South America (Geographic Keyword)
1,076-1,100 (1,326 Records)
Building upon the slow-science movement, and the work of Olivier Gosselain and others, this presentation examines how our understanding of ancient ceramic production depends upon the path a research may take. It argues for a re-articulation and re-evaluation of qualitative observation, small number of samples and quantitative data. The Rojo Grafitado case presented arose from research hazards, curiosity, and a regional perspective on ceramic production. During the first millennium B.C. in the...
The role of Botanicals in the Hierarchy of Panquilma (2016)
In this paper, through botanical analysis, I will reconstruct the environmental consumption patterns in the Lurin valley during the Late Intermediate Period. To this end we will compare botanical remains from each of the three sectors of the site. In particular, I will compare the botanical remains from ritual and domestic contexts, to seek ideas related to hierarchy, identity and power on the role of women.
The Role of Chullpas in the Inca Conquest of the Southern Altiplano: A Symmetrical Approach (2016)
I start with the premise that chullpas (architectural modules formed by a chamber which can be accessed by a narrow opening) are wak’as, persons with higher ontological status than humans, capable of acting in different ways (housing the dead, storing crops, guarding territories, defending communities, marking status differences among people, etc.) and settings (pukaras, villages, caves, or fields), as full members of altiplano society. I propose that chullpas were important actors in the Inca...
The role of highland-lowland interaction in political development: a view from the hilltop fort site Ayawiri, in the Andean highlands of Peru. (2015)
The florescence of the pre-Columbian Andean cultural sphere presents a classic, almost trite counter example to the development of highland-lowland relations seen in other areas. Far from marginal, the highlands are where the Inca empire emerged, following the earlier Wari and Tiwanaku states. However, highland-lowland relations were complex and varied; urban societies also developed independently on the Pacific coast, while eastern Amazonian lowlands were often cast as marginal and...
The Role of Infrastructure in Wari State-Making in Southern Peru (2017)
In southern Peru, the transition from the Early Intermediate to the Middle Horizon during the seventh century A.D. was marked by the expansion of Wari state colonists and influence from the Ayacucho heartland. Andeanists have long postulated the role of climate change and drought during this initial state expansion, while issues of chronology complicate this issue. Here, we reevaluate the radiocarbon data from the early Wari colonies of Cerros Baúl and Mejía in the upper Moquegua Valley in...
The role of metals in Ychsma society: A case study of Panquilma (2016)
In this paper I present a study of the role of metals at Panquilma site during the Ychsma phase (c. AD 1000-1470). Although metals were found in all three sectors at Panquilma (ceremonial, residential, and mortuary), the largest collection was from Sector 3, the burial area. Some mummy bundles were found in Sector 2, but they contain far fewer metals compared to the burial area. Similarly, very few metals were found in ritual or ceremonial contexts in Sector 1. It is widely accepted that metals...
The Role of Social Memory in Everyday Bodily Practices of Pottery Production and Consumption during the Late Moche Period (500 – 800 AD) on the North Coast of Peru (2017)
Often the term ‘social memory’ conjures up ideas of grand commemoration events such as statues, museums, large scale construction and other public displays to remember the collective past. We must not forget, however, the seemingly mundane daily practices that help to create, maintain, and change society while simultaneously forming social identities. This study looks at the Late Moche period (500 – 800 AD) on the North Coast of Peru. It was a time of immense social, religious, and political...
The role of the tambo in the Inka administration: a view from the site of Ingatambo, Cajamarca-Jaen, Peru (2015)
Archaeological investigations conducted at the site of Ingatambo highlight the Inka imperial policy in the provinces, which relied on the use of local ethnic groups in the state bureaucracy. Colonial documentation noted the movement of coastal communities within the Inka Empire to the Cajamarca region in order to serve in the tambos. Pottery sherds from the Ingatambo site illustrate that the coastal communities charged with administrating this site continued to produce pottery following the...
The Role of the Toad in the Middle Horizon Andes: A Chemical and Iconographic Analysis (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Seeing Wari through the Lens of the Everyday: Results from the Patipampa Sector of Huari" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Here we present preliminary findings of chemical analyses performed on a Middle Horizon pottery sherd (c. 600-1100 AD). The sherd originates from the capital region of the Wari and has the striking iconographic representation of either a frog or a toad with visual indications of preserved residues....
