South America (Geographic Keyword)
451-475 (1,291 Records)
As obligate tool users, humans habitually reconfigure material-resource distributions. It is proposed here that such resource restructuring may have played an important role in shaping hunter-gatherer mobility decisions and the emergent macro-structure of settlement patterns. This paper presents a model of hunter-gatherer mobility in which modifications of places, including the deposition of cultural materials, bias future mobility decisions. With the aid of an agent-based model, this simple...
Forest Clearance Among the Yanomamo, Observations and Implications (1979)
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Forest islands and raised fields in the 2nd millennium BCE Amazon (2015)
Pre-Columbian earthworks in the Llanos de Mojos show discrete spatial patterns, at different scales. For example, large mounds and causeways are found in the southeast, causeways and raised fields in the south, and large raised fields in the center and to the north. Recent excavations in forest islands associated with raised fields in Central Mojos identify occupations dating to the second millennium BCE. This raises the question of how to integrate different elements into histories of...
Forgotten mummies. Reflections on the management of human remains exhibits in Ecuadorean museums. (2015)
This paper will address the role of the human remains collections in Ecuadorian archaeological museums through the comparison between the case of the National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden Holland and three Ecuadorian museums: the National Museum, the Sumpa Lovers museum and the Jacinto Jijón y Caamaño museums. This comparison will be done on the basis of archaeological ethical practice in regards to human remains and the experience and points of view of the museum personnel that work with these...
Form is Emptiness, Emptiness is Form: Reimagining the Pyramids at Cochasquí, Ecuador (2017)
The archaeological site of Cochasquí, located north of Quito in the Ecuadorean highlands, has long been defined by its massive quadrangular pyramids with extended entry ramps. When Max Uhle arrived on site in 1932 he focused his excavations on the largest of the fifteen known pyramids. Uhle’s work laid the foundations for the interpretations and the chronology of the site, which are still applied today. Archaeologist Udo Oberem conducted the most extensive excavations on site between 1964 and...
Formation and Transformation of Identities in the Andes: The Constructions of Childhood among the Tiwanaku (2016)
Despite their importance, little attention has been paid to childhood and the roles of children in the ancient Andes. Here, we focus our case study on the Tiwanaku polity of the South Central Andes, which expanded through migration and culture contact across parts of Bolivia, Peru, Chile and Argentina between ca. 500-1100AD. The way the lives of children are structured and shaped are fundamental to understanding the formation and maintenance of states and their impact on the life experiences of...
Formative mobilities: Moving through the Atacama Desert, Northern Chile (2017)
Social spheres are constituted by population movements. Mobility entails not only the circulation of material goods, but of people, collective imaginary, experiences, flows of information, and knowledge. In this paper, we examine multiple types of movements through the Atacama Desert during the Formative Period (ca. 500 BCE—700 CE). Here, mobility required displacements whose variability included pedestrian travels, the movement of large llama caravans, and the use of sea lion-skin rafts to sail...
The Formative process as discourses of nature and culture: the case of Tarapacá, Atacama Desert (Northern Chile). (2015)
The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a critical review of the concept of Formative (ca. 2800-1000 AP) and its ontological and epistemological assumptions through our studies in Tarapacá, in the Atacama Desert (Chile). Through this case, our purpose is to complicate the notions or radical distinctions between nature and culture, farming and gathering, mobility and sedentism, among other categorizations upon which the Formative as Neolithic Revolution has been defined. The materiality...
Formative Urbanism in the Andean Lake Titicaca Basin (2016)
Archaeologists tend to apply the term ‘formative’ to phases of emergent complexity in a given world region. I critically engage the concept by honing in on what I term incipient urbanism as a core dimension of formative complexity. I draw on comparative data from across the Americas to situate formative complexity and incipient urbanism in the Andean Lake Titicaca basin. Archaeologists working in the region have known for years that by at least 800 BC, the region was home to multiple...
