South America (Geographic Keyword)
1,151-1,175 (1,291 Records)
Archaeologists have long examined how ancient empires and states developed a standard aesthetic and material culture—a set of styles and iconographic designs meant to express their claims to regional authority. In contrast, this paper moves beyond style designations and iconographic interpretations, which often draw on texts to make claims about representations of myths and political personages, to instead understand the materials and technological sequences that constituted a regional aesthetic...
Subsistence variations and landscape use of marine foragers in southern South America. New perspectives from an isotopic zooarchaeology (2017)
Predictions based on resource distribution and abundance throughout patches (i.e. patch choice model) are critical to model human-specific decisions. However, information about past abundance or distribution of preys is rare, and archaeological evaluations are normally based on modern ecological parameters. This procedure can face some problems since species distributions are likely to have fluctuated along time as a consequence of different environmental factors, or as the product of human...
Supplies, Status, and Slavery: Contested Aesthetics at the Haciendas of Nasca (2017)
The coastal wine and brandy-producing estates owned by the Society of Jesus in Nasca held captive a large enslaved population in the 17th and 18th centuries. With a combined population of nearly 600 slaves of diverse sub-Saharan origins, San Joseph and San Xavier de la Nasca were the largest and most profitable of the Jesuit vineyards in the viceroyalty of Peru. These estates were also home to black freepersons and itinerant indigenous and mestizo wage laborers who engaged, exchanged goods,...
Surveillance and control in a landscape of war: An examination of mobility and fortification in the Colca Valley, Peru (2016)
Mobility is frequently examined in terms of interaction, confluence and circulation. During periods of conflict, however, roads and paths can become arenas for the negotiation and control of people, lands and resources, and thus bring into sharp relief the often tense politics of mobility. This paper draws on regional survey of Late Intermediate Period (AD 1100-1450) hilltop fortifications in the Colca Valley to examine the use of fortification to monitor and control mobility during a period of...
Surviving Trepanation: Approaching the Relationship of Violence and the Care of "War Wounds" through a Case Study from Prehistoric Peru (2015)
The political instability that characterizes the early Late Intermediate Period (ca. AD 1000—1250) in Andean prehistory had widespread impacts on how people lived, ranging from changes in settlement patterns to an increase in skeletal trauma and infectious disease. This paper explores the social experiences of violence and its implications for healthcare, primarily through the analysis of a notable case study: a young male from Andahuaylas, Peru, whose skeleton evinces multiple lesions and...
Sustaining Irrigation Agriculture for the Long-Term: Lessons on Maintaining Soil Quality from Ancient Agricultural Fields in the Phoenix Basin and on the North Coast of Peru (2013)
Irrigation agriculture has been heralded as the solution to feeding the world’s growing population. To this end, irrigation agriculture is both extensifying and intensifying in arid regions across the world in an effort to create highly productive agricultural systems. Over one third of modern irrigated fields, however, show signs of serious soil degradation, including salinization and waterlogging, which threaten the productivity of these fields and the world’s food supply. Surprisingly, little...
Swordfish Hunting as Prestige Signaling within Middle Holocene Fishing Communities of the Atacama Desert Coast? (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Human Behavioral Ecology at the Coastal Margins: Global Perspectives on Coastal & Maritime Adaptations" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since around 8500 years BP, the archaeological record on the Southern Coast of the Atacama Desert shows evidence of growing population density and low residential mobility. A maritime specialization process is also evident by a rich set of specialized tools, and a pronounced increase...
Symbolic patterns of Northern Peruvian Coast pottery in Inca times (2016)
The present study proposes a comparative analysis of the iconography and morphology of ritual pottery produced in the Northern Peruvian Coast during the Late Intermediate Period and Late Horizon. Ceramics produced in that region during the 15th century presents several changes in the attributes of anthropomorphic and zoomorphic protagonists (here addressed as "figures of power") when compared to those of prior periods. Such modifications in the symbolic patterns suggests aspects of ancestry, ...
