South America: Andes (Geographic Keyword)
451-475 (1,096 Records)
This is an abstract from the "After the Feline Cult: Social Dynamics and Cultural Reinvention after Chavín" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the Moro region of the middle Nepeña Valley, on the western slopes of the north-central Peruvian Andes, the fifth century BCE marked a major social crisis, perhaps best seen in endemic armed conflicts, unfinished monumental buildings, and the demise of Chavín-related artistic programs. In this balkanized...
Huari Urban Prehistory: An Introduction to the Excavations of 2017 (2018)
Huari Urban Prehistory: An Introduction to the Excavations of 2017 From June through mid-August archaeological excavations were conducted at the Patipampa section of Huari, Ayacucho, Peru, where prehistoric constructions are not preserved on the surface. The goal of this first season of excavation was to detect and expose outlines of the built environment in approximately a hectare of space believed to contain primarily residential remains. As spatial organization becomes clear, individual...
Human Biogeography, Life Histories and Bioavailable Strontium in the Southern Andes (Argentina and Chile) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Patagonian Evolutionary Archaeology and Human Paleoecology: Commending the Legacy (Still in the Making) of Luis Alberto Borrero in the Interpretation of Hunter-Gatherer Studies of the Southern Cone" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While regionally focused in Patagonia, Luis Borrero’s research has contributed to shape archaeological practice beyond this region, encompassing South America at large. As a regional case...
Human Impact on an Inhospitable Plain: New Insights into the Hydraulic System of the Rio Huaycho (Lake Titicaca, Bolivia) (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Water Management in the Andes: Past, Present, and Future" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ALTI-plano research project (Archaeological Lake Titicaca Inventory-Mapping) aims, in particular, to provide a complete map of archaeological sites along the eastern shores of Lake Titicaca. Our focus lies primarily on refining our grasp of local chronologies, human settlement patterns, and the environmental change effects on...
Human-Environment Relationships and Spatial Organization in the Nepeña Valley, Ancash Peru (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The built environment is not a simple, haphazardly constructed idea. The human condition and cultural components, combined with environmental factors have undoubtedly influenced the built environment situated within landscapes. Not only are these landscapes environmental, but also social. In addition, these landscapes are not static and are subject to...
Humans strategy and paleoclimate in the Andean: variation in intensity occupation in the Laguna del Diamante (ca. 2000-500 años aP) (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Laguna del Diamante (34°S) is a high-altitude wetland (3,000 m asl) with resources that have been attractive to human societies for the last 2,000 years. This article evaluates the variable intensity of its occupation in five temporal segments between 2030 and 440 cal BP, according to a chronology modeled from 14 radiocarbon dates excavated in stone...
The Hydrologic and Geologic Dynamics of the Las Peñas Spring (2018)
This presentation addresses the hydrology of agricultural terraces and a spring associated with the Late Intermediate Period (post AD 1200) site of Las Peñas located in the Moquegua Valley of Peru. Positioned 150 meters northwest of Las Peñas, the spring is located at roughly 2,700 meters in elevation and sits at the base of several agricultural terraces. This field system was presumably in production at the time Las Peñas was occupied and is still in use today. Using coring techniques, sediment...
Iconographic Depictions of Spear-Thrower Use in the Ancient Andes (2018)
Spear-thrower devices held a role around the world as a primary weapon and tool before slowly falling out of favor in certain areas for other projectile weapons. While it is widely accepted that spear-throwers were used by the people of the ancient central Andes, comparatively little research has gone into the role that they had as weapons of war, hunting tools, and objects of ceremonial reverence. Many Andean societies have rich traditions of art and iconography, often portraying human and...
Iconographic Evidence for Altered States of Consciousness in Andean Cupisnique Visual Culture (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Magic, Spirits, Shamanism, and Trance" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Although a shamanic component has long been recognized in Andean Formative cultures, recent research on Cupisnique (ca. 1200–900 BCE) ceramic iconography yields evidence for more varied, more prevalent, and much more far-reaching use of therapeutic and entheogenic substances during the early phases of Andean prehistory than has been previously...
Iconographic, Technological, and Contextual Analysis of Wari Pyro-Engraved Gourds from Castillo de Huarmey, Peru (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. The technological, stylistic, and iconographical aspects of decorated gourds are yet insufficiently addressed by researchers of precolumbian Andean art. This paper investigates Wari pyro-engraved gourd vessels that have been discovered during the excavation process at Castillo de Huarmey since 2013. The archaeological...
Identification of Bilateral Congenital Radioulnar Synostosis in an Early Horizon Burial from the Site of Atalla, Peru (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Bioarchaeological research can help trace the development and distribution of rare pathologies across space and time, aiding in our understanding of how past peoples experienced and made sense of a variety of conditions and diseases. Congenital radioulnar synostosis (CRUS), a developmental condition resulting in fusion of the proximal radius and ulna, is one...
Identifying Strategies of Integration and Cooperation during the Late Intermediate Period (AD 1000–1480) at Sangayaico, South-Central Andes, Peru (2018)
The Late Intermediate Period (LIP) in the highlands of the Central Peruvian Andes was characterized by a marked intensification in economic specialization. In contrast to the preceding periods, in which mixed agro-pastoral groups appear to have dominated highland Peru, many LIP populations seem to have adopted increasingly specialized pastoral or agricultural strategies. This increased economic specialization would likely have fostered inter-group cooperation, as subsistence generally required...
