South America: Andes (Geographic Keyword)
1-25 (1,096 Records)
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. In the year 2014 as part of the Qhapaq Ñan project, a long-term intervention at the site of El Guarco in the coastal town of Cerro Azul was started. The project was thought from the beginning within the framework of collaborative archaeology and the relation with local...
12,500 Years of Altitude (2018)
The earliest occupations in the Salt Puna —a high elevation desert in the Andes Mountains — date to the Pleistocene-Holocene boundary and are relevant to the discussion of the timing of the first exploration and colonization of South American elevations above 3500m, as well as the relationship between mountain environments and other ecological areas. The wooden shafts used in the extractive technologies of the earliest hunter-gatherers originated outside the Puna, in the eastern lowlands....
The 1973 Seminar on The Lacustrine Kingdoms in the Titicaca Basin (2018)
Co-organized by John V. Murra and Luis G. Lumbreras, this seminar was planned as an international and interdisciplinary study on the Lacustrine Kingdoms around the Titicaca basin (Lupaqa and Paqajes), and their interaction towards the western lowlands. Murra and Lumbreras were able to gather a group of leading Andeanists and students from Bolivia, Peru, Chile, Ecuador, Canada, and the U.S. who worked in the field for almost three months in Southern Peru, Northern Chile, and Bolivia. The Seminar,...
The 2017 Excavations at Pan de Azúcar de Nivín: Insight into the Middle Horizon Occupation of the Middle Casma Valley, Peru (2018)
Pan de Azúcar de Nivín is located 23km east to the city of Casma, in the small town of Nivín, at the right margin of the Casma River Valley in the Department of Ancash, Peru. In June and July 2017, a team of archaeologists from Louisiana State University carried out mapping and excavation operations at this important archaeological complex. Through limited excavations, architectural mapping, surface collection and the analysis of associated materials, the Proyecto de Investigación Arqueológico...
The 2023 Excavations at the Cosma Archaeological Complex, Ancash – Peru: A Journey Down the Rabbit Hole into the Andean Late Preceramic (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Excavations at the Cosma Archaeological Complex, located in north-central Peru, have revealed a potential missing link, both temporally and geographically, in understanding the origins of corporate labor and the construction of public monuments associated with the Late Preceramic period. A suite of radiometric dates at two temple mounds with Kotosh-Mito...
Abandonment Processes in Manabi, Ecuador: Ethnoarchaeological Interpretations from the Cloud Forest (2018)
The purpose of this research is to determine the manner in which site abandoned occurred in Manabí, Ecuador. The Manteño were one of many pre-Hispanic cultures exchanging local resources, engineering new technologies, and mass-producing goods along the coast of Ecuador. Successful in their chiefdom and independent from the expanding Inca Empire, the Manteño remained culturally uninterrupted for more than 800 years. The focus of this research is to understand the interruption and thus...
Abbreviated Imagery on Cajamarca Cursive Ceramics (2018)
Paintings on fineware ceramic vessels and spoons by the pre-Hispanic Cajamarca culture of the north highlands of present-day Peru emphasize an abstracted and expressionistic aesthetic unlike their north coast neighbors, the Transitional Moche culture, and their contemporaries, the Wari state. During the Middle Horizon (c. 600 - 1000 CE), the Cajamarca culture's paintings developed a greater emphasis on human and animal imagery while maintaining an abstraction of forms. The figures are reduced to...
The Absolute Chronology of Castillo de Huarmey (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. Castillo de Huarmey, located on the North Coast of Peru and dated to the Middle Horizon period (ca. 650–1050 CE), was one of the most important provincial centers of the Wari Empire. Presenting the results of an extensive radiocarbon dating program, the present paper focuses on the chronological aspects of this unique...
Accessing the Inaccessible: Late Intermediate Period Chachapoya Collective Mortuary Practices at Diablo Wasi, Peru (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Beyond the Ancestors: New Approaches to Andean "Open Sepulchers"" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The complexity in mortuary traditions across the Chachapoyas region ranges from single individual interments to large, commingled mortuary caves, as well as including constructed sarcophagi and shared open chambers high on cliff faces. Variation within sites and across funerary complexes demonstrates individuality in...
Across the Lake: Interregional Connections with the Tiwanaku Occupation of Copacabana (2018)
Tiwanaku, the first expansive state in the southern Andes, established colonies in many parts of the Andes (Moquegua, the Atacama Desert, Cochabamba) and exerted influence over the southern Titicaca basin. Archaeologists have recreated daily life for people living in these places, producing many insightful studies of Tiwanaku diet, cultural bodily modifications, disease, and occasional incidents of trauma. Many colonists living far from the Tiwanaku heartland developed hybrid lifestyles,...
Adolph Bandelier’s Legacy in the Lake Titicaca Basin: Tiwanaku and Qeya Ceramic Style (2018)
While Swiss-born anthropologist Adolph Bandelier is perhaps best known for his research in the U.S. southwest, for which the Bandelier National Forest bears his name, his research in the Bolivian Lake Titicaca region during the late nineteenth century has left an indelible legacy. Based on a brief visit of scarcely three weeks to the site of Tiahuanaco in 1894, he produced an informative document that remains vital to understanding its monuments to this day. In this paper we focus on his...
Advances in Mineral Characterization of the Late Horizon Pottery from Incahuasi, Cañete (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Alfareros deste Inga: Pottery Production, Distribution and Exchange in the Tawantinsuyu" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper I will present preliminary results from the materials excavated of the Incahuasi site located at the middle Cañete valley. Research suggests that this portion of the valley, an area stretching from Caltopa at the low-mid valley to Pacaran at the upper-mid valley, was an Inca province...
