South America: Andes (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Beth Scaffidi.

Artifacts from yungas and coastal zones of Arequipa, Peru show varying degrees of integration into the ideological and material networks of prominent neighboring cultures of the Early Intermediate Period (Nasca) and Middle Horizon (Wari). Ongoing research suggests these communities and towns were well-integrated into foreign trading networks, whether through direct interaction with foreign traders or down-the-line exchange. While foreign-produced goods and emulation of foreign goods or...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Blackwood.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Virtual reality (VR) is a tool that offers an opportunity to approach archaeological analyses and communications through a different lens. VR provides a platform where data can be continuously updated and modified as is becomes available as well as adding an element of interactivity. VR allows the user to engage with a simulated environment, walk around,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kenneth Sutherland. David Chicoine.

This contribution explores feasting practices discernible from the pottery assemblage at three Early Horizon archaeological complexes in the lower Nepeña Valley, north-central coast of Peru: Caylán (800 - 1 BCE), a large town or city interpreted as the primary center of a multi-tiered polity; Samanco (500 - 1 BCE), a small coastal town involved in production and exchange of maritime resources; and Huambacho (600 - 200 BCE), a ceremonial center associated with agricultural production. In feasting...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Claudia Nuñez. Sofia Chacaltana Cortez.

It has been suggested that Inca colonization strengthened kin bonds between ayllu members while at the same time requested tribute by means of establishing "fictive" kin affiliations. Therefore, subjugated populations response to Inca imperialism caused the consolidation of local and regional identities. However, what occurred in the Colesuyo? Colesuyo region of southern Peru, inhabited by multi-ethnic small-scale groups –the Cochunas from the upper Moquegua Valley and the Coles and Camanchacas...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paul Goldstein.

In the absence of living interlocutors for the Andean Tiwanaku state society (AD 500-1000),we ask how Tiwanaku peoples imagined and reproduced themselves as social beings. A conventional view poses that Tiwanaku civilization at its apogee was unified by common membership in, or allegiance or aspiration to, an elite political culture, as evidenced by a high culture of specialized craft production, elite ritual functions, and religio-political iconography. This paper instead applies practice...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Christie.

This is an abstract from the "Navigating Imperialism: Negotiated Communities and Landscapes of the Inka Provinces" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper analyzes early state formation and integration of local groups at two royal estates, Tipon and Pisaq. Tipon, southeast of Cusco, began as a Killke period settlement before 1400. It functioned as outpost in the buffer zone between the Muyna and Pinagua in the Lucre Basin and the growing Cusco...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Spring. Jessica Smeeks.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This project uses Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to analyze Late Intermediate Period (LIP) spatial organization and defensibility practices in the Huamanga Province, Peru. The Peruvian LIP (AD 1000-1450) is the period between the collapse of the Tiwanaku and Wari States and the rise of the Inca Empire. This is an ideal time period to study the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brian Billman.

This is an abstract from the "Warfare and the Origins of Political Control " session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The central Andes has a long history of the rise and fall of centralized political organizations, beginning with construction of the first large-scale ceremonial centers in the New World between 3000 and 1800 BC. Some see these early centers as pilgrimage centers, lacking significant political power, while others argue they were urban...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Verano. Khrystyne Tschinkel. Helen Chavarria. Gabriel Prieto.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Depictions of combat and the capture and killing of captives are well known in Moche (ca. AD 200-850) art. Since 1995, the iconographic record has been joined by archaeological evidence of the practices themselves. The most dramatic discoveries were made in Plazas 3A and 3C at the Pyramid of the Moon between 1995 and 2001, with scattered deposits...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Justin Jennings. Matthew Biwer. Christina Conlee.

This is an abstract from the "A New Horizon: Reassessing the Andean Middle Horizon (AD 600–1000) and Rethinking the Andean State" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The coast of southern Peru from the Nasca to Moquegua has played a pivotal role in distinct interpretation of the Wari polity. A hard imperial frontier, for example, ran through the region in 1960s models. Nasca and Moquegua were home to important administrative centers in the “mosaic of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrea Vazquez De Arthur.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For ancient civilizations with no form of writing, proper iconographic interpretation is an important tool for accessing the past. This is certainly true of ancient Andean civilizations, especially the Wari who produced some of the most captivating visual imagery of their time. However, Wari depictions of supernatural composite figures are so stylized that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Moore.

This is an abstract from the "Almost 100 Years since Julio C. Tello: Research at Huaca del Loro, Nasca, Peru" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Emerging evidence increasingly suggests that D-shaped structures were a tool of Wari imperial and cultural expansion throughout the Middle Horizon landscape. Analysis of their construction, geographic distribution, regional context, and specific orientations reveals that their use and purpose was not...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Silvana Rosenfeld. Matthew Sayre.