Symbols of Transformative Power:Wari Split Eye Iconography in the Middle Horizon (2015)
Feline eyes have a refractory nature that relates to the dichotomy of light and shadows in Andean traditions in Peru and suggests they are significant in Wari iconography. Andean ethnographies have expressed an importance of binary concepts that play a role in understanding of cosmology, mythology, and ritual. I will use Susan E. Bergh’s (1999) classification of Wari elite textile iconography and apply it to ritual ceramic iconographic data from excavations at Conchopata to identify the...
Tabuchila Ceramics of the Jama River Valley, Manabí, Ecuador (2017)
Archaeological excavations by the Proyecto-Paleoetnobotánico Río Jama (PAPRJ) in the Jama River Valley of northern Manabí, Ecuador, have established a cultural chronology spanning over three millennia of prehispanic occupation. One of these occupations, the Tabuchila Complex of the Late Formative Period (1000 BC – 500 BC), remains poorly understood. Excavations at three sites in the Jama Valley in the 1990s recovered ceramic, lithic, obsidian, paleobotanical, archaeofaunal, and human skeletal...
A Tale of Two Styles: A Geoarchaeological Investigation into Lima & Ychsma Construction Materials at Cajamarquilla, Peru (2015)
This paper examines construction materials from Cajamarquilla, one of the largest prehistoric urban sites on the Central Coast of Peru. Little work has been published about the architecture at Cajamarquilla, other than to comment on the enormity of the site and its constructions. Rammed earth (tapia, in Spanish) is the main construction style at Cajamarquilla, but with marked observable differences between the Lima Phase (AD500 – 800) and Ychsma Phase (AD1100 – 1450) occupations. Lima walls were...
Tapioca from a Brazilian Root. In: Agriculture in the Americas - Volume 3 (1943)
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.
Taraco Pensinula Archaeological Survey
Systematic Survey of about 98 km2 of the Taraco Peninsula in Bolivia, conducted in the late 1990s.
Taxonomical Identification by Cytochrome b: A Patagonian Case (2016)
The application of traditional zooarchaeological methods in the analysis of faunal specimens recovered in Acevedo 1 site (Chubut, Argentina) led us to a low level of taxonomic identification. Therefore we decided to implement new ways to strengthen its information capacity. We joined hence the Laboratory of Forensic Genetics of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (LGF-EAAF), which had developed locally a protocol for identify animal species in forensic contexts by Cytochrome b analysis. As...
Teaching Archaeology from a Sustainability Perspective (2015)
In the twenty-first century, archaeology should be applied and should include scientists and engineers. Why? The reason is simple: because the discipline contributes to our understanding of contemporary issues such as global warming and environmental degradation as well as the past. As a paleoethnobotanist (and now historian of paleobotany), I saw a need for more collaborative work. Thus, in my classroom, I utilized a multi-disciplinary perspective, one that drew from anthropology, water...
A Technical Attribute Analysis of Textile Band Production at Uraca, Peru (2016)
As with other forms of technology, normative patterns in textile production can suggest information about the communities of weavers that produced them. Through an analysis of technical attributes, this poster establishes the normative patterns involved in the production of textile bands at the mortuary site of Uraca in the Majes Valley of Peru and suggests how these patterns relate Uraca to broader textile traditions within the region. More specifically, it examines how Uraca relates to the...
Technique and Style in textiles from the Cerro de Oro site (2015)
This paper focuses on the analysis the textile material obtained in three areas (one funeral and two domestic) investigated within the archaeological site located in Cerro de Oro Cañete Valley. This research is embedded within the framework of the Cerro de Oro Archaeological Project, which is working on this archaeological site since 2012 which has among its objectives to determine the cultural affiliation of the site, especially its relationship with the Wari phenomenon. The material has been...
Technique of Some South American Feather-Work (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.
