Republic of Paraguay (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
226-250 (587 Records)
Obsidian is not only an excellent raw material for the manufacture of stone tools but because of its compositional homogeneity, it can also be related to specific geographic sources. The geochemical characterization of obsidian sources can help to determine the geographic origin of different stone tools as well as aid to infer patterns of resource utilization and exchange. Although some of the most important obsidian sources in the Andes have been identified and adequately characterized, many...
A Geochemical Database for Indigeneous Ceramics from South America (2017)
The indigenous peoples of South America have been producing pottery for more than 7,500 years. Pottery was made into vessels for the cooking and storage of foods, funerary urns, toys, sculptures, and a wide range of art forms. Due to the regional differences in the composition of raw materials used to manufacture and decorate pottery, geochemical investigations of pottery have proven successful for studying trade and exchange, changes in technology, provenance, etc. Some of the methods used to...
Geographic origin of sacrificed camelids at Huanchaquito (Chimú period, northern coast of Peru): insight from stable isotopic analysis (2017)
Excavations at the Chimú site of Huanchaquito located in the Moche Valley (northern coast of Peru) leaded to the discovery of an exceptional sacrificial deposit of more than 200 domestic camelid skeletons. This finding adds to the many testimonies of the presence of camelids on the Peruvian coast during the pre-Hispanic era. The abundant presence of animals suggests - but does not bring definitive evidence - that breeding took place locally in an unfavorable arid environment. Measurements of...
Geometric Morphometrics on the Spot: When Artifact Shape Tells Us More of Prehistoric Lithic Variability in São Paulo State, Brazil (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation contemplates the application of a method of analysis for the study of artifact shape named geometric morphometrics (GM). GM is a quantitative method originated in the biological sciences with a large application in evolutionary biology for the analysis of organismal form. Evolutionary archaeologists have been employing this approach to...
Getting Creative with Photogrammetry: Adventures in Dos Mangas, Ecuador (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Photogrammetry, the science of converting two-dimensional images into immersive 3D models, traditionally adheres to a strict set of guidelines and specialized tools. However, this poster explores the spirited realm of photogrammetry with rule bending and limits to achieve success in Dos Mangas, Ecuador. In this resource-constrained setting, innovators...
A GIS Analysis of Production Areas, Ritual Spaces, and Socioeconomics at the Mixed Inka-Local Administrative Center of Turi, Northern Chile (2017)
While anthropologists are often concerned with profiling the socioeconomic character of the cultures they study, this task can be challenging for archaeological researchers investigating long-abandoned settlements. Intrasite socioeconomic reconstructions in particular may depend upon such factors as the accurate detection of specific production activities and the partitioning of architectural features into socially informative categories. This paper presents a case study on this topic wherein...
GIS and Drones in the Middle Moche Valley: an Analysis of Huaca Menocucho (2017)
Huaca Menocucho is a prehistoric monumental center located in the middle Moche Valley on the northern coast of Peru. The site shows evidence of several construction and occupation phases of the Moche Valley cultural sequence (Prieto & Maquera, 2015). Huaca Menocucho and the surrounding area have faced looting and destruction from several sources. In July 2016, MOCHE, Inc. conducted a drone survey combined with a systematic surface artifact survey to record information about activities and...
Gruta do Gentio II: data on the new excavations and isotopic signals from the site (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Gruta do Gentio II is an iconic site in the archaeology of Central Brazil because of its early occupation and rich excavation history. Situated in the interfluvial region of the Central Plateau, renewed investigation (after 35 years) offers new perspectives for the site. Data produced during the 1970s and 1980s revealed a wide variety of remains dating...
Harbor Archaeology in Sergipe: Initial Results and Considerations (2016)
In this poster, we intend to discuss some results achieved by the project Harbor Archaeology in Sergipe: inventory and contextualization of structures, developed in the Federal University of Sergipe. We will highlight the remnants and structures identified along the Sergipe River, as well as shipwrecks that have been found in Real and in São Francisco Rivers, both bordering the state of Sergipe. The main goal of this project is to stablish the foundations for the development of a systematic...
