South America: Andes (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Guy Duke.

This is an abstract from the "Farm to Table Archaeology: The Operational Chain of Food Production" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Creating a meal at the Late Moche (AD 600-850) site of Wasi Huachuma was not simply a matter of visiting the pantry and cooking the ingredients. It required the knowledge of whom to acquire ingredients from, when the ingredients were available, and how to process them. The culinary materials recovered from Wasi Huachuma...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Klarich. Laure Dussubieux.

Pukara, in the northern Lake Titicaca Basin, was a regional center during the Late Formative Period (200 BC- AD 200). The Classic Pukara style is associated with monumental public constructions and sunken temples, elaborate stone sculpture, and a unique polychrome pottery tradition. Spotted felines, disembodied heads, camelids and plants, and anthropomorphic figures were incised and painted on incense burners, trumpets, and other special purpose ceramic vessels that were circulated in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jerry D. Moore.

Dwellings occupy a unique space in human lives, places where multiple trajectories of ‘Culture’ and ‘Nature’ intersect. Not merely shelters, dwellings often incorporate subtle aspects of social life and world view while being literally structured by the capacities of raw materials and construction techniques. Rather than a passive reflection of human intention or social existence, dwellings result from making—to use Tim Ingold’s notion, a perspective placing "the maker from the outset as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Benjamin Carter.

Shell beads are rarely considered a major artifact category. However, research on bead production among the Manteño-Guancavilca (AD 800-1532) of coastal Ecuador highlights the fundamental importance of this category of artifacts. By recording six measurements and four qualitative observations for each of 7651 beads from six sites (two regions, three stretches of time), this research has been able to recognize two distinct châines opératoires. At approximately AD 1200, bead makers shifted from a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeffrey Splitstoser. Jon Clindaniel.

This is an abstract from the "Cordage, Yarn, and Associated Paraphernalia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While Andean khipus—indigenous knot-and-cord recording devices—have been extensively studied over the past hundred years in their final, completed form, relatively little attention has been paid to the process by which they were made. As such, the level of agency that khipu makers, called khipukamayuqs, had in producing khipus is not fully...

DOCUMENT Citation Only George Lau.

This is an abstract from the "Crafting Culture: Thingselves, Contexts, Meanings" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation details different strands of evidence we have on the organisation and kin-based significances of carved stone monoliths during the late prehispanic period of ancient northern Peru (ca. AD 500-1532). Ethnohistorical documents suggest that it was close kin who carved and erected stone images of esteemed forebears; the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jose Nuñez. Alejandro Chu.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Se ha conceptualizado que la relación entre un imperio arcaico y una sociedad conquistada ondula entre dos polos: el hegemónico y el territorial. Ambos sistemas conllevan distintas estrategias, las cuales son aplicadas según los deseos del imperio, pero también atendiendo a las características locales, sean geográficas, políticas y sociales. Los inkas no...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Weronika Tomczyk. Claire Ebert.

This is an abstract from the "Dogs in the Archaeological Record" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The widespread perception of the dog as humans’ closest companion species allows their remains to be used as proxies for human diet and mobility patterns. But these highly social animals held their own variable social and economic roles. Therefore, dog remains can provide information on the organization of animal management systems in past complex...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jason Kennedy. Sergio Chavez. Stanislava Chavez.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Copacabana Peninsula of Lake Titicaca, in modern Bolivia and Peru, is a landscape that has been heavily modified through the construction of stone terraces on the slopes facing the shores of Lake Titicaca and the intermontane valley systems. Previous research by the Yaya-Mama Archaeological Project has demonstrated that terrace construction began...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stefanie Wai.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While archaeologists in the last decade have made significant advances to the archaeology of Tiwanaku and the surrounding Lake Titicaca Basin in present day Bolivia, much remains unknown about the everyday domestic practices leading up to the rise of the Tiwanaku state. Moreover, few studies globally have attempted to explore the advanced use of GIS analyses...

DOCUMENT Citation Only BrieAnna Langlie.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the Lake Titicaca basin of southern Peru, agronomic systems were finely tuned over millennia to the high-altitude environment, an ever-oscillating climate, and dynamic cultural regimes. To succeed in these conditions, prehistoric farmers transformed steep hillsides into viable agricultural land by modifying them into massive agricultural terrace complexes....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brian Bauer. Matthew Piscitelli.

