South America (Geographic Keyword)
251-275 (1,326 Records)
Our goal is to reconstruct networks of ceramic production and exchange on the Peruvian central coast through a comparison of compositional datasets on pottery and soil samples from the Lurin valley. While one dataset from Villa El Salvador dates to the late Early Horizon, most of the pottery sample comes from Late Horizon occupations at the Pachacamac, Pueblo Viejo, and Huaycan de Cieneguilla sites. In Tawantinsuyu, the products and networks of exchange connected heterogeneous populations, and...
Comparative Micro-Usewear and Residue Analyses on Late Pleistocene Unifacial Tools from Huaca Prieta, Peru, and Monte Verde, Chile (2018)
This study presents the results of a comparative multi-year analysis of high and low power micro-usewear and residue patterns on 14,000-10,000 cal BP unifacial stone tools from the late Pleistocene archaeological sites of Huaca Prieta on the north coast of Peru and the Monte Verde I and II sites in south-central Chile. The archaeological stones from these sites are also compared with experimental assemblages employing various actions (e.g., scraping, cutting, gouging, perforating) to work...
The comparison of central and peripheral household compounds at the site of Panquilma, Peruvian Central Coast (2015)
This paper explores the hierarchical differences between households at the site of Panquilma. Previous studies at the site have identified two types of household compounds: central and peripheral. Despite the fact that central compounds are bigger and located closer to the public buildings of the site, no other difference has been identified that can point towards the presence and the nature of any type of hierarchical distinction between both types of domestic compounds. Using 3-D...
A Comparison of Ceramic Compositions from Canchas Uckro (Ancash) and the Cave of the Owls (Huánuco), Peru: Implications for an Upper Amazon Interaction Sphere (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Despite decades of archaeological research, the economic and social ties connecting the eastern Andes and Upper Amazon remain underexplored. Stylistic and compositional comparison of ceramics from the sites of Canchas Uckro (ca. 1100-850 BCE), a large monumental platform situated above the Puccha River, and the Cave of the Owls, on the Monzón River near...
A Comparison of Various Technologies to Capture Low-Altitude Aerial Photography as Alternative Methods in Mapping Archaeological Landscapes (2016)
Site-based archaeological projects often face a common challenge of producing detailed maps of large, complex areas. The use of traditional site-mapping techniques (e.g. total station) can be expensive and labor-intensive. Alternatively, a variety of platforms provide archaeologists with practical and inexpensive approaches to aerial photography and photogrammetric mapping. Here, the authors explore three different approaches to aerial photography as alternatives to traditional methods of site...
Compositional Analysis of Ceramics from the Las Trancas Valley, Nasca, Perú. (2015)
In this paper we address the results of an Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis (INAA) on a sample of sherds from Santa Luisa and Higosñoc, two Las Trancas Valley sites from the Southern Nasca Region (SNR), Perú. By sampling sherds dating from the Early to the Late Horizon, this study adds temporal depth to previous compositional work in the region. While results confirm previous analysis conducted in the SNR suggesting compositional uniformity during Early Nasca, results also reveal...
A compositional signature of multi-craft production?: Food vessels from Great Plaza of Huacas de Sican (2016)
This paper discusses the results of a recent compositional analysis by INAA of 225 samples of ceramics sherds excavated from the Great Plaza of Huacas de Sicán. The analysis revealed a limited number (3) of compositional groups and a high rate of arsenic and uranium in one group. The author argues that the high rate of arsenic indicates the side-by-side production of arsenical copper and ceramic vessels and that the vessels used at the Great Plaza were produced at the regional ceramic workshop...
Compositional Study of Pre-Hispanic Ceramics from Eastern Bolivia (2016)
Ceramics from three archaeological areas in the dry lowlands of eastern Bolivia were analyzed by instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA). The resulting compositional data were analyzed statistically to identify potential patterns of manufacture and distribution. Samples were selected from three archaeological areas investigated prior to construction of the Bolivia-Brazil Natural Gas Pipeline in 1997-1998: 1) Rio Grande; 2) Bañados del Izozog; and 3) an inter-riverine area in the Gran...