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 advances in food studies have revealed significant new information about life during the Middle Horizon (AD 600-1000) in the central Andes of Peru. Botanical and faunal data from Wari affiliated sites shows differential use of at least two items: molle (Schinus molle) and guinea pigs (Cavia...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patrick Ryan Williams. John Janusek.

In this paper, we focus on the relationships between landscape places viewed as ancestors to Andean communities and things that further political agendas in imperial contexts. We explore how objects and people work together to create or deconstruct political power in Wari and Tiwanaku societies. In particular, we focus on objects, including ceremonial ceramics and lithic monuments, as examples of things that participate in building power relationships with local communities. We argue that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Reid. Veronica Rosales Hilario. Miguel Vizcarra Zanabria. Kevin Ricci Jara.

This is an abstract from the "Exploring Culture Contact and Diversity in Southern Peru" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This project investigates the social mechanisms behind culture change and contact in Peru’s southern coastal valleys through the lens of road infrastructure: i.e. the built networks of communication, travel, and commerce. Here we present recent investigations of a pre-Inca road network in the Majes/Chuquibamba region of Arequipa....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rosa Maria Varillas. Francesca Fernandini.

Some pre-Hispanic textiles were complex masterpieces made with labor-intensive techniques and high quality raw materials. Nevertheless, the vast majority of textiles, those used by the population at large, were plain, simple and without any decoration. This study will present a comparative analysis between a sample of plain weaves obtained from domestic contexts and a sample of high quality textiles excavated in an elaborated Wari tomb, all of them registered at the pre-Hispanic settlement of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Glowacki.

The Wari settlement of Huaro, located southeast of the Cuzco Valley in the Southern Highlands of Peru, contains a mortuary complex known as Cotocotuyoc. This towering plateau site, which overlooked the entire Huaro Wari settlement, was one of several urban components that made up a more than nine hectare Wari center, occupied for over 500 years. Excavations at Cotocotuyoc generated telling evidence for who built and occupied this settlement and how they were treated upon their deaths and in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alesia Hoyle. Sonia Alconini.

The qochas of the high-altitude Bolivian Apolobamba Puna region had a pivotal importance in the local agropastoral economies. Fed by snow melt and inner water sources, the qochas formed a complex hydrological system along the rich marshes. Although we do not know their origins, some of these qochas were modified during the Late Intermediate period, and a network of canals expanded in order to accommodate increasingly specialized pastoralism. Later the Inka arrival prompted specialized...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Abel Traslaviña.

This is an abstract from the "Lost in Transition: Social and Political Changes in the Central Southern Andes from the Late Prehispanic to the Early Colonial Periods" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. After the Spanish arrival in the Andes, the new social, economic, and political organization mainly materialized in two spatial entities: the "reducciones" or specially-designed towns where the Andean population was forcibly resettled, and the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jonathan Dubois.

Research in the highlands of Huánuco, Peru, has revealed rock art sites were used to establish, negotiate, and legitimize changing social relations for more than three millennia. Implementation of stylistic seriation bolstered by art from more securely dated archaeological deposits allowed for the development of a chronological sequence of rock art styles in Huánuco. The research revealed rock art played a prominent role in expressing changing social relations in the region. This paper focuses...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sadie Weber. Percy García.

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. Located in the Cajamarca Valley, the site of Iscoconga (50 BCE–750 CE) represents one of the few extensively explored domestic contexts of the Cajamarca Archaeological Culture. Excavations at Iscoconga revealed, among many things, that the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paula Ugalde. Calogero Santoro. Eugenia M. Gayo.

Surficial archaeological sites are widespread in arid environments. However, due to the difficulties in numerically dating them, they are usually considered as coarse indicators of past behaviors. Here, we explore the use of lithic weathering to develop local relative chronologies, and to better incorporate these assemblages into archaeological research. We test whether the most weathered artifacts should be considered the oldest; an assumption that has informally served to compare assemblages....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hideyuki Nishizawa.

Dramatic culture change occurred in the Central Andes at the onset of the Middle Horizon (MH) (AD 500-1000). During this period, a state society emerged in the Ayacucho Valley and expanded across Peru. Even before the emergence of this state, however, culture contact of the Ayacucho heartland had already started with some remote regions in the late part of the Early Intermediate Period (EIP). This far-reaching contact would have gradually been intensified toward the beginning of the MH. Indeed,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Geoffrey Taylor.

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. Preliminary investigation into the use of plants at the site of Huari from the 2017 field season of the Programa Arqueológico Prehistoria Urbana de Huari resulted in new information placing the common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) as a central component of the daily meal for those living in Patipampa in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Monica Fenton.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Zooarchaeologists have extensively documented the importance of marine resources in the ancient Andes, and the first field season at Cerro San Isidro (Ancash, Peru) proves no different. The multi-component hilltop site lies in the agriculturally rich 'Moro Pocket' of the middle Nepeña Valley, at least an eight-hour walk from the ocean on the north-central...