South America (Continent) (Geographic Keyword)
51-75 (1,799 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This research presents an analysis of the textile technology excavated at the site of Santo Domingo, Huarmey Valley, in coastal Peru. Previous research suggests that the site was inhabited during the Late Intermediate period (AD 1150–1280). This study is accomplished primarily through the examination of the textile remains and additional perishable fiber...
Anarchy in the Trenches: Perspectives on 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. In many ways, Buen Suceso is a unique archaeological site. Not only is it a multicomponent site, with evidence for occupation throughout almost the entirety of the ~2,200-year Valdivia sequence and specialized use by the much later Manteño culture, but it exhibits an occupational...
Anarchy, Heterarchy, and the Bioarchaeological Evidence of Labor in the Tiwanaku “State” (AD 500–1100) of Bolivia and Peru (2021)
This is an abstract from the "A New Horizon: Reassessing the Andean Middle Horizon (AD 600–1000) and Rethinking the Andean State" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Early explorers thought that Tiwanaku was a ritual or pilgrimage center because of its heartland location in the high-altitude, seemingly inhospitable altiplano of Bolivia. Years after “progressing” beyond a ceremonial center, Tiwanaku was fit into the “state” category within a political...
Ancestor Veneration or Funeral Practices? An Examination of Recuay Mortuary Variability in the Basin of Puccha (Ancash) between AD 200-900 (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Mortuary studies have followed different perspectives, such as ancestor veneration mostly based on intrasite analysis. This paper examines the regional distribution of Recuay's funeral practices and its implications for ancestor worship studies. Radiocarbon dates available for the valley show an occupation between AD 200-900, and it correlates with the...
Ancient Andean Scalarity (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Beyond the Round House: Spatial Logic and Settlement Organization across the Late Andean Highlands" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Scholars of the Andes often assume that the social units they study—residence, community, and region—are monotonically scaled, nested from smaller to larger. This suggests universal correspondences between the analytical and observational objects through which social units are known; hence...
Ancient DNA of Camelids from Far Southern Peru: Whole Genome Enrichment Methods Reveal Breeding History at Tiwanaku and Inca Sites (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Advances in Zooarchaeological Methods" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Prior to Spanish colonization, the indigenous peoples of Andean South America (Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina) incorporated domesticated camelids (Camelidae), llamas (Lama glama), and alpacas (Vicugña pacos) into their economic and ritual life and were skillfully adept at breeding and rearing camelids for different utilitarian and...
Ancient Human-Animal Interactions in Chachapoyas Region: Isotopic Analysis of Zooarchaeological Remains from Kuelap, Peru (2018)
This study uses isotopic analysis of fauna remains as a proxy for reconstructing the ancient Chachapoya environment of the northeastern highlands in Peru. Large middens have been excavated at the monumental center of Kuelap (900-1535 CE), yet there is little previous research focused on the fauna remains at this or other archaeological contexts in the region. The goal of this project was to reconstruct animal resource exploitation and provide insight into dietary variation and environment at...
Ancient Landscapes of Amazonia: A Study of Pre-Colonial Processes and Contemporary Use at Macurany, Brazil (2018)
We analyze settlement organization and landscape modification at Macurany, a pre-Colonial terra preta site on the Middle Amazon River in Parintins, Brazil, within local and regional contexts. Pre-colonial land modifications dot the contemporary landscapes of Amazonia. Many such landscape features, such as anthrosols, elevated platforms, mounds, ramps, and riverine ports, are used today by contemporary inhabitants of Amazonia. New data gathered at Macurany reveals that ancient Amerindians altered...
Ancient Manganism in the Andes: A Bioarchaeological View (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ancient Chinchorro people of northern Chile used manganese as part of their mortuary rites (7000–3000 BP). Chinchorro artifacts (n = 12) reveals the presence of manganese up to 64% measured with portable X-ray fluorescence. In addition, bone chemistry analysis from Chinchorro mummies (n = 68) using atomic absorption spectrometry reveals for the first...
The Ancient Maya Settlement of Waybil, Belize: Middle-Level and Hinterland Settlement Investigations (2018)
The Classic Maya, with their towering jungle temples and sprawling cities have been the focus of archaeological studies since the mid-1800s. Although numerous investigations have fostered considerable insights, important questions remain regarding the circumstances in which these settlements originated, interacted, developed, and were ultimately abandoned. The organization of Maya settlements is best conceptualized as a continuum consisting of three basic, but variable types, including:...
Ancient Population History in the Palenque Region: The Problem of the Selection of Population Proxies (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Mesoamerican Population History: Demography, Social Complexity, and Change" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Proyecto Regional Palenque (PREP) has recorded a total of 653 sites within an area of 650 km2. Regional population ranges from 28,000 to 32,000 inhabitants. Mapping efforts and household excavations undertaken as part of the Proyecto Especial Palenque during the seasons of 1992–1994 identified 1,480...
Ancient waorani fiber technologies (2003)
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 EXARC Bibliography, originally compiled by Roeland Paardekooper, and updated. Most of these 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 using the...
Ancient woods used in a ritual context at Chenque I cemetery (Pampean region, Argentina) (2017)
Empirical evidence of ancient ritual practices is not often found in many archaeological sites. This complex ideological aspect of past human societies has usually been reported in association with the presence of monuments such as sculptures, tombs, funeral mounds, temples and shrines and also with particular artefacts used during ceremonies and rituals such as ceramic, stone or metal vessels, musical instruments and so on. Archaeobotanical evidence could contribute enormously to the study of...
