South America (Geographic Keyword)
826-850 (1,326 Records)
The concept of public archaeology has become ubiquitous since the last decade and, gradually, it seems to have been accepted as an important component of archaeological research. However, despite the wider popularization of the concept, its operationalization still poses challenges to archaeologists interested in surpassing the academic and professional sphere. Here, I reflect on the procedural guidelines and implications that public archaeology has recently attained and some of the challenges...
Not Incised, but Well-Burnished: A typology of undecorated Early Horizon feasting wares from Hualcayán, highland Ancash, Peru (2015)
Feasting has long been recognized as one of the most widespread and significant political and ritual activities in the prehispanic Andes. In spite of this deep significance, the undecorated ceramics that undoubtedly played important roles in these ritual events are often overlooked for analysis in favor of their more elaborate, decorated counterparts. Here, we present a quantitatively constructed typology for undecorated ceramic vessels recovered from an Early Horizon ceremonial mound at the...
Not Quite One and the Same: Repetition and Rule in the Inka Provinces (2017)
The use of molds for pottery manufacture is an integral part of the ceramic tradition of the North Coast of Peru, dating to at least as early as AD 100. Analysis of mold-made Chimu-Inka monkey effigy vessels excavated from mortuary contexts at the sites of Farfan and Tucume suggest that Late Horizon fineware production occurred in local workshops rather than in a centralized facility—a pattern consistent with other studies of Inka pottery production from around the Central Andes. The use and...
Notches in the Non-Epiphyseal Ends of the Metacarpals and Phalanges In Children of Four South American Populations (1972)
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.
Nuance, Brilliance and Sheen: Textile color qualities in the Andean World (2016)
Andean textile artists transformed fibers and dyes from nature to create complex color palettes attuned to the aesthetic of their time and place. Creating unique qualities not only of value and hue, qualities of color—in nuance shades, degree of sheen and brilliance-- Andean dyers, spinners and weavers built a vocabulary of color that contributed to the meaning and value of textiles in their social, political and creative context. From Chavin religious and supernatural figures created through...
Nuevas evidencias desde Cerro Tortolita un sitio del Intermedio Temprano en la costa sur del Perú-Ica (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Developments through Time on the South Coast of Peru: In Memory of Patrick Carmichael" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Nuestra investigación busca entender la relación entre la religión y la política en contextos domésticos durante la época Nasca. Es así que Cerro Tortolita (valle de alto de Ica), dada su naturaleza y escala constructiva; el cual incluye un componente ceremonial y otro residencial; constituye un sitio...
The Numerical Proportions of the Sexes at Birth (1907)
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.
Objects Conservation and Materials Analysis at Pañamarca (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Paisajes Arqueológicos de Pañamarca: Findings from the 2018–2023 Field Seasons" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In addition to the painted architectural surfaces recently unearthed at Pañamarca, a wide array of objects have been found in recent excavations. The objects found at Pañamarca demonstrate that the site has an excellent preservation environment. This paper will present conservation approaches to some of the...
Obsidian Hydration Studies in Highland Ecuador (1977)
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.
Obsidian in the Wari Empire: sourcing material from the capital using pXRF (2017)
This paper examines the procurement and consumption of obsidian within the Wari capital (AD 600 – 1000) in the Ayacucho highlands of Peru. During the Middle Horizon, the Wari Empire expanded and controlled much of the Peruvian Andes, largely through the import, export and regulation of critical resources extracted from subject territories and populations. This project hypothesizes that obsidian may have operated as one such critical resource for imperial control and seeks to examine this...
An Obsidian Stone Tool Workshop at Cerro Baúl?: Wari Provincial Craft Production and Political Economy (2016)
Here we present a preliminary chaîne opératoire analysis of obsidian stone tools and associated debitage recovered from a single architectural compound at the site of Cerro Baúl. As the only known direct interaction sphere of the prehispanic Wari and Tiwanaku empires, research at Cerro Baúl in the Moquegua Valley, Peru offers a rare perspective of colonial encounters and intertwined political economies. During the 2015 excavation season we exposed a dense midden context consisting of various...
Of Mummies and Guinea Pigs: An Analysis of Burial Contexts at Chiribaya Alta (2017)
In the Pre-Incan site of Chiribaya Alta, animals were often included in the graves of the deceased. Cuy, or Guinea pig, are amongst the most common type of animal found in these contexts, signaling the significance of these animals for the Chiribaya peoples in life and in death. Among traditional peoples in the Andes documented ethnohistorically and ethnographically, guinea pigs are consumed as food and are also used for divination and other religious practices. At Chiribaya Alta, a site in...
Offing 2 Locus 2 archaeological site (Dawson Island, Patagonia, Chile), marine hunter-gatherers and interaction during the Late Holocene (2016)
The results of Offing 2 Locus 2 archaeological excavation are presented and used to discuss broader implications for Patagonia hunter-gatherer contexts of the Late Holocene. The site is located near Dawson Island, within a strategic geographical position between Fueguian-Patagonian archipelagos, South American. Radiocarbon dating states occupation around 800 years BP. Evidence is characteristic of shellmidden deposits and chronological evidence indicates a short occupational sequence. Lithic...
Offing 2 Locus 2 archaeological site (Dawson Island, Patagonia, Chile), marine hunter-gatherers and interaction during the Late Holocene (2015)
The results of Offing 2 Locus 2 archaeological site are presented and used to discuss broader implications for Patagonia hunter-gatherer contexts during Late Holocene. The site is located near Dawson Island, within a strategic geographical position between Fueguian-Patagonian archipelagos and South America mainland . Radiocarbon dating states occupation around 800 BP. Evidence is characteristic of shellmidden deposits and chronological evidence indicates a short occupational sequence. Lithic...
