South America: Andes (Geographic Keyword)
276-300 (845 Records)
During excavations at the Valdivia site of Buen Suceso, Ecuador, in 2017 we recovered a number of figurines. Using in-field photogrammetry and post-field processing, we have created digital 3D models of these figurines. For us, the purpose of photogrammetric models is: 1) to facilitate comparisons across assemblages by a variety of scholars, and 2) for use in public education and outreach. While the creation of 3D images via photogrammetry is becoming more common in archaeological practice, the...
Finding Terraces in the Lake Titicaca Basin Peru (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Finding Fields: Locating and Interpreting Ancient Agricultural Landscapes" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Driving through the Lake Titicaca basin of southern Peru travelers are often struck by terrace covered hillsides rising from the plain. Nearly every hillside encountered has been transformed from steep faced rocky hillsides into arable land. These ancient fields were constructed and farmed millennia ago to help...
Finding Value: Integrating Multiple Datasets to Clarify the Nuances of Past Food Choices (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Thinking about Eating: Theorizing Foodways in Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological studies of ancient foodways focus on understanding subsistence practices in terms of the movement of species over space and time, human/plant/animal strategies, ecological transformations, periods of abundance/famine, economics, and politics. The values that foods are imbued with, the meaning and significance they...
First Human Occupations of the Southern Atacama Desert (24.5° S): Settlement Dynamics and Environmental Context (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The early peopling of the Atacama Desert coincided with the Central Andean Pluvial Event II (CAPE II), an extensive pluvial event during the Late Pleistocene-Early Holocene (13,800–8500 cal yr BP). A large number of early human archaeological sites from this period have been found along the borders of the Imilac and Punta Negra (24.5° S) high altitude basins...
First Insights into the Life of Menocucho: Results of the Archaeological Excavations at Huaca Menocucho, Peru (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper, the authors will present the results of their first excavation season at Huaca Menocucho, in the Moche Valley on the north coast of Peru, exposing the political, religious, and economic activities carried out by the people who lived at the site. This excavation revealed the site was first occupied during the Initial period (1800–500 BC),...
Fishing with Dogs: Canine Contributions to Andean Maritime Communities (2023)
This is an abstract from the "If Animals Could Speak: Negotiating Relational Dynamics between Humans and Animals" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Dogs played many roles within prehispanic Andean societies, including companions, hunting and herding partners, guardians, sacrifices, and mortuary offerings. Their role within maritime communities however remains surprisingly understudied, particularly considering the importance of maritime adaptations...
Fishing, Shellfish Collecting, Hunting and Planting from Late Preceramic to Initial Period: A Case Study from Huaca Nagea, Viru, North Coast of Peru (2018)
By studying fauna and botanic remains unearthed from Huaca Negra Archaeological Project, this presentation seeks to understand subsistence system and daily life in Late Preceramic Period, and how it might have changed in later Initial Period. Huaca Negra is a fishing village located in the northwest of the Virú Valley and is 1.2 kilometers from the current shoreline. The site was occupied between 5,000-3,200 CalBP, from Late Preceramic Period to Initial Period, which witnessed the transitions...
Follow the Llamero: the Movement of Plant Foodstuffs in the Andes (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Fryxell Symposium in Honor of Dolores Piperno" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The exchange of goods and movement among different ecozones is a hallmark of Andean society. Key to this system of mobility were camelid caravans, which are possibly best known for the Wari or Tiwanaku cultures but are today dwindling in frequency or have disappeared in the Andes. These caravans were established in the much earlier Formative...
Foodways and Urban Living: A Macrobotanical Analysis of Huari Homes (2018)
Knowledge of Wari plant use has progressed significantly with analyses from sites such as Conchopata and Cerro Baul, but there has yet to be any investigation into Wari plant foodways at the capital city of Huari. This paper will investigate the botanical remains from flotation samples recovered throughout the 2017 excavations of Patipampa, a domestic sector of the site occupied during the Middle Horizon (AD 500-1000). For years, it has been assumed that the emergence of the Wari state in...
The Force Awakens: The Nature and Chronology of Wari Presence in the Huarmey Valley (2018)
Since the fundamental work of Dorothy Menzel, it has been suggested that a new center of power and prestige arose on the North-Central Coast of Peru during the late Middle Horizon, and that its focal point was probably located in the Huarmey Valley. Unfortunately, this hypothesis has not been empirically confirmed for more than 40 years, due to the lack of strong evidence based on systematic archaeological research. Since 2010 an international team of scholars performs multidisciplinary research...
Foreign Travel and the Development of Inca Archaeology in Cuzco, Peru (2018)
The roots of Inca archaeology lie in reports and memoirs of 19th century travel, which culminated in Hiram Bingham’s 1911 Yale Peruvian Expedition. These accounts traced routes that brought international attention to architectural remains of Inca royal estates and religious monuments, providing an early "guide" to would-be travelers and framing the formative years of Inca archaeology. As research proliferated in the past 50 years, some archaeologists have promoted the remains of royal estates as...
The Formation of Agro-pastoral Communities in the Chanka Heartland (Andahuaylas, Peru) (2018)
This paper examines how Late Intermediate Period or Chanka phase (~AD 1000-1400) communities were formed during a period of overlapping social and environmental risks in the Chanka heartland of Andahuaylas. In particular, the paper considers how aggregated hilltop communities formed and functioned under new social and economic conditions. Recent archaeological research from Andahuaylas suggests that the majority of aggregated Chanka phase ridgetop sites were likely inhabited by neither...
