South America (Continent) (Geographic Keyword)
1,751-1,775 (2,200 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Usacorral is a 10 hectare mixed-use and long-occupied ceremonial, habitation, and agropastoral complex situated at 3,625 masl in the north-central highlands of Ancash, Peru. Preliminary fieldwork at Usacorral employed test excavations, mapping, spatial analysis, and community-based research methods to understand the site’s occupational history and...
Ritual and Productive Activities in the Mound-Top Structure at 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. Three seasons of excavation at Buen Suceso have identified a series of occupation floors in the area of the site referred to as Unit 6. This area is also the highest at the site, suggesting the existence of a mound or an augmented rise that was utilized during the Valdivia period. This...
Ritual Areas in Santa Rosa de Pucalá and Its Implications in Territorial and Sociopolitical Dynamism in Lambayeque Valley, AD 650–950 (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Them and Us: Transmission and Cultural Dynamism in the North of Peru between AD 250 and 950: A Vision since the Recent Northern Investigations" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Santa Rosa de Pucalá is a ritual monumental area in Lambayeque Valley. Recent researches show us an increase in ceremonial practices, from 670 CE (Santa Rosa Phase 1), especially human sacrifices, changes in burial patterns, and the arrival of...
Ritual Commensality in the Lower Amazon on the South of Amapá State, Brazil, During the Precolonial Period (2019)
This is an abstract from the "From Individual Bodies to Bodies of Social Theory: Exploring Ontologies of the Americas" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In many Amerindian worldviews, commensality pervades to different degrees both mundane and ritual spheres, being a way of caring and building relationships as revealed by available information from ethnology and ethnohistory. Based on these issues, this paper explores the central concepts of body...
Ritual Foods Compared with Daily Diet at Tenahaha in the Cotahuasi Valley during the Andean Middle Horizon (2018)
People in the past actively chose which foods were used in different contexts. Here we compare plant remains with human skeletal remains to understand dietary practices at Tenahaha in the Cotahuasi Valley (AD 850-1050). Tenahaha was built during the Middle Horizon as a communal space to take advantage of new social interaction spheres, stimulated in part by the Wari state. Tenahaha includes burial areas as well as food storage and preparation zones. Macrobotanical remains were found in public...
Ritual violence or simply ritual? Evaluating the evidence for child sacrifice in Late Formative Period Peru (2017)
Highland mortuary practices during the Andean Late Formative Period (900–500 BC) in Ancash, Peru are poorly understood, in part because burials from this period are rarely encountered. Excavations conducted in 2009 at the archaeological site of Hualcayán uncovered a primary interment of a juvenile aged 5-6 years at time of death, dated in the range 806–540 calBC. The individual was buried with a necklace strung with bone and shell beads and bone spoons. Bioarchaeological analyses indicate the...
Riverbank Insights: Exploring Prehispanic Adaptation in Central Nicaragua’s Alluvial Landscapes through Archaeological Analysis and Local Wisdom (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Centralizing Central America: New Evidence, Fresh Perspectives, and Working on New Paradigms" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. “El Agua es Vida, si no hay Agua, no hay Vida” (“Water is Life”) says Doña Francisca (community of Huehuestepe, Mayales River Valley [MRV], Nicaragua). Today more than ever this sentence holds true, given water’s increasing significance in the global climatic debate. Rivers are essential to...
The Road to Rayan Is Paved with Good Intentions (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Wilfredo Gambini, the then mayor of the Caceres District (upper Nepeña River Valley) Ancash, Peru, encouraged local campesinos to bring him any artifacts that were found in their local hamlets for his private collecting. From these interactions he compiled a database of archaeological complexes for the region, despite only...
Roads and Changing Mobility in Northwest Argentina (AD 1400-1800) (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Mobility defines human behavior; roads make that mobility possible. We study human mobility along route networks in an area of the Middle Calchaquí Valley, Salta Province, Argentina called La Hoyada Quebrada, a natural connection route to the puna. Archaeological research highlights the fundamental role of high ravines and valleys for communication between...
