Republic of Colombia (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
401-425 (1,590 Records)
This study examines the diets of 32 individuals who were deposited in the Vegachayoq Moqo sector at the site of Huari, the capital of the Wari Empire. The commingled skeletal remains date to the second half of the Late Intermediate Period (LIP), long after the empire’s collapse circa 1100 CE. This was also a time of an extended drought. The diets, reconstructed from carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes from bone collagen, are compared among the individuals and to those of earlier Wari populations...
Documenting Early Exposure to Violence and Physical Stress among Juveniles in the Late Prehispanic Andes (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Growing up during periods of chronic warfare can have long-term impacts on health and well-being across the lifecourse. Public health research has demonstrated how early exposure to violence or other physical stressors contributes to increased morbidity and mortality among children and adolescents. Within bioarchaeology, investigating the lived experience...
Documenting the Complexity of the Petroglyphs of Toro Muerto, Southern Peru (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Technique and Interpretation in the Archaeology of Rock Art" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Toro Muerto, situated in Arequipa Region in southern Peru, consists of over 2.5 thousand stone blocks covered with petroglyphs, which makes this site unique not only in Peru but also in South America. In this presentation we outline the current results of a new project which aims to document the whole site. This includes...
Does technology hinder or assist story-telling? A critical theory approach to archaeological representation and relational data (2017)
Advances in archaeological science are throwing new light on old concerns about representations of the past. Methods such as GIS allow archaeologists systematically to analyze multiple variables at once and rapidly to view data from various vantage points. Critics argue that such methods lose sight of the experiential aspects of history—the cultural differences that influenced how different people participated in social life and told stories about their past. This paper argues that this critique...
Doing Context-Specific, Anthropological Bioarchaeology: Hard Times from England to the Andes (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of Debra L. Martin" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The concept and approach of "bioarchaeology as anthropology," wherein bioarchaeology is framed as interdisciplinary, hypothesis-driven, biocultural, cross-cultural, and focused on understanding the adaptation and evolution of social systems, was pioneered by George Armelagos and has been progressively strengthened and amplified...
Domestication of the Cochineal (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Identifying the specifics of location and time of the cultivation and domestication of the cochineal beetle (Dactylopius coccus) in the New World has eluded archaeologists and ecologists for decades. The cochineal’s production of red dye from its rich storage of carminic acid has made this insect a notable element in the lives of pre-contact Mesoamerican and...
Don Lathrap, Precocious Civilization, and the Highland-Lowland Link in Andean Archaeology (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Legacies of Archaeologists in the Andes: Second Symposium, the Institutionalization and Internationalization of Andean Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The dynamic interaction between culture areas has been and continues to be important. Traditionally, the boundaries or frontiers between culture areas were considered fixed. Many scholars now recognize that these spaces were fluid and their inhabitants...
Donald Lathrap, the Tropical Forest, and Hemispheric Archaeology (2018)
Donald Lathrap was a visionary anthropologist and archaeologist. His contributions always reflected the "big picture": an understanding that all pre-Columbian culture history was intertwined, and that these connections went back through time to origins in the lowland tropics, or the Tropical Forest. He practiced an archaeology that gave equal weight to iconography and religious thought, and rim sherds and energetics. The most significant issues for Lathrap’s version of American Archaeology, is...
Dressing the Child: An Analysis of Camisas at Chiribaya Alta (2017)
Children learn and communicate their social identities through dress. Thus, examinations of ancient clothing can reveal the process of socialization in past societies. The presence of child and adult sized camisas in the graves of Chiribaya children suggest that these items communicate more than a child’s living identities. Here, we analyze camisas at Chiribaya Alta to examine the process of socialization and the role of death as a potential rite of passage. The site of Chiribaya Alta, an elite...
Drilling inside the Structure Atop the Mound: A Potential Lapidary Workshop at Buen Suceso (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Finding Community in the Past and Present through the 2022 PARCC Field School at Buen Suceso, Ecuador" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The lithic materials recovered from Buen Suceso are varied in use types and materials. This paper will focus on the collections of chipped stone drills excavated from the Unit 6 Structure at the site, located on top of a possible mound. The presence of concentrations of these drills in...
Drinking Together: The Role of Foodways in the Wari and Huaracane Colonial Encounter in the Moquegua Valley, Peru (2018)
Food is a unique form of material culture, representing a multiplicity of ethnic, gender, racial, political, and economic identities, that is consumed and reaffirmed through daily practice. In this way, food remains provide a nuanced perspective on a variety of archaeological issues. This paper focuses on Wari imperial expansion and how foodways enabled both Wari colonists and local peoples to negotiate the colonial experience during the Middle Horizon (AD 600-1000), Peru. Using...
Drones, Photogrammetry and 3d Modeling in Peruvian Archaeology (2017)
Air photography, using Drones and 2D/3D Models produced with Photogramettry, is changing the way we do field archaeology. This technology also can be a powerful tool in telling a story about the sites and the work that we, as archaeologists, do there. However, several technological adaptations have to be developed in order to take full advantage of these new technologies. In this paper, we will walk you through the process of combining air and ground based 3D modeling along the North Coast of...
Duendes, Fantasmas y Encantamientos: How Dos Mangas Connects to Archaeological Heritage through Folktales (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Finding Community in the Past and Present through the 2022 PARCC Field School at Buen Suceso, Ecuador" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The lands of the Comuna Dos Mangas are replete with archaeological material, including the Buen Suceso Archaeological site. Over the Comuna’s history, generations of its residents have encountered thousands of artifacts from the Valdivia, Machalilla, Chorrera, Guangala, and Manteño...
