South America (Geographic Keyword)
201-225 (1,291 Records)
Andeanists have produced rich ethnoarchaeological studies of specialized potting villages, yet up until now scholars have ignored contemporary ceramic production in the Southern Lake Titicaca Basin. This poster reports on recent work of the Proyecto Olleros Titicaca Sur (P.O.T.S.), a recently initiated project in the village of Chijipata Alta exploring the relationship of learning, identity and social boundaries using both ethnographic approaches (participant observation, oral history, and...
Childhood Diets and Residential Mobility in the Late Intermediate Period, Colca Valley, Peru: A Study of Carbon and Oxygen Isotope Ratios from Dental Apatite (2017)
Around AD 1300 in the Colca Valley of southern Peru, an increasing proportion of elite individuals began to mark themselves as ethnically distinct by elongating the heads of children. This permanent act had far-reaching effects on the livelihoods of modified individuals, especially females, who exhibit more diversified diets in adulthood and experienced lower rates of cranial trauma. The present study complements prior stable isotopic analysis of bone collagen by examining carbon and oxygen...
Children at the Heart of 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. Children in antiquity provide bioarchaeologists with a window into the past as they embody the environment and culture around them (Halcrow and Tayles 2011). Due to subadults’ sensitivity to biocultural factors, they are excellent indicators of the health and nutrition of a society...
Children of the Atacama Desert: The complex interactions between breastfeeding, weaning and environmental stress in one of the world’s harshest environments. (2017)
Infant feeding practices and the weaning process have important implications for early life health and mortality patterns. In particular, the concept of weaning stress is often invoked as an explanation for increased infant or child mortality and morbidity. In this paper we evaluate the concept of weaning stress and the bioarchaeological methods used to interpret its presence. We highlight the intimate connection between stress and the weaning process in our own research in the northern Atacama...
Chimú Conquest and Administration at Talambo, Jequetepeque, Perú (2016)
There are few communities in the Andes untouched by the legacies of empire. On the North Coast of Peru, the Chimú (900—1470 AD) formed the most extensive empire in the region prior to Inca conquest. Significant archaeological and ethnohistoric evidence from the Jequetepeque Valley—the first region to be incorporated by the Chimú— has illustrated the nature of this conquest and the varying impacts on local communities. The site of Talambo, located in the lower neck of the Jequetepeque Valley, has...
Chimú-Inka Ceramics: Quantifying differences between Colonial forms and their influences (2015)
Between 1428 and 1534 the Inka conquered the world’s largest territory controlled by a single state including 1300 km of coastline from the 1460 conquest of their main rivals, the Chimú. Studies on Inka provincial administrative policies are increasingly important in understanding the pre-conquest Andes, however, there has been no study of the effects of Inka subjugation on the art of their most powerful former enemy. Ceramics from the Chimú-Inka period offer a striking example of how...
Chincha Farmers: Understanding Inca expansion, strategies, and motivations at Las Huacas, Chincha Valley (2016)
The Inca Empire was the largest empire in the New World and its ability to expand relied upon the flexibility and diversity of its methods. In some regions the Inca used force and installed their own loyal members imposing a direct rule; in other regions, local administrative structure and elite groups were kept largely intact. The Chincha Kingdom has often been cited as a prime example of Inca diplomacy and peaceful incorporation, whereby the Inca gained access to the Chincha Kingdom’s...
The Chonos archipelago: from hunting-gathering to industrial productivity in the western Patagonian channels (43°50’ - 46°50’ S), Chile. (2017)
The Chonos archipelago is a series of islands and fjords in the northernmost part of western Patagonia, South America. It has been disconnected from continental landforms since glacial retreat, thus it is an ideal area for assessing the human use of maritime habitats. We analyze the spatial and temporal distribution of the archaeological record focusing on the emergence of human intense signatures in the last part of the late Holocene. The archaeological record (87 sites) includes open-air and...