Rock Art and the Creation of Landscape at Callacpuma, Peru (2018)
Numerous rock art panels dot the landscape of the Late Intermediate Period (AD 1000-AD 1450) site of Callacpuma in the Cajamarca Basin of northern Peru. The panels are comprised of many distinct motifs and types including a variety of camelids, anthropomorphs, geometric patterns and other zoomorphs. Although the iconographic information held within these motifs is certainly important, this project attempts to move beyond the iconographic significance of individual motifs or panels and examine...
The Rock Art of the Fortaleza Ignimbrite: 4,200 Years of Landscape Inscription in the North-Central Andes (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Fortaleza Ignimbrite (FI) is a geologic formation, situated at the headwaters of the Fortaleza and Santa Rivers in highland Ancash Peru. A 2014 survey of the FI by the Proyecto de Investigación Arqueológica Arte Rupestre del Alto Fortaleza (PIA ARAF) documented 192 rock art places on the FI, demonstrating correlations between specific images and production...
Rock Salt Mining in San Pedro de Atacama, Northern Chile, during the 20th Century: Protoindustrialization or Industrialization in the Periphery? (2015)
Rock salt exploitation in the oases of San Pedro de Atacama is one among many expressions of capitalist expansion in Latin America. Except for mining concessions, historical documentation of these practices is virtually nonexistent, although material remains and former actors in the mining process still survive. In this paper, we present archaeological evidence of rock salt mining sites of different scale and kind of exploitation that coexist throughout the 20th century. Such differences show...
The Rock-Art of Central-West Brazil: New Studies from Chapada dos Guimarães / MT (2018)
A new project carried out in the region of the Rio Vermelho / São Lourenço river basin in the central-western region of Brazil started in 2016. This project focus on the studies of the initial stages of the establishment of the hunters gathers groups in this region. It is intended through excavations, surveys and research in rock art to show patterns of the peoples who inhabited that region. The first systematic field surveys within this project, entitled "Archeology in the Pantanal region"...
The Role of Infrastructure in Wari State-Making in Southern Peru (2017)
In southern Peru, the transition from the Early Intermediate to the Middle Horizon during the seventh century A.D. was marked by the expansion of Wari state colonists and influence from the Ayacucho heartland. Andeanists have long postulated the role of climate change and drought during this initial state expansion, while issues of chronology complicate this issue. Here, we reevaluate the radiocarbon data from the early Wari colonies of Cerros Baúl and Mejía in the upper Moquegua Valley in...
The Role of Institutions in Imperial Formations in the Andes (2019)
This is an abstract from the "From Households to Empires: Papers Presented in Honor of Bradley J. Parker" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Bradley Parker was first and foremost a student of empire. As an Assyriologist and a budding Andeanist, he was enthralled with understanding the rise and persistence of empire from a comparative approach, and at the time of his death was building an inspirational model to understand imperial expansion from the...
The Role of Kinship Networks and the Lowland Ecology in the Interpretation of the Caribbean Archaeology of Greater Chiriquí (2018)
Archaeological investigations in the Caribbean region of Greater Chiriquí conducted over the last two decades have documented occupations dating to the second millennium BCE. Similarities in material culture suggest local and trans-isthmic cultural relationships within Greater Chiriquí and a pattern of scattered hamlets associated with the exploitation of marine and lowland ecosystems. In order to provide a model for this settlement pattern, we offer a theoretical model based on ethnohistorical...
The Role of Lowland Tropics as Centers of Landscape Domestication during the Middle Holocene in South America (2018)
The archaeological record of the Middle Holocene is lacking in many areas of lowland South America. The reasons for such hiatuses are yet not clear, but there is an emerging pattern showing that the areas where one finds complete records of human occupation that span most of the Holocene are typically located on estuaries, extensive floodplains or other wetlands normally placed at ecotones. On the other hand, mounting paleoeocological data shows that the climatic conditions of the Middle...