Health and Disease during the Ecuadorian Formative: A Case Study from Buen Suceso (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Ecuadorian Formative Period (3800-300 BC) is known for the creation of ceramics, a transition towards agriculture, and the development of sedentary settlements along the Pacific coast. These social and economic changes were often associated with declines in health, as people ate less varied agricultural diets and increasingly encountered pathogens...
The Health of the Herd: Considering Camelid Herding from Late Moche Peru (2017)
The herding of camelids in the pre-Columbian past impacted daily and ritual life of peoples residing there. During the Late Moche period of Peru, camelid herding was a major factor in the trade and exchange of goods, people and ideas. The extent of herding and the degree of camelid breeding in the coastal desert has been understudied. This paper will discuss the patterns in camelid age profiles and pathologies to inform the extent to which camelids where traveling along the coast and into the...
Herds for Gods? Sacrifice and Camelids Management during the Chimú Period (2017)
Although domestic Andean camelids are native from the highlands they have been largely present in the Peruvian coast since the end of Early Horizon (near 200 BC). This presence stresses the symbolic, ritual importance and economic values of camelids. In 2011 an impressive human and animal sacrificial context dating from the Chimú period was found in Huanchaquito near Chan Chan on the northern coast. At least 130 children and 200 camelids were uncovered during the successive excavations that took...
Heritage and Territoriality: Past, Present, and Future Perceptions among the Tacana, Tsimane, and Mosetén in Bolivia (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Politics of Heritage Values: How Archaeologists Deal with Place, Social Memories, Identities, and Socioeconomics" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Preliminary results of the collaborative methodologies applied in two years of intense fieldwork in the Bolivian Amazon will be presented, and we will reflect on the different roles played by archaeological and sacred sites in the Tsimane, Mosetén, and Tacana indigenous...
Heritage Conversations with Dos Mangas (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. Archaeological investigations in Dos Mangas began in 2006, and continued with excavation of a Valdivia village site, Buen Suceso, in 2009, 2017, 2019, and 2022. Those and subsequent excavations have combined archaeological inquiry with community engagement activities such as...
High C4 plants consumption from the Late Intermediate period in Cuzco region. (2017)
Maize was one of the important crops for Inca political economics as a ritual and a staple food. In previous study of sacrificed children mummies found at Mt. Llullaillaco, the individuals particularly consumed C4 resources (such as maize, amaranth and domestic animals raised with C4 plants) in ritual activities. Contrary, the dietary compositions of Machu Picchu skeletons have shown diversity. The individuals from Mt. Llullaillaco and Machu Picchu were most probably immigrated from different...
A History of Landscape Transformation and Environmental Change across the Ascope Irrigation System of the Chicama Valley. (2017)
The sequence of landscape transformation across the area of the Ascope Canal System in the Chicama Valley involved both natural and anthropogenic events and processes that unfolded in nonlinear ways. We argue that early events were crucial in determining transformations later in the sequence. In the arid environment of the North Coast, water availability plays a key role in landscape histories. This paper highlights evidence for El Niño events, water management, and changing ecologies for the...
Holocene Geology and Paleoenvironmental History of the lower Chicama River Valley and Coast (2017)
This paper focuses on reconstructing the Holocene paleoenvironmental history of the lower Chicama River valley and coastal system, which has provided diverse natural resources for the Preceramic cultures at Huaca Prieta and Paredones. The archaeological site of Huaca Prieta is situated on the southern tip of a Pleistocene terrace along the shore, ~3 km north of the Chicama River mouth and floodplain system. Paredones is located 0.6 km to the north on the eastern edge of the terrace. Here we...