Conceptual and Technical Connectivity in Indigenous South American Rock Art Traditions (2017)
Archaeologists have long sought to explain the distribution of rock art traditions across Amazonia and circum-Amazonia with reference to stylistic variability in the iconography, often as a proxy for exploring shared concepts of symbolic representation, mediated through local cultural norms. Where it has been possible, cross-referencing this kind of data with the ethnographic and archaeological records has engendered valuable new interpretations of indigenous symbolic repertoires in a variety of...
Conditional cooperation and the ritualized economy of Paracas (2015)
The Pampa de Carmen above the Chincha valley contains a series of Paracas period archaeological features including geoglyphs, ceremonial mounds, settlements and small stone structures. I discuss how these features integrate the pampa into a monumental ritual landscape focused on five major settlements. I interpret these features to be a means to attract people from outside the region to periodic market fairs held in the neutral chaupiyungas areas between highlands and coast. These fairs...
Configuring Space in a Valdivia Town: Social Precepts, Cosmological Mandates, and Emergent Hierarchy in Early Formative Ecuador (2016)
This paper revisits interpretations of the built environment at the Early Formative Valdivia town site of Real Alto in coastal Guayas province, Ecuador, from the broader comparative perspective of contemporary Formative Period sites throughout the Americas. Special emphasis is placed on the Middle Valdivia town configuration encompassing individual households, residential neighborhoods, open plazas, and central ceremonial space, but consideration is also given to Late Valdivia transformations...
Confronting the Challenge of Analyzing Museum Collections with Limited Archival Data in Southern Brazil (2017)
One of the major challenges in working with museum collections of excavated material is the paucity of information available about the original excavation. What value do these collections have without any context? This paper examines a case study of an archaeological collection from one of the first Spanish Jesuit missions founded in Southern Brazil, housed at the Paranaense Museum, Curitiba, Brazil. The mission, Santo Inacio Mini (1610 – 1631), was the largest in the province and was integral...
Connecting the Pre-Columbian Past to the Present in South Coastal Peru: The Archaeology of the Colonial and Republican Haciendas of Nasca (2015)
The fertile desert middle-valleys of South Coastal Peru’s Grande Basin offered resources for great productive potential which supported a large population since the Formative Period and attracted intense agro-industrial interests during Spanish colonization. Historical archaeology offers tools for understanding regional processes of population replacement, highland/coastal exchange and migration, and the radical transformation of social processes during the last five centuries of intense...
Connectivity beyond the floodplains: the case of the upper Tapajós (2017)
The first millennium AD saw an increase in population density throughout much of Amazonia; this is testified by an increase in the number and size of coeval archaeological sites, many of which include anthropogenic dark earths, widely considered as proxies for intensive and continuous human habitation and alteration of the environment. The Terra Preta do Mangabal and Sawre Muybu sites were village settlements occupied from c.700AD and c.900AD respectively, located along the rapids of the upper...
Conservación de la arquitectura en tierra y pinturas murales de Pañamarca (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Paisajes Arqueológicos de Pañamarca: Findings from the 2018–2023 Field Seasons" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. La Conservación de la arquitectura en tierra y pinturas murales del proyecto "Paisajes Arqueológicos de Pañamarca" en las temporadas 2022 y 2023, se desarrollaron en paralelo a los trabajos de excavación, teniendo en consideración la vulnerabilidad estructural así como la fragilidad de los murales pictóricos,...
Constructing Social Memory: Inca Politics and Sacred Landscape in the Lurin Valley (2017)
We will discuss the characteristics and scope of Inca politics in the Lurin Valley by focusing on the results of excavations carried out by Makowski (2016) in Pachacamac with its famous Imperial Inca temple and oracle, as well as in the administrative center Pueblo Viejo – Pucara. The comparison of landscape transformed by Imperial infrastructure between the Highlands of Cuzco (Christie 2016) and the lower Lurin Valley allows to reconstruct the mechanisms through which social memory was...
