Using Historic Archaeology To Uncover Previously Ignored Collections

Author(s): Shevan E. Wilkin

Year: 2016

Summary

In 1891 George Dorsey conducted excavations Ancon, Peru, as archaeology was still a fledgeling discipline, and his conclusions reflect his naïveté of modern field methods to come. He assessed that the remains derived from one community, and classified the burials as elite/non-elite. From what we know today, there were two distinct time periods, between which mortuary practices and material culture changed dramatically. The collection has been repeatedly ignored due to the theorized disappearance of Dorsey’s field notes, and the inability to temporally separate the populations from each other has severely hindered comparative questions. After an extensive search, I have located and transcribed the field notes, and from these papers, it is possible to determine which individuals lived during each of the two disparate time periods. Publishing this information will allow future researchers the opportunity to explore the complex differences between the two temporal populations at Ancon.

Cite this Record

Using Historic Archaeology To Uncover Previously Ignored Collections. Shevan E. Wilkin. Presented at Society for Historical Archaeology, Washington, D.C. 2016 ( tDAR id: 434762)

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

Keywords

Temporal Keywords
1981-1893

Spatial Coverage

min long: -129.199; min lat: 24.495 ; max long: -66.973; max lat: 49.359 ;

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 694