South America (Geographic Keyword)
376-400 (1,291 Records)
Moche art served the purpose of not only disseminating specific content of a religious nature, but it was also a tool of social influence and control. Its iconography gives an exceptional opportunity to study the mechanisms of perceiving and presenting others (representatives of different cultural and probably also ethnic group) by a society which has not left behind any written documents for us. It is also interesting how these representations could be used in the process of shaping...
Engineering an Ecosystem of Resistance: Late Intermediate Period Farming in the South-Central Andes (A.D. 1100-1450) (2017)
In the 15th century, the Inca built the largest pre-colonial empire in the western hemisphere. In southern Peru near Lake Titicaca, an ethnic group known as the Colla violently resisted conquest by the Inca for several years. Because of their military prowess, the Inca named one quarter of their empire, Collasuyo, after this group. The Colla’s ability to resist Inca subjugation was facilitated by their decentralized economy evident in their construction and management of a new agricultural...
The Enigmatic Structure at Panquilma on the Central Coast of Peru: Site of Funerary Bundle Preparation or Ancestor Cult? (2016)
During the summer of 2015 a puzzling structure was excavated in the cemetery at Panquilma, a major Ychsma settlement on the Peruvian central coast. Upon first glance this structure appeared to have a layout of a household structure but was located near the outskirts of the cemetery, far from the residential center of the site. A wide array of unusual items such as an abundance of metal fragments, colorful bird feathers, orpiment, an arsenic-bearing yellowish mineral used as a pigment, and lithic...
Entangled Encounters between the Chancay and Chaupiyunginos in the Huanangue Valley, Peru (2015)
This paper builds off of recent calls to re-evaluate Murra’s model of verticality and explores the utility of entanglement theory as an alternative way to understanding the different relationships that developed between groups living on the western slopes of the Peruvian Andes during the Late Intermediate Period (1100-1470 CE). Entanglement theory is increasingly being used in Old World archaeology to examine the complex types of interdependencies that develop between groups when exotic goods...
Entangled Encounters in the Wari World: Coast-Highland Interactions during the Middle Horizon as revealed by the archaeological and bioarchaeological investigations in the Castillo de Huarmey, North-Central Coast of Peru (2015)
Wari (600-1050 AD) was the first pre-Hispanic political organization that succeeded in the consolidation of vast lands in the central Andes into one multi-ethnic, cultural, and linguistic realm, creating the conditions of a mini world system. The products and networks of exchange connected heterogeneous populations from distinct parts of the empire, which political complexity was reflected in a variety of styles, due to the co-existence of local traditions, with production that imitated foreign...
Entre los Andes y la Selva: Una aproximación al desarrollo prehispánico en el valle del Alto Upano, Ecuador (2018)
Localizado en la alta amazonía ecuatoriana el entorno geográfico del valle del río Upano acoge una amplia diversidad ecológica y de suelos que, sin duda, resultaron atractivos para los diferentes grupos humanos que se asentaron en la región durante la época prehispánica. Por otra parte la ubicación estratégica hizo que el valle sin duda constituya un nodo importante en la interacción cultural entre los altos valles andinas y las tierras bajas amazónicas. Ambas situaciones fueron favorables para...
Environment, history and resilience of archaic coastal hunter-gatherer-fishers from the Atacama Desert, northern Chile (2015)
The coast of the Atacama Desert in northern Chile is one of the most extreme environments of the Andean area. However, the high productivity of the Pacific Ocean facilitated the peopling of this territory as early as 12.000 years cal BP and also a continual occupation of hunting-gathering-fishing communities throughout the Holocene. In this paper we discuss significant environmental changes during the Middle Holocene, as well as the systematic interaction of local communities with inland...
The environmental context of Prôto-Je culture at Pinhal da Serra, RS, Brazil – insights from palaeoecology (2015)
Understanding the purposes and associations of burial monuments and sacred built landscapes in the Formative period of the Americas is an important research goal among archaeologists. A key step that can help us to better understand the social and spatial organisation of these cultures is determining the ecological and environmental characteristics of the landscapes within which these cultures lived and developed. Created by the Je group in south-eastern Brazil, and with more than 30 pit houses...
