South America (Geographic Keyword)
726-750 (1,326 Records)
In the final decades before the Spanish invasion of the Andes, the Inka Empire struggled to maintain its eastern frontier against the imminent threat posed by the invading lowland Chiriguano peoples. Located within this sparsely populated and loosely connected borderland region was the settlement of Pulquina Arriba, an Inka tampu (waystation) strategically constructed along a preexisting indigenous road network that ran adjacent to a rich river valley. The area’s inhabitants were involved in...
Maize starch taphonomy in chicha production: experimental results (2016)
Starch granules can be recovered from a variety archaeological contexts and have been used to interpret cooking technologies. This set of experiments investigated some taphonomic considerations to interpreting chicha (corn beer) production from starch granules. The first experiment examined how far the maize starch granules travelled from the grinding station. Starch could be recovered as far as 10 meters from the grinding site, with dense starch collections happening less than 40 centimeters...
Making and Breaking of Shipibo-Conibo Ceramics. In: Ethnoarchaeology: Implications of Ethnography for Archaeology (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.
Manq'asiñani: Political Dimensions of Foodways on the Taraco Peninsula, Bolivia during the Formative and Tiwanaku Periods (2016)
Multi-year excavations at four sites on the Taraco Peninsula, Bolivia have produced rich plant, faunal, ceramic, and isotopic data that shed light on early foodways in the Lake Titicaca Basin of the Andes. In this paper, we explore the roles food played for the various political entities that emerged and subsided throughout the Formative (1500 BC-AD 400) and Tiwanaku (AD400-1100) periods. From the small, autonomous village polities of the earlier Formative periods to larger, political centers...
A Manteño Burial from Buen Suceso, Ecuador (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. When Spanish explorers arrived in South America, sea-faring Manteño peoples dominated much of the northern and central Ecuadorian coast. While Manteño sites and technologies are well-documented, particularly at large sites such as Cerro Jaboncillo, many questions about Manteño society and mortuary traditions remain, particularly concerning people who lived on...
Manufacture and Circulation of Paddle and Anvil Pottery of the North Coast of Peru (1985)
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.
Mapping a Large Scale Amazonian Landscape using GIS (2016)
Among the many challenges for landscape archaeologists is the “palimpsest” nature of the landscapes that they try to study. Archaeologists around the world have long been at work using GIS to study a wide range of questions across scales from meters to thousands of kilometers, and from single occupations to thousands of years. Thinking of archaeological landscapes as a palimpsest uses the recognition that connecting individual landscape features exclusively to a single moment or period of time...
Mapping and feature classification of low altitude orthomosaics using geospatial image analysis in a planned colonial town in highland Peru (2015)
Large archaeological settlements with complex architecture have been always difficult to map. The introduction of unmanned aerial vehicles to fly over sites has helped reduce the time and increase precision of archaeological mapping; nevertheless post-processing time is still a workflow bottleneck. We present a geospatial imagery-based methodology for identifying and mapping surficially-visible structures and environmental features at a late pre-Hispanic and colonial settlement with extensive...
Mapping Lines and Lives at the Sajama Lines, Bolivia: A Model for Ritualized Landscapes (2017)
Ritual trails and geoglyphs in the Andes date back as far as 400 BC and are perhaps best represented in the Nasca lines and the ceques of Cusco. In western Bolivia, the Sajama lines are a network of ritual trails that cover an estimated 22,000 square kilometers and connect pucaras, chullpas, villages, and chapels. Although this ritualized landscape was heavily modified during the Colonial (1532-1820) and Republican (1821-1952) eras, these pathways had prehistoric use by the local Carangas. These...
Mapping the Mines: Simulating Transit Routes between Mining Centers in the Colonial Andes with GIS (2017)
Least cost path has been the method most commonly employed by archaeologists in attempts to determine routes from one site to another. This is due to the relative ease of use of this particular tool, as well as because of the parsimonious logic of this approach. The tool is also particularly useful where material remains of roads are no longer visible. However, the use of network analysis provides a more realistic possible route by taking into account known possible paths. Network analysis...
Maritime Foundations of Andean Civilization. Cummings Archaeology Series (1975)
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.
Marshaling the Past: Indigenous Regimes of Ownership in Amazonian Ecologies (WGF - Dissertation Fieldwork Grant) (2020)
This resource is an application for the Dissertation Fieldwork Grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation. This project investigates how people marshal the past to secure a sustainable future. I ask how Amerindian people in Amazonia attribute historical and ecological values and meanings to anthropogenic landscapes, while simultaneously building an understanding of themselves within a complex set of changing relations between humans, nonhuman agents, and the environment. I propose an ethnography...
Mate Competition, Favoring Close Kin, and Village Fissioning Among the Yanomamo Indians. In: Evolutionary Biology and Human Social Behavior (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.
Material Perspectives on Canal Ceremonialism at Chavín de Huántar (2015)
This work presents an interpretive revaluation of canal ceremonialism at the Andean Formative civic-ceremonial center of Chavín de Huántar. Focusing on a set of spaces within the subterranean stone-lined waterway "Canal 2," excavated in 2012 in an "Esplanade" area flanking the site’s monumental core, this study explores the excavation hypothesis that canals acted as stages for the ritual-sacrificial deposition of artifacts. Through an analysis of stratigraphic and material patterning within...