The old age of mitochondrial linage D1g from the southern cone of South America supports the early entry of the first migrants (2016)
The southern cone of South America has been an important source of information regarding the early peopling of America. The discovery of Monte Verde archeological site meant a revolution, leading to the idea and eventual acceptance of the Coastal route, also named Pre-Clovis hypothesis. Notwithstanding the fact that many pre-Clovis sites has been discover throughout America and this hypothesis is already accepted, the debate of the real age of the first migration still continues. Probably...
On the Absolute Chronology of Late Tiwanaku / Early Late Intermediate Period Ceramic Traditions: Case Studies from the Bolivian Altiplano and North Chile (2015)
Although the timing of the Tiwanaku collapse is debated and probably varied somewhat from one region to another, this process probably took place in the 10th and 11th centuries AD. In 1998-2006, I worked at two Tiwanaku heartland sites which produced long series of radiocarbon dates corresponding to this critical period. At the cemetery site of Tiraska, ceramic grave goods in a style closely resembling Tiwanaku V were present from the early 10th until the mid-13th century AD. On the island of...
On the Origins of Raised-Field Farming in the Lake Titicaca Basin of the Andes (2015)
One of the most dynamic debates in the archaeology of the Lake Titicaca Basin of the Andes surrounds the appearance and disappearance of raised-field farming. There is now a general consensus that raised-fields were a Formative period indigenous technology that was expanded upon by the Tiwanaku state and that fell out of use, except in small pockets, when the state declined. In this paper, I use ethnographic and archaeological data from the Taraco Peninsula, Bolivia to tackle the rather nebulous...
One Thousand Years of Regional Integration: Malpaso and the Role of U-Shaped Temples in Long-Distance Exchange (2016)
Located 31 km from the Pacific, Malpaso is the most inland of 8 U-shaped temples in the Lurín Valley. This form of monumental architecture is associated with the Manchay culture that dominated the central coast of Peru during the Initial Period. Malpaso is also one of only a few U-shaped temples located in the chaupiyunga, a climatic zone that serves as an intermediary between the Pacific coast and the Andean highlands. Consequently, Malpaso shows ties not only to the U-shaped temples of the...
The onset of warfare and access to diverse resources in the late Early Horizon-Early Intermediate Period (ca. 300 BC-AD 100) (2015)
The formation of economically specialized communities in the coastal valleys of Peru by the late Archaic (3000 BC) has long been accepted. Specialized groups exchanged products with each other, negotiating both local and more far-flung exchange networks by the Initial Period (ca. 1800-900 BC). By the end of the Early Horizon (ca. 300 BC) communities in coastal and inland valley areas built numerous fortifications, suggesting conflict or preparations for defense that must have changed interaction...
Ontological foundations of Inka archaeology (2016)
The “ontological turn” ties several core anthropological questions about cultural variability in human interaction with the world, all of which can best be summarized by Sapir’s dictum—from the 1920s— that “the worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached.” Drawing on evidence—ethnographic, grammatical, cognitive, material, and visual—from the central Andes (principally from Southern Quechua and their Inka ancestors), I...
Ontologies of Water on Peru's North Coast (2016)
The power of water is all-important in the long history of Peru’s North Coast: the arid environment, the transformative effects of irrigation, and the devastating force of the ENSO (El Niño) ecological phenomenon. Archaeological theorizing about North Coast societies has often focused on the shaping force of water; this paper suggests bringing emergent thinking about the human/nonhuman relationship to bear on this topic. Twentieth century Western science saw water as something to control through...
Ontologies of water: intensities and magnitudes (2017)
Increasingly, the effects of global warming take the form of destructive movements of water, whether vanishing bodies of water that create desertification or floods that damage human habitations and take lives. The extensive archaeological record of the North Coast of Peru offers a place to study long-term human strategies for living with the dangerous and unpredictable movement of water. Despite frequent earthquakes, floods and torrential rains that re-shape land- and sea-scapes, humans...
Ontologías Corpóreas: Transfiguración, ancestralización y "muerte" en el mundo Moche (2016)
En las últimas cuatro décadas decenas de tumbas de élite Moche (200-900 AD) han sido descubiertas a lo largo de la costa norte del Perú, develado importante información sobre la vida física, la identidad y el status de los antiguos Moche. Sin embargo, y paradójicamente, la gran cantidad de datos recuperados contrasta con los pocos intentos de teorizar cómo el cuerpo pudo haber sido construido y conceptualizado por esta sociedad. Integrando la fenomenología de Merleau-Ponty y el perspectivismo...
Open Obsidian Geochemistry Visualization system for the Andes (2017)
Obsidian sourcing studies which provide valuable insights into archaeological mobility and interaction are enhanced by the availability of geochemical analyzers, and especially by the proliferation of portable X-ray fluorescence units. This year we are introducing an open source system for analysis of geochemical datasets available in web-based repository and based on R-Shiny, a browser based analysis and visualization system built on the R project. The Andean Geochemistry data archive, a new...
Open Space and Restricted Action: Analysis of Intra-site Networks of Movement at Wimba, in the Northeastern Peruvian Montane Forest (2017)
In an area that has been considered marginal both geographically and in the narrative of South American prehistory, new research shows extensive settlement, landscape modification, and interaction between inhabitants of the eastern slopes of the Andes and their neighbors. The site of Wimba, located in the Amazonas department, in the northeastern Peruvian montaña – the tropical montane forest between the highland Andes and lowland Amazonian rainforest – is one of the best known archaeological...