South America (Geographic Keyword)
626-650 (1,325 Records)
The Gallinazo and Mochica of northern coastal Peru lived side-by-side for centuries. However, the nature of their social interrelationships (one or two ethnic or social groups) is a continuing topic of debate as such complexity is one of the hallmarks of pre-Hispanic central Andean civilization. How can meaningful dimensions of social differentiation and complex social interrelationships be elucidated through archaeological investigation? To answer this question, we present our integrated...
Integrated Geophysical Surveys at Archaic and Formative Archaeological Sites in Tumbes, Peru (2015)
In this poster, we interpret data collected through nondestructive geophysical methods at the prehistoric sites of Santa Rosa and El Porvenir in the northern region of Tumbes, Peru. In late May and early June 2014, a program of integrated geophysical survey incorporating magnetometer and ground penetrating radar sought to identify subsurface archaeological features at the two sites. Previous excavations at these sites provided material data dating from 4750 BC and revealed architectural shifts...
Integrating archaeobotany to provide Insight into domestic and public ritual in southern Brazil (2017)
Archaeobotanical results are integrated with archaeological and paleoecological data for the southern proto-Jê of the southern Brazilian highlands. Results from a domestic structure displays a pattern of architectural termination and renewal that not only uncovers an ancient ritual practice, but also reveals practices of plant management when considered alongside paleoecological data. Within the wider context, the data support a change in the performance of ritual practices revolving around fire...
Integrating Bones, Soils and Dates: Late Pleistocene-Holocene Settings and Human Occupations in the Pampas of Argentina (2016)
A great increase of archaeological knowledge from the Pampean region of Argentina occurred in the last 20 years. Three main approaches were explored in detail by means of archaeological research that contributed to broadening our understanding of hunter-gatherers in the past: interdisciplinary studies, geochronology, and taphonomy. These perspectives were either initiated or reinforced in our projects by Eileen Johnson. The aim of this presentation is to highlight the main contributions that...
Interaction and Ethnic Boundaries in the Lurin valley: Yauyos and Yschmas in the archaeological record (2015)
The Peruvian central coast is widely known in the archaeological literature as the locus of small polities that co-existed in environments of limited resources through cooperation and competition. However, most archaeological research has been greatly influenced by ethnohistoric accounts which populated the Late Intermediate Period in the Andes with a number of warring societies, and not on direct archaeological evidence. Recent research points towards a more complex scenario, in which the Inka...
Interaction through time: diachronical composition of rockart panels in Central Brazil (2016)
The Central Brazil has a large number of rock art sites, with remarkable stylistic variability. Trying to understand such variability, the Brazilian archaeologists proposed chrono-stylistic units to analyse the stylistic changes in diferent regions. In some specific areas, the studies of stylistic changes led us to perceveing another dimension of that variability: the diachronical interactions. This presentation tries to highlight specific behavior of new paintings, when they reoccupy rock walls...
Interactions across the frontier? Exploring interpretations of ceramic production and design on the upper Tapajós. (2016)
Excavations at ADE sites on the Upper Tapajós River, south of the Amazon, have unearthed ceramics that point to the existence of a cultural frontier along the Tapajós River’s rapids. At Sawre Muybu (SM) and Pajaú, on the river’s right bank, both fine and coarse pottery present techno-stylistic modes – including the use of either quartz sand or sponge spicule (cauixí) temper, of applied and punctuated fillets of clay and clay nubbins – that echo elements of Lower Amazon and Orinocan ceramics...
The Interior Frontier: Intercultural Exchange in the Formative Period (1000 B.C.-A.D. 400) of Quillagua, Antofagasta Region, northern Chile (2017)
Today the modern village of Quillagua, an oasis in the hyperarid Atacama Desert, is of limited regional economic importance. However, there is strong evidence to support the argument that, in the past, the village was a node of ancient routes linking the populations of the Pampa, the Pacific Coast, the River Loa, and the Salar of Atacama. Documents from the 18th century suggest that Quillagua was, in fact, an "internal frontier" between populations residing to the north and south of the oasis....
