South America (Geographic Keyword)
701-725 (1,326 Records)
Despite its extreme aridity, the Atacama Desert (18-25ºS) was not a biogeographical barrier during the period concerned with the early peopling of the area and of other regions in South America (12.6 ka). The Imilac and Punta Negra (24ºS) high altitude basins, located in the Precordillera of the Andes (3000 masl), are among the few micro-regions of the Atacama Desert which were continually occupied during the Late Pleistocene to Early Holocene transition (12.6-10.2 ka). Results from the analyses...
Liturgical textiles from the Spanish colonial reducción of Santa Cruz de Tuti, Colca Valley, Peru (2017)
A highly visible symbol within the church, liturgical cloth plays an important role in the communication of ideas about the wealth and authority of the Catholic Church. During the colonial period in the Andes, the influence of liturgical textiles extended to reinforcing ideas about the power of the Spanish Empire as well as the role of indigenous populations within it. Although cloth production during the period of Spanish colonization is a subject discussed to some extent by art historians...
Lived Experiences of Disease and Trauma among Manteño Burials from Buen Suceso (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Finding Community in the Past and Present through the 2022 PARCC Field School at Buen Suceso, Ecuador" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Skeletal measures of pathology and trauma can reveal lived experiences of individuals and broader patterns of health and disease within past communities. These are important lines of inquiry at both the individual and community level as they may reflect the identities held by those...
The Lives of Mountains: A Cultural Orogeny in Peru's North Highlands (2016)
There is no more palpable or ambivalent a presence in the Andean landscape than that of mountains--distant and harboring, fertile and terrible, rocky and liquid, inviting and impervious. Yet their understanding for Andean groups is only in its infancy, and largely informed by insights from Inka, colonial and ethnographic studies. This paper focuses on pre-Inka engagements with 'mountains' as nonhuman beings on the landscape, especially around Peru's Cordillera Blanca. I am interested in when and...
Living on the river shore: Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene Human Adaptations in the Uruguay River basin (2015)
This presentation provides new data on investigations on the middle basin of Uruguay River. The most recent research on Northern Uruguay in the K87 Tigre type site has yielded radiocarbon dates with similar ages to Clovis (ca. 13.000 cal yr BP). At a regional level, a settlement pattern emerges where the Paleoamerican residential sites are located on the banks of Uruguay River near the mouth of arroyos, near "rapidos", natural passages (pasos), and small cascades (cachoeiras). This pattern...
Living Things: fishermen, archaeologists and fish-traps in Amazon, Brazil. (2016)
This presentation deals with the use of ancient fish-traps by fishermen of Vila de Joanes, Ilha do Marajó, Amazon, concerning the status of these sites as a living thing and their role in the constitution of memorial narratives about fishing. Based on research conducted with a group of fishermen I suggest that: a) the contemporary use of the fish-traps is not an act of destruction, but a memorial engagement with the past; b) the continuous process of decay and reconstruction of the fish-traps by...
Local and Inca Cross Regional Interactions: studies from the Northern Ecuador frontier. (2015)
This paper focuses on the importance of interregional contact along border zones as we seek to understand the nature and impacts of interactions between cultural worlds. We are particularly concerned with how archaeologists construct and methodologically recover evidence of these interactions. Ultimately, and not surprisingly, people within these zones show innovative ways of expanding, exploiting or resisting transfers of knowledge, styles, technologies, raw materials and material culture. ...
Local Communities, Ceramic Use, and the Uneven Development of Social Complexity in the Late Valdivia Period of Coastal Ecuador (2015)
The Late Valdivia period of the coast of Ecuador is often portrayed as one of movement, as sites in the former "heartland" adjacent to the Santa Elena Peninsula were abandoned and new, larger sites were founded at the former peripheries to the north and south. These new sites are implicated in the development of incipient social hierarchy within Valdivia society. However, recent research at the site of Buen Suceso in the Manglaralto Valley suggests that this process of developing social...
Local Effects of Imperial Craft Production in Highland and Coastal Peru (2015)
During the Late Intermediate Period (LIP, c. AD 1000-1400), longstanding traditions of specialized craft work and distribution of wealth goods on the north coast of Peru culminated under the rule of the Chimú Empire. In contrast, the same period in the highlands shows little evidence of specialization or large-scale access to wealth goods during the advent of the Inca Empire. This paper will compare the evidence for craft production and wealth consumption at sites located in valleys near the...
