Republic of Ecuador (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
1,376-1,400 (2,078 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Global Perspectives on Climate-Human Population Dynamics During the Late Holocene" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Extensive archaeological shell middens can be found throughout coastal northern Chile, where they span more than 9,000 years. They contain abundant terrestrial plants and shellfish remains and can often accumulate very quickly and/or episodically. We use multiple radiocarbon dates to measure local...
Performing the Moche Feast: Plants, Ritual Practice, and Spectacle in the North Coast of Peru (2017)
The site of San José de Moro in the Jequetepeque Valley of the North Coast of Peru is renowned for the discovery of several "Priestess" burials containing women interred with the material accoutrements of the goddess figure from the Moche pantheon. As a burial ground for the Moche elite, San José de Moro presents an excellent case study for ritual performance with burial-related ceremonies taking place concurrently with feasting. In this paper, we discuss the plant evidence for large-scale feast...
Periodizing Andean Colonialism: A Comparison of Archaeological and Historical Data From Markaqocha, Cusco, Peru (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Lost in Transition: Social and Political Changes in the Central Southern Andes from the Late Prehispanic to the Early Colonial Periods" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper assesses the problem of materially distinguishing between the Andean Late Horizon Inka Empire (ca. 1450-1532 CE) and ensuing Spanish Colonial Period (1532-1824 CE) in contexts that lack overtly colonial artefacts. The arrival of Spanish...
Periphery and Perspective: The View from Late Prehispanic Coastal Ecuador (2018)
The small country of Ecuador is sometimes categorized as part of the Andean cultural region and sometimes included in the Intermediate Area. Located as it is next door to archaeological behemoth Peru, Ecuadorian archaeology has frequently been overshadowed by that of its neighbor. Banal oversights, such as maps that show the Inca Empire stretched across the Ecuadorian coast, serve to emphasize the subordinate position of archaeology in the country to the north. Periphery, however, depends on...
Perishable Technology and the Successful Peopling of South America (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent research demonstrates that perishable industries―specifically including the manufacture of textiles, basketry, cordage, and netting―were a well-established, integral component of the Upper Paleolithic milieu in many parts of the Old World. Moreover, extant data suggests that not only were these synergistic technologies part and parcel of the...
Periurbanism in the Casma State: Preliminary Observations from the Olivar Archaeological Complex (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Casma State Material Culture and Society: Organizing, Analyzing, and Interpreting Archaeological Evidence of a Re-emergent Ancient Polity" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Casma State played a major role in north-central coastal social and political developments in the Middle Horizon and Late Intermediate Period, circa AD 1000-1400. El Purgatorio served as the capital for much of that time, providing a central...
Persistence and Material Mnemonics in the Cosma Basin: 5000 Years of Ritual Enactment in the Upper Nepeña River, Peru (2017)
The Cosma Complex is located in the Cordillera Negra at the headwaters of the upper Nepeña River Valley, Ancash Peru. Fieldwork conducted between 2014-2016 documented repeated reconstruction episodes associated with the reuse of monumental ritual architecture originally dated to the Late Preceramic (3000-1800 BCE). By the Early Horizon infant remains and other offerings were placed into earlier architectural contexts as a final capping episode on at least one mound. As settlement patterns...
Petroglyphs in Context: Documenting and Interpreting the Chillihuay Archaeological Complex, Southern Peru (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. With over 1,000 individual pictorial elements, Chillihuay is among the largest and most impressive concentration of petroglyphs in southern Peru. Carved on geologically distinct rock outcrops high above the Chorunga Valley, these anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, abstract, and geometrical designs were distributed along narrow trails and hard-to-reach canyons...
The Petroglyphs of Quilcapampa la Antigua (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Wari and the Far Peruvian South Coast: Final Results of Excavations in Quilcapampa" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The site of Quilcapampa la Antigua is hypothesized by Jennings et al. (in press) to be a "moving place", strongly associated with roads leading up out of the valley bottom onto the pampa above. As the roads near the site, they pass beneath white sandstone cliffs. The visually striking cliff face is...
