South America (Geographic Keyword)
1,126-1,150 (1,346 Records)
Although color is often at the background of our lived experience, colors also have the power to demand our attention. In this paper we explore how color was a meaningful component of the built environment in prehistoric South America and specifically the ways it demanded the attention of the Tiwanaku (AD 500-1100) of the south-central Andes. Extensive excavations at the Tiwanaku Omo ceremonial temple (M10A) in Moquegua, Peru have revealed the use of red and green pigments on selective walls...
Settlement pattern transformation in the Arica Highlands during the Late Intermediate and the Late Periods (XIV-XV centuries): The role of Zapahuira and the Incan Tambo network system and its relationship with local communities. (2017)
I will discuss the settlement pattern transformation of the Arica Highlands during the Late Intermediate Period and the Late Period (XIV-XV centuries) and the role of Zapahuira Tambo and the Inca Settlement Network System and its relationship with local communities. The latter will be carried out from an architectural and spatial characterization of some of the main Incan and Local settlements of the area. Some of the data integrated in this discussion have been gathered in my current research...
Settlement Patterns Study in the Lake San Pablo Area, Northern Highland Ecuador: Preliminary Results (2015)
The project "Cultural and Technological Principles Associated with Occupation Modalities during the Integration Period: Value and Use in Present Day Ecuador", carried out by the INPC (National Institute of Cultural Heritage of Ecuador) and funded by SENESCYT (Ecuador’s Department of Science and Technology) has researched five areas of the country, including in the Otavalo Canton. This paper presents the preliminary results of a survey, conducted with the collaboration of community members, from...
Shamans, Jaguars, Owls, Cosmograms, and Zygotes: Matapalo and the Origins of Late Valdivia Stone Plaques (2017)
The material record of Ecuador’s Early Formative Valdivia culture has long been approached from the perspective of a New World, particularly an Amazonian, shamanism incorporating foundational features of animistic ontology. More recently enigmatic stone plaques from Northern Manabí Province have been included in the non-secular repertoire of later Valdivia phases; however, their temporal and spatial associations remained poorly known. Investigations in the Coaque Valley clearly establish their...
Shared Motifs and Figures in the Archaic of the Cajamarca Highlands: New Data from the site of Callacpuma (2016)
The northern Andes, and in particular the Cajamarca region, has for years seen a dearth of archaeological investigation into the lithic, or archaic period. This is surprising given early investigation in the region by Augusto Cardich whose excavations at caves like Cumbe yielded archaic period occupations dated to 8,500 B.C. More recent work at Conga and Maqui Maqui north of the Cajamarca basin have documented hunter-gatherer occupations including projectile points dating to approximately 12,000...
Shark Interactions in Early Times: A Comparison of Some Sites from Colombia and Panama (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Past Human-Shark Interactions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The data obtained from the zooarchaeological remains of some Panamanian Pacific sites and Colombian Caribbean Sites allowed for unprecedented discussions about the role of sharks in the lifestyle of precolumbian inhabitants on the intermediate area. People captured and processed sharks, using their body parts both as a food source and for ornaments. These...
Shell Fishhooks on C. chorus Mussel Shell (7500 to 4500 Years BP) from the Atacama Desert Coast (Chile) (2018)
Fishing was a crucial aspect in the lifeway of ancient coastal societies. Along the Pacific Coast, the appearance of shell fishhooks has been interpreted as part of different contexts of growing population, economic specialization, and social complexity, among others. Along the coast of the Atacama Desert (18° to 26° Lat. South), fishhooks on Choromytilus chorus shells (mussel) appear in archaeological sites located along 1.6 thousand kilometers of coast with dates around 7500 years BP. Around...
Shell mounds from southern and southeastern Brazil (2015)
Systematic archaeological research focused for centuries on large scale shell mounds and now scholars turn their attention to smaller sites located on the southeastern coast of Brazil. Similarly to large mounds, these sites were built with mollusk and fish remains, have a complex stratigraphy and high numbers of burials. Researchers’ approach used data from formation processes and funerary contexts to establish comparisons between regions. Results indicate that small mounds located around the...
Shifting Baselines: Tales of the unexpected (2015)
A shifted baseline is the intergenerational acceptance of the progressive degradation of a system as reflecting its natural state. Paleoecological analyses have revealed the long-term usage by humans of sites previously thought to be ‘pristine’. Analysis of lake sediments in remote areas of Panama and Ecuador revealed unexpected histories of land usage. In Ecuador, Lake Ayauch provided a record of maize agriculture from 6000 years BP. At Lake Wodehouse, in Panama, a 3300-year long record from an...
Shifting the paradigm of coastal archaeology in Latin America (2017)
How might knowledge of past fisheries contribute to the future sustainability of modern coastal societies? Small-scale coastal fisheries provide a crucial source of food and livelihood to millions of people living in South America. Such coastal economies are founded on long-established knowledge that is deeply rooted in the past. Whilst marine conservation, dwindling fish stocks and environmental sustainability have driven the research agenda in recent years, government and international...
The Shipwreck of the French Fleet in Las Aves de Sotavento, Venezuela: A Seventeenth-Century Maritime Disaster (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Underwater and Coastal Archaeology in Latin America" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation underlines the importance of Venezuela’s underwater cultural heritage through continued research into the shipwreck of French King Louis XIV’s fleet, which struck reefs in the Las Aves de Sotavento, in Las Aves Archipelago, Venezuela, the night of May 11, 1678. The fleet consisted of 30 vessels. At least 12 ships...