Formation Processes of Late Pleistocene Archaeological Sites in the Atacama Desert (2019)
This is an abstract from the "From Middens to Museums: Papers in Honor of Julie K. Stein" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We investigated site formation and modification of surficial and shallow Paleoindian sites (ca. 13-11 cal. ka) located in the hyperarid core of the Atacama Desert. Sites occur primarily on inactive Pleistocene to Pliocene alluvial terraces, in and beneath desert pavements, a sparsely studied context for archaeological sites. Our...
Fortification on the Margins of the Bolivian Eastern Highlands (2018)
Frontiers are usually spaces of interaction between multiple groups of people navigating through established cultural and political lifeways. The zone of Tumupasa functions as a peripheral site on the margin between the Yungas and the Amazon. This region will form the center of my study area to identify historical and archaeological lines of interaction between highland and lowland groups. I argue that the region of Tumupasa, Bolivia is situated on a natural geographic transit point between the...
Forty Years of Community Archaeology, Archaeology of Listening, and Working Together in the L. Titicaca Basin (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. One of the most critical issues facing archaeology today remains how to best figure out research on problems that are significant to living peoples, particularly those descended from prehistoric and historical populations that we study. We have learned how paradigms antithetical to local historical sensibilities can harm the...
From Cattails to Maize: An Archaeobotanical Discussion on the Relationship between Human Groups and Plants during the Archaic and Formative Period (ca. 4000–2000 BP) in the Atacama Desert (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the Atacama Desert, northern Chile, human groups settled during the Archaic and Formative periods (ca. 4000–2000 BP) in the Tiliviche and Aragon sites, located between the coast and the hinterlands. We analyzed and identified the macrobotanical and microbotanical remains from the sites of Tiliviche-1 and Aragón-1 to evaluate the ontologies among the...
From Discrete Frontiers to Cross-Cutting Religious Networks: Religious Monuments and Cultural Syncretism in the Peruvian North Coast and Highland, Ninth to Eleventh Centuries AD (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. Colonialist perspectives of territorial expansion envision the political entities as spatially defined by discrete frontier boundaries. Under this approach, the distribution of objects a given cultural style parallels the area of influence of the...
From Heartland to Province: Assessing Inca Political Economy through Material Culture Signatures (2018)
Archaeological studies of Inca hegemony often focus on the intensity or degree of "Incanization," or assimilation to Inca material culture. These studies particularly rely upon well-preserved and highly visible remains, especially well-fired polychrome ceramics and monumental architecture. While Inca scholars have begun to analyze Inca hegemony in theoretically sophisticated ways that reveal how material culture legitimizes imperial rule, these approaches present several weaknesses: (1) sampling...
From Kotosh to Pacopampa: Sixty-Years of Japanese Investigations on the Andean Formative (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. From the excavations at Kotosh during the 1960’s, the University of Tokyo school of Andean Archaeology has consistently carried out large-scale archaeological researches focusing mainly on the Formative Period of the central Andes. All the archaeologists...
From Mud to Brick, or the Transformative Possibilities of Assembling Architecture (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper considers the often-overlooked practice of building, in order to rethink the role of architecture as a mere container of sociality, a proxy for domestic stability or the precondition of social complexity. By focusing on the building of a wall in the site of Ramaditas, a 2,000-year-old site in the Atacama Desert, this work seeks to question...
From Near and Far: Application of Archaeometric Techniques to Characterize Regional and Long-Distance Interaction at the Formative Period Center of Atalla, Peru (2018)
This paper investigates the role of interregional interaction in the development of social complexity in the Central Andes during the Late Initial (c.1100-800 BC) and Early Horizon (c.800-200 BC) periods at the archaeological site of Atalla, a regional ceremonial center located in highlands of Huancavelica, Peru. Methodologically, this research integrates radiocarbon dating with stylistic, technical, and geochemical analyses of a range of materials to examine exchange and interaction on multiple...
From Pozuelo to Paracas: An Approach to the Processes of Formation and Social Complexity in Early Societies in the Chincha Valley (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. Paracas, believed to be the oldest complex society on the southern coast of Peru, occupied the Chincha Valley during part of the Formative Period (400–200 BCE). Although there is evidence of the Paracas occupation throughout the Chincha Valley, little is known about the formation of Paracas within the valley. Relatively...
From Slavery to Servitude: Approaching Hacienda Worker Health through Transformations in Labor and Foodways in Nineteenth-Century South Coastal Peru (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Approaches to the Archaeology of Health: Sewers, Snakebites, and Skeletons" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The nineteenth century was a dynamic period for hacienda workers on the south coast of Peru. Once Jesuit vineyards with two of the largest enslaved Afro-descended populations in rural coastal Peru, the haciendas of San José and San Javier and their annexes in Nasca’s Ingenio Valley underwent dramatic changes with...
From Technological Style to Communities of Practice: Defining Yavi-Chicha Sociotechnical Systems in the Río Grande de San Juan Basin (Border of Bolivia and Argentina) during the Period of Regional Developments (ca. AD 900-1450) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Cross-Cultural Petrographic Studies of Ceramic Traditions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Despite the Yavi-Chicha phenomenon being widely discussed in the Southern Andes, there is a lack of systematic research around the socioeconomic and political implications of production and circulation of the pottery of the Río Grande de San Juan Basin (Chicha Region). From the study of ceramic production and circulation, this...
From the Ashes: Volcanic Construction Materials in Pre-Columbian Ecuador (2018)
In many ways, volcanic eruptions define the pre-Columbian history of highland Ecuador: the shaping of the landscape, migration patterns, mythology, and ideology. Ecuador is one of the most volcanically active countries on earth, and it’s impossible to examine the archaeology without considering both the direct and indirect impacts of volcanic eruptions. Through millennia, the imposing presence of the volcanos on the northern Ecuadorian landscape inspired fear and veneration, with the...