South America: Andes (Geographic Keyword)
101-125 (1,096 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Peering into the Night: Transition, Sociopolitical Organization, and Economic Dynamics after the Dusk of Chavín in the North Central Andes" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Following the demise of the Early Horizon (800–200 BC) and Chavín influence in the Central Andes, archaeologists—historically—have hypothesized that cultural changes on the north coast of Peru, such as the “White-on-Red” cultural traditions, as well...
The Biology and Mythology of Ancestor Lithification in the Andes (2018)
Throughout human history, many cultures have told stories about people who turned to stone in death. What is the inspiration for these myths? How do they relate to taphonomic processes that affect deceased organisms? This paper addresses these questions in an Andean context by comparing pre-Hispanic narratives of lithification to post-mortem biological processes. In the Andes, tales of lithification focus on ancestors and local heroes, who, in their petrified state, continue to interact with the...
Blue on Clay: Indigo as a Colorant in Andean Post-Fired Ceramic Paints (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Plant Exudates and Other Binders, Adhesives, and Coatings in the Americas" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Indigo (*Indigofera) is a recognized plant exudate employed in cloth dyes to produce the color blue. In Andean South America, indigoid dyes have been identified in textiles as early as about 4200 BCE. While in other parts of the Americas the plant is utilized as a ceramic pigment (e.g., “Maya Blue”), in the...
Blue Tunics and Royal Lions: Colonial Period Changes in Clothing and Changing Conceptions of Indigeneity in the Spanish Colonial Americas (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Archaeologies of Contact, Colony, and Resistance" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper addresses the impact of conquest and colonialism on indigenous Andean peoples’ clothing styles and textile motifs in the central Andes, using examples from elsewhere in Latin America and beyond to contextualize documented patterns. Comparing Prehispanic and colonial period examples, I use several classes of material culture...
The Body, the Regalia, the Weapons, and the Mortuary Bundle: Forms, Materials, and Uses of Cordage at the Paracas Site (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Cordage, Yarn, and Associated Paraphernalia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In study of Andean archaeological textiles, a focus on decorative “high status” objects too often produces a distorted vision of ancient textile traditions, obscuring the textile forms most commonly found in an excavated assemblage. Ethnoarchaeological study by Cases (2020) has begun to address this problem by looking at production contexts in...
Bones Left Behind: Living Spaces at a Residential Compound at Cerro la Virgen, a Rural Chimu LIP Settlement (2018)
Cerro la Virgen (CLV) is a town-sized LIP site located in the Moche Valley a few kilometers from Chan Chan, the administrative and political center of the Andean polity of Chimu. Previous studies have focused on ceramics and regional politics (Keatinge 1974, 1975), the kinds of plant and animal remains found in residential dumps (Pozorski 1976, 1979; Billman et al in press), and multiple lines of evidence for the nature of the political relationship between the residents of CLV and the...
The Bones of a Community: Mortuary Contexts over Time at Waywaka (Andahuaylas, Peru) (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Bodies formed a significant component of the ritual practice at Waywaka, an early farming village in the Andean highlands (Andahuaylas, Apurímac, Peru) that was occupied from 1600 BC - AD 700. Recent excavations from 2019 show that the village's early inhabitants buried their dead in their domestic areas and used parts of bodies of the dead in various ways...
Born into Captivity: Bioarchaeological Perspectives toward Enslaved Children and Childhood in Colonial Peru (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Afro-Latin American Landscapes" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Children and childhood have emerged as important topics for understanding the history of African slavery in the Americas. In historical archaeology, analyses of subadult skeletal remains have provided valuable information about the biological and social conditions of captivity. However, in spite of these contributions, children are still infrequently...
Born This Way, Becoming That Way: Difference, Disability and Sickness in Inka Society (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Medicine and Healing in the Americas: Archaeological and Ethnohistorical Perspectives" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Inkas’ social constructions of physical difference recognized ‘disability’ as a permanent state of being, one that Guaman Poma de Ayala suggested was considered a specific calle or passage of life. Unlike much of the contemporary Late Middle Ages of Christian Europe, such individuals were not...
Botijas and the Black Pacific: Stylistic and pXRF Analysis of Amphorae produced by Enslaved Potters at Early-Modern Nasca, Peru (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Botijas were the universal packaging for dry and liquid goods transported throughout the global Iberian empires of the Early Modern world. Heirs to the potting traditions of Mediterranean amphorae, these vessels are the most ubiquitous ceramics at Spanish colonial sites in the Americas. We present new research combining stylistic analysis and Portable...
Boundaries and Crossroads, Immigrants and Ancestors: Comparing the Post-Chavín Landscapes of the Moche and Virú Chaupiyungas (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 centuries following the disintegration of the Chavín interaction sphere (~500/400–200/50 BCE) were experienced in myriad ways throughout the ancient Andes. In the Moche and Virú Valleys in northern Peru, the late Early Horizon (~500–200 BCE) generally saw earlier traditions of large ceremonial...
Breathtaking Landscapes, Big Questions, and Fabulous Feasts: Celebrating the Contributions of Dr. Charles Stanish (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Thinking Big in the Andes: Papers in Honor of Charles Stanish" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this introductory paper, we celebrate Dr. Stanish’s impact from both personal and professional angles. We review some of the major contributions of Dr. Stanish’s career over four immensely productive decades, including long-term research projects in several regions and “big ideas” that have significantly influenced Andean...
Building Alliances, Return to Origins, and Monumental Failure: Huascar's Royal Estate at Kañaraqay and the Inca Civil War (1528–1532) (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Although the Inca civil war (1528–1532) set the stage for the transatlantic encounter in the Andes, it has been relegated to a historical footnote. This is largely due to the fact that the relatively short Inca imperial period (or Late Horizon, 1440s–1532) has been mostly studied as a monolithic whole. Yet Inca material culture varies dramatically through...