Sicán Painted Textiles: Producer's and Multi-Craft Perspectives (2016)
Two types of painted textiles exist within controlled funerary contexts from the Middle Sicán culture (900-1100 CE) on the North coast of Peru. The first represents the genre of painted cloth in a traditional sense: woven textiles with decorative elements added to the final product. The other is a more complex, multi-crafted and multi-stepped object that combines the labor intensive production of sheet-metal, cotton textile, gesso-like clay, and the final application of painted designs. These...
Sicán Sociopolitical Organization in Lambayeque, Peru: Ceramic Compositional and Distributional Perspective (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We report the results of a recent chemical compositional analysis (INAA) of ceramic samples from multiple Middle Sicán (ca. 1000 CE) sites in the Lambayeque region on the north coast of Peru that offer important insights on the Middle Sicán sociopolitical and territorial organization. The analysis is an integral part of our cross-disciplinary testing of the...
The Signaling and Inheritance of Cooperation: Artificial Cranial Modification among Altiplano Foragers (2017)
We report on the recent archaeological discovery of a 7000-year-old population of hunter-gatherer burials and discuss the key insights they offer into how hunter-gatherer societies may have maintained cooperative structure against evolutionary odds. Sixteen human burials interred at the site of Soro Mik'aya Patjxa in the Andean Altiplano of Peru consistently exhibit intentional artificial cranial modification (ACM)—the irreversible shaping of human crania during infancy. Our analysis of cranial...
Signatures of human occupation in Amazonian soils (2015)
The extent and intensity of pre-Columbian human impacts on Amazonian forests has remained a topic of debate for decades. Traditional views of pre-Columbian Amazonia as a ‘pristine forest’ have recently been replaced by predictions of vibrant cultures frequently scattered across the Basin. A primary form of evidence for the latter includes the presence of terra preta soils, which are nutrient-enriched anthrosols that were formed in prehistory. Archaeological and paleoecological investigations...
Silver Production and Inka Expansion in the South Central Andes (2017)
Silver was an important component of the Andean prestige economy with bestowal and display of silver and silver-alloyed objects constituting a vital tool of Inka statecraft. The quest for mineral wealth was thus a motivating factor for Inka conquest of the South Central Andes. Nonetheless, the impacts of imperial incorporation on the organization and technology of metal production differed across this region of the empire. Focusing on the purification of silver ores, we present two case studies...
Site-seeing: Aeriality, Archaeological Survey and Objectivity in Coastal Peru (2017)
Far from being mana from the future, aerial imagery has been integral to both the practical and conceptual dimensions of archaeological survey almost from its inception. In this presentation, I argue that aerial photography captured via private and state-funded reconnaissance in the 1930’s and 40’s played a transformational role in the emergence of regional approaches in Peru’s desert coast in the mid 20th century. I discuss how the use of aerial imagery has both enabled and constrained the...
Skeletal Remains of Early Man in South America. In: Early Man In South America (1912)
This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.
Slash-And-Burn Cultivation Among the Kuikuru and Its Implications for Cultural Development in the Amazon Basin. In: the Evolution of Horticulture Systems In Native South America (1961)
This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.
Slash-And-Burn Cultivation Among the Kuikuru. In: Native South Americans: Etnology of the Least Known Continent (1974)
This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.
Slavery and memory in French Guiana: designing the commemoration of memory at the Loyola cemetery while respecting sensibilities of history (2015)
Our paper reflects on the development of a commemoration concept which takes into account the sensibilities of descendants from the slave trade period in French Guiana. Memory of the trade period is indeed a very sensitive issue among residents of most Caribbean Islands and we use sixteen years of research at one site to present the various questions with which we are confronted in order for the local population to appropriate the spirit of place. The Loyola Habitation was located at 10 km from...
Slow thinking: beyond the entangled list (2015)
Several theorists under the broad umbrella of a new materialism have argued that our accounts of the social-natural world proceed too quickly, skating over rich complexities and contradictions in favor of simple ontological impressions. In response, they suggest, we need to slow down our analytical movements in order to track the complex articulations of a world that becomes difficult to resolve at higher speeds. Here I argue that this issue is particularly relevant for archaeologists for...
SMELTING AND THE SCARED AT DOS CRUCES: Technological and ritual activity at a Chimu era smelting site (2015)
In November 2013 the Las Minas Archaeometallurgical Project completed excavations at the Chimu Era copper smelting site of Dos Cruces in the Zaña valley. Dos Cruces is an artificially terraced hill located near a river and several known copper mines. The site was divided into 4 distinct sectors, each of which was put to a different use. This paper focuses on excavations and preliminary laboratory results from the industrial or smelting sector of Dos Cruces, an area filled with slag, furnaces,...
Smoky places: archaeology of smoking practices on public parks of a capital city (Santiago, Chile, South America) (2016)
Cigarettes are the most numerous, ubiquitous, and tolerated form of trash on the urban landscape (Graesch & Hartshorn 2014:1). This statement has special meaning in Chile, leading country in cigarette consumption in the continent and highly ranked at a global scale. On this basis, it has became a critical public health issue. Current approaches in the study of this phenomenon are based on interviews, but no material study has been conducted. Considering the differences between people´s...
So Many Chenopods: Paleoethnobotany of the Late Intermediate Period, Puno, Peru (AD 1100-1450) (2016)
Following the collapse of Tiwanaku in the Andean altiplano, warfare, sociopolitical balkanization, and a severe drought lead to economic hardships during the Late Intermediate period (LIP) between A.D. 1100 and 1450. Previous research in the region has shed light on how martial conflict between and possibly among competing ethnic groups incited people to live in defensive fortified hilltop villages. Although scholars have previously speculated on the severity of lifeways for residents of...