Identifying Use and Consumption Patterns through a Quantitative, Qualitative, and Comparative Analysis of Mollusks at Huaca Menocucho, Moche Valley Peru (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Excavations at Huaca Menocucho in the Moche Valley, Peru, revealed occupation sequences from the Initial period to the Middle Horizon with large amounts of malacological remains. Quantitative, qualitative, and comparative analyses are being conducted to interpret the role of gastropods, bivalves, and other mollusks at the site. A quantitative analysis will...
Identity through Movement: Domestic Political Units and Pan-Andean Relations in Early and Middle Cajamarca Periods (50 BC–AD 750) (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. The purpose of this project is to investigate the relationship between environmental factors and cultural dynamics as manifested in the development of specialized pottery production as a symbol of an ethnic identity in the valley of Cajamarca,...
Ideological Infrastructures and Bio-Political Ecology: Investigating Colonial-Era Entanglements of New Food and Religious Systems (Sixteenth Century, Ayacucho, Peru) (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Unsettling Infrastructure: Theorizing Infrastructure and Bio-Political Ecologies in a More-Than-Human World" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. ThThe extended Spanish conquest of Indigenous groups in the sixteenth century prompted infrastructural collisions of governance, foodways, and religious ideologies that indelibly altered Indigenous physical and ritual landscapes. Through the entanglement of new European foods and...
If Threads Could Talk: Listening to Andean Textiles at the Louisiana University Museum of Art (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the mid-1990s, the LSU Museum of Art received a collection of nearly 60 Andean objects as a donation from a private collector. More than half of the items donated are textiles and/or tools used in making textiles, all thought to have come from Peru. Beyond this geographic pointer, little information came with the collection, so the catalog entries for...
Images of the Living Past: 19th-Century Moche Archaeological Photographs and Everyday Indigeneity in the Northern Peruvian Andes (2018)
This presentation analyzes late 19th-century photography of Moche pre-Columbian buildings, as a way to inspect the buildings’ incorporation into everyday indigenous lives. I will focus on the work by German scientist Hans Heinrich Brüning (1848-1928). First arrived as an engineer hired by the most important sugar haciendas of the region, Brüning’s interests quickly shifted towards archaeological and ethnographic studies during his stay in the Northern Peruvian Andes between 1875 and 1920. His...
Imperial Space Appropriation and Colonialism during the 16th Century in the Ecuadorian 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 Inka Empire began its process of conquest and colonialism in 1420 in ancient Ecuador. The inkas reproduced their own social spaces for the public, the sacred, and the economic over local spaces. However, such Inka layers of transformation were suddenly truncated by the Spanish arrival at around 1530, which again brought different kinds of populations that...
The Implications of Amaranthaceae Cultivars at the Tiwanaku Site of Cerro San Antonio, Locumba, Perú (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Tiwanaku civilization (ca. A.D. 500-1100) originated in the Bolivian Altiplano (3800 masl) of the south-central Andes and grew frost-resistant crops, such as quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa), kiwicha (Amaranthus caudatus), and potatoes (Solanum tuberosum). Throughout the Middle Horizon (A.D. 600-1100), the Tiwanaku expanded into Peruvian coastal valleys (~900...
Improvisation and Creativity at an Emergent Andean Center (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Crafting Archaeological Practice in Africa and Beyond: Celebrating the Contributions of Ann B. Stahl to Global Archaeology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ann Stahl continues to produce a rich, and provocative scholarship, one that has inspired scholars across regions and generations. She has long positioned herself within "intellectual crosscurrents," drawing on literature from a wide range of disciplines. Most...
In the Heart of the Inca: An Osteobiography at Huanacauri (Cusco, Peru) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study takes an osteobiographical approach to describe the archaeological significance and life history of the only known individual buried within Huanacauri (Cusco, Peru), one of the most sacred sites in the Inca Empire (ca. 1400-1533 CE). Given the significant location of the burial—in the center of the place the Incas perceived as the foundation of...
In the Land of Llamas and Ají: New Insights into the Late Horizon Inca Occupation of the Middle Sama Valley, Southern Peru (2018)
Since the 1970s, the Sama valley on the far south coast of Peru has been known to house the Inca site of Sama Grande since the excavations of German archaeologist Hermann Trimborn. Situated at the crossroads of the Quapaq Ñan running parallel to the Andean foothills and from the coast to the highlands, Sama Grande was assumed to direct people, animals, and goods across the region during the Late Horizon (14th-15th century AD). In 2017, full-coverage pedestrian survey of the coastal desert plain...
The Inca Administration of the Middle Cañete Valley, Peru (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The historical accounts of the Cañete valley, recovered by the Spanish conquistadores, inform that the Incas found two different kinds of reactions to their conquest attempts: while the Guarco kingdom, in the lower valley, resisted the Incas domination; the Lunahuná kingdom, in the middle valley, supported the Inca troops and generals. While this information...
Inca Hydrodynamics at the Chachabamba Archeological Site (Machu Picchu National Archeological Park, Peru) (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Water Management in the Andes: Past, Present, and Future" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Chachabamba archaeological site in the Machu Picchu National Archeological Park contains a unique water complex erected by the Incas. Based on archaeological investigations, it has been established that the function of this water complex was strictly ceremonial. The necessity to control water flow in an architectural context...
Inca Imperial Colonization and Ethnicity of Northern Chile (2018)
Were the Inca aware of the restrictive possibilities for labor and productivity in the extreme arid territories of the Atacama Desert of northern Chile? How did the Inca officials manage to obtain information that enabled them to identify (i) strategic enclaves for farming, installing administrative and political nodes, exploiting and processing ores, and (ii) a selection of conspicuous mountains to place hilltop shrines? Here we discuss the idea that the rapid, extensive, and efficient...