Petrographic and Technological Analysis of Ancient Polychrome Ceramics from Upper Madeira River, Amazonia (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Andean and Amazonian Ceramics: Advances in Technological Studies" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Several researchers have been showing that the southwestern Amazon is a center of cultural innovation and diversity in lowlands South America. Archaeological studies carried out in the last decades have also revealed that the region has ancient centers of ceramic production. At the upper Madeira River, southwest Amazonia,...
Petrography, Production, and Provenance of Ceramics from La Blanca, Guatemala (2018)
The Middle Preclassic (900-600 BCE) was a critical time of political and social centralization in the Guatemalan lowlands. Of particular interest is La Blanca, one of the first polities to rise and show signs of regional influence and potential urbanization. To reconstruct everyday life I am using excavated ceramic refuse to observe dynamics surrounding three households. This, in turn, elucidates elements of La Blanca’s political economy associated with the manufacturing and production of...
Photogrammetry All the Way Down: Multiscalar and Multiplatform Photogrammetry as Primary Spatial Registry in a Large Excavation Project (2017)
In 2016, a large excavation project was carried out at the site of Mawchu Llacta in the Colca Valley of southern Peru. A colonial reduccíon (planned town), Mawchu Llacta is a large site with plazas, chapels, a parish, and domestic compounds. These spaces all consist of complex standing architecture in varying degrees of preservation. Eleven excavation blocks were opened to better understand ritual and everyday life in the town. The extent and distribution of the excavations, however, presented...
Photogrammetry Modeling and GIS Analysis at Rumiqolqa (Cusco, Peru), a Multi-ethnic Labor Colony Occupied during Inca and Spanish Colonial Rule (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 employs digital archaeological mapping methods such as photogrammetry and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to examine domestic labor practices, architectural style, and town planning at Rumiqolqa, a massive colony in Cusco, Peru where a multi-ethnic population of forcibly resettled workers quarried stone for Inca and then Spanish colonial...
Photovoice and Participatory Strategies for Community Heritage in the Peruvian Andes (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Huancavelica mining landscapes in the Peruvian Andes present two historical narratives that continue to shape contemporary heritage discourse. On one hand, Huancavelica was the "crown jewel" of the Spanish empire due to lucrative mercury mining. For indigenous Andean peoples forced to labor underground, Huancavelica became known as "the mine of death" due...
Phytochemical Characterization of Chicha de Molle Production at Cerro Baúl (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Exploring Culture Contact and Diversity in Southern Peru" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Converging evidence from archaeological excavations and ethnographic research in the Peruvian Andes has demonstrated that the indigenous alcoholic beverage chicha de molle has a time depth of at least the Middle Horizon (600 CE – 1000 CE). The most impressive example of large-scale, pre-Hispanic production of chicha de molle hails...
The Piedras Rayadas of El Tigre, Honduras: Brokering Place and Cultural Memory (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Problem of the Monument: Widening Perspectives on Monumentality in the Archaeology of the Isthmo-Colombian Area" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Grooved boulders seem to be an archaeological feature unique to El Tigre island in Honduras. Distributed around the small island, they are known locally as piedras rayadas, and feature in local oral histories. As durable traces, their meaning is everchanging, yet...
Pigment Mining for Color Meanings: El Condor Mine from Atacama Desert (A.D. 300-1.500) (2017)
The mineralogical richness of the Atacama Desert allowed for the development of an important set of mining-extracting and metallurgic, lapidaric and pigmental productive activities, which became significant activities in the sociocultural dynamics of desert dwellers. El Cóndor mine, an important hematite source located in the middle section of the Loa River, was exploited from the Formative Period (~A.D. 300) until Inka times (~A.D. 1500). In contrast to other mining sites in Atacama, El Cóndor...
