Republic of Colombia (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
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Were the Inca aware of the restrictive possibilities for labor and productivity in the extreme arid territories of the Atacama Desert of northern Chile? How did the Inca officials manage to obtain information that enabled them to identify (i) strategic enclaves for farming, installing administrative and political nodes, exploiting and processing ores, and (ii) a selection of conspicuous mountains to place hilltop shrines? Here we discuss the idea that the rapid, extensive, and efficient...
Inca Presence at Las Huacas, Chincha Valley (2017)
When the Spanish arrived to the coast of Peru they heard stories of the wealthy Chincha Kingdom and the privileged position that they enjoyed within the Inca Empire. Previous archaeological and ethnohistorical research has concluded that at the Chincha Kingdom’s capital of La Centinela, the Inca rulers set up their authority alongside the local lord, and that they left him in charge of ruling the rest of the valley. This poster will present recent research conducted at the site of Las Huacas, a...
Inca Road Emplacement: The case of Canturillas - Nieve-Nieve in the Lurin Valley, Huarochirí, Lima, Peru (2017)
The Qhapaq Ñan or Great Inca Road was declared World Heritage by UNESCO in June 2014. The section of the road located between Pachacamac Sanctuary and the Inca administrative center of Hatun Xauxa (central highlands of Peru), is one of the most important, and one of the segments considered for the UNESCO declaration. Within this portion, the stretch from Canturillas to Nieve-Nieve is located near to the modern town of Nieve Nieve in a desert area, right where the Andes start raising, and...
The Inca State and the Valley of Acari, Peru (2018)
The south coast of Peru was one of the regions conquered relatively early by the expanding Inca state. Following its incorporation, a series of Inca administrative centers were established, all linked by a branch of the Inca road. Tambo Viejo was established in the Acarí Valley. The south coast was, in general, incorporated peacefully into the imperial system; the administrative control exercised by the Inca state was likely to have been exerted through local authorities. However, Inca control...
The Inca State from the South. Agricultural Landscape and Transformations in Pozuelos (Jujuy, Argentina) (2018)
The aim of this paper is to discuss the results of the research conducted at the Moreta settlement in the Pozuelos (Jujuy, Argentina) where we have detected an extensive agricultural area built by the Incas. A critical reading about agrarian landscapes is fundamental in order to recognize the different strategies that Inca state applied in its conquest and control of the Argentinian Northwest. This region experienced a series of transformations during the second millennium CE; in this sense,...
Inca Stone Sources, Quarrying, and Transport (2019)
This is an abstract from the "How Did the Inca Construct Cuzco?" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Stone was fundamental to building Cuzco and there was significant variability in the sources and sizes of stones employed. To understand the history of construction, we must take into account relationships with the people and resources of the wider region, which impacted where the stones originated and how they were worked, transported, and used....
The Inca Transformation of the Lucre Basin (2019)
This is an abstract from the "How Did the Inca Construct Cuzco?" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the study of archaic states and empires, much can be gained from analyzing how imperialist regimes transform and modify the landscape and built environment in the pursuit of their political goals. The Inca Empire, which expanded out of the Cusco Valley in the south-central Peruvian Andes ca. 1400 CE, provides an ideal case study to understand this...
Inca Views of the Native Groups of Southern Ecuador (2018)
Over time, the Incas created varying narratives surrounding the native groups of southern Ecuador, including the Paltas, Cañaris, and coastal groups, such as the Punaes. I examine these narratives through historical accounts from both northern sources and Cusco-centric writers, which serve as our primary sources of information, and compare these to archaeological data, which are mainly limited to the Cañari region. These narratives are the product of the history of Inca interactions from initial...
