence for transregional and interregional interaction and the broader socio-cultural effects. Topics to be presented include evidence of transfer of raw materials beyond the expected ethnohistorically documented range; emerging and growing evidence of itinerant craftspersons who cross borders; interregional contacts reflected in hybrid ceramic styles or technologies; evidence of different modes of trade and how these are documented in the archaeological record and the evidence of the effects and role such transfers of materials, styles and knowledge played in the past.

Other Keywords
Ceramics • andes • Pottery • Obsidian • Cultural Interaction • Interaction • Ceramic Technology • Source Analysis • Colonialism • Lake Titicaca

Geographic Keywords
South America • Europe • South Asia • Central America

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-15 of 15)

  • Documents (15)
Documents
  • Alfarería en las fronteras de La Quebrada de Humahuaca, Jujuy, Argentina (Ceramics at the borders of the Humahuaca Quebrada, Jujuy Argentina) (2015)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Veronica Acevedo.

    Los materiales cerámicos arqueológicos polícromos denominados "vírgulas o comas " tienen una amplia pero desigual distribución espacial y son hallados en cantidades limitadas en sitios arqueológicos de las regiones de Puna central y Quebrada de Humahuaca, Jujuy, Noroeste de la República Argentina. Estas regiones mantienen límites ambientales y geográficos fronterizos. En el pasado los habitantes de ambas zonas sostenían una fluida comunicación, mantenido formas identitarias diferentes entre el...

  • Characterizing the Relationship Between Two Early States of the Andes: The Moche, The Wari and the Product of their Contact. An Archaeological and Archaeometric Perspective (2015)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Luis Armando Muro. Nino Del Solar. Luis Jaime Castillo. Remy Chapoulie.

    This paper explores from an archaeological, anthropological, and archaeometric standpoint the relationships between two early states in Andean prehistory: the Moche of the North Coast (AD 400 - 850) and the Wari of the Southern Highlands of Peru (AD 600 – 1,000.) In spite of many theoretical models that have been proposed to explain the nature of this relationship, little attention has been paid to analyzing the material expressions of such interaction. This paper focuses on one such expression...

  • Chimú-Inka Ceramics: Quantifying differences between Colonial forms and their influences (2015)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Siegler.

    Between 1428 and 1534 the Inka conquered the world’s largest territory controlled by a single state including 1300 km of coastline from the 1460 conquest of their main rivals, the Chimú. Studies on Inka provincial administrative policies are increasingly important in understanding the pre-conquest Andes, however, there has been no study of the effects of Inka subjugation on the art of their most powerful former enemy. Ceramics from the Chimú-Inka period offer a striking example of how...

  • Cultural Interaction and Cultural Change in the Peruvian Central Highland Valley of Ayacucho (2015)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Lidio Valdez.

    Human societies are not isolated islands; instead, they are part of a complex web that links them with distant communities who are not only culturally different, but also inhabit different environmental settings. In the distant past, cultural interaction was a window that enabled the exposure to previously unknown cultural customs and the flow of ideas, in addition to access to foreign exotic goods and the establishment of new kinship ties. Contact with more complex societies and important...

  • Cultural transmissions and indigenous influences: Glazed tiles from Mughal India (2015)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Thilo Rehren. Maninder Gill. Ian Freestone.

    The use of glazed tiles for architectural embellishment in the Islamic world was widely patronised by the Timurids in Central Asia in the fourteenth and fifteenth century, influencing in times to come the decorative traditions of neighbouring lands. In northern India, glazed tiles began to be used in substantial numbers by the Mughals on their buildings in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, in the province of Punjab near the north-west border, and further inland at Delhi. Samples...

  • Hybridized Objects and Colonization Practices: Ceramics from Minaspata, Cuzco, Peru (2015)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Hardy.

    In recent years, archaeologists studying ancient colonialism have shifted from a top-down view, emphasizing "colonizers" and "colonized," to a more careful consideration of how local social practices are situated in global colonial structures and dynamics. Material cultures and technologies play a crucial role in this colonial encounter, as material objects manifest and actively transmit signs of ideology, power and resistance. Minaspata, a local site located in the Cuzco Valley of the...

  • Identifying transcultural processes: the Wayana-Apalai and Tiriyó example (2015)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Beatrix Hoffmann-Ihde.

    The majority of ethnographic museum-collections were generally created to show a distinct indigenous culture based on examples from the material culture. These collections were created to give the impression that the features of a certain material culture, recognizable in form, design and material, are essential and genuine to a particular indigenous group. My research in the field of Museum-Ethnology, investigating transcultural processes reflected in objects of material culture, refers to...