The Role of Pachacamac and Castillo de Huarmey in the Wari World: A Comparison (2023)
This is an abstract from the "A Decade of Multidisciplinary Research at Castillo de Huarmey, Peru" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Excavations since 2005 at Pachacamac (Lurin Valley) near Lima and since 2010 at Castillo de Huarmey (Huarmey Valley) have provided important new evidence about the character and chronology of these two sites, considered by Menzel to be religious and political centers of the Wari Empire. Both sites were contemporaneous,...
The Role of Social Memory in Everyday Bodily Practices of Pottery Production and Consumption during the Late Moche Period (500 – 800 AD) on the North Coast of Peru (2017)
Often the term ‘social memory’ conjures up ideas of grand commemoration events such as statues, museums, large scale construction and other public displays to remember the collective past. We must not forget, however, the seemingly mundane daily practices that help to create, maintain, and change society while simultaneously forming social identities. This study looks at the Late Moche period (500 – 800 AD) on the North Coast of Peru. It was a time of immense social, religious, and political...
The Role of the Toad in the Middle Horizon Andes: A Chemical and Iconographic Analysis (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Seeing Wari through the Lens of the Everyday: Results from the Patipampa Sector of Huari" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Here we present preliminary findings of chemical analyses performed on a Middle Horizon pottery sherd (c. 600-1100 AD). The sherd originates from the capital region of the Wari and has the striking iconographic representation of either a frog or a toad with visual indications of preserved residues....
The Role of Women Following a Community Archaeology Project in Agua Blanca, Ecuador (1979-2018) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Working with the Community in Ecuador" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Agua Blanca community has participated in one of the most successful and sustainable community archaeology projects in Ecuador. Since the start of excavations in the Manabí region in 1979, archaeologist Collin McEwan and Maria-Isabel Silva have worked collaboratively with community members to excavate, interpret, and present findings about the...
Rooms, Compounds, Alley Dumps, and Neighborhoods: Intrasite Zooarchaeology on Peru’s North Coast (2017)
The increasing number of samples of zooarchaeological remains from the prehistoric Chimu settlement of Cerro La Virgen, on the North Coast of Peru, allow a comparison of consumption and discard patterns within and between households and neighborhoods. The information from this analysis adds to our understanding of economic and political realities of life in a community which would have to balance the demands of family consumption and the state tributes requested by the Chimu polity. Of special...
Rooms, Houses, and Neighborhoods: Drone-mapping and GIS Analyses of the Household Architecture at Cerro la Virgen, Moche Valley, Peru (AD 1100–1470) (2018)
Here we explore the spatial patterning of the Small Irregular Agglutinated Residences (SIAR) at the Chimú town of Cerro la Virgen (1100–1470 AD) in the Moche Valley, Peru. Few examples of "Andean Households" are as enigmatic and iconic as SIAR, which were closely associated with the florescence of the Chimú Empire. Large barrios consisting of SIAR architecture are found at the Chan Chan (the Chimu capital) and at all Chimu provincial centers throughout the empire. Cerro la Virgen once lay in...
Runa: Indigenous Identity and Heritage in the 21st Century (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The right of indigenous peoples to define their identities and to lobby for national policies that respect their views and lifeways, highlights the need for national curricula in schools and colleges globally to include more inclusive approaches to the teaching of subjects like history and archaeology. In many countries with significant indigenous populations...
Running Down That Hill: Inka Imperial Problems in the Tropical Montane Cloud Forests of Ecuador (2023)
This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Tropical Montane Cloud Forests" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over multiple Inka emperors’ reigns, Tawantinsuyu (the Inka Empire) had notoriously difficult experiences trying to secure their foothold in the Amazon. When marching north into the highlands of modern Ecuador, the Inkas thought it best to expand westward with their colonial agenda prioritizing access to the Pacific Coast before the...