South America (Geographic Keyword)
451-475 (1,326 Records)
Zooarchaeological analysis of the Cabeçuda shell mound identified a number of Ariidae (Genidens barbus, G. genidens) neurocrania with exceptional preservation. This site is a large mound located in southern Brazil, and the faunal collection was sampled during archaeological interventions done in the 1950s. Generally, Ariidae specimens are a common find in Brazilian shell mounds. However, Cabeçuda is the only site that presents elements with this level of preservation. Catfish neurocrania are...
Fishing and Hunting By the Bari of Columbia. In: Working Papers On South American Indians - Volume 2 (1980)
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.
Floods, Famines, and Fagan: Recent Research on El Niño in the Age of Andean States and Empires (2015)
In 1997-98, the first mega-Niño of the internet age devastated vast regions of the equatorial Pacific basin and altered weather throughout the globe; El Niño became a household term. Within two years, Brian Fagan had published "Floods, Famines, and Emperors: El Niño and the Fate of Civilizations", calling global attention to potential impacts of the phenomenon in prehistory. The Peruvian coast is ground-zero for El Niño, and Fagan included a chapter on Peru in his book. Over the last 15 years,...
Focusing Efforts to Impact the Precolumbian Antiquities Trade (2017)
How can we as archaeologists best focus our efforts to have a positive impact upon the Precolumbian antiquities market? We will discuss some of the most important restrictions upon law enforcement investigations into antiquities smuggling, by drawing upon case experience. We will discuss how both foreign and American government departments may overestimate law enforcement’s ability to pursue legal action based on a flawed understanding of constitutional law; how antiquities smuggling is of low...
Food Consumption and Animal Exploitation at Minaspata, Cuzco, Peru (2016)
Minaspata, a site located in the Cuzco Valley of the south-central Peruvian Andes, contains evidence of occupation spanning continuously from the Early Horizon through the end of the Inca Empire. In 2013, several units were excavated in order to better understand the social transformations which occurred in local populations due to colonial practices, focusing primarily on the early consolidation of the Inca heartland during the early Late Horizon (AD 1400-1532). Analysis of the faunal remains...
Food Distribution and Social Bonding Among the Maminde of Mato Grosso, Brazil (1979)
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.
Food for the Ayllus: Plants Access and Social Meaning in the lowland Tiwanaku sites of Omo and Rio Muerto (2016)
Tiwanaku, one of the first Andean states, spread during the Middle Horizon (AD 500-1000) from the Bolivian Altiplano into the lowland territories of Cochabamba and Moquegua in order to acquire the resources that were lacking in the highlands, a strategy termed by Murra as the "vertical archipelago". Plants such as maize and coca were among the primary resources that the Tiwanaku sought in these valleys, and different social groups, ayllus or elites, were probably in charge of accessing and...
Food in the Contact Zone: Reimagining Highland-Coastal Contact in the Prehispanic Moche Valley of North Coastal Peru (2016)
In this paper, we explore migration and culture contact in the prehispanic Moche Valley of north coastal Peru, specifically through the lens of domestic foodways. During the Early Intermediate Period (EIP, 400 B.C. to A.D. 800), serrano groups from the neighboring highlands colonized many principal river valleys along the Peruvian north coast; however, the nature of highland colonization remains poorly understood. Scholars have envisioned diverse interactions between locals and nonlocals, from...
Food preparation and status: ch’arki versus roasting at Chavin de Huantar (2016)
Based on the chronicles and ethnohistorical documents, the consumption of (more) camelid meat has been linked to groups of high status or rank in the Andes. However, were all camelid dishes created equal? At the site of Chavin de Huantar, previous (Miller and Burger 1995) and recent zooarchaeological investigations provide evidence for the consumption of ch’arki (traditional way to dry meat on the bone) and the consumption of roasted meat in different areas. Can the particular preparation of...
Forager Mobility in Constructed Environments (2015)
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)
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.
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...