South America: Andes (Geographic Keyword)
376-400 (1,096 Records)
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 Hunting to Herding in the Lake Titicaca Basin: A Preliminary Investigation of Faunal Assemblages, 9.0–3.5 ka (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Approaches in Zooarchaeology: Addressing Big Questions with Ancient Animals" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As the sole large-bodied animal domesticate in South America, camelids constituted a central component in Andean socio-economies and were pivotal for the expansion of early complex societies. The timing and nature of domestication, as well as the subsequent spread of husbandry practices,...
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 Mountain Worship to Guarding the Sacred Lakes: Surveys of Cerro Canoncillo, Cerro Prieto Espinal, and Cerro Santonte (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Bridging Time, Space, and Species: Over 20 Years of Archaeological Insights from the Cañoncillo Complex, Jequetepeque Valley, Peru, Part 2" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. At the heart of the community, Cerro Cañoncillo and its lakes formed enduring sacred spaces across the landscape. In this paper, we explore in greater depth how the ceremonial centers of the region interrelated spatially and symbolically with...
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 Pukaras to Polities: Exploring Late Prehispanic Andean Hillforts through Large Scale Network Analysis (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Applications of Network Analysis" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper employs network analysis to explore the sociopolitical dynamics of the late prehispanic south-central Andes through the lens of 1,400 hilltop fortifications. Hilltop fortifications in the Andean highlands, known as pukaras, are emblematic of the Late Intermediate period (1000–1450 CE) and Late Horizon (1450–1532 CE). Focusing on...
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...
From the Dead to the Living: An Interdisciplinary Analysis of Late Period Open Sepulchers, Upper Nepeña Drainage, Ancash, Peru (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. The ubiquity of open sepulcher type funerary contexts in the Andean highlands is a salient fact. Previous work and new surveys in the Pamparomás and Chaclancayo valleys of the Upper Nepeña Drainage have identified more than 60 such funerary contexts. Over the past two years, systematic excavations of selected sites coupled...
From the Ocean to the Mountain: Marine Shell in the Patipampa Sector, Huari, Ayacucho, Peru (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. Excavations in the residential area of Patipampa in the city of Huari revealed a striking amount of marine shell. While a large percentage of this shell assembly is spondylus, other marine shell, such as mussel, is also present. The assemblage includes worked shell objects, unworked fragments and...
From there, a great long time ago, even before the Incas were born: Representations of the Inka Empire among the Lurin Yauyos (2018)
Andean archaeology consistently uses the Spanish colonial written record as a guide in interpreting the characteristics of the different societies that fell under the Inka rule. However, a growing body of scholarship on the material culture of such incorporated societies shows that the nature of their relationship with the Empire was variable, and that Inka control was not territorially continuous. One key strategy through which the Inka incorporated these groups was the entangling and capture...
Frontier Landscapes in the Longue Durée: The Upper Moche Valley Chaupiyunga (2018)
Physical landscapes shape, and are shaped by, human activity throughout prehistory, creating a palimpsest of anthropogenic and natural landscape features that archaeologists wrestle with to understand past human behavior. Located between the Andean highlands and the arid coastline, the Upper Moche Valley chaupiyunga no doubt would represent a geological and ecological frontier in the absence of human occupation. However, over two millennia of human activity are inscribed upon this landscape and...
Fuel Use and Management at the Specialized Fishing Site of Bayovar-01 in Northern Coastal Peru (5th–8th Centuries AD), Contributions of Charcoal Analysis (2018)
The Sechura desert located on the extreme northern coast of Peru is one of the most arid places on the planet. Nonetheless, human settlements have been recorded from 5000 BC up to the 15th century. Recent archaeological excavations have been carried out at the site of Bayovar-01 (occupied from the 5th to 8th centuries AD). The new data provide insight into the activities and adaptations of the desert’s ancient inhabitants. The presence of two small structures, a large activity area containing a...
A Galactic Empire: Celestial Bodies and Imperial Ideology on the Wari Frontier (2018)
The consolidation of Wari imperial power in the Osmore Valley was predicated on the perceived legitimacy of a common ritual ideology that situated elites and their subjects within an ordered cosmos. Recent archaeoastronomical surveys of the administrative and ceremonial citadel on Cerro Baúl and elite contexts on neighboring Cerro Mejía have identified alignments of ceremonial architecture with recurrent astronomical phenomena at both sites, suggesting that observation of the heavens reinforced...
Gallery of the Condor: The Earlier End of Chavín’s Underground Structures (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. In 2019 a new gallery was detected by the Programa de Investigación Arqueológico y Conservación en Chavín de Huántar in Chavin’s Building D, which was explored in 2022 and excavated in 2023. Named for a sculptural stone vessel depicting a condor left during gallery closure, the...
Gallinazo Networks: Economic Complementarity and the Persistence of Gallinazo-Mochica Social Interrelationships (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Early archaeological works that overemphasized societal elites and funerary contexts have led to several biases that limit comprehension of society’s lower-echelon, or their roll in quotidian social spheres (political, religious or economic) during the latter part of the first millennium on Peru’s north coast. This is a topic of much interest when considering...
Gardening for Victory: War Gardens in the Ancient Andes (2018)
During times of social and political crisis humans’ most basic biological needs still need to be met: they need to eat. This means that during times of war, when state infrastructure breaks down and supply chains are threatened, people often take food security matters into their own hands. During 20th century conflicts, families ensured food security on the home front by building household gardens. Practically, the construction of war gardens resulted in decreased individual reliance on often...
Gender at Chiribaya Alta: A Multiple Correspondence Analysis of Funerary Offerings (2018)
Chiribaya Alta is a Late Intermediate Period cemetery site located in the Osmore drainage of Southern Peru and is the largest, most elaborate site associated with the Chiribaya polity. Previous univariate mortuary analyses at Chiribaya Alta have identified gendered grave goods, related to roles during life. These analyses, however, assume a binary distinction between males and females by only testing graves with sexed skeletons. Here, we use a multivariate technique, multiple correspondence...