The Environmental Effects of Indigenous Smelting in the Southern Andes: A Look at the Source (2017)
Air pollution caused by pre-industrial metal production in the Andes has been reported by scholars using data collected from lake sediments and ice cores. An important source of this pollution, which consists primarily of lead dust, is Potosí, Bolivia, a mining center that produced large quantities of silver during the early colonial period and, perhaps, during prehispanic times as well. This paper examines the environmental effects of indigenous silver production by investigating the operation...
Epidemiological Crisis with Imperial Collapse? Investigating the Osteological Evidence for Bacterial Infections among post-Wari Communities in the Peruvian Andes (2016)
The socio-political decline of the Wari Empire and a severe drought ca. AD 1000/1100 led to significant changes in health among those who lived in the former imperial core. The political turmoil, social upheaval, and prolonged drought coalesced to create poor community health. Infectious disease appears to have been an aspect of morbidity that dramatically changed relative to the preceding era of Wari rule. Here we examine the skeletal evidence for bacterial infections among post-Wari...
Establishing Chemical Signatures for Cabuza Style Pottery and the Tiwanaku Tradition Using Portable X-ray Florescence (pXRF) (2015)
Portable X-ray Florescence (pXRF)was used to analyze the chemical composition of 60 Tiwanaku and derived style ceramic sherds from different locations in the south central Andes. The results indicate that there are four distinct geochemical groups and that the local Cabuza style pottery from survey collections in the Azapa Valley in Chile has a distinct chemical composition from all other Tiwanaku tradition ceramics. The results also indicate that pXRF is a viable technique for distinguishing...
Estimating the pre-Columbian population of southwestern Amazonia. (2017)
Estimates of population density in pre-Columbian Amazonia have been based on calculations of the carrying capacity of the environment, generally classified as varzea, terra firme and savannah. These estimates, however, have been criticized because they overlook the fact that i) the Amazonia environment is far more diverse in terms of soils, vegetation and climate than this simplistic classification and ii) pre-Columbians increased, both intentionally and unintentionally, the productivity of the...
Ethnic Disparity and Stress in Prehispanic Peru: A contextualized analysis of Cranial Pathology and Facial Asymmetry (2015)
This study evaluates the effects of stress on a prehistoric population from the south-central highlands of Andahuaylas, Peru during the Late Intermediate Period (LIP: AD 1000 - AD 1400). This era was characterized by skyrocketing violence, resource competition, and increasing social inequality. We test the impact of these phenomena by examining cranial lesions and fluctuating facial asymmetry--both indicators of non-specific stress-- among different ethnic groups, identified by the absence,...
Ethnic interaction and settlement composition at Huacramarca (2015)
The Late Intermediate Period (LIP) is usually considered as the time of ethnic diversity in the Central Andes and representations of ethnic boundaries in maps illustrate this scenario. However, these representations offer a synchronic perspective of ethnic configuration as a consequence of their reliance on XVI Century sources. Nevertheless, Andean chronologies demonstrate that the LIP covers more than 500 years (from AD. 900 to 1450) in which several dynamic phenomena including expansion,...
An ethnoarchaeological study on anthropic markers from a shell-midden in Tierra del Fuego: Lanashuaia II (2015)
Hunter-gatherer sites constitute often challenging research contexts within the discipline of archaeology; identifying and even defining whom Tierra del Fuego constitute an optimum arena for studying anthropic markers in hunter-gatherers sites for two reasons: a) good preservation of archaeological remains; b) a rich ethnographic record about hunter-fisher-gatherer societies who inhabited this region. The aim of this work is to present the first results of an intrasite spatial analysis, based on...
Ethnoarchaeology of residential mobility among savanna foragers and archaeological site formation (2016)
Ethnoarchaeological observations of residential mobility provide crucial links between subsistence activities, landscape use, social behaviors, and archaeological visibility of occupations. Pumé foragers of the Venezuela llanos move their camps up to six times a year. They occupy separate wet and dry season main camps that are the hubs of central place foraging for different seasonal resources. Pumé hunter-gatherers also make temporary camps for fishing, raw material acquisition, and to...
Ethnographic and Linguistic Notes on the Paez Indians of Tierra Adentro, Cauca, Colombia (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.