Incas and Yumbos at Palmitopamba, Tulipe and Other Notable Sites on the Northwestern Periphery of Tawantinsuyo (2018)
Survey and excavation data from the western Pichincha cloud forest of northwestern Ecuador have provided tantalizing evidence of an unusual relationship between Incas and the autochthonous Yumbo populations. The monumental pool site of Tulipe, the terraced hill complex of Palmitopamba, and the pucaras of Chacapata and Capillapamba all provide an extraordinary view of the tentative, late expansion of Tawantinsuyo into the sub-Andean jungle of northern Ecuador. After a dozen seasons of excavation...
The Incas in Nasca: A Review of Data from the Northern Drainage (2018)
Little research has been conducted in the Nasca region to explicitly improve our understanding of the nature of Inca occupation in the region. A while back, Menzel (1959) noted the lack of local monumental architecture associated to Inca sites in Nasca. In contrast to the Ica valley, surface data from sites in the Nasca area suggest that local populations lacked socio-political complexity and were organized at the level of simple chiefdom structures. Later on Schreiber (1992) suggested that the...
Incas in the Northern Highlands: Late Horizon Evidence at Ichabamba in the Condebamba Valley (2017)
The Condebamba valley, covering the southern part of the Cajamarca-Huamachuco road, constituted the privileged scenario of the interaction among local groups and foreign empires. Several surveys along this part of the Inca road have established the cultural sequence in the region and the main features of its settlements. One of these sites, Ichabamba, exhibits stone walls in a rectangular layout, with two narrow subdivisions framing a large central space. Due to its architectural features,...
Incas, locales y otras identidades: Dinámicas materiales en el norte de Chile en tiempos del Tawantinsuyo (2018)
Los estudios arqueológicos en Chile plantearon la ausencia de una conquista incaica propiamente tal en esta parte del Desierto de Atacama, puesto que sus poblaciones se hallaban insertas dentro de sistemas de complementariedad ecológica preincaicos, cuyas cabeceras o "señoríos" se encontraban en el altiplano del lago Titicaca. Y las que, una vez anexadas al Tawantinsuyo, implicaron un dominio casi automático de las restantes entidades ubicadas en lugares más alejados como las del norte chileno,...
An Independent Center of Early Ceramic Production in SW Amazonia (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Monte Castelo has one of the earliest records of ceramic production in the New World. Occupation of the site dates to between 6000 and 700 BP and demonstrates covariances between technological changes and environmental scenarios since the beginning of its chronology. We present petrographic, chemical, and isotopic data on ceramics from different periods to...
Indigenous Archaeology, Memory, and Ethnoarchaeology: A Multivocal Research in Collaboration with the Guarani for Land Repatriation in Brazil (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Cultivating Food, Land, and Communities" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation explores my ethnoarchaeological research on a long-term interdisciplinary project in collaboration with Guarani communities toward Indigenous land repatriation in Brazil and offers a case study of a collaboration designed within the framework of Indigenous archaeological approaches. The project’s planning and fieldwork were...
Indigenous Land Use and Cultural Burning in the Amazon Rainforest Ecotone (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Subsistence Crops and Animals as a Proxy for Human Cultural Practice" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The southwestern Amazon Rainforest Ecotone is the transitional landscape between the tropical forest and seasonally flooded savannahs of the Bolivian Llanos de Moxos. These heterogeneous landscapes harbor high levels of biodiversity and some of the earliest records of human occupation and plant domestication in...
Indigenous Miners and the Making of the Andean Markets in Colonial Huancavelica (2017)
The mercury mines of Huancavelica have often been described through two familiar discourses in the colonial narrative, the European pursuit of wealth through extractive industries, and the simultaneous destruction of indigenous Andean communities through brutal forced labor and the corrosive effects of the colonial market. While these two historiographical traditions contain a great deal of truth, they can minimize the role of indigenous Andeans in the creation of new economic networks that...
The Indigenous Worldview of Water in the Isthmus of Panama (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Unraveling the Mysteries of the Isthmo-Colombian Area’s Past: A Symposium in Honor of Archaeologist Richard Cooke and His Contributions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The rivers are natural limits to many cultures between the knowing and unknowing worlds. Also, they were the border between different territories and a fundamental element in establishing a settlement in a place or not. The names of the rivers are...