Advances in Technological Studies of Northern Chile Ceramics: Petrography and Geochemistry of Fabrics and Paintings (Iluga Túmulos, Tarapacá) (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Andean and Amazonian Ceramics: Advances in Technological Studies" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the last decades, ceramic research in the region of Tarapacá has nourished our comprehension on past societies. First, pottery has played a key-role in defining chrono-cultural periods of the south-central Andes. Second, archaeometric studies have allowed to discuss these social, cultural, political, and economic...
Aerial Drone Photogrammetry of Aboveground Mortuary Architecture in the Amazonian Andes (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Adventures in Spatial Archaeometry: A Survey of Recent High-Resolution Survey and Measurement Applications" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For centuries, Indigenous Andean communities known as the Chachapoya placed their ancestral dead in aboveground architecture across the landscape of the Amazonian Andes, in what is now northeastern Peru. The study of Chachapoya ancestral sites presents a series of ethical and...
The Aesthetics and Poetics of Infrastructures in Ancient Andean Urbanism (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Mesoamerican and Andean Cities: Old Debates, New Perspectives" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Social scientists have stressed the invisibility of modern infrastructures, whether roads, irrigation systems, or hidden electrical wires and plumbing. They have argued in turn that as a system of interconnected substrates, infrastructures recede to the background and become the subject of conscious reckoning...
After Monumentality: The Late Paracas Component at the Site of Campanayuq Rumi in the Peruvian South-Central Highlands (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Beyond Borders at the End of a Millennium: Life in the Western Andes circa 500–50 BCE" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Campanayuq Rumi, located in the Peruvian south-central highlands, flourished as a major ceremonial center during the late Initial period and early Early Horizon (ca. 1000–500 BCE). While it ceased to function as a Chavín-related center and an important node of interregional interaction around 500 BCE,...
The Afterlife of Pacatnamu: From Looting to Curanderismo (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Site destruction from looting, climate change, agricultural activities, and urban development threatens the preservation of cultural heritage more than ever before, particularly due to a lack of site monitoring in some regions during the pandemic. This has long been the case in the North Coast region of Peru since the Spanish Conquest. A significant amount...
An Agent-Based Disaster Model: Marginality, Decision-Making, and Novel Resource Exploitation during ENSO Flooding Events in Chicama, Peru (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ecological disasters are often argued to be forces of large-scale societal change, including the primary causes of major cultural collapses. This concept is reevaluated in light of the recent 2016-2017 El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which provides an opportunity to examine the ways in which this event affects the landscape. Through integration of remote...
Agricultura ancestral y dinámica social en Quito desde el Formativo hasta la República Temprana (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Innovations in Ecuadorian Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Durante el monitoreo arqueológico de la línea 1 de Metro de Quito se identificó 23 evidencias de campos de cultivos antiguos. Los resultados de los análisis confirman su presencia desde el periodo Formativo, y una persistencia hasta el periodo republicano. Se observó que las evidencias más antiguas se encuentran hacia el NW de la ciudad. Por...
Agricultural Life and Socioeconomic Dependencies in the Western Andes of Southern Peru during the Second Half of the First Millennium BCE (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Beyond Borders at the End of a Millennium: Life in the Western Andes circa 500–50 BCE" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Formative Paracas archaeological culture has long been considered a coastal phenomenon in the southern Peruvian Andes. In this paper, we change this perspective and examine two Late Paracas and Initial Nasca (370 BCE–CE 90) highland settlements: Collanco (1,630 m asl) and Cutamalla (3,300 m asl) in...
Agricultural Practices in the Atacama Desert (Northern Chile): New Perspectives from Stable Isotope Analysis on Archaeological Crops (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Challenges and Future Directions in Plant Stable Isotope Analysis in Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Agricultural practice began in arid northern Chile during the Formative Period just prior to 1000 yr BC. Unusually, preservation of crops, including maize, squash, quinoa and beans is excellent due to the extremely arid conditions that characterise the Atacama Desert. In order to explore crop management,...
Alterity, Resistance, and Autonomy: Mortuary Archaeology and the Diversity of Indigenous Responses to Spanish Conquest in Lambayeque, Peru (2018)
Over the last few decades, archaeological narratives have shifted towards far more nuanced understandings of colonized peoples in favor of reconstructing nuanced and integrated understandings of indigenous perception, identity, biosocial interplays, and other responses to conquest. This work merges archaeological, ecological, and bioarchaeological contexts to help understand the significance of mortuary pattern data to compare postcontact cultural outcomes in Mórrope and Eten, two...
Alternative Complexities in the Central Andes: An Anarchist Approach to Chancay Political Organization in the Huanangue Valley (2018)
Understanding the political organization of Late Intermediate Period (1000 – 1470 CE) societies along the central coast of Peru has remained challenging. The urban/proto-urban settlements that are characteristic of groups like the Chancay, Ichma, and the Chinca (among others) have been interpreted as material manifestations of elite power, however, many of these societies don’t fit traditional models of chiefdoms or states. Using a combination of ethnohistoric data, settlement pattern analysis,...
An Alternative Pattern of Coalescence: A Study of Architecture and Organization at a Non-fortified, Pre-Inca Town in the Southern Highlands of Peru (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. This paper presents a detailed analysis of architecture and spatial organization at Maukallaqta de Nuñoa, a pre-Inca site in the highlands of southern Peru. Maukallaqta was constructed at a time when societies across much of the central Andean highlands were constrained by persistent...
An Analysis of Botanical Remains from the Site of Quilcapampa (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Wari and the Far Peruvian South Coast: Final Results of Excavations in Quilcapampa" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents the results of the recovery and identification of plant remains from the site of Quilcapampa La Antigua. Located in the Department of Arequipa, Peru, Quilcapampa provides evidence of cultural material associated with the Wari Empire (AD 600-1000). This presentation focuses on the plant...