South America: Andes (Geographic Keyword)
951-975 (1,096 Records)
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. Fifty-four fragmentary figurines, including 53 human and one animal, were recovered from archaeological domestic contexts at the site of Zorropata, located in the Las Trancas Valley, Nasca, Peru. Zorropata was a large domestic site with likely ceremonial function occupied from the Late Nasca period...
The Tacahuay Landscape: Land Use and Environmental Change on the South Coast of Peru (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Tacahuay Quebrada on the far southern coast of Peru was shaped by a combination of human and environmental forces. Within its watershed, there is a system of channels that have provided resources for humans and other living beings throughout its anthropogenic history. Excavations within these channels revealed use of the Tacahuay landscape between 1000...
The Tacahuay Legacy: Landscape Modification and Reuse on the South Coast of Peru (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Living Landscapes: Disaster, Memory, and Change in Dynamic Environments " session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Tacahuay Quebrada has a long geologic history of flood events, as well as human occupation. Around 12,000 years ago, early inhabitants lived along the coastline of this landscape. Through time, people moved away from the ocean to settle along the channel, floodplain, and elevated terraces of the quebrada. In...
Tajahuana: New Insights into a Familiar Paracas Site (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. The Paracas site of Tajahuana in the middle Ica Valley has been associated almost exclusively with the occupation of its summit known as La Peña. La Peña de Tajahuana was described by Menzel, Rowe, and Dawson as an important urban center corresponding to Phase 9 of the Ocucaje Sequence of Paracas...
Taking a Closer Look: Biomolecular Insights to Foodways among the Moche of North Coastal Peru (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Culinary Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cuisine is essential in the construction and maintenance of local and individual identity. At the Late Moche (600–900 CE) ceremonial center of Huaca Colorada on the north coast of Peru, a rich macrobotanical and zooarchaeological assemblage suggests a cuisine reflective of the region’s environmental diversity. Dominated by maize cultivation and camelid herding,...
A Tale of Two Cities?: Neighborhood Identity and Integration at Ventanillas (2018)
Studies of Andean urbanism have often focused on contrasts: between elite and lower-class compounds or neighborhoods, between rural and urban communities, or between the "true" cities in regions like Mesopotamia and the "special case" of the Andes. Recent work at Ventanillas, a large Late Intermediate Period site in the middle Jequetepeque Valley at the frontier of coastal Lambayeque and Chimú polities, was initially designed to contrast what were presumed to be an elite coastal residential...
Tales from the Hearth: An Analysis of Formal verses Informal Burning Episodes at the Cosma Complex, Nepeña Valley, Peru (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Illuminated Communities: The Role of the Hearth at the Beginning of Andean Civilization" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Research at the Cosma Archaeological Complex since 2014 has revealed two multi-tiered mounds with architecture relating to the Kotosh-Mito tradition. Carbon dates from the earliest components in Cosma have dated several ritual structures to between 2900-2400 BCE, well into the early Late Preceramic...
Tambo Colorado before the Inca Administrative Center: Study of the Socio-political Developments of the Pisco Valley during the Late Intermediate Period and the Late Horizon (2019)
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. Tambo Colorado is one of the most impressive Inca sites on the coast of Peru. Its mural paintings have drawn attention and yet, little is known about it, in particular about its pre-Inca occupation and its possible re-occupation after the Spanish...
A Taste for Tubers: The Circulation of the Familiar through the Ancient Titicaca Basin (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists track the social, political, and economic dynamics of the ancient Lake Titicaca basin through the circulation of people and things. Plant things, in particular, reveal food choices, quotidian diets and special meals, and broader trade relations before and after the settling of the urban center of Tiwanaku. In this paper, we discuss...
Tecapa: Segmentary Organization as Sociopolitical Technology in the Transitional Period (AD 800–1000 AD) (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. The site of Tecapa represents one of the few major Transitional settlements on the North Coast. Its occupation (~AD 800–1000 AD) spans the waning of Moche influence and the coalescence of Chimú and Lambayeque culture. In fact, the spatial...
Technical Knowledge, Metal Artisans, and Moche Visual Culture: A View from Piura, Peru (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Movement of Technical Knowledge: Cross-Craft Perspectives on Mobility and Knowledge in Production Technologies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Technical knowledge is passed along through individuals and the exchange of objects. While technical studies of artifacts illuminate the physical evidence of evolutions in manufacturing processes, what are the mechanisms via which ideas are exchanged? What is the role of...
A Technical Study of Post-Fire Painted Paracas Ceramics: Regional Exchange and Material Culture (2018)
The Paracas culture and its impressive pottery tradition developed along the south coast of Peru in the Early Horizon period (approximately 800-100BC). A scientific study of manufacturing techniques and materials of post-fire painted Paracas ceramics at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) and Metropolitan Museum of Art (MMA) found a correlation between changes in material use and iconography and vessel form across time. Differences between colorant composition in the Formative/Early...
Technology and Social identity on the North Coast of Peru (2018)
Drawing on nearly three decades of inspiration from and collaboration with Rita Wright, this paper explores the relationship between craft technologies and social identities on the North Coast of Peru over the longue durée. The technologies used to manufacture goods were themselves meaningful, often considered to be divinely inspired and certainly a key element in determining the value and significance of both everyday and esoteric objects. As transformative processes, the methods and...
