South America: Andes (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Izumi Shimada. Carlos Elera. Haagen Klaus. Alexandra Greenwald. Jenna Hurtubise.

We present a multidisciplinary summary vision of the natural and cultural contexts and impacts of an 11th century mega-El Niño event and the extraordinary social responses to and consequences of it. Evidence and impacts of torrential rains and associated severe flooding dated ca. 1050 CE have been documented at multiple sites along the Peruvian coast, particularly in the Lambayeque region. The flood buried the Middle Sicán capital of Sicán with fluvial deposits 1.0 to 1.5 m thick. During this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Leonor Adán. Mauricio Uribe. Simón Urbina.

This is an abstract from the "Political Economies on the Andean Coast" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Este trabajo expone el análisis arqueológico de los asentamientos y arquitectura registrados en la costa de Tarapacá, norte de Chile, durante los períodos Intermedio Tardío y Tardío (950-1540 dC). Los sitios estudiados comprenden el litoral entre Pisagua e Iquique hasta la desembocadura del río Loa, los que forman parte del Complejo Cultural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Celeste Samec. Hugo Yacobaccio. Patrick Roberts.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The goal of this work is to study llama herding in the Puna Highlands of Atacama during the final period of the Late Holocene (700 years BP to present day), focusing on the link between mobility and climate change. South American camelids are the only large mammals that were domesticated in the Americas and llamas have been an important resource for Andean...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Iride Tomazic. Jordan Dalton.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological and osteological analyses of burial features allow archaeologists to explore questions related to an individual’s life, activities, social status and potential role in society. This poster presents the analysis of a Late Horizon tomb from the site of Las Huacas in the Chincha Valley of Perú, with an emphasis on human skeletal remains. Las Huacas...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jason Nesbitt.

This presentation will discuss the results of recent archaeological research at the late Initial Period (ca. 1100–800 B.C.) site of Canchas Uckro. Located in the Puccha Valley, Canchas Uckro is positioned approximately 25 km to the north of Chavín de Huántar and 40 km from the upper Marañon river. Analysis of the pottery assemblage from Canchas Uckro suggest strong parallels with the Urabarriu Phase of Chavín de Huántar. However, a considerable proportion of the pottery also exhibits formal and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sophia Marques.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Statistical and GIS-based analysis are applied to summarize the findings of preliminary auger testing, survey, and site reconnaisance conducted in July and August 2022 in the Valle de Mairana, Bolivia. In depth profiles of eight possible Inka-period sites were created and compared. The Valle de Mairana spans the municipalities of Mairana and Samaipata in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Greg Maggard. Kary Stackelbeck.

Although specific examples are rare, the concept of seasonal or periodic group aggregation is often employed by studies of early foragers in the Americas as a functional process to explain the formation of social networks, information exchange, group ritual, exogamy, and the long-distance movement of materials. In spite of frequent use when modeling mobility and settlement, the material, spatial, and social characteristics of aggregation sites remain poorly understood. Here, we provide two...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bob Benfer.

Here I report the use of multiple imagery for understanding the coastal valley site studied most intensively, El Paraíso. Photographs of carved bone figures, plane table maps, Total Station maps, kite orthophoto maps, aerial photos, Google Earth satellite maps, and planetarium maps provide images that, taken together, permit identification of the effigies. Identities of both arms of the El Paraíso complex can be recognized: One is a bird. The other resembles the three mythical figures Bischof...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Brown. Mark Willis. Chester Walker.

Remote sensing, including both low level aerial photography and subsurface geophysical methods, has become an increasingly key element in archaeological fieldwork over the last few decades. During that time, our team has used various techniques to accurately map late prehistoric Ecuadorian sites and to search for buried features. In the last two years we have used drone aerial photography, ground penetrating radar, and magnetometry to aid in investigations at the monumental site of Cochasquí....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alyson Thibodeau. Allison Curley. Emily Kaplan. Ellen Howe.

Ritual drinking vessels called qeros have been produced in the Andes for millennia. In the colonial period, Andean artists produced wooden qeros, many of which were decorated using a polychrome inlay technique. Almost all extant polychromed wooden qeros attributed to the colonial period derive from museum and private collections and lack provenience and precise means of dating. Here, we investigate the chronology and production of qeros by characterizing lead white pigment (lead hydroxycarbonate...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patrick Mullins.

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. Frontier landscapes are complex and dynamic zones often comprising multiple cultural, economic, political, demographic, and geographic boundaries. Bradley J. Parker’s (2006) Borderland Matrix model endeavors towards a systematic and process-focused study of frontier landscapes and the bundles of boundaries that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lauren Kohut.

During the Late Intermediate Period (AD 1000–1450), frequent warfare radically transformed the landscape of the Colca Valley in the southern Peruvian highlands. Widespread fortification not only marked a new defensive landscape, but also reflected and reinforced broader social and political transformations—including increasing settlement nucleation and the coalescence of new ethnic identities. Although many of the valley's fortifications were largely abandoned following the region's...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Monica Barnes. Sumru Aricanli.