Local food, exotic sacrifices: the tentative summary of the animal management in Castillo de Huarmey. (2017)
Even through the majority of faunal remains so far recovered at Castillo de Huarmey site derived from ceremonial contexts (i.e. main mortuary mausoleum and adjacent palatial complex), studies demonstrate that at the very least, the site’s elite inhabitants extensively exploited local resources, and simultaneously benefited from developed trade connections. At the core of animal management was the extensive camelid husbandry. The standard zooarchaeological analysis and mortality profiles...
Local Mortuary Practice and Inca Imperial Conquest in the Middle Chincha Valley, Peru (2019)
This is an abstract from the "From the Paracas Culture to the Inca Empire: Recent Archaeological Research in the Chincha Valley, Peru" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. I investigate the relationship between local mortuary practice and imperial conquest in the middle Chincha Valley of Peru, a landscape that was incorporated into the Inca Empire in the 15th century. Indigenous groups developed strategies for dealing with invasive imperial control. One...
Local Ritual and Social Change in the Andean Formative Period at Hualcayán, Peru (2016)
Research in the Andes has long focused on how early complex societies performed elaborate rituals in monumental spaces to both organize communities and establish authority. In pursuing this research for the Formative Period (1800-1 BC), comparisons between local ritual practices and the regional traditions of Kotosh and Chavín have overshadowed the study of how and why communities selectively altered and replaced ritual practices over the long term. For example, how did different generations...
Localized Formative Traditions in the Upper Nepeña River Valley, Ancash, Peru: The 2015 Excavations at the Cosma Archaeological Complex (2016)
This paper will explore the development and use of a localized ceremonial complex at the base of the Cordillera Negra Mountains, in coastal Ancash. Located at the headwaters of the Nepeña River valley at an elevation of 2650 masl, the Cosma Archaeological Complex shows a repeated occupation from the Pre-Ceramic through Late Horizon. This paper will cover the chronology and ritual use of the two main ceremonial mounds: Karecoto, and Acshipucoto, which date from the Pre-Ceramic through Final...
Long-Distance Adoption of Exotic Cultigens in Northwest Peru: Problems and Processes (2015)
By 7,000-6,000 BP on the coast and in the western highlands of northern Peru, several long-distance food crops, whether domesticated or not, were adopted by local communities. Most of the crops are derived from Neo-Tropical environments far to the north, perhaps in the Ecuadorian and Colombian lowlands, or from the eastern side of the Andes. The technological, demographic and economic mechanisms and processes by which this adoption process took place is considered for several archaeological...
Long-term social interaction is reflected in parallel linguistic structures among the languages of the lower Amazon (2016)
A central concept in historical linguistics is that of the sprachbund, or linguistic area, where languages of different families show shared structural traits as a result of long-term social interaction rather than shared inheritance. Through language contact phenomena such as bilingualism, calquing, the formation of trade languages, etc., this process of linguistic diffusion and convergence sometimes flies under the scientific radar, especially in regions such as Amazonia where there tend to be...
Looking for Invisible Makers Marks: The distribution of Formative Period sherds in adobes at the Omo M10A Tiwanaku temple (2016)
This paper expands on previous work which concluded that the Omo M10A Tiwanaku temple in Moquegua, Peru, was constructed using, in some amount, adobes containing cultural materials from antecedent Huaracane populations. Exploring this data further may reveal social and ecological conditions during construction of the Tiwanaku temple at Omo M10A. Analyses will include spatial distribution of Huaracane sherds within architectural collapse, and associating these architectural collapse areas with...
Los Cambios Climáticos y Sociales una Ecuación Positiva: Los Datos en el Complejo Arqueológico de Huacas del Sol y de la Luna (2017)
Los antiguos estudios sobre la cultura Moche, o Mochica, consideraban que un mega Niño (550-600 d.C.) fue la causa del abandono del sitio y el traslado de la capital Moche a Galindo. Los datos recuperados en los últimos 25 años en el complejo arqueológico Huacas del Sol y de la Luna ofrecen una secuencia ocupacional casi continua desde el siglo I d.C. hasta el siglo XIV. Durante este tiempo se han identificado tres grandes periodos: los dos primeros corresponden a la ocupación Moche y el tercero...