Forming bonds in the Late Intermediate Period Huaura Valley and central coast of Peru (2015)
This paper will examine the ceramic forms from excavated contexts at Cerro Colorado de Huacho, Huaura Valley, Peru in order to address conflict, cooperation, and exchange on the central coast of Peru in the Late Intermediate Period (LIP) (AD 1000-1450). Though dominated by Chancay black-on-white and Lauri impressed ceramic styles, the range of diversity in forms from Cerro Colorado is sizable. The diversity of these forms from will be compared and contrasted to ceramics from contemporaneous...
A Fortified Frontier - LIP Defensive Settlement in the Moche Valley (2015)
During the Late Intermediate Period (LIP, 1000-1476 CE), the florescence of the Chimú Empire in the Moche Valley on the coast corresponded with an explosion of fortified and defensive settlement up-valley and into the nearby highlands. Previous scholarship has associated these forts with tentative stages of Chimú expansion into the middle and upper reaches of the Moche Valley, placing the imperial frontier as located in the transitional zone between the river valley and the highlands above....
Fortified lookouts and border patrol in the Late Intermediate Period Colca Valley, Peru (2015)
During the Late Intermediate Period (AD 1000-1450), the Colca Valley in the southern Peruvian highlands was heavily fortified. Survey of hilltop fortifications (pukaras) identified a class of large non-habitational pukaras located along the rim of the valley that were perhaps designed to monitor the vast expanses of puna surrounding the valley. Additionally, a prehispanic road which leads into the valley from the south passes through a primary defensive wall at one of the sites—further...
Fortified settlements of the Upper basin of the Sama River (Tacna) during the Late Intermediate Period (1100-1450 AD) (2017)
During the Late Intermediate Period (1100-1450 AD), the upper valleys of Tacna, between Sitajara and Tarata, are known to have been multietnic areas of contacts between coastal and altiplano populations. Our research concerns the fortified settlements, called Pucara, to better understand the cohabitation relationships with different scales: from the study of the fortifications themselves to the territory analysis with the identification of the inhabitants of these fortresses.
The Fossil Signature of Late Pleistocene Patagonian Carnivores (2015)
A regional study of Late Pleistocene bone assemblages is used for the study of Patagonian extinct carnivore niches. The excavation of dens, distributional patterns, habitat and prey selection and the study of living analogs are some of the main research lines. This study offers information about the conditions of the environment immediately before the arrival of humans, and indicates the conditions under which Patagonian archaeological bone assemblages are destroyed or contaminated with bones...
Fractal and extended identities: the dynamics of ceramic styles from Monte Alegre, Lower Amazon. (2016)
This paper presents the initial results from analysis of ceramic materials from open air sites in Monte Alegre, a region that has long been known for abundant and impressive rock art sites, and for the very early human occupation at Pedra Pintada cave excavated by Ana Roosevelt 20 years ago. A new research project in the area with a broader regional approach so as to explain the enormous diversity of sites, has included now sites from a more recent occupation beginning around the XII century AD....
Fragments of the Past: Applying Microarchcaeological Techniques to House Floors at Tumilaca, Moquegua, Peru (2016)
For decades archaeologists have been trying to develop methodologies that will help them determine what activities took place in and around domestic structures. Since people tend to clean activity areas, especially those that are used repeatedly, visible artifacts like pottery, bones and stone tools are rarely discovered in the context where they were originally used. Instead, such artifacts are usually discovered in refuse heaps or other secondary contexts. Microarchaeology, the study of the...
The French Scientific Mission to South America (1903): the controversies and material legacy of the first extensive excavations in Tiahuanaco, Bolivia (2017)
In the context of a pluridisciplinary mission organized by the French government in Chile, Argentina, Peru and Bolivia in 1903, archaeological excavations were conducted in the monumental site of Tiahuanaco by the naturalist Georges Courty. During his 3-month stay, he conducted extensive fieldwork in the Akapana mound, the Sunken Temple, the Kalasasaya, and the Chunchukala and Putuni structures. The material corpus unearthed is estimated to consist in over 1400 artifacts, later divided between...