The Role of Women Following a Community Archaeology Project in Agua Blanca, Ecuador (1979-2018) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Working with the Community in Ecuador" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Agua Blanca community has participated in one of the most successful and sustainable community archaeology projects in Ecuador. Since the start of excavations in the Manabí region in 1979, archaeologist Collin McEwan and Maria-Isabel Silva have worked collaboratively with community members to excavate, interpret, and present findings about the...
Rooms, Compounds, Alley Dumps, and Neighborhoods: Intrasite Zooarchaeology on Peru’s North Coast (2017)
The increasing number of samples of zooarchaeological remains from the prehistoric Chimu settlement of Cerro La Virgen, on the North Coast of Peru, allow a comparison of consumption and discard patterns within and between households and neighborhoods. The information from this analysis adds to our understanding of economic and political realities of life in a community which would have to balance the demands of family consumption and the state tributes requested by the Chimu polity. Of special...
Root, Fruit and Dirt: using ethnoarchaeology and archaebotany for constructing reference collections of plants in activity areas in Eastern Amazon (2016)
In the Brazilian State of Pará, Eastern Amazon, indigenous Asurini populations living in the middle course of the Xingú River currently face the challenge of maintaining traditional lifeways in a situation of great ecological and social change, due to the construction of Belo Monte, one of the world’s largest hydroelectric dams. Amongst their practices, the cultivation of diverse varieties of manihot, sweet-potato, beans, maize and other crops is an important aspect of Asurini culture, and one...
Rules for Fishy Trash? (2016)
Analysis of intrasite spatial variation can improve our understanding of the dynamics of daily living of past populations. Fish remains are a special type of trash with distinctive aspects of capture, transport, preparation, and discard when compared to other fauna. This paper focuses on the analysis of fish remains from the Chimu site of Cerro La Virgen (A.D. 1000-1470) on the north coast of Peru. Cerro La Virgen is a rural town of mixed economy, including both fishing and agriculture, linked...
Rural Life during and after the Fall of the Wari Empire: A Stable Isotope Analysis of Childhood Diet and Geographical Origins at the Village of Qasa Pampa, Ayacucho, Peru (2017)
Life in a rural village can be vastly different from life in the metropolis, and when an empire collapses the effects can reach even the smallest village. For Qasa Pampa, an agricultural village that was occupied in Wari (ca. 650 – 850 CE) and post-Wari (ca. 1000 – 1200 CE) times and located several kilometers away from the capital of Huari, life for its population may have been quite distinct from their capital counterparts. Stable carbon and oxygen isotope analysis can shed light on the...
Sacred Spaces and Ideology in the Pambamarca Fortress Complex (2016)
In the northern Andes of Ecuador just north of Quito lies the Pambamarca Fortress Complex. This region was one of the last to fall to the Inca in the late 1490's/1500's as they expanded their empire, and they met great resistance from the indigenous societies of Northern Ecuador. Fighting occurred for over a decade and power strategies changed to conquer this region. These struggles are apparent, best seen through the high number of Inca fortifications and enclosures throughout the landscape....
Sacrifice and Social Identity: Untangling Identity from a Mass Burial at Matrix 101, Huaca Las Ventanas, Peru (2015)
Typically, burials are laden with symbols of social identity such as age, sex, and wealth of grave goods. However, conceptualizing individual or group identity can become problematic when examining non-modal or deviant burials. During the 2011-2013 field seasons, the National Sicán Museum and the Lambayeque Valley Biohistory Project recovered over 200 individuals from a Late Middle Sicán (A.D 1050 - 1100) sacrificial context designated Matrix 101. Constructed in three separate phases during a...
