Republic of Ecuador (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
876-900 (2,078 Records)
Archaeologists live in a reality in which gender, sexuality, race, age, and occupational identities (to name a few) are pervasive and impactful in our professional and personal lives. Our individual experiences in the world are always being shaped by our place at the intersection of multiple perceived and/or performed identities in the multiple social landscapes we inhabit. It then must be accepted that social identities operated similarly for people in the past. Still, there remains a hesitance...
Identity through Movement: Domestic Political Units and Pan-Andean Relations in Early and Middle Cajamarca Periods (50 BC–AD 750) (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Them and Us: Transmission and Cultural Dynamism in the North of Peru between AD 250 and 950: A Vision since the Recent Northern Investigations" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The purpose of this project is to investigate the relationship between environmental factors and cultural dynamics as manifested in the development of specialized pottery production as a symbol of an ethnic identity in the valley of Cajamarca,...
Identity, Residential Mobility and Anthropogenic Lead in early colonial Huamanga (Ayacucho), Peru (2017)
La Iglesia de la Compañía de Jesús de Huamanga, the earliest Jesuit church in modern-day Ayacucho, Peru, was built in AD 1605 near the main plaza. Famous for its baroque art, this standing church is in need of extensive renovations. In a partial restoration in 2008, an archaeological excavation uncovered human and faunal remains underneath the church floor proper, and underneath the floors of associated chapels. Upon examination, only indigenous individuals appear to be buried underneath the...
Ideological Infrastructures and Bio-Political Ecology: Investigating Colonial-Era Entanglements of New Food and Religious Systems (Sixteenth Century, Ayacucho, Peru) (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Unsettling Infrastructure: Theorizing Infrastructure and Bio-Political Ecologies in a More-Than-Human World" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. ThThe extended Spanish conquest of Indigenous groups in the sixteenth century prompted infrastructural collisions of governance, foodways, and religious ideologies that indelibly altered Indigenous physical and ritual landscapes. Through the entanglement of new European foods and...
If Threads Could Talk: Listening to Andean Textiles at the Louisiana University Museum of Art (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the mid-1990s, the LSU Museum of Art received a collection of nearly 60 Andean objects as a donation from a private collector. More than half of the items donated are textiles and/or tools used in making textiles, all thought to have come from Peru. Beyond this geographic pointer, little information came with the collection, so the catalog entries for...
(II) Proposed Study to Test Objects in Museum Collections in Ecuador to Verify Usage of Hallucinogenic Entheogens to circa 2650-2100 Y.P.B - 450 B.C.E - 100 C.E. (2022)
(II) Proposed Study to Test Objects in Museum Collections in Ecuador to Verify Usage of Hallucinogenic Ethneogens to circa 2650-2100 Y.B.P.- 450 B.C.E - 100 C.E.; Significance; Outline of Testing to be Performed; Identification of Specific Objects to Test to Verify; Suggested Plan for Study Including Funding; and Overall Benefits of the Study.
Illuminating the Obscure: Using Legacy LiDAR Data to Define and Interpret a WWII Airfield on the Island of Tinian, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) (2018)
Tinian International Airport in the CNMI is a repurposed portion of West Field, a WWII U.S. airbase constructed in 1944 for B-29 operations against Japan. In 2017, HDR conducted a cultural resource inventory for proposed airport infrastructure improvements, focusing on West Field and the adjacent Japanese-built Gurguan Point Airfield. Survey was complicated by dense secondary forest that obscures the two airfields, rendering many features invisible from the air. To assist with mapping these...
Images of the Living Past: 19th-Century Moche Archaeological Photographs and Everyday Indigeneity in the Northern Peruvian Andes (2018)
This presentation analyzes late 19th-century photography of Moche pre-Columbian buildings, as a way to inspect the buildings’ incorporation into everyday indigenous lives. I will focus on the work by German scientist Hans Heinrich Brüning (1848-1928). First arrived as an engineer hired by the most important sugar haciendas of the region, Brüning’s interests quickly shifted towards archaeological and ethnographic studies during his stay in the Northern Peruvian Andes between 1875 and 1920. His...
The Imbalanced Archaeology of Honduras: Challenges and Potentials (2018)
This paper presents a brief overview over past and current trends in non-Maya archaeology of Honduras. From the beginnings of archaeological investigations in Honduras, there has been a strong research focus on the Maya city of Copan in the extreme west of the country. But already in early years, pioneers like William D. Strong, Doris Stone and Claude Baudez made valuable contributions, in order to reveal the hidden history of central Honduras, the Atlantic and the Pacific coast. The lack of...
The Impact of Climate Dynamics and Cultural Change on the Demography and Population Structure of Pre-Columbian Populations in the Atacama (2017)
Archaeological studies in the Central Andes have pointed at the temporal coincidence of climatic fluctuations and episodes of cultural transition throughout the pre-Columbian period. Although most scholars explain the connection between environmental and cultural changes by the impact of climatic alterations on the capacities of the ecosystems inhabited by pre-Columbian cultures, direct evidence for assumed demographic consequences has been missing so far. Desert margin areas, as we find them at...
Imperial authority and local agency: Investigating the interplay of disruptive technology, indirect authority, and changing ritual practice at Dos Cruces. (2017)
The Chimu smelting site of Dos Cruces is located along the Zaña River in the middle valley of the greater Lambayeque area. Dos Cruces is located at the intersection of two major trade routes and nearby several rich sources of copper ore. The smelting of ore at Dos Cruces utilized wind powered smelting technology, a new innovation for this region. Despite its obvious Chimu affiliations, Dos Cruces lacks an audiencia, or indeed any indication of Chimu administrative oversight. The denizens of Dos...