The Pinta Ceramic Phase. Explaining a Paracas ceramic phase from Cerro del Gentil (2017)
During the last five years, we have developed an archaeological research program in the southern Peruvian coastal valley of Chincha. This project focuses on the rise of the Paracas society ca. 800-200 BCE. We excavated the monumental Paracas site of Cerro del Gentil located in the Chincha mid-valley where we recovered an important ritual context in a sunken court related to the Pinta phase. The Pinta phase was defined by Dwight Wallace in 1950´s but not has been systematically described. In...
The Pipil/Nicarao Migration from the Perspective of Pacific Nicaragua: An Archaeological Critique of Mythstorical Mobility (2018)
Ethnoshitorical sources describe migrations from central Mexico of Nahuat and Mangue speakers, known as the Pipil/Nicarao and the Chorotega, who settled along the Pacific Coast of Central America in the centuries prior to European contact. According to these accounts the new groups introduced cultural and religious traits into settlements in El Salvador, the Pacific coast of Nicaragua, and northwestern Costa Rica. Beginning in 2000, archaeologists from the University of Calgary have investigated...
Pisanay and the Endangered Rock Art Traditions of Arequipa, Peru (2017)
Drawing on the archaeological excavations at the site of Pisanay, located in the Sihuas Valley of Arequipa (southern) Peru, this paper will situate the rock art at the site within the broader contexts of multiple rock art traditions in the region. These traditions include both painted and pecked images on rock surfaces, a wide variety of geoglyphs, mobilary art, and sacred offerings made to particular rocks and geographic landmarks that represent huacas (loosely ‘holy places’). Within the...
Place-Making, Erasure, and the Death of Kingship at the Ancient Maya Site of Pacbitun, Belize (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the Late Classic Period (550–800 CE) at Pacbitun, a sequence of events took place that changed the landscape of power and sacredness in the site’s core during a tumultuous time in the Belize River Valley. The sequence of caches and burials likely began in order to consecrate a new courtyard (Court 3) and establish the new center of power at the site....
Places, Ports and Their People: The Rise of the Peruvian Post-Colonial State in the Arequipa Coast (2018)
In this paper I provide insight into the earliest decades of the Peruvian post-colonial state (1821-1879) from the vantage point of the Arequipa coast. The Andean south, with its center in Arequipa, had a traditional mercantile basis that favored improvements in trade, particularly those that resulted in the rapprochement of the city of Arequipa to the sea. After independence (1821-1824), new ports were established; the operation of certain coves sanctioned; and extractive activities shaped the...
Placing the Early Pre-Latte Period Site of San Roque on Saipan in Its Broader Context (2021)
This is an abstract from the "When the Wild Winds Blow: Micronesia Colonization in Pacific Context" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This comparative assessment of the San Roque site in northern Saipan to other early Pre-Latte period sites in the Mariana Islands, circa 1500–1100 BC, presents far from uniform data that suggest that maritime settlers of the archipelago may have targeted a range of natural settings for survival upon arrival. These...
Plant Use in the Platform-Chamber Complex: A Paleoethnobotanical Study of Structure 1 at Alto Pukara, Taraco Peninsula, Lake Titicaca, Bolivia (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The site of Alto Pukara is located on the Bolivian Altiplano near Lake Titicaca. It dates to the Middle Formative, a period which whitnessed the emergence of settlements, craft specialization, and hierarchical political development in the region. Excavations by Robin Beck in 2000 and 2001 uncovered two structures, which were identified as part of a...
Plants in Ancient Pots: A Comparative Study of Paleoethnobotanical Results from Unwashed and Washed Ceramics (2017)
Paleoethnobotanists study human-plant interactions in the past, including the role of plants in ancient foodways. Microbotanical remains (phytoliths and starch grains) enable the identification of many plants because their morphology can be diagnostic to the family, genus, and species. Microbotanical samples can be extracted from specific artifacts, such as ceramics, enabling a better understanding of their use. Paleoethnobotanists can thus discern associations between certain vessel types and...