Sacrifice Reconsidered: Interpreting Stress from Archaeological Hair at Huaca de los Sacrificios (2017)
The Inka Empire (AD 1450-1532) practiced flexible forms of statecraft that affected their periphery populations across the cordillera. Lived experiences of different Inka subjects differed in varied ways, which therefore requires nuanced bioarchaeological approaches. This study aims to interpret psychosocial stress through assays of cortisol in archaeological hair from sacrificed individuals (n=19) recovered in the Huaca de los Sacrificios at the Chotuna-Chornancap Archaeological complex. This...
Sacrificial Landscapes and the Anatomy of Moche Biopolitics (2016)
Power in Moche society was fundamentally biopolitical, expressed through the violent deconstruction and reconstruction of bodies, including animate places. An examination of Moche architecture reveals that North Coast populations envisioned built environments as living organisms that were biologically dependent on human communities. The erection and renovation of Moche ceremonial architecture played an instrumental role in the generation of life and the harnessing of vital forces. Therefore,...
San Catequilla de Pichincha and Catequil, the cult to Lightning (Illapa) in the context of Inca expansion (2015)
Natural features, hills, subterranean springs, etc., designated as, ‘Catequilla,’ in northern Ecuador were huacas associated with Catequil, a religious cult to lightning (Illapa), worshiped from Quito to Cuzco, in the context of Inca expansion. San Catequilla de Pichincha is located in the Pomasqui Valley of northern highland Ecuador and the only huaca under the equator at 0°0’02" South Latitude. Ethnohistoric accounts indicate it was one of the most highly venerated Andean huacas, in part...
Sancti Spiritus (1526-1529), an Ephemeral but Diagnostic Spanish Fort (2023)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Colonial Forts in Comparative, Global, and Contemporary Perspective", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The arrival of the first European settlers in the Southern Cone of America was followed by a settlement policy with marked military characteristics. The forts located along the waterways were the strategic enclaves from which the conquest of the La Plata Basin was developed. These forts were also the...
Santa Maria de la Antigua del Darién: The Aftermath of Colonial Settlement (2017)
What kind of relationships were created between the indigenous people of the western region of the Gulf of Urabá (Colombia) and the Spaniards in the early years of the conquista? What happened in Santa Maria de la Antigua del Darién (1510-1524), the first European city founded on the American mainland, in the course of its short history, and immediately after its abandonment? We have a number of clues that can be drawn from contemporary historical sources (Oviedo), sources immediately following...
Satellite Remote Sensing of Archaeological Environmental Change in the Chicama Valley (2017)
As global ecological change becomes a pressing contemporary issue, it’s beneficial to also consider how long term land use histories have effected current ecologies. Using imagery from several multispectral remote sensing satellites and field verification of detected sites, I describe how legacies from archaeological occupations impact modern industrial sugarcane production in the Chicama valley. Occupation sites and agricultural systems, both extant and remnant, continue to influence sugarcane...
Satisfying needs and negotiating freedom in colonial Spanish American cities (2017)
Unlike archaeological studies that seek to focus on the relations of power and elites, that by means of physical violence and symbolic exerted their domination over other groups assumed to be passive, an approach from practice theories and spaces of contact in which daily practices took place is proposed. It is in these spaces and through everyday activities that curiosity, knowledge and consent made it possible for the majority to survive under the colonial regime, without this implying an...
Scales and visibility of human-environment interactions in western Amazonia: the case of the geoglyph builders (2015)
A debate that has received much attention in recent years is the nature and scale of pre-Columbian impact in the Amazon lowlands. While the notion that Amazonia is a "pristine wilderness" has long been rejected, several papers have proposed that human impact in western regions was more sporadic and on a smaller scale than impacts in central and eastern regions, and that western Amazonia supported sparse pre-Columbian populations. The discovery of over 400 geometrically-patterned earthworks in...
Scaling the Huaca: Constructing Late Moche Identity through Architectonic Re-presentation of Place at Huaca Colorada, Jequetepeque Valley, Peru (2015)
Following Descola’s "modes of identification", Andean ontology has recently been suggested to represent a combination of animism and analogism that establishes strong intersubjective relationships wherein humans, objects and places are intrinsically linked while simultaneously creating a highly hierarchical scale based on the properties of each autonomous entity. In order to operationalize this animistic-analogical ontology, mimetic processes of imitation and transformation serve to link and...