Republic of Ecuador (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
701-725 (2,078 Records)
Exploitation and control of wetland resources was a major strategy of early sedentary peoples in many areas of the world. In some cases, indigenous knowledge about flood pluses and water dynamics and anthropogenic transformation of waterscapes increased to the point where some wetlands were transformed into domesticated landscapes. Analysis and interpretations of relevant radar (TerraSAR-X, ALOS SAR-X, Sentinel-1), multispectral (Landsat ETM and ETM+, ASTER), DEMs (SRTM, ASTER) satellite and...
Flowers and Sherds: The Practice of Collecting Artifacts in Brazilian Amazon (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this presentation we discuss the practice of collecting artifacts, considering the perspectives of the collectors and of the State in Brazil. We assume that collecting is an act that should be understood from a phenomenological approach. Our reflections take into account the affective relationships between the collectors and the artifacts, and also the...
Fluid Stone: Geological Materials in Process (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. Geological materials that constitute features in archaeological sites in Central America range from unfired clay and unmodified cobbles, to cut stone, and plasters produced by heating limestone. What these materials have in common is that from an archaeological...
Focusing Efforts to Impact the Precolumbian Antiquities Trade (2017)
How can we as archaeologists best focus our efforts to have a positive impact upon the Precolumbian antiquities market? We will discuss some of the most important restrictions upon law enforcement investigations into antiquities smuggling, by drawing upon case experience. We will discuss how both foreign and American government departments may overestimate law enforcement’s ability to pursue legal action based on a flawed understanding of constitutional law; how antiquities smuggling is of low...
Follow the Llamero: the Movement of Plant Foodstuffs in the Andes (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Fryxell Symposium in Honor of Dolores Piperno" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The exchange of goods and movement among different ecozones is a hallmark of Andean society. Key to this system of mobility were camelid caravans, which are possibly best known for the Wari or Tiwanaku cultures but are today dwindling in frequency or have disappeared in the Andes. These caravans were established in the much earlier Formative...
Following in El Maestro’s Footsteps: Historical Ecology and Panamanian Capacity Building in Darién (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. In 2012, Richard Cooke described the study of so-called Gran Darién as one of the most urgent concerns in Panamanian archaeology. Years later, that mandate resonated with us, and in 2019 we joined efforts beginning to fill in one of the greatest gaps in...
Foodways and Urban Living: A Macrobotanical Analysis of Huari Homes (2018)
Knowledge of Wari plant use has progressed significantly with analyses from sites such as Conchopata and Cerro Baul, but there has yet to be any investigation into Wari plant foodways at the capital city of Huari. This paper will investigate the botanical remains from flotation samples recovered throughout the 2017 excavations of Patipampa, a domestic sector of the site occupied during the Middle Horizon (AD 500-1000). For years, it has been assumed that the emergence of the Wari state in...
Forager Adaptations to Andean Cloud Forest, Peru (2024)
This is an abstract from the "American Foragers: Human-Environmental Interactions across the Continents" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cloud forests are montane tropical rainforests typically characterized by persistent fog, diverse microclimates, and rich biodiversity. Although some regions have long histories of development of technological and sociopolitical complexity in cloud forests (e.g., the Mayan highlands), in the central Andes cloud...
The Force Awakens: The Nature and Chronology of Wari Presence in the Huarmey Valley (2018)
Since the fundamental work of Dorothy Menzel, it has been suggested that a new center of power and prestige arose on the North-Central Coast of Peru during the late Middle Horizon, and that its focal point was probably located in the Huarmey Valley. Unfortunately, this hypothesis has not been empirically confirmed for more than 40 years, due to the lack of strong evidence based on systematic archaeological research. Since 2010 an international team of scholars performs multidisciplinary research...
Foreign Travel and the Development of Inca Archaeology in Cuzco, Peru (2018)
The roots of Inca archaeology lie in reports and memoirs of 19th century travel, which culminated in Hiram Bingham’s 1911 Yale Peruvian Expedition. These accounts traced routes that brought international attention to architectural remains of Inca royal estates and religious monuments, providing an early "guide" to would-be travelers and framing the formative years of Inca archaeology. As research proliferated in the past 50 years, some archaeologists have promoted the remains of royal estates as...
The Forest Foods of Ancient Arenal, Costa Rica (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Beyond Maize and Cacao: Reflections on Visual and Textual Representation and Archaeological Evidence of Other Plants in Precolumbian Mesoamerica" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Paleoethnobotanical investigations at two different domestic structures in Arenal, Costa Rica, reveal the plant resources utilized by past peoples living in this volcanically active setting from 1500 BCE to 600 CE. Over 100 different genera of...
Form is Emptiness, Emptiness is Form: Reimagining the Pyramids at Cochasquí, Ecuador (2017)
The archaeological site of Cochasquí, located north of Quito in the Ecuadorean highlands, has long been defined by its massive quadrangular pyramids with extended entry ramps. When Max Uhle arrived on site in 1932 he focused his excavations on the largest of the fifteen known pyramids. Uhle’s work laid the foundations for the interpretations and the chronology of the site, which are still applied today. Archaeologist Udo Oberem conducted the most extensive excavations on site between 1964 and...
Formation and Context of Sitio Chivacabe, Western Highland Guatemala (2018)
Located in the Highlands of western Guatemala, Chivacabe is a Pleistocene-age bone bed and Archaic-age archaeological site. In 2009 the site was subjected to intensive geoarchaeological investigation with the goals of identifying the relationship between the faunal and archaeological remains through developing an understanding of their context. Three allostratigraphic units were identified: The oldest unit, which contains the bone bed, consists of colluvially reworked tephra bracketed by...