Tecnología cerámica, análisis petrográfico y técnicas arqueometricas en cerámicas policromas de las fronteras de Quebrada de Humahuaca, Jujuy, Argentina (2018)
Los materiales cerámicos arqueológicos polícromos denominados "vírgulas o comas" tienen una amplia pero desigual distribución espacial y son hallados en cantidades limitadas en sitios arqueológicos de las regiones de Puna norte, central y Quebrada de Humahuaca, Jujuy, Noroeste de la República Argentina. Estas regiones mantienen límites ambientales y geográficos fronterizos. En el pasado los habitantes de ambas zonas sostenían una fluida comunicación, mantenido formas identitarias diferentes...
Tectonic Origin of Desert Wetlands at Pozuelo, Peru (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Pozuelo site, one of the oldest in the region, is composed of four Formative Period mounds (circa cal yr 1230 BCE) in southern, coastal Peru. Archaeological excavations at the site exposed both mound and pre-mound stratigraphy. Sediments beneath the mound showed a sharp transition from alluvial fan/eolian sediments to a thick (approx. 1 m) clay...
Tello and Carrión Cachot on Recuay Culture: A Visual Archaeology (2018)
While the achievements of the great Peruvianist Julio C. Tello and his theories about Andean civilisation are well-chronicled, much less work has addressed his engagements with archaeological illustration, its practices and desires, especially beyond his signature Chavín work. This paper examines the imagery and arguments of key publications by Tello and his student and intellectual disciple, Rebeca Carrión Cachot, on the Recuay culture (ca AD 100-700). Together, they discerned the culture’s...
The Tension between Standardization and Regionalism in Cord-Keeping in Tawantinsuyu (2018)
Studies of the extant corpus of some 1,000 khipus from different regions around the former territory of the Inka Empire – Tawantinsuyu – show evidence of contradictory forces at work in terms of the forms and degree of standardization of recording structures and techniques. While, on one hand, there are marked differences in certain features of khipus from one region to the next throughout the empire, there are, on the other hand, notable similarities in other features. This paper examines the...
Tent City and Midden Islands: Spatial Organization and Domestic Architecture at the Eleventh-Century Los Batanes (Southern 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 the wake of Tiwanaku state collapse (eleventh century CE), the hyperarid coast of southern Peru became a refugium for diasporic groups who abandoned their homes in the south-central Andean highlands and middle valleys. The reorganization of post-Tiwanaku society in the region manifests in shifting settlement patterns and subsistence strategies, and new...
A Tenuous Prize: Archaeology of the Inka Conquest of Northern Highland Ecuador (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Barbacoan World: Recognizing and Preserving the Unique Indigenous Cultural Developments of the Northern Andes" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The numerous Inka forts in northern highland Ecuador, more than reported from most other imperial provinces, suggest preoccupations with the region and its inhabitants. The Barbacoan-speaking locals were indeed powerful and a potentially difficult conquest, as attested to by...
Terrace Construction and Use across Five Centuries at Ollantaytambo, Peru (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Advances in Geoarchaeology and Environmental Archaeology Perspectives on Earthen-Built Constructions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists are increasingly examining remains from the past, including durable landscape features such as terraces, earthen mounds, and seemingly “abandoned” sites, in terms that query not just their initial construction, but also ongoing use and reoccupation. In this paper, I...
The Terraced City (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. Standing architecture is an important and impressive part of Inca Cusco, but comprises only a portion of the pre-Columbian built environment. Developing a sense of the grand plan of Cusco involves forgetting our fascination with the standing architecture and concentrating on recreating the three-dimensional form of the terraces that formed the surface...
Textile Coca Containers from Chiribaya Alta, Peru (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While the bioarchaeology of Chiribaya Alta is well documented, there is little available data from the textiles at the site. This poster presents data from three types of textile coca containers recovered from the mortuary contexts at Chiribaya Alta. These are chuspas, or coca bags, which are brightly colored and often decorated with three stripes of...
Thin Section Petrography of Inka Pottery from Pachacamac, Peru (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study investigates the organization of production for Inka pottery at Pachacamac from several contexts throughout the site’s ceremonial core and elite residential sector. Pachacamac was a major Ychsma center on Peru’s central coast that was transformed into a major Inka provincial center around 1470 C.E. The Inka constructed a number of buildings and...
Thinking about Ecotopes: Two Thousand Years of Landscape’s Continuities and Discontinuities in the North Coast of the Central Andes (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This work seeks to analyze the continuities and discontinuities on the landscapes occupied by ancient Moche (an archaeological culture which flourished on the north coast of the central Andes between the first and eighth centuries) and contemporary populations. We intend to refine the discussion about the effectiveness and limitations of the ecotopes concept –...
Thinking Transition: The Processes of Ethnogenesis (2021)
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. The study of Andean prehistory divides broader cultural eras or horizons which have their own distinct and well-discernible characteristics; political and social structures and material and symbolic traditions. Between these eras of (relative)...