The materiality of emotion: Steps toward understanding affective experience in the South Andes (2015)
Anthropologists routinely acknowledge the affective significance of things. Display and use of objects (in rituals and performances) can evoke strong emotions. Elaborate objects may be used to forge consensus, to evoke memory, or to foster solidarity and express shared interests. Alternatively, displays may divide opinion, generating a diverse response. Understanding the role of emotions in the past is crucial, both for creating rich and nuanced pictures of past societies, as well as for...
Materializing ideas. Preliminary analysis of roof tiles images from the Nuestra Señora de Loreto I and San Ignacio Mini I missions (1610 – 1631) (2017)
In this paper we will be discussing the iconography of the roof tiles found in the primitive missions of Nuestra Senora de Loreto and San Ignacio Mini located in the region of the Guairá. The aim is to analyze the material and symbolic universe that circulated in the primitive Jesuits missions (1610 - 1631). In order to achieve this goal, we will first analyze the technologies of production, the iconographic types and interpret the possible meanings acquired in the representations shown on the...
Memento Mori: Scalar reference, architectonic persistence and the continuity of ritual memory at Huaca Colorada, Jequetepeque Valley, Peru (2017)
This paper examines the temporal dimensions underwriting relationships linking humans, architectural representations and the meaningful places they reference in past Andean life-worlds. I argue that for the Moche of the North Coast of Peru, acts of symbolic compression and miniaturization served to reanimate specific times, known ceremonial locales, and the social identities created and reaffirmed in these places. The ritual efficacy of architectural simulacra rests in their mimetic power to...
Men's House Associates Among the Eastern Bororo (1969)
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.
Message in a Bottle: Assessing the Impacts of Looting on the Archaeological Record of the Jama River Valley, Coastal Ecuador. (2015)
Northern Manabí Province of coastal Ecuador has long been a center of archaeological looting and illicit trade in antiquities derived from successive cultural occupations of the Formative Period Valdivia and Chorrera cultures and the long Jama-Coaque cultural tradition, a sequence spanning some 3,500 years. The ceramic artifacts from this trade are some of the most complex and elaborate found anywhere in Ecuador. They grace the shelves of national and regional museums, and numerous private...
The Messy East: Regional Models and Their Complications in the Chachapoyas Area of Peru (2018)
The Chachapoyas area has long been considered an internally coherent archaeological and sociohistorical region, one of the few associated with the Eastern Andes. Recent research, however, reveals significant environmental and cultural diversity and calls into question whether "Chachapoyas" can meaningfully be understood as a single region. There is little evidence for any practices that both unified it internally while distinguishing it from others, and ongoing research at the site complex of...
Methodological Considerations for Examining the "Slave Diet" at Colonial Wine Producing Estates in Nasca, Peru (2015)
The 2012-2013 season of the Haciendas of Nasca Archaeological Project focused on the recovery of material correlates of domestic production, consumption, and discard from two Jesuit coastal haciendas, San Joseph and San Xavier, where the majority of the labor was enslaved and of African descent. Our systematic analysis of macrobotanical remains and sediment samples aimed at branching our understanding of: a) colonial foodways beyond the Native Andean/European dichotomy, as several years of...
Microarchaeology of Lapa do Santo, a paleoindian rock shelter from central Brazil (2016)
The site of Lapa do Santo (state of Minas Gerais, Brazil) is a key location to understand the mundane and ritual activities of early South Americans. Radiocarbon dating placed its occupation between 7.9 and 12.7 cal kyBP. Rock art from the Pleistocene/Holocene boundary was found beneath 4 meters of sediment, and 26 human burials revealed unique mortuary practices involving mutilation, defleshing and decapitation. In this work, we focus on the stratigraphic sequence from the early Holocene, where...
A microstratigrapic perspective on early civic and ritual architecture: a case from the Kala Uyuni site, Bolivia (2015)
This paper brings a microstratigraphic perspective to debates about the origins of sociopolitical complexity though a study of floors from nondomestic structures. Such civic and ceremonial buildings are central to models of community formation and leadership development. In the Bolivian Middle Formative Period I (800-200 BCE) communities became aggregated and expanded the range of civic architecture as populations rose. Demonstrating these trends, the Kala Uyuni site expanded and developed two...
A Mid-16th to Mid-20th Century Glass Bead Sequence for South America (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Glass trade beads recovered during excavations by Smithsonian archaeologists Betty Meggers and Clifford Evans in Brazil, Guyana, and Ecuador can be readily placed in time using bead chronology studies developed in North America. The bead assemblages from their South America excavations date to multiple time periods, including the mid-16th, early-17th,...
The Middens, the Terraces and What Lies in Between: a test for the middenscape model of terra preta formation at the mouth of the Xingu River (2016)
Remarkable marks of an intense occupation in pre-Columbian times, the Amazonian Dark Earths are spread ubiquitously over a large area in the Amazon River basin. Despite being products of human interaction with the landscape, the differences between each one of them can be significant in terms of its physical and chemical properties, probably reflecting a diversity of both cultural and natural processes which they were exposed. As the increasing studies in Amazonian Archaeology the processes of...