The Interrelated Establishment of Sedentary Lifestyles in Tropical Lowland South America in the Late Holocene (2015)
The archaeological record of lowland South America shows the widespread establishment of sedentary life styles, associated with marked signs of landscape modification, starting around the mid first millennium BC. Such changes had a large scale, ranging from the lower Orinoco basin in the north all the way to the mouth of the Plata river in the south, albeit with earlier dates towards the north. This paper argues that this process of change needs to be understood from a continental perspective,...
The Interrelationships Between the Natural Environment and Four Sambaquis, Coast of Santa Catarina, Brazil (1974)
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Intersubjectivity in Inka Visual Culture (2016)
The Inka of western South America, who reached the height of their power in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, identified certain rocks as sharing many characteristics with human beings. Such rocks were sentient and some of them had the ability to speak and move. Some rocks were said to eat and drink the foods and liquids humans eat and drink, dress in human clothing, and speak Runasimi, the language spoken by the Inka. The Inka, in recognizing the sentience of certain rocks, practiced...
INTERVENCIÓN DE LA TEXTILERÍA LOCAL COMO ESTRATEGIA DEL TAWANTINSUYO PARA VINCULAR A LAS POBLACIONES DE ATACAMA CON EL NOROESTE ARGENTINO (1350-1535 DC) (2017)
Los materiales textiles tienen la capacidad de contener información relacionada con situaciones de contacto cultural y el grado de intensidad de éstas. Bajo este principio se estudió en forma sistemática la textilería del sitio Doncellas en el Noroeste Argentino -tanto aquella que se encuentra en el Museo Etnográfico Juan B. Ambrosetti en Buenos Aires, como la porción depositada en el Museo del Pucará en Tilcara- y aquella proveniente de sitios del Salar de Atacama y de la cuenca del Loa,...
Introduction to the Session with a Review of Past Ceramic Technological Studies in the Andes and the Amazon (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Andean and Amazonian Ceramics: Advances in Technological Studies" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As an introduction to this session on technological studies of Andean and Amazonian ceramics, we will briefly review previous research orientations in the field leading to the present investigations and advances in ceramic studies, both archaeometric and technological, in Latin America.
Investigating Plant Management in the Tucumã (Pará-Brazil) and Monte Castelo (Rondônia- Brazil) Shell Midden using Phytoliths Analysis (2016)
This paper will address and evaluate the micro botanical remains of the Monte Castelo (9343 calB.P) shell mound in southwestern lowland Amazonia (state of Rondonia) and the sambaqui do Tucumã (7.000 -4.000 B.P) located on the southeast lower Amazon River (state of Para). The focus in identifying and evaluating the floral dietary peculiarities of these specific pre-Colombian settlements from the principle that the south and southeast Brazilian shell mound occupants are known to have had a...
Investigating Rock Art in the Coastal Valleys of Arequipa (2016)
Rock art takes on a diversity of forms in the coastal valleys of Arequipa ranging from pictographs and petroglyphs to larger geoglyphs and rock alignments. This poster documents initial steps being taken to document and understand the contributions of all forms or rock art to the sacred geography and cultural landscape of this region before, during, and after the Middle Horizon period (400-1000 A.D.) Techniques being used include photo documentation, mapping, and viewshed/intervisibility...
An Investigation of Dietary Histories and Skeletal Health in a Muisca Population (950-1350 AD, Sabana de Bogotá, Colombia) (2015)
Highly stratified societies are characterized by differentiation between groups along various socially defined axes. The Tibanica community (950-1350 AD), part of the Muisca culture from the Sabana de Bogotá, Colombia, is an ideal population to study how social roles and identities are intertwined with human diet and skeletal health. Here we present stable isotope data to investigate the complexity of human diets across the life course by comparing childhood diets to adulthood diets for the same...
INVESTIGATIONS AT THE MOUTH OF THE RÍO ICA, PERU: A PRECERAMIC RECORD OF RICH SEAS, FOG-MEADOWS, INCIPIENT AGRICULTURE AND SHIFTING SHORELINES (2015)
The earliest evidence of human occupation on the Río Ica, south coast Peru are middens at the river’s mouth, accumulated through episodic fisher-hunter-gatherer occupations during the Middle Preceramic Period. We present results of ongoing investigations and dating of these sites to between 7,000 and 6,000 Cal yr BP. Apart from a variety of rich marine resources, the occupants of these middens also exploited the river estuary, riparian woodlands in the river floodplain and lomas (or ‘fog...