The House that Built Me: local and non-local among the Lurin Yauyos during the Inka Empire (2017)
Most scholarship on the shifts in local lifeways during the Late Horizon strictly focused on changes in the availability to new and limited-access goods by local elites (D’Altroy 2001; Hastorf 1990; 2003). In these models, local leaders became immersed in reciprocal and status-granting relationships with the Inka through gifts and exclusive artifacts. Materiality played a pivotal role in the relationship between the Inka and their subjects. However, it is less clear how local ethnicity was...
Household dynamics and the reproduction of early village societies in Northwest Argentina (200BC-AD 350). (2017)
Long term evolutionary narratives on South Andean pre-Columbian history have stressed lineal processes of complexity intensification, defined by big changes on subsistence strategies, from small and egalitarian hunter gatherer groups to complex multicommunitarian chiefdoms. These changes were thought to influence or even determine the structure of household and consequently daily life of people. Nevertheless recent household archaeology studies have demonstrated that the reproduction of...
Houses of Colonial Chiefly Authority: Local Elites in the Social Order of Mawchu Llacta, a Colonial Reducción Town in the Southern Highlands of Peru (2017)
As a result of the Toledan Reforms in the Viceroyalty of Peru during the late fifteenth century, new settlements known as reducciones were established to centralize indigenous populations. Such is the case of Mawchu Llacta, originally Espinar de Tute, in the Caylloma Province, Arequipa. The introduction of these sweeping reforms brought a series of major changes to the social order. External agents were established as the new bearers of power and local elites took on a secondary status. However,...
How many, how few, how long: pre-Columbian population density and human impact in pre-Columbian Amazonia (2017)
Assessing the landscape impact of past settlement and subsistence systems in space and in time is essential to reconstructing pre-Columbian land use in the Amazon basin. In this paper we consider archaeological and landscape evidence for past land use by examining the strengths and limitations of archaeological radiocarbon evidence as a proxy for broad demographic patterns in pre-Columbian Amazonia.
Human Coprolite Diet Reconstruction Confirms Wetland Resource Use in the Coast of the Atacama Desert, 6580 cal. yr BP (2017)
It has been proposed that Chinchorro coastal people along the Atacama Desert in northern Chile had marginal access to plant food, a position refuted by recent scholars. The older perspective comes from bone chemistry analyses which showed a nearly exclusive reliance on marine animal resources. Newer analyses of mummy gut contents shows a substantial reliance on wetland plant resources, especially sedge rhizomes and seeds. Therefore, existing analyses present very different ideas of Chinchorro...
Human Responses to Holocene Aridization South of the Atacama Desert (31° to 32° S), the Meaning of Differences in Landscape Use (2017)
The geographical band between 31°-32° S, from the Pacific to the Andes, lies in the southernmost part of the Semi-Arid North of Chile, south of the Atacama Desert. Multidisciplinary research to the north and south of the Choapa River’s mouth is uneven, thereby in need of new data for understanding the relative intensity of the human traces across the landscape and the human interactions with environmental changes. Currently, the combined pollen records in the coast and highlands indicate arid...
Human Selection on Maize Size Traits. A contribution from the archaeological record of Tarapacá, chile, South Central Andes. (2017)
Maize from Andean region has a recognized complex history, involving ecological and human interaction. Today, while Andean maize show high morphological and low genotypic diversities, the process involved in its production and selection is unclear. In this work we ask how the morphological and genetic diversity of maize has varied through Formative Period to present time in Tarapacá Region, northern Chile? To answer this we analysed thirty morphological traits and eight microsatellites markers...
Human-Environment Interactions and the Hunter-Gatherers of Chachapoyas, Peru (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. Although a growing bodies of scholarship address later cultural developments in such regions, Tropical Montane Cloud Forests (TMCF) are nevertheless perceived by many as environments marginal for human occupation, especially for hunter-gatherers. One such region, the Chachapoyas culture area in northern Peru, has to date been home to...