Imperial Remodeling: Hatuncancha and Later Inca Construction (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. Though generations of scholars have mapped nearly all the standing architecture of the imperial and colonial city of Cusco, nevertheless, the site remains caught in the hypothetical moment of its apogee prior to its destruction during the Great Inca Revolt. A recent intensive survey of the central portion of the city provides nuanced data that permits a...
Imperial Space Appropriation and Colonialism during the 16th Century in the Ecuadorian 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 Inka Empire began its process of conquest and colonialism in 1420 in ancient Ecuador. The inkas reproduced their own social spaces for the public, the sacred, and the economic over local spaces. However, such Inka layers of transformation were suddenly truncated by the Spanish arrival at around 1530, which again brought different kinds of populations that...
Impermanent Architecture, Monumentality, and Landscape Transformation in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia (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. From AD 100 to AD 1600, the northern and southern faces of of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta were permanently transformed by preHispanic societies who built hundreds of stone and rammed earth towns throughout an area encompassing over 7,000 square kilometers. Despite the...
The Implications of Amaranthaceae Cultivars at the Tiwanaku Site of Cerro San Antonio, Locumba, Perú (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Tiwanaku civilization (ca. A.D. 500-1100) originated in the Bolivian Altiplano (3800 masl) of the south-central Andes and grew frost-resistant crops, such as quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa), kiwicha (Amaranthus caudatus), and potatoes (Solanum tuberosum). Throughout the Middle Horizon (A.D. 600-1100), the Tiwanaku expanded into Peruvian coastal valleys (~900...
Improvisation and Creativity at an Emergent Andean Center (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Crafting Archaeological Practice in Africa and Beyond: Celebrating the Contributions of Ann B. Stahl to Global Archaeology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ann Stahl continues to produce a rich, and provocative scholarship, one that has inspired scholars across regions and generations. She has long positioned herself within "intellectual crosscurrents," drawing on literature from a wide range of disciplines. Most...
In the Heart of the Inca: An Osteobiography at Huanacauri (Cusco, Peru) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study takes an osteobiographical approach to describe the archaeological significance and life history of the only known individual buried within Huanacauri (Cusco, Peru), one of the most sacred sites in the Inca Empire (ca. 1400-1533 CE). Given the significant location of the burial—in the center of the place the Incas perceived as the foundation of...
In the Land of Llamas and Ají: New Insights into the Late Horizon Inca Occupation of the Middle Sama Valley, Southern Peru (2018)
Since the 1970s, the Sama valley on the far south coast of Peru has been known to house the Inca site of Sama Grande since the excavations of German archaeologist Hermann Trimborn. Situated at the crossroads of the Quapaq Ñan running parallel to the Andean foothills and from the coast to the highlands, Sama Grande was assumed to direct people, animals, and goods across the region during the Late Horizon (14th-15th century AD). In 2017, full-coverage pedestrian survey of the coastal desert plain...
In the Middle of Nowhere: Inter-nodal Archaeology and Mobility in the Southern Andes (2017)
"Inter-nodal archaeology" contributes to research on social processes through the study of the areas between nodes, i.e., places where human activities tend to cluster (sites or densely settled areas, depending on the scale). By focusing on the material traces directly generated by people’s movement, this approach holds great potential for addressing questions regarding who travelled across regions and why. These possibilities are illustrated through research conducted in three inter-nodal areas...
In the Third Degree: Modeling and Photogrammetry at the Ancient Maya Site of Pacbitun, Belize (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeological site of Pacbitun is located in west central Belize and has a long history of occupation at the site. Starting in the Middle Preclassic (600 – 400 BC) and continuing until AD 800-900. Recent student research projects have led to three differing uses of photogrammetry. First has been for public education and outreach, with students converting...
INAA of Loro Ceramics from Zorropata, a Middle Horizon Las Trancas Habitation Site in Nasca, Peru (2017)
Early in the Middle Horizon (c. AD 650-1000), the Wari Empire expanded from its Ayacucho homeland and established at least three colonies (Pacheco, Pataraya, and Inkawasi) in the Southern Nasca Region (SNR) on the South Coast of Peru. Concomitant with the Wari presence local settlement patterns underwent dramatic reorganization. Large portions of the population shifted from the Nasca and Taruga Valleys south to the Las Trancas Valley – away from and perhaps in contention with the Wari. A new...
The Inca Administration of the Middle Cañete Valley, Peru (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The historical accounts of the Cañete valley, recovered by the Spanish conquistadores, inform that the Incas found two different kinds of reactions to their conquest attempts: while the Guarco kingdom, in the lower valley, resisted the Incas domination; the Lunahuná kingdom, in the middle valley, supported the Inca troops and generals. While this information...
The Inca Dogs and their Ancestors (2017)
The goal of this paper is to elucidate the social role of the dog in ancient Peru as an artifact, a physical manifestation of culture, produced by humans, through archaeological and iconographic interpretation. The large numbers of dogs available for study are a neglected archaeological resource, and one that can provide a wide variety of information on human life and cultures in ancient Peru. Through the examination of archaeological dog remains and dog iconography from differing temporal and...
Inca Hydrodynamics at the Chachabamba Archeological Site (Machu Picchu National Archeological Park, Peru) (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Water Management in the Andes: Past, Present, and Future" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Chachabamba archaeological site in the Machu Picchu National Archeological Park contains a unique water complex erected by the Incas. Based on archaeological investigations, it has been established that the function of this water complex was strictly ceremonial. The necessity to control water flow in an architectural context...
Inca Imperial Colonization and Ethnicity of Northern Chile (2018)
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...