South America (Geographic Keyword)
301-325 (1,346 Records)
Arqueólogos estão revelando que além de terem domesticado algumas plantas para consumo, como a mandioca, por exemplo, os indígenas teriam agido de modo a cultivar florestas inteiras! Além disso, pesquisadores de diferentes áreas do conhecimento estão confirmando que a formação de parte das florestas e biodiversidade amazônicas, é produto da seleção cultural de espécies. A consequência disto foi que, muito provavelmente, boa parte das florestas conhecidas como naturais seriam, na verdade, obra...
Cultura Viva y Arqueología, del Rgistro de la Memoria por Propios y Extraños (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. El proyecto Cultura Viva se genera a partir de acciones públicas en comunidades interesadas en revalorizar sus costumbres, y que se encuentren dentro del área de influencia de las actividades de los proyectos arqueológicos realizados en la Costa del Ecuador, principalmente. Cultura Viva ha gestionado el levantamiento de rasgos de la herencia...
Cultural implications of neutron activation analysis of ceramics from Palmitopamba, Ecuador (2016)
The cloud forest site of Palmitopamba in northwestern Ecuador was occupied for centuries by the Yumbos prior to the arrival of Incas around 1500. Instrumental neutron activation analysis has been performed on ceramics we have excavated there and which represent those two groups, on a third pottery complex widely identified in Ecuador as Cosanga or Panzaleo, and on raw clay samples from the vicinity of Palmitopamba. The results of some 140 analyses are presented. These imply that the Inca pottery...
Cultural Inclusion and the use of Technology (2016)
The presentation intends to show the work and results achieved with local communities from Brazil. Those communities are culturally related to archaeological work near inhabited areas or in indigenous lands. The presentation intends to show how those communities are included in the archaeological project and what tools are used in order to reach positive outcomes. This paper highlights the technological tools used in order to be more efficient in teaching the communities and making the...
Cultural Interaction and Cultural Change in the Peruvian Central Highland Valley of Ayacucho (2015)
Human societies are not isolated islands; instead, they are part of a complex web that links them with distant communities who are not only culturally different, but also inhabit different environmental settings. In the distant past, cultural interaction was a window that enabled the exposure to previously unknown cultural customs and the flow of ideas, in addition to access to foreign exotic goods and the establishment of new kinship ties. Contact with more complex societies and important...
Cultural interaction and Fueguian Islands archaeology: discussing Middle and Late Holocene (50º-55º South Latitude, Chile) (2017)
The Fueguian archipelago, dominated by three mayor islands, namely Tierra del Fuego, Dawson and Navarino, is located namely at southernmost end of South America and was peopled by hunter-gatherer societies from c. 10.500 BP to the 20th century. Sea coastline areas have evidence of specialized marine adaptation since c. 7.000 BP, including navigation. Ethnohistoric and ethnographic records account for an overlapping network area of three groups: Selk'nam land hunters and Alacalufe or Kawésqar...
The Cultural Kaleidoscope in the "Island of Guiana" (2017)
The Guiana Shield is an island demarcated by the massive river systems of the Orinoco and Amazon and the northeast coastline of South America. Numerous Amerindian groups with distinct identities have occupied the region for thousands of years. In the contexts of maintaining distinct identities and active processes of ethnogenesis, well-established webs of relations and exchange exist across the region. Relations of production and distribution long documented ethnohistorically and...
Cultural Materialism, Split Inheritance, and the Expansion of Ancient Peruvian Empires (1981)
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.
Cultural Responses to Climate Changes in Preceramic Coastal Peru (2017)
Research at the archaeological site of Yara in southern coastal Peru has revealed at least three separate levels of human occupation in sequence with several large debris flow deposits. In this extremely arid environment these debris flows represent strong El Niño events that were potentially catastrophic to the inhabitants of the region. Evidence for the repeated occupation of the landscape in the face of these episodic hardships provides a window into human responses to the changing...
Culture at an Andean Crossroads: New Analysis of Chorrera Ceramics from the Jama River Valley, Manabi, Ecuador (2016)
The archaeology of Late Formative Ecuador (ca. 2800-2000 BCE) remains only partially explored and understood, especially when compared to studies of contemporary cultures in the Andes of Peru and Bolivia. However, ceramics looted from these contexts suggest a vibrant and complex array of cultures in this region. Excavations in the Jama River Valley of northern Manabí, performed in the early 1990s but largely unpublished, explored multiple sites pertaining to the Chorrera style, one of Ecuador’s...
Culture-Ecology of Shifting (Pioneering) Cultivation Among the Yanomamo Indians. In: Peoples and Cultures of Native South America (1973)
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.
Daily Life Rhythms: Narrating Milpa Landscapes in Mexican mountains & Sustaining Agroforestry Practices in Brazil (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Weaving Epistemes: Community-Based Research in Latin America" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper highlights the importance of agroforestry communities in Latin America as guardians of ancestral knowledge related to plant cultivation and ecological practices that have shaped the region's landscape and cultural heritage. These communities celebrate the interconnectedness between people and the environment,...
Daily Practices and the Creation of Cultural Landscapes in Amazonia (2017)
Short-term, small-scale interactions between humans and the environment may result in profound transformations of that environment over time. Recent archaeological research in Amazonia has revealed the extent that daily practices, such as refuse disposal or cultivation, have modified the soil in the vicinity of ancient and modern settlements. The fertile anthropic soil known as terra preta, formed mainly through the discard of refuse around habitation areas, is an example of how quotidian...