Ciudadelas: Their Form and Function. In: Chan Chan: Andean Desert City (1982)
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A classification of Middle Formative (1200 – 800 BCE) ceramics from Chavin de Huantar (2015)
Recent research has expanded drastically the sample size available for performing ceramic analyses at Chavin de Huantar during the last decade. Initial efforts have showed that the ceramic complexity previously described during the end of the last century has fallen short and that it is necessary to rethink Chavin ceramics in terms of the new data available. In of In this regard this paper attempts to organize and classify the corpus of ceramics dated from the Middle Formative (1200 – 800 BCE)...
Clay Matters: Pottery Changes at C4-084B, a Manteño Site in the Cloud Forest of El Pital, Coastal Ecuador (2016)
Recent archaeological investigations at site (C4-084B) within the Rio Blanco valley in coastal Ecuador yielded significant data regarding Manteño occupation of the region during the Integration Period (A.D. 700-1500). Situated in a cloud forest in the community of El Pital, the site contains the remnants of masonry residential structures along with evidence for at least two different occupations. Phase I, the earlier occupation, is separated from Phase II, the later occupation, by a gravel...
Climate Change and Chiefdom Ecodynamics in the Eastern Andean Cordillera of Colombia (2016)
Exploratory research into climate change and the formation of chiefdoms took place in the Valley of Leiva. Preliminary findings from cultural-environmental contexts provide extraordinary interdisciplinary data. A stone-walled, oval-shaped elite building with compacted earthen floors, post-holes, and artifact-ecofact assemblages (decorated pottery, spindle whorls, deer fauna, and stone monoliths) was revealed near El Infiernito. Soil survey along the Rio Leyva produced evidence for major erosion...
Climate Change and Moche Politics: A View from the Northern Chicama Valley, Peru (2017)
In this paper I will discuss the different lines of evidence pertaining to detecting El Niño and La Niña events at the site of Licapa II and surrounding Northern Chicama Valley. Flood deposits, dune encroachments episodes, malacological data, canal destruction and rebuilding events, and radiocarbon evidence are used as proxies to help understand the intensity and timing of ENSO events. I compare evidence from Licapa II to other sites inside and outside the Chicama Valley to highlight the...
Climate Change in Coastal Ecuador (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Innovations in Ecuadorian Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Climate change is negatively impacting cultural heritage and archaeological sites worldwide. The site of Balsamaragua, which signifies 2,500 years of human occupation on the coast, is rapidly deteriorating, having lost 10 m of shoreline since 2009. Increased awareness and documentation at the site can help us glean valuable information about...
Clouds for Water, Forest for Healing: Prehispanic Cultural Dynamics in the Cloud Forests of the Northern Andes (2023)
This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Tropical Montane Cloud Forests" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The cloud forests along the eastern and western foothills of the northern Andes have received little attention in the overall archaeology of South America. These regions of broken geography and dense forests have historically been considered culturally poor, with little impact on the sociocultural transformations of the Andean and...
Clues to Cacao from the Ecuadorian Upper Amazon (2015)
Genetic studies suggest a single domestication event for cacao (Theobroma cacao L.) in the Upper Amazon of southeastern Ecuador and northeastern Peru and then transported by humans northwards to Central America and Mexico. As such, we should expect to find the earliest archaeological evidence of cacao use in the tropical forests of South America. This paper presents starch granule evidence for the use of cacao dating to 3500-3300 Cal BC from the Santa Ana - La Florida site in the Upper Amazon of...
Co-Creation, Applied Archaeology, and Community Engagement in Ancash, Peru (2016)
Initiated through the Proyecto de Investigación Arqueológico Regional Ancash, the cultural heritage component of the archaeological research program in the village of Hualcayán, Ancash, Peru, has taken on an increased "co-creative" perspective over the past two years. We define co-creative processes as those where the cultural heritage professional partners with a community in projects that address the expressed needs of the local residents. This poster reports on the process of implementing...