From "Nation" to "Indio" and "Español": Transitions in Indigenous Culture in the Missions of San Antonio (2018)
The Spanish colonial advance into Texas during the late 17th century resulted in the establishment of several missions to house members of dozens of indigenous groups and a handful of presidios to protect the missions from raiding bands of Comanches and Apaches. The Padres that were in charge of the missions enforced systematic policies and procedures to affect change in the identity of the resident indigenous nations. The policies and procedures specifically targeted religious believes,...
From Bedrock to Biface: An Examination of Wari Lithic Technology within the Moquegua Valley of Southern Peru (2015)
This research investigates lithic artifacts, and debitage recovered from Middle Horizon (A.D. 550 – 1000) households in the Moquegua Valley, Peru to assess models of Wari state expansion and polity interaction. While lithic technology, in the form of formal and informal flake tools, are present throughout complex societies, they are traditionally overlooked by archaeologists and result in few published studies. This study examines two Wari sites (Cerro Baul and Cerro Mejia) in the upper Moquegua...
From Cooking to Smelting, the Social Technology of Pyrotechnology of Earth Ovens (2018)
The effects of earth ovens on societies is a topic that has not been consider much, mainly because the limitation of archaeological findings. Because our research has been mainly concentrated in floodplains environments, we have been successful in recovering a large sample that allows to propose explanations on the variability of them, and the relationship that features have in understanding some basic aspects of the social characteristic of the societies that created them. As a study case, we...
From Dispersal to "Disappearance": AD 1000-1250 in the Upper Moquegua Valley, Peru (2015)
In the Moquegua Valley, Peru, the decline of the greater Tiwanaku system circa AD 1000 was accompanied by a shift to a more dispersed settlement pattern, as populations moved out of the large towns of the middle valley and established smaller sites on the coast and in the upper valley. In this paper I focus on the upper valley, where the longevity of occupation at post-expansive sites and the presence of secondary occupations offer an opportunity to examine the centuries’ long trajectory of...
From ethnography to archaeometry: ceramic production and styles in the Río Grande de San Juan Basin, Bolivia (2016)
The Yavi-Chicha phenomenon in the circumpuneño Andes has been extensively discussed, however, little systematic research has focused on systems of ceramic production. Consequently, multiple questions remain unanswered regarding the organizational systems of Chicha communities during the Late Intermediate Period (ca. A.D. 1000-1450). Today, the core region of the Chichas is an exceptional area of ceramic production. Nearly 70% of the inhabitants of the town of Chipihuayco are actively producing...
From foragers to producers: desert gardening at the Archaic Peruvian site of Quebrada de Burros (2015)
Research at the Peruvian site of Quedrada de Burros (Dep. of Tacna, Peru) evidenced a very early settelement of fiserhmen and shel-gatherers on the desert Pacific littoral. The campsite has been occupied during the Early and Middel Holocene, between 10'000 and 6'000BP. The analysis of organic remains indicate that since the beginning, the different groups not only relied on ocean resources but also exploiter the surrounding vegetation. In particular, phytolith analyses show that the settlers...
From Frontier to Forefront: Microbotanical Evidence of Early Holocene Horticulture in the Middle Cauca Valley, Colombia (2015)
Archaeological research in the Middle Cauca region of Colombia has identified significant human presence during the early to middle Holocene (10,600-3600 uncal BP), associated with lithic technology focused on plant processing (e.g. handstones, milling stone bases, and "hoes"). Starch residue analysis on these tools has documented the early availability and use of several domesticates; both exogenous, such as maize (Zea mays) and manioc (Manihot esculenta), and possibly indigenous, such as...
From herders to wage-laborers and back again: mountain mobility in the Puna of Atacama, northern Chile. (2016)
Towards the end of the 19th Century, the subsistence mode of indigenous Atacameño society transited from an agricultural-pastoral economy to a more diversified capitalist-based one. This transformation resulted from a growing mining industry in the northern region of Chile. While part of the indigenous population migrated to the new productive enclaves, others remained in their territory, especially the herders of the puna. These highlanders, however, also took part of the new capitalist order...