Industrial Islands: Ecological Impacts of the steam-powered mills of the El Progreso plantation, Galápagos Islands. (2017)
From 1880 to 1917 "El Progreso" plantation operated on the humid highlands of San Cristóbal Island in the Galápagos archipelago (Ecuador). The plantation enterprise used steam-powered machinery for sugar refining and alcohol distillation. Despite its remote location, 1000 km west from the South American coast, this large operation took advantage of the latest industrial technology. A number of specialized machines were used in sugar processing which were imported from factories in Scotland and...
Inequality and Taskscape in a Precolumbian Agricultural Landscape (2017)
Raised fields and other earthworks, as parts of archaeological landscapes, can be theorized through Ingold’s related concepts of taskscape and lines. In the Bolivian Amazon, such earthworks are the physical remains of group or community activities in the precolumbian past. As such, they are both the products of community tasks, and infrastructure, or resources that in turn afford other community tasks. In conjunction with archaeological survey and excavation, mapping of raised fields and other...
Initial Period Friezes and Architecture at Taukachi-Konkan, Casma Valley, Peru (2018)
Recent excavations at a number of intermediate-sized mounds of the Initial Period (2100-1000 B.C.) site of Taukachi-Konkán in the Casma Valley of Peru have uncovered surprising new evidence of clay friezes and architectural forms previously unknown for the Initial Period along the coast of Peru. One U-shaped mound complex has an associated sunken rectangular plaza that contains distinct friezes on all four of its sides. The content of the friezes includes two sea lions, a large feline and two...
Inka and Local Elite Interaction as Reflected at the Inka Site of Incahuasi, Cañete, South Central Coast of Peru (2018)
Incahuasi, located at the mid-valley of the Cañete river, is the largest Inca administrative center reported from Peru's Central Coast. Although first built as a military base by the Inca Tupac Yupanqui in his war against the Guarcos, the site was completely transformed into an administrative center with an extense and prominent storage facility. Recent research at the site has focused in Sector B, described as an elite residential complex. Excavations have found a significant number of finished...
Inka Colonialism without Inkas: Uncovering the Role of Lowland-Affiliated Populations in the Consolidation of the Eastern Andean Frontier (2018)
As the Inkas expanded their imperial hegemony over the valleys of the eastern Andes, their armies fought and then forged political and military alliances with the various cultural groups comprising the Charkas confederacy. While the Spanish chronicles and local ethnohistoric sources attest to these events and to the important role the local indigenous populations played in Inka colonization efforts along the eastern imperial frontier, they are all curiously silent on another important population...
Inka Conquest Narratives along the Northern Frontier: Evidence from the Pais Caranqui, Ecuador (2018)
When the Inka moved into Northern Ecuador at the end of the 15th century, they were met with fierce resistance from the semi autonomous societies of the Pais Caranqui. Chronicler accounts and Inka narratives note that conflict occurred and fortifications were constructed before the Inka were eventually victorious and continued their conquest northwards. However, these accounts do not accurately highlight the true complexity of the groups the Inka encountered, the prolonged nature of the...
Inka Dry Ashlar Masonry, a Deliberate Seismic-Proof Architecture? Reassessment through an Archaeoseismological Approach in the Cuzco Area, Peru (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For decades now, various scholars have assumed that the Inkas developed seismic-resistant construction techniques. While it is true that some architectural features are particularly well suited to face the seismic risk, no structural evidence can demonstrate with confidence the intentionality of the earthquake resistance. As part of our research, we discuss...
Inka Dynamics in the Cochabamba Valley (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. After expansion from Cuzco, the Inca introduced a statecraft model based principally on the mobilization of numerous population groups across longer and shorter distances. In this sense, the Inca Empire can be conceptualized as a “mobile state” that was to last for only 80 to 100 years (1445-1538 AD). Inca influence in the area of Bolivia was moderate...