European occupation and its impact on local lifestyle: discussing architectural transformations in 20th-century sites in Argentinean Patagonia. (2013)
European lifeways were introduced into Argentinean Patagonia during the 19th century, thus joining this so-called "empty region" to the realm of the dominant global economic model. By the late 19th century, stockbreeding production started to spread over the area traditionally occupied by local indigenous people, thereby introducing significant changes to their lifestyle. Officially, indigenous peoples were to be settled into circumscribed reserves. However, some chose self-appointed...
Evaluating the Utility of Using Stable Oxygen Isotope Analysis to Study Ancient Migration and Climate Reconstruction in the Ayacucho Basin of Peru (2016)
This study examines whether oxygen isotope analysis can be used to study ancient human migration in the central, highland Andes of Peru (Ayacucho Basin). Although strontium isotope analysis is a reliable way of exploring questions of migration, oxygen isotope analysis, which is significantly less expensive, may offer preliminary insights regarding the possible presence of migrants at a site. This approach has not yet been used in the Ayacucho Basin where the Wari empire was centered, so we...
Evidence of diet and food consumption from Chavin de Huantar during the Middle and Late Andean Formative (1200 – 550 BCE) (2017)
Excavations carried out at the Wacheqsa sector at Chavín de Huantar identified archaeological contexts from the Middle Formative (1200 – 900 cal BCE) and Late Formative (900 – 550 Cal BCE). In this paper we present preliminary results of starch analysis carried on in culinary equipment (ceramics) retrieved from domestic occupations from the Middle and Late Formative periods and a large midden, originated from the discard of feasting remains during the Late Formative period. Microbotanical...
The evolution of the sugar industry in French Guiana from the 17th century to the 19th century (2013)
The situation in French Guiana was not the same as in the other French overseas territories (West Indies or Reunion Island) where sugar was grown. Here, visible remains of the colonial sugar and rum industries are hardly found. Only the foundations of factory buildings and domestic housing can still be seen, and today in French Guiana, there is only one factory which is still producing rum. Furthermore, very little archaeological research has been undertaken on the territory's colonial period. ...
Evolving Identities in Early Andean Art: Figurative Ceramics from Ancient Ecuador (2015)
For nearly 5000 years, between c.4,000 BCE and 500 CE, a continuous tradition of figurative ceramics evolved in ancient present-day Ecuador. Though known only through now-anonymous archaeological remains, this tradition represents some of the earliest dated sculptural and ceramic art forms in all of ancient America. At least five distinct, chronologically sequential styles have long been recognized in this tradition, beginning with the earliest Valdivia style and continuing with subsequent...
An Examination of Ancestry: Exploring the Peopling of the Americas Through Paleoindian Cranial Indices in Comparison with the Howells Collection (2017)
The original peopling of the Americas has puzzled researchers for decades. While some evidence points to a single wave of migration, still other data suggest two or more waves. Their reasonable estimated arrival dates range from 14,500 to over 20,000y.b.p., although some scholars push back their arrival even farther. Drawing from archaeology, genetics, historical linguistics, and physical anthropology, the peopling of the Americas debate encompasses research from a wide range of experts. In this...
Examining biological variation among the marine hunter-gatherers of the Chonos Archipelago, Western Patagonian Channels, Chile (2016)
Our understanding of the evolutionary processes and the prehistory of South America have been enhanced by recent archaeological and biological studies on this continent. Of particular interest has been the focus on marine environments along the Pacific Coast and their importance to biocultural developments among human groups. In this study, we focus on the Chonos Archipelago (43°50’-46°50’S) in the Western Patagonian channels of Chile, which is comprised of a series of more than 150 islands...
Examining ethnohistory: Cranial modification and social status in pre-Hispanic Inca Peru (2015)
The social meaning of cranial modification in the Andes has long been debated. Ethnohistoric accounts recorded by Spanish priests and travelers after the conquest assert that within Inca Peru, the practice of cranial modification was related to social status. They claimed that the Inca royal family preferred a particular head shape, and only certain noble families were permitted to reproduce that shape. In contrast, non-elite Inca supposedly practiced strictly local traditions of cranial...