Coalescence and conformity at the Ayawiri hillfort, Peru: A social experiment under duress (2015)
Defensive settlements are often places of relatively rapid, dense nucleation by people with few viable alternatives, resulting in the imperative need to establish new consensual rules for living together. In the Titicaca Basin of Peru, after the collapse of the Tiwanaku state, old political relationships were abandoned and defensive security became essential. In the post-collapse period, large hillfort towns formed by the aggregation of multiple families. What behaviors and attitudes were...
The "Coastal Cajamarca" Style Did Not Come from the Coast (2016)
The "Coastal Cajamarca" style of painted bowls was first documented by Disselhoff in the 1950s at the site of San Jose de Moro (Lower Jequetepeque Valley, Peru). There are two competing hypotheses with regard to the origin of this ceramic style: (1) it originated from the coast or (2) it was produced in the middle valley or chaupiyunga zone, an intermediate area between the coast and the highlands. In this paper I present evidence from the site of Las Varas, located in the Middle Jequetepeque...
Coastal politics in Cajamarca: recent research in the middle Jequetepeque Valley (2016)
Based on research at Ventanillas, a Late Intermediate Period community in the middle Jequetepeque Valley, Peru, this paper discusses the role of coastal polities and highland influence in a multiethnic middle valley context. Mapping, surface collection, and excavations in 2011 and 2013 focused on investigating the cultural and political affiliation of Ventanillas residents. Ventanillas’ imposing adobe platform mounds link the site visibly to coastal traditions; however, households used a mix of...
Coastal-Highland Interactions at the End of Moche: Investigating Vertical and Horizontal Archipelagos as Reflected in Pastoral Strategies in the Cañoncillo Region, Peru (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. Archaeologists have conducted important work on long-distance interactions during the Middle Horizon of the south-central Andes (Bélisle et al. 2020; Castillo et al. 2012; Jennings 2010). Camelid herding provided a critical means of exchange...
Cochasquí in Context: The Evolution of a Monumental Center (2017)
Recent investigations suggest that the history of the northern Ecuadorian mound group at Cochasquí was complex and that the perception of the site as a single, mostly unchanging monumental center is simplistic at best. Begun by AD1000, the earliest constructions within the complex were modest rounded mounds, several containing burials. By AD1250, much larger, ramped square mounds signaled a major shift in site function possibly associated with the eruption of Quilotoa volcano, 125 km to the...
Cochasquí under the Inka: Reassessing the Inka presence in northern Ecuador (2016)
The archaeological site of Cochasquí exhibits some of Ecuador’s largest and most ornate earthen pyramids or Tolas. With long dirt ramps and truncated steps of cangahua blocks, the Cochasquí pyramids are some of the most recognizable in the country. It was at this site that the Inka first encountered and conquered one of the great polities of the Caranqui Confederation. Sometime after its conquest by the Inka, the Spanish arrive and, by all historic accounts, the location was abandoned by 1580...
Coffee and captivity in the 19th century Paraíba valley (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil). Landscape archaeology and phenomenological recording (2015)
The expansion of modern capitalism in the 19th century led to higher demands for commodities such as coffee, sugar, and cotton. The production of these commodities, however, was associated to an increasing industrialization of slave labor ("Second slavery"). The Paraíba valley in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, produced most of the coffee consumed in Europe and North America. The central question is: how was the valley constructed over the 19th century as a landscape of enslavement? Labor routines...
Collective Intelligence in Cultural Environment: Predictive Models, preservation and valorization of Cultural Identity in a Brazilian context (2017)
The current days are becoming more and more demanding for researches on social sciences, considering the great changes happening globally on the last decades, changes that seem to be happening always on a faster pace than before. Many international institutions, including UNESCO, have been promoting discussions intended to bring new ideas on the role of Humanities on the current society, this from the standpoint of a global perspective. This challenge is also about the integration of knowledge,...