The Cuzco Ceque System was composed of 328 shrines (huacas) organized along 41 lines (ceques) that radiated out from the city of Cuzco, the Inca capital. Historic research indicates that the ceque system was conceptually linked to the fundamental social divisions of the Cuzco region. The ceque system of Cuzco has been frequently discussed in the literature, and anthropologists and historians have long speculated on the locations of shrines in the system and the projection of the ceque lines. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gabriela Oré Menéndez.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Mapping archaeological sites has become more precise, faster, and cheaper than ever, especially once archaeologists began using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs or drones) to capture high-resolution aerial views of archaeological sites. Nevertheless, the next step, manually tracing structures and archaeological features from orthophotos, is still daunting...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Benjamin Vining. Seth Price.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Broad regions of Peru’s coastal desert are now highly adverse marginal environments, yet archaeological evidence indicate these settings often were used extensively in the past. Using a time-series analysis of Sentinel 1 and 2 remote sensing data, we document surface and groundwater resources that developed in the normally hyperarid desert margins of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Noémie Galland.

This is an abstract from the "Underwater and Coastal Archaeology in Latin America" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent archaeological work has revealed that the north-central coastal region of Peru had been the territory of a cultural entity that we recognize today as “Casma” between the ninth and fourteenth centuries AD. Some aspects of this culture remain largely unknown and require further investigation, particularly its iconography. It...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amber Anderson.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As the Inka expanded north at the end of the 15th century, they were met with fierce resistance from the País Caranqui societies in Northern Ecuador. A prolonged standoff occurred, visible in the plethora of fortresses along the northern frontier. Excavations completed by the Pambamarca Archaeology Project north of Quito at three Inka fortresses within the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kendra Leishman. Kara Ren. Aleksa Alaica. Milton Luján Dávila. George Lau.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Pastoralism in a Global Perspective" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Fluctuating political allegiances during the Early Intermediate period (200 BCE–600 CE) were coopted by competing leaders throughout the central Peruvian highlands and more broadly in the south-central Andes. The relationships and conflicts that resulted from socioeconomic negotiations among local networks; alongside the vacuum of power left...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adam Birge.

This is an abstract from the "Manifesting Movement Materially: Broadening the Mesoamerican View" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Movement and the rhythm of life, from procuring food to trade and ritual, are major structuring forces of human lives. However, examining these practices archaeologically can prove difficult due to the minimal and/or short lived evidence of routes. The Sajama landscape of the Carangas provides an example of these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lynn Kim.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Colonial encounters with the Inka Empire led to social changes reflected in the landscape. A hallmark of Inka landscapes were their roads. I explore if the road network in the Camata-Carijana Valley materialized broader forms of state or local control through its distribution and construction. In particular, I investigate how the design of road system...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Henry Bacha.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper engages as its central problematic a recurrent iconographic motif—identified by scholars as depicting a ritualized drinking encounter between the Sapa Inka and his Colla (an ethnic polity of the Late Intermediate Period Lake Titicaca basin) counterpart—painted on keros (Andean ceremonial drinking vessels) produced in the colonial Viceroyalty of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Kaplan.

The use of portable X-Ray Fluorescence (pXRF) for in-situ elemental analysis is becoming widespread in archaeology and cultural heritage studies. Archaeologists and conservators routinely use pXRF instruments in the field and many museums use them in-house for identification of pigments, metals, and inorganic pesticide residues, characterization of minerals and determination of alloy composition. The NMAI Conservation Department has been using pXRF for over fifteen years for a variety of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Pratt.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Excavations at earthen pyramid sites in northern Ecuador have documented the presence of unique circular baked-earth floors atop the pyramids which have been interpreted to be a marker of the especially sacred nature of the structure. Yet little is known about the process by which these floors are produced and fired or the societies that built them. Recent...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Chen. Randy Haas. Jelmer Eerkens. Bryna Hull.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation examines the diets of 16 prehistoric burials at Soro Mik’aya Patxja, a high-elevation Archaic Period site occupied 7,000 years ago in the Peruvian Andes. Stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes were analyzed to infer the prehistoric hunter-gatherer diets during a period that preceded the domestication of tubers, quinoa, and vicuña. Plants such as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Chiou.

Camelids (i.e., llamas and alpacas) were domesticated in the Andean region of South America over 6000 years ago. Since then, camelids have occupied a place of central importance in Andean lifeways over the longue dureé. Nevertheless, while camelid pastoralism in the landscape of the highland Andes has been well documented ethnographically, ethnohistorically, and archaeologically, the intimate relationship between people and camelids in the Andean coastal valleys is less understood. In this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amanda Brock Morales.

This is an abstract from the "Living Landscapes: Disaster, Memory, and Change in Dynamic Environments " session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 1970, a 7.9 magnitude earthquake destroyed numerous towns and displaced many families throughout the Callejon de Huaylas, Peru. In the search for new land and new lives, many of the displaced families began to settle on elevated archaeological sites of monumental architecture located in alluvial plains and near...