The Formation of Agro-pastoral Communities in the Chanka Heartland (Andahuaylas, Peru) (2018)
This paper examines how Late Intermediate Period or Chanka phase (~AD 1000-1400) communities were formed during a period of overlapping social and environmental risks in the Chanka heartland of Andahuaylas. In particular, the paper considers how aggregated hilltop communities formed and functioned under new social and economic conditions. Recent archaeological research from Andahuaylas suggests that the majority of aggregated Chanka phase ridgetop sites were likely inhabited by neither...
Formation Processes of Late Pleistocene Archaeological Sites in the Atacama Desert (2019)
This is an abstract from the "From Middens to Museums: Papers in Honor of Julie K. Stein" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We investigated site formation and modification of surficial and shallow Paleoindian sites (ca. 13-11 cal. ka) located in the hyperarid core of the Atacama Desert. Sites occur primarily on inactive Pleistocene to Pliocene alluvial terraces, in and beneath desert pavements, a sparsely studied context for archaeological sites. Our...
Formation Processes, Fertility, Spatial Extent, and Carbon Content of Anthropogenic Soils in the Upper Xingu, Southern Amazon (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology in the Xingu River Basin: Long-Term Histories, Current Threats, and Future Perspectives" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent research in the Upper Xingu carried out in partnership with the indigenous Kuikuro community (Associação Indígena Kuikuro do Alto Xingu; AIKAX) has revealed that modified soils associated with archaeological remains and possibly with ancient cultivation areas may be much more...
Formative mobilities: Moving through the Atacama Desert, Northern Chile (2017)
Social spheres are constituted by population movements. Mobility entails not only the circulation of material goods, but of people, collective imaginary, experiences, flows of information, and knowledge. In this paper, we examine multiple types of movements through the Atacama Desert during the Formative Period (ca. 500 BCE—700 CE). Here, mobility required displacements whose variability included pedestrian travels, the movement of large llama caravans, and the use of sea lion-skin rafts to sail...
Fortification on the Margins of the Bolivian Eastern Highlands (2018)
Frontiers are usually spaces of interaction between multiple groups of people navigating through established cultural and political lifeways. The zone of Tumupasa functions as a peripheral site on the margin between the Yungas and the Amazon. This region will form the center of my study area to identify historical and archaeological lines of interaction between highland and lowland groups. I argue that the region of Tumupasa, Bolivia is situated on a natural geographic transit point between the...
Fortified settlements of the Upper basin of the Sama River (Tacna) during the Late Intermediate Period (1100-1450 AD) (2017)
During the Late Intermediate Period (1100-1450 AD), the upper valleys of Tacna, between Sitajara and Tarata, are known to have been multietnic areas of contacts between coastal and altiplano populations. Our research concerns the fortified settlements, called Pucara, to better understand the cohabitation relationships with different scales: from the study of the fortifications themselves to the territory analysis with the identification of the inhabitants of these fortresses.
Forty Years of Community Archaeology, Archaeology of Listening, and Working Together in the L. Titicaca Basin (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Thinking Big in the Andes: Papers in Honor of Charles Stanish" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One of the most critical issues facing archaeology today remains how to best figure out research on problems that are significant to living peoples, particularly those descended from prehistoric and historical populations that we study. We have learned how paradigms antithetical to local historical sensibilities can harm the...
Fragmented Records: Fuego-Patagonian Hunter-gatherers and Archaeological Change (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology on the Edge(s): Transitions, Boundaries, Changes, and Causes" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One common assumption in the interpretation of Fuego-Patagonian archaeological long stratigraphic sequences is that they represent occupational continuity. Several archaeological markers, including chronological and stratigraphic gaps, as well as recent molecular results erode that assumption, inviting us to...
Framing Intent, Power, and Agency in Eastern Honduras (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Advances and New Perspectives in the Isthmo-Colombian Area" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Throughout their history, the polities in eastern Honduras existed along a frontier, interacting with larger, powerful groups from a different cultural tradition to the west and with more closely related people to the south. During the period between 500 and 1200 CE, eastern Honduran groups adopted several significant elements...
The French Scientific Mission to South America (1903): the controversies and material legacy of the first extensive excavations in Tiahuanaco, Bolivia (2017)
In the context of a pluridisciplinary mission organized by the French government in Chile, Argentina, Peru and Bolivia in 1903, archaeological excavations were conducted in the monumental site of Tiahuanaco by the naturalist Georges Courty. During his 3-month stay, he conducted extensive fieldwork in the Akapana mound, the Sunken Temple, the Kalasasaya, and the Chunchukala and Putuni structures. The material corpus unearthed is estimated to consist in over 1400 artifacts, later divided between...
From "Nation" to "Indio" and "Español": Transitions in Indigenous Culture in the Missions of San Antonio (2018)
The Spanish colonial advance into Texas during the late 17th century resulted in the establishment of several missions to house members of dozens of indigenous groups and a handful of presidios to protect the missions from raiding bands of Comanches and Apaches. The Padres that were in charge of the missions enforced systematic policies and procedures to affect change in the identity of the resident indigenous nations. The policies and procedures specifically targeted religious believes,...
From Cattails to Maize: An Archaeobotanical Discussion on the Relationship between Human Groups and Plants during the Archaic and Formative Period (ca. 4000–2000 BP) in the Atacama Desert (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the Atacama Desert, northern Chile, human groups settled during the Archaic and Formative periods (ca. 4000–2000 BP) in the Tiliviche and Aragon sites, located between the coast and the hinterlands. We analyzed and identified the macrobotanical and microbotanical remains from the sites of Tiliviche-1 and Aragón-1 to evaluate the ontologies among the...