Continuidad y cambio: un estudio comparativo e interpretativo de los espacios domésticos de Mawchu Llacta (2017)
Una de las más grandes reformas llevadas a cabo durante el Virreinato en el Perú fue la Reducción General de Indios, que consistió en el traslado y reubicación de las poblaciones indígenas. Este proceso de cambios no solo se enfocó en la generación de una nueva forma de asentamientos humanos, sino que también afectaron con toda una estructura social, que a su vez repercutió en el modo de vida y bagaje cultural materializado en la distribución, uso y representación de espacios, es este el caso de...
Continuous Spatial Modles of Artifact Relative Frequency Data as an Aid for Sourcing Chert Materials: Two Examples from Patagonia and the Pampas of Argentina (2015)
The aim of this presentation is to introduce and discuss an approach to sourcing chert materials based on the use of spatial continuous models of relative frequency data (i.e. percentage representation of toolstone classes in georeferenced artifact assemblages), which is particularly useful in areas where there is scarce information about both the variability of one or many toolstone classes represented in lithic assemblages across the regional space and the localization of their likely or...
Contribución al estudio de la ocupación Tiwanaku (A.D. 500-1050) e Inca (A.D. 1430-1530) en el lago Titicaca, Bolivia : aportación de la Arqueología Subacuática. (2016)
El lago Titicaca se encuentra en el corazón del paisaje cultural Tiwanaku. Las excavaciones subacuáticas realizadas en 2014 a lo largo del espacio litoral de la Isla del Sol (Puncu) sitúan al lago como nexo de comunicación y de intercambio de toda la cuenca lacustre. En el plano ritual, este mar interior formaba parte de la vida cotidiana y como tal ha jugado un papel preponderante en la relación que mantenía el hombre con el territorio en el que vivía; racionalizándolo para comprenderlo,...
The contribution of Northwestern Argentina to the metallurgical Andean tradition (2017)
The most ancient metallurgy of pre-Columbian America originated and evolved in the Andes, reaching great levels of technical sophistication. However, as a few interesting cases of these first moments of experimentation with metals come from Perú, with them comes the popular idea that any technical advance took place in the Peruvian Andes. Because complex societies later emerged in what is now Central Andes, there is a tendency to think that all technological innovations did as well. This could...
Contributions from the Archaeological Record: Climate Proxies and El Niño-Southern Oscillation (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a complex climatic phenomenon that has shaped both the environment and human behavior on the North Coast of Peru for millennia. Currently, El Niño, a component of ENSO, occurs every 3-8 years. Often associated with heavy rains that penetrate this normally arid coastal desert, ENSO brings flooding, erosion, and an...
Contributions of Dolores Piperno to the history and folklore of coastal Ecuador (2015)
Personal and professional reminiscences from 1979 to the present of the life and works of Dolores Piperno, great person, smart graduate student and distinguished scientist whose contribution to the early history of Ecuador (culture Las Vegas) has been transforatioal. SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation...
Contributions to understanding demography and settlement patterns in the Valle del Quimi, Zamora-Chinchipe Province, Ecuador (2016)
Carvajal´s descriptions of the Upper Amazonian populations created controversies, given that little evidence was presented until recently, by the archaeologists about the demography of the area. Only few studies in the Upper Amazonia region have contributed with data for the reconstruction of local demography, given that most of the work has been enforced as contract archeology projects within the oil and mining industry, with specific questions on mine and lack of regional scope. In the Valle...
Conventionalized Figures in Ancient Peruvian Art (1916)
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Conversion and Revitalization in a Taki Onqoy Center of Highland Peru (Chicha--Ayacucho) (2016)
In the first generation after the Spanish conquest of Peru, indigenous Andeans and Spaniards entered into a period of change in which daily practices, traditions, and religion were negotiated and reshaped. A local response to Spanish attempts at Christian conversion was the cultural revitalization movement of Taki Onqoy (Quechua-dancing sickness). Primary sources suggest that this movement was practiced by local Andeans and manifested through the rejection of Spanish religious beliefs in favor...