Andean Indigenous Bodies: Methodological Approaches to Past Perceptions of the Body (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. Any attempt to understand indigenous anatomy and perceptions of the body from an emic perspective in the Andes is a challenging endeavor, beginning with basic definitions that differ substantially from Western traditions. Furthermore, definitions changed across space and time throughout Andean...
An Andean Mountain Shrine: The Case of Balconcillo de Avillay, Huarochiri (Lima, Peru) (2017)
One of the characteristics of ritual practices in the Andean Society is the presence of shrines in top of mountains related to local deities. These shrines formed part of ancient cultural landscapes that involved settlements, farmlands, cemeteries, and even complex road systems. Most of these ritual spaces are not regularly present in the archaeological record, yet they are frequently mentioned in etno-historical accounts. This study presents a preliminary analysis of a shrine located in the...
Andean Philosophies, Social Theory, and the Use of Analogies in the Interpretation of Andean Built Environments (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Dedication, Collaboration, and Vision, Part I: Papers in Honor of Tom D. Dillehay" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Dr. Tom Dillehay has significantly advanced Andean studies and archaeological theory and method, and a short presentation could never do justice to the extraordinary breadth of Tom’s many contributions. In my paper, I focus on Tom’s invaluable investigations of Andean ideologies of space and his pioneering...
Andean Population Dynamics Revealed by Genome-wide Data from the High Elevation Cuncaicha Rock Shelter (2017)
Present-day Andean human populations harbor a relatively high genetic diversity but a minimal population structure and differentiation among them. Moreover, mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and Y chromosome studies on pre-contact human remains suggest that both modern and ancient Andean populations derive from a single ancestral origin. However, nuclear ancient DNA (aDNA) data from the Andes in particular and South America in general are still too scarce to fully address questions on genetic continuity...
The Angel of History and the Paradise of Progress in the Scholarship of Peter Roe (2017)
In honor of the innovative contribution by Peter Roe to the ethno-archaeological research on Amazonia, my paper will focus on the indigenous knowledge forms which invert our own logics about material objects. Roe’s early willingness to allow indigenous thought to impact our scientific interpretations was well ahead of its time. Today, we on the ethnographic side of Amazonian scholarship, have little difficulty speaking in terms of the "social life of things." Yet, even beyond, the legitimacy...
Animal Imagery and the Mythic Level of Jama-Coaque Figural Style (2017)
The mythological and iconographic analyses of Peter G. Roe have made seminal contributions to our understanding of Amerindian cosmology and religious thought in South America, both in the ethnographic present and in the prehispanic past. His unitary mythic model set forth in the Cosmic Zygote (1982) and explored in subsequent publications has convincingly demonstrated that this quintessentially Amazonian model has "deep-time" attributes that shed interpretive light on iconographic...
Animals for the Ancestors: Comparing Animal Use in Funerary Rites at Ancient Hualcayán, Peru (AD 1–1000) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster presents recent analysis of faunal materials from three distinct funerary structures at Hualcayán, Ancash, Peru, in order to assess differences in taphonomic environments and funerary practices through interred faunal remains. This study compares species representation, bone modifications, and fragmentation from Early Intermediate Period and Middle...
Animism and Agency in the Amazonian Landscape: A Consideration of the Ontological Turn Utilizing Perspectives from Modern Runa Communities (2018)
Modern kichwa-speaking Runa peoples inhabit much of Ecuador’s Upper Amazon. Ethnographic study focusing on Runa communities of both the Pastaza and Napo Rivers indicate these groups share many of the views, collectively known as Amazonian Perspectivism, that characterize numerous lowland cultural groups. This paper will detail some of the ways in which Runa persons perceive and interact with their environment, focusing on relations with socially salient plants and animals thought to be persons,...
Annotated Bibliography: Distant Early Warning (DEW) System, Alaska (2008)
An annotated bibliography of the Distant Early Warning (DEW) System. The DEW Line was an integrated chain of early warning radar and communication stations constructed between 1953 and 1957 from northwestern Alaska across northern Canada. The DEW System remained in use throughout the mid to late 1980s. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was replaced with the North Warning System (NWS).
Anthropocene Amazonia, Beyond the Buzzword: Centennial-Scale Anthropogenic Influences on Southern Amazonian Forests, 1000-2000 CE (2018)
The Anthropocene is defined here as the time when human-induced alterations of the environment become a driver of regional and global climate. The Amazon has very deep histories of human alterations of forest systems, but settled occupations that dramatically altered forest structure in regional systems of Late Holocene age, particularly following the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), ca. 900-1300 CE. Global population loss in the Old World, beginning in the 13th century, and the demographic...
Anthropogenic Landscapes of Amazonia: A Spatial Analysis of Landscape Modification and Settlement Organization at Macurany, Brazil (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. I analyze anthropogenic landscape modification at Macurany, a pre-colonial terra preta site on the Middle Amazon River in Parintins, Brazil, in order to gain insight into settlement formation and organization. Settlement patterns and artificial landscapes are the result of human action, technological innovation and ingenuity. Understanding anthropogenic...
Anti-Colonialism, State Development, and Araucanian Resilience in the South-Central Andes (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Disentanglement: Reimagining Early Colonial Trajectories in the Americas" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation centers on indigenous proto-state or polity formation in the early Spanish period in the south-central Andes and the sociocultural conditions that shaped a specific type of archaeological record, an unostentatious material culture for a polity-level of society. The historical focus is on the...