A Database of Neutron Activation Analysis Characterizing Indigenous Ceramics from South America (2016)
The earliest ceramics in South America were made by the indigenous peoples at least 7500 years BP. Ceramics were used for a variety of purposes, including cooking and storage vessels, funerary urns, toys, ceremonial items, sculptures and other art forms. Over the past 25 years, the Archaeometry Laboratory at the University of Missouri Research Reactor has performed neutron activation analysis on more than 7,000 ceramics and clays from locations throughout South America to establish a...
Date and context of early mussel shell fishhooks (Choromytilus chorus) from the southern coast of the Atacama Desert, Taltal, Chile. (2016)
Fishing tools made on marine shells are an important aspect in the economy of prehistoric fishing groups around the world. The oldest shell fishhook along the Pacific Coast of the American Continent dates around 10000 years BP and comes from Baja California, Mexico. On the northern coast of Chile, fishhooks on mussel shell (Choromytilus chorus) have been recovered from the archaeological site of Morro Colorado with dates between 8500 and 6500 cal BP. The appearance of this technology marks the...
De regreso al Valle de los Quijos (Ecuador): aproximaciones gráficas factoriales para interpretar la concentración de basura prehistórica como el momento de compactación sociopolítica de los cacicazgos (2016)
Estudios neo- evolucionistas desarrollados en las últimas décadas, muchos inspirados en las investigaciones arqueológicas desarrolladas en el Valle de la Plata, Colombia, plantean como un elemento fundamental la identificación de unidades políticas cacicales a partir de la dispersión de material cultural en la superficie de las áreas prospectadas. Investigaciones recientes llevadas adelante por nosotros en el Valle de los ríos Cosanga y Quijos, en la Ceja de Montaña Oriental de los Andes...
The decoupling of environment and political change in the prehistoric southern Titicaca Basin (2017)
As the greater project of this symposium attests, we want to become more aware of the constraints of our historical training and try to not separate culture from nature, or politics from the environment in our study of the past. Towards that end, the authors have been working on understanding water and lake level regimes of the southern Titicaca Basin, to better understand the history of this shallow lake and the people that lived around it from the Formative through the Late Horizon. ...
Deep Histories and Persistent Places: Repetitive Mound-Building and Mimesis in the Jama Valley Landscape, Coastal Ecuador (2018)
This paper explores the notions of ‘material memory’ and human agency in deep time as expressed in the repetitive reconstruction of earthen platform mounds over some three millennia in the Jama Valley of coastal Manabí Province, Ecuador. Empirical evidence of repetitive mound-building is presented over a long stratigraphic record extending from approximately 2030 BCE to about 1260 CE, and special emphasis is given to the site of San Isidro, a major civic-ceremonial site and ‘persistent place’...
The Defensive Conformation of the Maritime Space in the Bay of Cartagena de Indias (Colombia) during the Eighteenth Century (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. Cartagena de Indias’ geostrategic importance for the European colonial powers in the eighteenth century led to the creation of defense infrastructures and the development of practices to strengthen and protect the coastal territory. All the infrastructures and cultural practices inherent to the “militarization” of this territory...
Defining Identity during Revitalization: Taki Onqoy in the Chicha-Soras Valley (Ayacucho, Peru) (2017)
Investigations into Early Colonial Period status and identity of New World indigenous people have focused on assemblages of Spanish and indigenous goods in domestic and public contexts (Deagan 2003, Rice 2012). These studies have investigated how access to new goods and foodways may have reflected status among indigenous people, or how use of these imports in specific contexts were markers of changing identities. This paper presents excavation results at Iglesiachayoq (Ayacucho, Peru), an Inka...
Demographic Analysis of a Looted Late Intermediate Period Tomb, Chincha Valley, Peru (2015)
Ethnohistorical and archaeological sources establish that the Chincha Valley on Peru’s south coast hosted a populous and economically complex polity during the Late Intermediate Period (1200-1470 CE). A 2013 survey of the middle valley revealed more than 40 cemeteries containing over five hundred highly visible, above-ground collective tombs resembling highland chullpas. To establish a baseline demographic profile for this mortuary tradition, we conducted an osteological analysis of one looted...
Dennis Stanford's Legacy in Latin America (2018)
The influence that Dennis Stanford has had on archaeologists (and others) working in Latin America on the topic of early peopling is discussed, with specific reference to lithic technology, migratory models, and logistical/academic support.
Detecting Pre-Columbian Paleoecological Disturbance in the Lower Amazon (2016)
Amazonia is a major reservoir of biodiversity that has been influenced by anthropogenic activities for millennia. However, the temporal and spatial scale of pre-Columbian land use and its modern legacy on Amazonian landscapes are among the most debated topics in New World archaeology, paleoecology and conservation. This research investigates pre-Columbian (3000-1492 AD) land-use on Amazonian landscapes near the confluence of the Tapajós and Amazon rivers, a region once occupied by the capital of...
Determination of Burial Locations Using Soil Analyses at the Loyola Plantation in French Guiana, 1668-1763 (2017)
Our paper discusses the approach used to determine the location of burials in an equatorial environment where organic preservation is nil. Before using the space of the plantation cemetery to preserve the memory of the enslaved who lived at the plantation we had to demonstrate the extant of the cemetery using soil analyses. Memory of that period is a fleeting souvenir among local residents and we want to use archaeology to address issues with which they are confronted in order for them to...
Developing a "Mound Literacy" for the Late Archaic Norte Chico Region (2016)
During the Late Archaic Period, dramatic cultural transformations took place along the north central coast of Peru in a region known as the Norte Chico. These changes included a transition from hunting-gathering-fishing to farming, more intense social interaction, new kinds of power relationships between leaders and respondent populations, and the construction of monumental ceremonial architecture—all hallmarks of emergent social complexity. This paper moves beyond questions of why people built...