A Dynamic Social Landscape: Recent Investigations at the Hacienda Guachalá, Northern Highlands of Ecuador (2017)
The area of Cayambe in the northern highlands of Ecuador is marked by the physical remains of successive waves of Inca and Spanish imperial expansion and their enduring consequences. Across the landscape high altitude fortifications evidence the drawn-out struggles between expanding Inca and local forces during the 15th century. Similarly, elite haciendas that transformed the rural countryside in the interests of imperial and state power continue to dominate the social and political landscape....
EAGERs and RAPIDs – Small Grants with Big Outcomes at Surtshellir Cave, Iceland (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Celebrating Anna Kerttula's Contributions to Northern Research" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Anna Kerttula's stewardship of NSF's Arctic Social Sciences program not only expanded opportunities for large-scale collaborative research projects in the North, but also increased opportunities for supporting smaller "high risk" and "time-sensitive" projects through the EAGER and RAPID programs. These smaller projects,...
The Earliest Occupation of Colombia: Balance and Perspectives at the Beginning of the 21st Century (2017)
In First Americans research in Colombia, the last three decades of the 20th Century were significant in terms of enthusiasm and motivation. Studies carried out by scholars such as Ruth Gruhn and Alan Bryan in Venezuela and other places were fundamental references for Colombian teams and encouraged advances in Pleistocene archaeology. Gonzalo Correal, Thomas Van der Hammen and Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff, among others, followed widely their contributions. Following Colombian generations of...
Early Ceremonial Architecture in the Cajamarca Highlands of Peru: A Newly Recorded Circular Court at Callacpuma within the Cajamarca Basin (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster presents data on a newly recorded monumental circular court located within the Cajamarca Basin of the northern Peruvian Highlands. Large circular courts, better known from the Initial and Formative Periods of the Andean Central coast and highlands, are very rare or at least not well known for the northern Andes. Recent work has investigated an 18...
Early Ceremonial Hearth Use in the Upper Amazon: Santa Anna–La Florida, Palanda, Ecuador (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Illuminated Communities: The Role of the Hearth at the Beginning of Andean Civilization" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One of the outstanding traits of the Mayo Chinchipe – Marañón culture is the spiral architecture that appears on the mound terraces of at least two major sites of the upper Amazon. In one of them, the vortex of the spiral was a ceremonial hearth that contained a votive cache in its base. The...
Early Fishing on the Atacama Desert Coast of Southern Peru (2017)
The coastal Atacama Desert in southern Peru has some of the oldest and best documented fishing sites in western South America, including Terminal Pleistocene through Early Holocene components at Quebrada Jaguay and Quebrada Tacahuay and Early to Middle Holocene components at the Ring Site and Quebrada de los Burros. These sites have offered insight into the antiquity and variability of the early fishing tradition, the antiquity and features of coast-highland interaction, and coastal settlement...
The Early Intermediate Period Farmer’s Almanac: Co-Producing Agriculture, Time, and Community on the North Coast of Peru. (2017)
Previous research on plant foods and social memory in the Andes has primarily focused on ritual feasting amongst elite segments of society within the confines of exclusionary monumental spaces. However, it is vital to look beyond elite-directed activities and consider ritualized commoner and quotidian practices as integral to community building and memory making. This paper will demonstrate how domestic food production and consumption, the construction of agricultural landscapes, and wild plant...
Early Metallurgy from Waywaka in the South-Central Highlands of Andahuaylas, Apurimac, Peru: New AMS Dates and XRF Analysis (2017)
This presentation will discuss the results of processing eight high-resolution Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon determinations on charcoal found in association with poorly dated ceramics and copper-alloy artifacts recovered from an important pre-Inca site, Waywaka, in the south-central highlands of Andahuaylas, Apurimac, Peru. Excavations at Waywaka revealed a naturally stratified series of deposits of Pre-Inca cultures spanning nearly four millennia. In the bottom-most layers was...
Early Monumental Architecture in Peru: Sunken Circular Plazas from the Late Archaic (5000–2600 B.C.) to the Final Formative (400–200 B.C.) (2018)
We hereby focus on a feature of monumental architecture in north and central Peru from the Late Archaic (5000-2600 B.C.) to the Final Formative (400-200 B.C.) respectively illustrated by the sites of Sechín Bajo and Pallka both located in the Casma Valley. This specific feature is the sunken circular plaza (SCP), a public-oriented sunken space whose circular shape runs from 1,5 m to 80 m, as the most extreme examples. Through the record and description of 64 sites –some of them contained several...
Early Occupations of the Late Pleistocene–Early Holocene in the Northern Highlands of the Semiarid North of Chile (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Here, we present the results of archaeological surveys and excavations carried out in the Pedernales Salt Flat and the upper course of the Jorquera River (26°–27° S, 3,000–4,500 m asl). Environmentally, they are characterized by an Andean steppe with biotic resources distributed in patches. Surveys were directed toward specific geoforms such as river terraces,...
Early Ritual and Public Hearths in the Casma Valley, Peru (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Illuminated Communities: The Role of the Hearth at the Beginning of Andean Civilization" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Around 1500 BC, the complex society of the Sechin Alto polity of the Casma Valley, Peru produced a wide variety of architectural forms ranging from large platform mounds to small single room dwellings. Hearths used for public or ritual purposes are frequently associated with some of these...
Early Settlements and Networks of the Formative South-Central Andes: Sunken-Court Distribution and Variation through Systematic Imagery Survey and Targeted Ground-Checking (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. By the Middle Formative period (1000–500 BCE), the first permanent architecture appears along the shores of Lake Titicaca in the form of sunken, semi-subterranean courts. These were centers of important public and religious activities and are indicative of emergent forms of permanent political leadership and hierarchies. Thanks to their monumental size,...