Building Statehood: Wari Architecture and Colonial Strategies in Cajamarca (2018)
Wari expansion across the Central Andes involved the construction of colonies, serving as nodes in the state network from Cajamarca to Moquegua. Each colony, even considering local adaptations, was built following a precise sequence and setting up predetermined types of spaces. Monumental architecture exhibiting Wari features and design became an expression of power by itself, a symbol of Wari hegemony physically inscribed in the local social landscape. Large amounts of work were invested in the...
Burial Garments of a Chimu Child Sacrifice from Pampa La Cruz, Huanchaco, Peru (2018)
The site of Pampa la Cruz, located in Peru’s northern coast in Huanchaco, is situated just north of the ancient Chimu capital of Chan Chan. A multi-component site with occupations from the Salinar, Gallinazo, and Chimu eras (400 BC – AD 1470), excavations in 2016 recovered Chimu child sacrifices. Each body was interred wearing multiple garments, including mantles, loincloths, and tunics. Environmental and soil conditions enabled the preservation of these textiles. In July 2017 students in the...
Burial Plots: Finding Theatre in the Thanatology of Colonial North Coast Peru. (2018)
Spain's invasion of the Andes initiated a social drama unprecedented in the experience of the Andean natives. Spanish and Spanish-conscripted native chroniclers wrote extensively about Inca pageantry, spectacle, and ritual, and hastily attributed pagan belief to performances they witnessed or heard about. With equal haste, the Spanish appropriated performance as means of introducing and enforcing Christianity. In this paper, I treat performance as the central feature of Andean Colonial...
Buried Sites in the Chincha Valley Floodplain (2019)
This is an abstract from the "From the Paracas Culture to the Inca Empire: Recent Archaeological Research in the Chincha Valley, Peru" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Peruvian coastal valley of Chincha is the largest in the south coast of Peru. Research by our team since 2011 has discovered and excavated a number of archaeological sites that date from 3200–1000 BP. The data from this research provide exciting data to test models of early social...
The Cahuacucho Idol of the Casma culture (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Casma State Material Culture and Society: Organizing, Analyzing, and Interpreting Archaeological Evidence of a Re-emergent Ancient Polity" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2015 Suárez reported the discovery in the high parts of Cerro Cahuacucho (Sechin Valley) of a carved algarrobo (Prosopis sp.) tree trunk, over 2 m long and 118 kg in weight. It was carved on one side with the representation in profile of 5 felines....
A Cajamarca Basin Perspective on Northern Highland Interaction during the Middle Horizon and Late Intermediate Periods (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. Investigations at the Cajamarca sites of Callacpuma and Yanaorco are shedding new light on shifting patterns and intensities of interregional interaction. Highland influence on the coast has been recognized for many years in the coastal...
Cajamarca: Identity through movement (2018)
The Cajamarca Valley, located in the northern Andes of Peru, is a space of encounter and movement of material from different ecological areas since early times to the present. This is mainly due to its strategic location within Andean geography as an enclave of natural points of access to different ecological zones (coastal valleys, Amazon rainforest, southern highlands). Cajamarca culture (100 BC - 1400 AD) is characterized precisely by the mobility of its inhabitants, as indicated by their...
Camelid Exploitation at the Middle Horizon Site of Huari (2018)
Excavations at Huari, the urban center of the Wari state in Peru's Ayacucho Basin, have uncovered well preserved faunal remains, with the majority belonging to native camelid species. While knowledge pertaining to camelid exploitation by the Wari people has been enhanced in recent years through excavations at sites such as Conchopata, little is known about camelid usage at the site of Huari. In this paper, I use osteometric analysis to identify specimens to the species level and to examine the...
Camelid Herding and Enduring Community Identities among the Ayarmacas (Cuzco, Peru) (2018)
Indiscriminate invocation of the term ayllu constrains archaeological reconstructions of community organization in the pre-contact Andean highlands. Legacies of earlier generations of anthropological scholarship encourage researchers to assume particular traits of sociopolitical organization. Archaeological and ethnohistoric evidence from the Cuzco region of Peru demonstrates how such assumptions can be an obstacle to developing accurate representations of social organization. As Inca elites...
Camelid Pastoralism in the Wari Empire and Its Political Implications (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Pastoralism in a Global Perspective" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The South American camelids had tremendous importance for basic subsistence, social life, and religion in all prehispanic Andean societies, but implications of herding domesticated llamas and alpacas for broader political systems have received less academic attention. This study uses the camelid remains as a proxy to study pastoral traditions...
Camelid Variation and Subsistence Diversity: Insights from Osteometric Analysis and Zooarchaeological Assemblages at the Eleventh-Century CE Site of Los Batanes (Sama, Peru) (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Inhabitants of the Terminal Middle Horizon site of Los Batanes (Sama Valley, southern Pern) founded by Tiwanaku-descendant groups in the eleventh century CE practiced a mixed subsistence strategy. Located along a natural corridor that connects the south-central Andean highlands and coast, residents had access to and a taste for local, highland, and marine...
Camelids Consumption and Utilization at the Archaeological Site of Huayuri, South Coast of Peru (2018)
In this work the author presents the preliminary results of the animal bones analyzes from the archaeological site of Huayuri. This site, located in the south coast of Peru, shows evidences of ocupations since the Late Intermediate Period to the Late Horizon. The materials were recovered during the excavations that took place in 2002 and 2005 in the Compound 03, located at the south part of the site. The analysis was primarily focused on the camelid bones, taking into consideration the cultural...