Technological approach of Obsidian sources in North Patagonian: Comparative studies between plain and highlands sources (2015)
Obsidian sources in northern Patagonian reflect they early use (ca. 8000 years BP). Provenance studies conducted so far realize that obsidian sources located in the Andes even with limited access (only during the summer) are those that reflect a wider spatial dispersion and more continuous use than those located in the plains. In this way, the sources located in the plains, reflect a local use and for the last 1000 years BP. This presentation compares the results of the technological studies...
Technological styles and production practices in the Río Grande de San Juan Basin (Argentinean-Bolivian border) during the Late Intermediate Period (2015)
The lack of direct ceramic production evidence, coupled with the lack of technical studies, hinder the understanding of ceramic production practices and its organization across the south central Andes. Yavi-Chicha ceramics associated with a diversity of sites in the Río Grande de San Juan Basin (straddling the border of Bolivia and Argentina) provide a unique entry point to explore socio-political dynamics during the Late Intermediate (AD 1000-1450) and Inka (AD 1450-1540) periods. Framed within...
TECHNOLOGICAL VARIABILITY IN THE ANCIENT HOLOCENE IN THE CENTRAL PLATEAU OF BRAZIL AND BORDER SOUTHWESTERN BRAZIL WITH URUGUAY (2017)
We’ll present reflections about the technological variability of two regions of Brazil, the Central Plateau and the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul. Both are dated from the ancient Holocene and the results comes from techno-functional analysis applied in lithic materials evidenced in sites of these regions. The Central Plateau is characterized by the Itaparica Techno-complex, composed of instruments with silhouette easily identifiable. The technical design allows a standardized hafting and...
Technologies of Clay: Pottery, Architecture, and the Transformation of Mud in the Atacama Desert (South-Central Andes) (2018)
In the Atacama Desert, pottery is one of the main technological changes of the Formative Period (ca. 2700 BP). The initial industry (LCA type) is characterized by a stylistic homogeneity coupled with a wide geographical distribution. Compositional analyses, however, have shown a significant regularity in pastes, suggesting the use of localized sources of raw materials and/or specific production centers—indicative of a well-defined recipe and style. Provenance studies have identified a locus of...
Technology, subsistence and territoriality: changing patterns in the middle to late Holocene on the Central Brazilian plateau (2015)
During the middle to late Holocene a series of archaeological sites in central-north Minas Gerais state, located in the southwest of the Central Brazilian Plateau, show a context marked by the presence of an expedient lithic technology, no pottery, human burials and structures made of botanical remains. These structures contained domesticated plants, such as maize, manioc, cotton, bottle gourd, squash, peanut and native plants, such as palm nuts, passion fruit, jatobá, umbu and pequi. In this...
Tecnología lítica y movilidad durante el poblamiento temprano del Desierto de Atacama Meridional (Chile) (2017)
Actualmente se reconoce que los grupos humanos que colonizaron el Desierto Meridional de Atacama (22-25°S) desde la transición Pleistoceno tardío-Holoceno temprano (12.6-10.2 ka AP) accedían a la amplia diversidad de ambientes disponibles en este árido paisaje. Desde los oasis de borde de salar, los paleohumedales y quebradas de la precordillera, hasta los paleolagos de la alta puna, estos espacios fueron articulados a través de circuitos de movilidad estacional. Por otro lado, la colonización...
Tehuelche (Aonikenk) site variability during XIXth to XXIst century in Southern Patagonia (Argentina and Chile) (2016)
Since the arrival of Europeans (XVIth Century) and their related economic activities in Patagonia, the different indigenous societies that inhabited the region were forced to deeply modify their ancient ways of life. The incorporation of new raw materials (glass and stoneware) to produce traditional instruments was one of several of modified aspects that have been archaeologically and historically (chronicles) recorded. We study and compare Tehuelche (Aonikenk) data from XIXth to XXIst century...