South America: Andes (Geographic Keyword)
226-250 (1,096 Records)
Historical and archaeological research on the Colonial Andes and Spanish colonialism more broadly has drawn parallels between the conversion of indigenous populations to Catholicism and the conversion of agricultural land to ‘Christian’ food production. This scholarship contends that for colonizers, religious conversion was irrevocably connected to agricultural practice – a particular concern to Spaniards in the Andes given the strong links between agrarian production and Inka ritual practices....
Cultivation and Herding Practices, Fiber Colors and Textile Styles in the Paracas-Nasca Transition (2018)
Improving documentation of artifact assemblages in the funerary contexts of the Necropolis of Wari Kayan (Paracas site, south coast of the Central Andes) leads to identification of multiple contemporary textile styles as well as their transformation over the period of cemetery use (c. 250 BCE to 250 CE). While artifact variability in the region has largely been organized in hypothetical phases, expanded data on garment design and production details, as well as imagery, is most usefully organized...
Cultura material y agencia local en Chile Central en los tiempos del Inka (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Indigenous Stories of the Inka Empire: Local Experiences of Ancient Imperialism" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Las evidencias indican que el uso de actividades de amplia convocatoria asociada a prácticas ceremoniales fue una estrategia fundamental para la integración de las cuencas de los ríos Aconcagua y Maipo-Mapocho (Chile central) al Tawantinsuyu. La cultura material permite inferir la participación de...
Cultural Continuity and Ritual Significance: Apu Illaorco (Iscoconga) and Apu Rumitiana (Santa Apolonia) in Focus (2024)
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. This presentation unveils the findings of more than eight years of research in the Cajamarca Valley, focusing on two distinct Caxamarca sites from the Early Intermediate and Middle Horizon periods. Iscoconga or Apu Illaorco, investigated since 2017, served as a center for pottery production and pastoralism. The...
Cultural Diversity and Its Implications: A Case Study from Middle Horizon Cajamarca, Northern Highlands of Peru (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. In this paper, we will discuss the pottery typology and chronology of Cajamarca region to consider the cultural dynamics during the Middle Horizon period. We will present the excavation data from three archaeological sites: El Palacio, Paredones,...
Cultural Transformations in Conchucos after 500 BC (2024)
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. The decline of the Chavín Interaction Sphere in the mid-first millennium BC was followed by major religious, cultural, and economic changes over a wide region of highland and coastal Peru. In this paper, we discuss these phenomena from the perspective of our ongoing research in the Chavín heartland of...
Current Research on Early Social Change in the Utcubamba Basin (2024)
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 contrast to a long history of study of the Late Intermediate period societies of the Utcubamba Basin, research focusing on pre-Middle Horizon social change has only begun within the last 10 years. In this paper we examine existing literature from early archaeological contexts and introduce findings from our...
The Cusco Valley Road System (2019)
This is an abstract from the "How Did the Inca Construct Cuzco?" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Inca road system in the Cusco Valley has been remarkably understudied and undertheorized despite lying at the heart of the largest empire in the Americas and being the origin point for a road system designated as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. Far from the simplistic vision of four primary roads emanating to the four corners of Tawantinsuyu, this...
The Cusichaca Archive: History, Contents and Research Potential (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Legacies of Archaeologists in the Andes: Second Symposium, the Institutionalization and Internationalization of Andean Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 1977, Dr Ann Kendall established the Cusichaca Trust, registered in the UK, to oversee her archaeological project work. Today the Cusichaca Archive documents forty continuous years of one of the largest multi-disciplinary projects ever mounted in the...
Daily Life Outside the Monument: Recent Excavations at the La Banda Sector, Chavín de Huántar (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Chavín de Huántar’s Contribution to Understanding the Central Andean Formative: Results and Perspectives" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Chavín de Huántar is a very important Formative period site located in the Conchucos region of north-central Peru. It has unique monumental architecture, which includes a series of buildings with complex galleries and canals, as well as finely crafted stone sculptures. Although...
Dart Points and Chusquea Shafts in the Argentine South Puna (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Global “Impact” of Projectile Technologies: Updating Methods and Regional Overviews of the Invention and Transmission of the Spear-Thrower and the Bow and Arrow" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation focuses on the use of the atlatl and dart system since the earliest known occupations in the Salt Puna of NW Argentina ca. 9800–7000 BP, specifically in the region of Antofagasta de la Sierra (Catamarca)....
Dating a Wari D-Shaped Temple: New Radiocarbon Evidence from Pakaytambo, Arequipa, 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 Middle Horizon (A.D. 600-1000) was a time of profound social transformation in the Andes, distinguished in part by the expansion of Wari influence, peoples, and state institutions outside of their Ayacucho heartland. In this paper, I present findings of an architectural complex composed of Wari patio-groups, a D-shaped structure, and monumental platform...
“The Dead Do Not Leave”: LH Funerary Behaviors in Pueblo Viejo Pucara (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. Pueblo Viejo-Pucara, main settlement of mitmaqunas, Caringas de Huarochiri, is one of the emblematic cases of funerary behaviors involving the construction and use of open chambers. In most of the cases studied, the two-story structures of 1 m high each story, which fulfill the original function of storage rooms in each...