Investigations of Nasca-Wari Interaction and Imperial Expansion during the Middle Horizon: A View from the Las Trancas Valley, Nasca, Peru. (2015)
During the Middle Horizon (AD 750-1000) the Wari Empire established at least three colonies (Pacheco, Pataraya, and Inkawasi) in the Nasca Valley and its tributaries. Archaeological survey of the Southern Nasca Region conducted by Katharina Schreiber and students in previous decades observed dramatic changes to the local settlement patterns during this period (Edwards 2010, Schreiber 1999). The number and size of habitation sites in the Nasca and Taruga Valleys decreased but increased in the Las...
Irreducible Reducción: Archaeological Microhistory at Mawchu Llacta, a Planned Colonial Town in Highland Peru (2017)
The Reducción General de Indios (General Resettlement of Indians) in the Viceroyalty of Peru brought about one of the largest mass resettlement programs ever enacted by a colonial power, forcibly displacing some 1.5 million native Andeans to compact towns (reducciones) built around plazas and churches. As a colonial utopic project, the Reducción was to remake the Andean world in the ideal self-image of Spanish civic and religious community. As materialized manifestations in the Andean...
Irrigation Systems as a Chronological Proxy? Continuous Occupation at the Valley Edge, Chicama Valley, Peru. (2015)
The extension of irrigation systems from valley centers into the desert margins has been used by archaeologists in the Virú, Moche and Chicama valleys both as a form of relative dating and as a measure of societal complexity. Chronological periods in these valleys have become tied into uniform evolutionary sequences: the expansion of irrigation systems is correlated with population growth, technological advancement, and social hierarchy in the form of increased levels of bureaucracy and the...
Is it a Priestess? Preliminary analysis of the excavations of a Late Moche Chamber Tomb from San Jose de Moro, North Coast of Peru (2015)
San Jose de Moro, located in the North Coast of Peru, is a well-known ceremonial site where ritual practices were held over a span of 1000 years. This, in relation with the burial of high rank individuals whom are believed to have performed important roles within the Moche society, especially during the Late Moche Period, places this site as one of high importance for the understanding of the Moche society along its region. This paper will present the results of excavations held in 2013, when we...
Isotopes of Coastal Ecuador (2017)
A preliminary report is presented on research into the diet, health, and mobility patterns for prehistoric coastal Ecuador, based on an analysis of both modern data and archaeological data from Site 035 Salango. An assessment of dietary habits provides insight into a broad range of societal developments, such as the implementation and timing of maize agriculture. Additional insights are provided by an osteological evaluation of human remains, with a particular focus on evidence of pathologies...
Isotopic Analysis of Dietary Variation in Formative Period Chile (2015)
Northern Chile's Atacama Desert is one of the driest environments on Earth. In fact, it has been suggested that the region serves as a good model for living conditions on Mars. By employing a number of resource management strategies including complex systems of trade, humans have lived in the inhospitable region for millennia. Here we present the results of stable isotope analysis of seven Formative Period (1500 B.C.-A.D. 500) humans from the Ancachi site near the modern town of Quillagua....
An Isotopic Evaluation of the Classic Andean Mobility Models in Northern Chile during the Late Intermediate Period (AD 900-1450) (2017)
Research on the Late Intermediate Period (AD 900-1450) in northern Chile has been strongly influenced by two mobility models: John Murra’s classic vertical archipelago model and the more recent gyratory mobility model. The use and application of these two models, however, is problematic since there is insufficient supporting archaeological evidence. The use of stable isotope analysis allows a direct approach for studying diet and mobility patterns, in contrast to material culture. The aim of...
Isotopic Perspectives on Animal Husbandry Practices (2017)
This paper presents carbon and nitrogen isotope data from camelid (llama and alpaca) bone, hair, and wool textiles from sites throughout the north coast of Peru spanning the Early Intermediate Period through the Late Intermediate Period (200 BC – AD 1476). Through these case studies this paper explores how stable isotope data can be interpreted using various statistical methods to infer a deeper understanding of human-animal interactions in the past than would be possible using only traditional...