This paper will discuss the chain of Andeanists that began with Adolphe Bandelier in the late 19th century and continued into the 20th century with Charles W. Mead, Ronald Olson, Wendell C. Bennett, Junius B. Bird, Harry and Marian Tschopik, James A. Ford, John Hyslop, and E. Craig Morris and continues to the present with various fellows and research associates. Although not formally affiliated with the AMNH, John V. Murra is a link in this chain because of his personal and theoretical influence...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Bria.

This is an abstract from the "Illuminated Communities: The Role of the Hearth at the Beginning of Andean Civilization" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Scholars have long considered how the use of ritual hearths in early Andean temples, specifically those part of the Kotosh Religious Tradition, was central to early complex social practices in highland Peru. But what is the legacy of hearths as ritual spaces, objects, and tools for the transformation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katharine Davis.

In the latter part of the Middle Horizon (A.D. 800-1000) previously unoccupied areas around the megalithic ceremonial core of Tiwanaku came under settlement. A reorganization of space within the core coupled with the influx of new urban residents drawn to the site of Tiwanaku from the surrounding areas by the variety of social, economic, and ritual interactional opportunities meant that newly built households and neighborhoods further away from the monuments became the loci of quotidian...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Kennedy.

Mineral mining was a critical driver of the Peruvian economy during the early colonial period (AD 1550 – 1700). Peru's mineral wealth was used to fund the Spanish empire's geopolitical domination, often at the expense of indigenous Peruvians. Many were forced to labor in distant mines and work camps, decimating local communities. The south-central highlands of Peru were an especially rich area for mineral exploitation and mines, work camps, and processing mills have been identified throughout...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Janine Gasco.

This is an abstract from the "Humble Houses to Magnificent Monuments: Papers in Honor of Jerry D. Moore" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Although Jerry is best known for his archaeological work in the Andes over the past 40 years, his interest in anthropology and in conducting fieldwork began much earlier as a high school student in Stockton, California. Initially intrigued by visits to museums, he set out to learn about Native Americans in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Giancarlo Marcone.

This is an abstract from the "Political Economies on the Andean Coast" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Despite having been central during the pioneer years of Andean archaeology, we understand little of the Lima Culture (circa AD 50–900). Is the Lima culture a political formation or several political formations that share a common territory? How was this society organized politically? On what was political power based in Lima society? Researchers...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Genesis Torres Morales. Celeste Gagnon. Gabriel Prieto.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Children’s lives were mostly largely excluded from bioarchaeology analyses before the 1990s. Since then, a new focus on the bioarchaeology of children has illuminated the importance of the lived experiences of childhood for understanding past societies. In this research, we examined the remains of 270 children who died before they were six years old, who were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Janusek.

This is an abstract from the "After Dark: The Nocturnal Urban Landscape & Lightscape of Ancient Cities" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Most treatments of Andean urbanism and urban life emphasize the acts and rhythms of daily life. Ethnohistoric documentation of life in Cuzco, nevertheless, details a rich corpus of ritual sequences and domestic activities that ideally took place under cover of night. In Tiwanaku today, night is an ontological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Ringberg.

The hill slope settlement of Cerro León (AD 1-400) contains all the typical elements of Early Intermediate period residential sites; spaces for cooking, crafting, sleeping and storage. The flow of most daily activity likely occurred between enclosed, roofed kitchens with heavily used hearths and enclosed but sunlit patios for food processing, spinning, weaving, and tool-making. However, some residences at Cerro León stood apart, not only because of their spaciousness and greater number of rooms...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Davenport.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Pacajes pottery is commonly found throughout Qullasuyu, the southern quarter of the Inka empire. Originating in Bolivia, it saw wider distribution after Inka expansion through the region. One specific form common of this style is a shallow plate decorated with small, black stylized llamas repeating at regular intervals over a red interior. Evidence for the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ismael Pérez Calderón.

El registro arqueológico muestra que durante el pasado prehistórico en el valle de Ayacucho, ocurrieron diferentes lluvias que no solo inundaron y sepultaron aldeas, templos, pueblos y otros monumentos, sino que testimonian los cambios drásticos sucedidos en el desarrollo de las culturas. Como en el caso de la Costa, se vieron afectadas por el fenómeno "El Niño" o ENSO, y lluvias torrenciales que produjeron huaycos y sequias en la región interandina y en otras partes del mundo. Desde los lo...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrea Gonzáles Lombardi.

This is an abstract from the "Political Economies on the Andean Coast" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The peoples of the inner Piuran coast have a deep link with water management and agriculture that was consolidated around AD 1000 under the administration of local and foreign groups which densely occupied the Alto Piura (chaupiyunga) through administrative centers and irrigation systems. Using aerial photographs and RPA imagery, this research...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Monica Katz.

This is an abstract from the "From Materials to Materiality: Analysis and Interpretation of Archaeological and Historical Artifacts Using Non-destructive and Micro/Nano-sampling Scientific Methods" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Hispanic Society has a small but very fine collection of colonial Spanish American lacquered objects, which are decorated with one of the more widely known indigenous lacquer techniques, barniz de Pasto. The Hispanic...