Death after Inka Expansion: Analyses of a Secondary Communal Burial at Las Huacas, Chincha Valley (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Developments through Time on the South Coast of Peru: In Memory of Patrick Carmichael" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Mortuary Practices are political acts that are deeply embedded in political and social interactions. Complex N1 at the site of Las Huacas was the location of various burials during the Late Horizon (AD 1470–1532) and, possibly, early colonial period (AD 1532–1570). One such burial, was a large communal...
Death in the City: Huari Urban Tombs (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Seeing Wari through the Lens of the Everyday: Results from the Patipampa Sector of Huari" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. After declaring tombs to be absent from the Patipampa archaeological record on the basis of our 2017 excavations, this presentation discusses two mortuary contexts discovered at the Middle Horizon (AD 600-1000) site of Patipampa in the capital city of Huari. Excavated during our 2018 field season,...
Death that Endures: A Bioarchaeological and Biogeochemcial Study of Human Sacrifices from the 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. This project investigates how rituals of human sacrifice performed by the Chimú Empire (AD 1000/1100-1450/1470) transformed in response to Inca imperialism (AD 1450-1532) in the Moche Valley of Peru. Recent discoveries of hundreds of sacrificial victims in the Moche Valley suggest that ritual violence was used to maintain the sociopolitical and religious...
Decentralized Negotiation and Imperial Flexibility in the Margins of the Inca Empire (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Indigenous Stories of the Inka Empire: Local Experiences of Ancient Imperialism" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Marginal imperial regions are places where more flexible modes of dominion can be expected, where distinctions between state impositions and local appropriation of imperial infrastructure and material culture are less clear. Particularly in regions with decentralized polities, political negotiations are far...
Deciphering Social Structure: A Cognitive Approach in Examining Casma and Chimú Ceramic Iconography (2018)
The choices groups make in the type of decorative techniques and styles on ceramics are referential to key components of a group’s social structure. This research examines social aspects of the Casma and Chimú using a cognitive approach in analyzing iconographic elements on elite ceramics from Pan de Azucár, located in the Nepeña Valley, Peru. Casma ceramics are locally made vessels where no two are alike and are characteristically defined by the presence of circle-and-dot and serpentine...
The Decline of Darts in Late Formative Taraco (Southern Lake Titicaca) and Its Implications for the Rise of Tiwanaku Hegemony (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Global “Impact” of Projectile Technologies: Updating Methods and Regional Overviews of the Invention and Transmission of the Spear-Thrower and the Bow and Arrow" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper, we argue that both arrows and darts were used in the Taraco Peninsula (south Lake Titicaca) until the end of the Middle Formative period (around 250 BC), after which arrow technology began to predominate. A...
Decolonizing the Past & Education: Expanding the Classroom and Using Archaeology to Transform the Way History Is Taught. Chavín De Huántar – Perú: A Case Example (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Representations of the past outside of academia are based--to a certain degree--on archaeological or historical investigations; however, they are often outdated and/or manipulated. This has the worrisome ability to disenfranchise Indigenous peoples from their history. As public archaeologists that critique and study knowledge production and consumption from...
A Decorated Bone Pendant from Patipampa (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Seeing Wari through the Lens of the Everyday: Results from the Patipampa Sector of Huari" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The 2018 Patipampa excavations at Huari resulted in the discovery of a wealth of remarkable artifacts with potentially far-reaching implications for our understanding of Middle Horizon iconography, including a small bone pendant from a possible gallery space. This bone pendant was noted for a...
Deep Time and Human Action: An Introduction (2018)
The end of history has ended. Our social conditions, and indeed many of our greatest social ills, are now understood to have been generations in the making, the result of accumulations and sedimentations of quotidian human action. This introduction posits that such accumulations and sedimentations are not mere metaphor, and that the material world is the ongoing expression of the force of history. Following key post-structuralist insights, we argue that the contents of these histories are not...
Defensibility, Cooperation, and Centralization: A Comparative Analysis of the Interrelationship Between Warfare and Sociopolitical Organization in Late Intermediate Period Peru (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This research advances the current theoretical agendas of warfare scholars, overcoming the limitations of earlier social evolutionary theories and examining the interrelationship between warfare and sociopolitical organization in the Huamanga Province of Peru during the Late Intermediate Period (LIP, AD 1000-1450). Only through the analysis of this...
Defensive or Ritual Networks? A Preliminary Geospatial Analysis of Cerro Prieto Espinal in the Jequetepeque 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. Mountainsides formed powerful spaces for ritual, defense, and settlement, and Andean communities often considered them the very embodiments of their animate ancestors or wak’as. However, they remain understudied within the North Coast region despite their proliferation during the Late Moche and Late Intermediate Periods. This paper presents a preliminary...
Defining Markers of Occupational Stress in the Ancient Fisherman of Huanchaco, Perú: When Modern Ethnography and Bioarchaeology Intersect (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological excavations and bioarcheological analyses reveal that marine resources and fishing are main form of sustenance on the north coast of Peru – these traditional fishing practices have endured over 3,000 years. Although the degree of reliance on marine resources has shifted from the Initial Period (1500-1200 cal. BC) to present day, traditional...