Los Morteros and Pampa de las Salinas: Early Monumentality and Environmental Change in Preceramic Peru (2018)
Los Morteros is a preceramic archaeological site located on Pampa de las Salinas, in the lower Chao Valley, north coast of Peru. Archaeological excavations in 1976, Los Morteros was identified as a "stabilized dune" whose top was used as a cemetery for pre-pottery people around cal. 5000 BP. Excavations in 2012 and 2016 have uncovered a very long and complex history of occupation of Los Morteros which includes the presence of early adobe monumental architecture dating before 5500 cal. BP, more...
Los Muiscas de la Sabana de Bogotá: Muchos cacicazgos? Patrones de asentamiento, demografía y organización política en la parte baja de la cuenca del río Teusacá. (2017)
Investigaciones recientes en la cuenca baja del río Teusacá -la zona del valle de Sopó-, han proporcionado información regional que permite revisitar con nuevos datos, el tema siempre interesante de cuál era el grado de complejidad de los muiscas -y cuál su patrón general de asentamiento-, al ser ésta considerada como una –sino la más compleja- de las sociedades encontradas por los españoles alrededor de 1540 en el actual territorio de Colombia. A pesar de que ésta perspectiva ha sido respaldada...
Los peces de Salango y la mirada de Richard Cooke hacia Sudamérica (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Unraveling the Mysteries of the Isthmo-Colombian Area’s Past: A Symposium in Honor of Archaeologist Richard Cooke and His Contributions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. En 1989 el Smitnsonian Tropical Research Institute de Panamá, liderado por Ricard Cooke, organizó un curso de formación en estudios neotropicales para arqueólogos del américa latina, participamos profesionales de Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Panamá,...
Lost in Translation in the Formative Period: The Iconography of a Bear from the Formative Period Ceramics (2016)
Throughout ancient Andean culture, animals and their attributes have been depicted in objects of material culture associated with religious ceremonies, political authority, and social status. So far, scholars have focused on only a few types of animals, including felines, serpents, caimans, and eagles, for their significant roles in Andean cosmology and society. One important animal has largely been neglected: the bear, which is actually a major species in the Andean habitat, and which also...
Luminescence Dating at Alice Boer site, Brazil (2016)
The Alice Boer site, in the Rio Claro region of São Paulo state, Brazil, gained some renown in the 1970s as a possible pre-Clovis site. It was excavated in the 1960s by Maria Beltrão and produced a questionable radiocarbon date of 14.2 ± 1.2 BP (uncalibrated) drawn from a very small (for conventional dating) charcoal piece near the bottom of an ant-disturbed cultural layer. A TL date on burned chert of 11 kya was also produced. The presence of artifacts in the lower layers and the integrity of...
Lung-powered copper smelting on the Pampa de Chaparri, Lambayeque department, Peru (2017)
We report here the archaeometallurgical analysis of residues associated with two banks of four lung-powered copper smelting furnaces at site 256AO1, discovered during Hayashida's full-coverage survey of the Pampa de Chaparri in 2008. Calibrated radiocarbon dates place the operation of the furnaces in the Middle Sican period, ca. 1000-1200 cal AD. The furnaces are similar in size and shape to those excavated by Shimada and Epstein at Cerro Huaringa, which is only 15 km away; the smelting process...
Macro-scale History of the Lake Titicaca Region, Peru and Bolivia: A Synthesis and Comparative Analysis of Settlement Patterns (2015)
The Lake Titicaca region of Peru and Bolivia has been extensively surveyed by a number of archaeologists over the past 3 decades, but the accumulated data await systematic synthesis and comparative analysis. This study places the settlement pattern data from a dozen different surveys into a uniform analytic framework that focuses on demographic dynamics and their relationship to political change. Substantial regional variation is apparent in characteristics such as the variability of total...
Macrobotanical Investigation of Sonaji, Taraco Peninsula, Bolivia (2015)
This poster presents the results of a macrobotanical analysis from the site of Sonaji, Bolivia located on the Taraco Peninsula in the Lake Titicaca Basin of the Andes. Sonaji is a low mound built from generations of occupations through the Formative (1500BC-AD 500) and Tiwanaku (AD 500-1100) periods. We consider eleven macrobotanical samples from diverse contexts (middens, floors, pits). These data, when interpreted with ethnographic data and past paleoethnobotanical research from the region,...