  • Imitating from Memory: Hybrid Vessels and Attempted Replications of Stylistic Elements from Central Panama in the Pre-Hispanic Ceramics of Costa Rica (2015)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only John Hoopes.

    The ceramics of Central America are replete with examples of stylistic influence that represent attempts by local potters to reproduce foreign styles from distant lands. Examples include attempts to reproduce elements of Late Classic Maya styles in ceramics of the "southern periphery" of Mesoamerica. This paper presents evidence for attempted but imperfect and even inept reproduction of elements from the opposite direction—territories far to the south and east—by identifying elements of...

  • Local and Inca Cross Regional Interactions: studies from the Northern Ecuador frontier. (2015)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Amber Anderson. Samuel Connell. Chad Gifford. Siobhan Boyd.

    This paper focuses on the importance of interregional contact along border zones as we seek to understand the nature and impacts of interactions between cultural worlds. We are particularly concerned with how archaeologists construct and methodologically recover evidence of these interactions. Ultimately, and not surprisingly, people within these zones show innovative ways of expanding, exploiting or resisting transfers of knowledge, styles, technologies, raw materials and material culture. ...

  • Local, Regional, and Supra-regional Political Economies in the Late Bronze Age South Caucasus: Unpacking the Contours of "Interaction" (2015)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Alan Greene.

    The Late Bronze Age (LBA) South Caucasus (ca. 1500-1150 BC) has long been understood as an important moment in both the economic and political development of the region’s inhabitants. As local political authorities worked to produce formal governmental institutions and maintain social inequalities, they relied on trade networks of disparate lengths and intensities. The consumption of Mitannian cylinder seals from Mesopotamia and bronze weaponry from the North Caucasus can be contrasted with that...

  • Long Distance Material Movement in the Mediterranean: Obsidian Transport, Trade, and Technology (2015)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Tykot.

    In the Mediterranean Neolithic, obsidian often traveled over 100 kilometers from the geological island sources. The capabilities of interregional maritime transport of many foreign materials by the late 7th millennium BC is demonstrated by the settlement of these islands and with the neolithic package of animals brought from the mainland. The quantity, quality, accessibility, and physical and visual features of obsidian from each source has been well studied, and chemical analysis distinguishes...

  • The Politics of Connectivity at Khonkho Wankane, Bolivia (2015)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Smith.

    Located in the southern Lake Titicaca basin of Bolivia, the Late Formative period (200 BC – AD 500) center of Khonkho Wankane was a dynamic place where groups of mobile agropastoralists and caravan drovers engaged with resident ritual specialists. In a social context characterized by diversity, population fluctuation, and mobility, what form did political practice take? I review evidence from Khonkho Wankane for interaction with areas throughout the south central Andes and I explore some of the...

  • Revealing the common ground: technological practice, intrusive shapes and hybrid pastes in the Kampos Group pottery of Crete (2015)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter Day. Vassilis Kilikoglou.

    The dawn of the Early Bronze Age in the Aegean is of undoubted importance. Whether we emphasise the crafting and consumption of copper or the appearance of whole assemblages of pottery outside of their stylistic "homeland" in the Central Cyclades, Early Bronze I (c. 3100-2600 BCE) has always been characterised as a time of change, featuring the movement of people, goods and ideas. In our haste to categorise, label and seek identities, we have perhaps lost some of the complexity and creativity...

  • Spondylus and Ideology: 5000 Years of Interaction between Manabi, the Circum-Gulf of Guayaquil Region and Northern Peru (2015)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Patricia Netherly.

    Interaction and cultural exchange between the coastal societies of northern Peru and the cultures of Manabí and Guayas are evident from the late Preceramic in Peru and early Valdivia in western Ecuador. While spondylus is the best-known material manifestation of this exchange, there is evidence of early cultural influences which predate the heavy movement of spondylus to the south and Lambayeque metalwork to the north. Other influences which can be called ideological are seen in the iconography...

  • Wares in moving: people, technology and political issues in Northwest Argentina (2015)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Veronica Williams.

    Results obtained from fabric analysis using thin-section microscopy (TSM) and various other analytical strategies (e.g. Raman micro spectroscopy, FTIR, XRD –microX ray diffraction- XRF, SEM-EDAX, and INAA) provide insights into production technology and the provenance of selected pottery sample from Prehispanic archaeological sites in Northwestern (NW) Argentina, North of Chile, and Bolivia (AD 900-1530). Iconographic and morphological analyses sustain the idea of interregional contacts that...