Andes: Formative (Other Keyword)
1-25 (112 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Andean and Amazonian Ceramics: Advances in Technological Studies" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the last decades, ceramic research in the region of Tarapacá has nourished our comprehension on past societies. First, pottery has played a key-role in defining chrono-cultural periods of the south-central Andes. Second, archaeometric studies have allowed to discuss these social, cultural, political, and economic...
An Agent-Based Disaster Model: Marginality, Decision-Making, and Novel Resource Exploitation during ENSO Flooding Events in Chicama, Peru (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ecological disasters are often argued to be forces of large-scale societal change, including the primary causes of major cultural collapses. This concept is reevaluated in light of the recent 2016-2017 El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which provides an opportunity to examine the ways in which this event affects the landscape. Through integration of remote...
Agricultural Practices in the Atacama Desert (Northern Chile): New Perspectives from Stable Isotope Analysis on Archaeological Crops (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Challenges and Future Directions in Plant Stable Isotope Analysis in Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Agricultural practice began in arid northern Chile during the Formative Period just prior to 1000 yr BC. Unusually, preservation of crops, including maize, squash, quinoa and beans is excellent due to the extremely arid conditions that characterise the Atacama Desert. In order to explore crop management,...
Analysis of the Lithic Assemblage from Canchas Uckro (1100–800 BC), Eastern Ancash, Peru (2018)
Canchas Uckro is a large platform situated above the Puccha River, and approximately 25 km to the north of Chavín de Huántar. Recent excavations recovered a lithic assemblage consisting of 245 artifacts from stratigraphic layers dating between ca. 1100 and 800 BC. This poster describes the analysis of this lithic assemblage, including raw materials utilized, technological organization, and patterns of tool design in relation to possible subsistence activities. Expedient flakes from locally...
Ancient Human-Animal Interactions in Chachapoyas Region: Isotopic Analysis of Zooarchaeological Remains from Kuelap, Peru (2018)
This study uses isotopic analysis of fauna remains as a proxy for reconstructing the ancient Chachapoya environment of the northeastern highlands in Peru. Large middens have been excavated at the monumental center of Kuelap (900-1535 CE), yet there is little previous research focused on the fauna remains at this or other archaeological contexts in the region. The goal of this project was to reconstruct animal resource exploitation and provide insight into dietary variation and environment at...
Archaeological Contexts and Social Uses of Pututus in the Prehispanic Central Andes (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Music Archaeology's Paradox: Contextual Dependency and Contextual Expressivity" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Pututus are marine shell trumpets (organologically, horns), known in the prehispanic Central Andes from the Archaic period to the Late Horizon. Different classes of those sound-producing artifacts have been discovered: some of them cut from various species of marine gastropods, and others produced in ceramics...
An Archaeological History of the Tamaylacha (Jubones) River Basin, circa First Millennium BCE (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Innovations in Ecuadorian Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The earliest written descriptions of the Tamaylacha (Jubones) River and its surroundings were penned by the priest Pedro Arias Dávila (1582) during his journey(s) through Cañari territory. These were followed by the accounts of Francisco José de Caldas who joined the research expedition of von Humboldt and Bonpland in 1804, the accounts by...
Archaeological Investigations in El Paraíso. A Late Preceramic Architectural Complex in Lima – Peru (2018)
El Paraíso architectonic complex is located in the lower section of the Chillon River Valley, less than 2 km from the Pacific Ocean, in Lima, the capital city of Peru. It is composed by 14 structures, or huacas, distributed in an area of 47 hectares, in a rural place named Chuquitanta. The site is recognized as one of the earliest expressions of monumental architecture and social complexity in Peru since the works of Frédéric Engel in the 1960’s and Jeffrey Quilter in the 1980’s. Since 2015, the...
Architecture and Urban Planning of Inka Cusco (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Dedication, Collaboration, and Vision, Part II: Papers in Honor of Tom D. Dillehay" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The architectural and urban reconstruction of Cusco as ancient Inka capital has been a central scientific objective in Peruvian archaeology for more than a century. From the pioneering work of Squier and Uhle, continued by Uriel Garcia, Varcárcel, Chávez Ballón, and Rowe, among many others, and continuing...
Assembling the Dead and the Living: Funerary Practices within Eastern Populations of the Southern Andes (Tucumán, Northwestern Argentina) (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Despite extensive archaeological research, surprisingly little is known about regional and interregional mortuary practices in the Southern Andes, specifically in Northwestern Argentina. Large-scale excavation carried out in El Cadillal, undertaken between 1971 and 1972, resulted in the recovery of 44 prehispanic burials associated with Candelaria dated...
Assessing Chronology, Spatial Setting, and Architectural Planning at Pampa de Llamas-Moxeke, Casma Valley (2018)
The archaeological site of Pampa de las Llamas-Moxeke in the Casma Valley, Peru is an architectural complex comprising two opposing large platform mounds united by a sequence of aligned rectangular platforms and structures. The site was studied mainly in the 20th Century by various investigators; the most recent of whom carried out intensive excavations in the 1980s aiming to produce exact dates and explain the function of the settlement. This previous work suggested that the complex dates to...
Astronomical Meanings in Hearths from the Middle Preceramic villages of Paloma and the Late Preceramic site of Buena Vista in Central, Coastal Perú (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. Hearths from over 50 domestic structures at the stratified Middle Archaic fishing villages of Paloma, Chilca Valley, Peru, were found within circles of house poles. Domestic structures were burned and abandoned, sometimes with an old male burned on top. Burials in the last occupation were placed with...
Beyond Sunken Courts: Jerry Moore’s Influence on Lake Titicaca Basin Archaeology (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Humble Houses to Magnificent Monuments: Papers in Honor of Jerry D. Moore" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Through both his research and mentorship Jerry Moore has had a profound effect on the development of studies of landscapes and built environments in the Lake Titicaca basin. His own investigations have advanced our understanding of ritual interaction in the paradigmatic public spaces of the region: sunken courts....
The Body, the Regalia, the Weapons, and the Mortuary Bundle: Forms, Materials, and Uses of Cordage at the Paracas Site (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Cordage, Yarn, and Associated Paraphernalia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In study of Andean archaeological textiles, a focus on decorative “high status” objects too often produces a distorted vision of ancient textile traditions, obscuring the textile forms most commonly found in an excavated assemblage. Ethnoarchaeological study by Cases (2020) has begun to address this problem by looking at production contexts in...
The Bones of a Community: Mortuary Contexts over Time at Waywaka (Andahuaylas, Peru) (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Bodies formed a significant component of the ritual practice at Waywaka, an early farming village in the Andean highlands (Andahuaylas, Apurímac, Peru) that was occupied from 1600 BC - AD 700. Recent excavations from 2019 show that the village's early inhabitants buried their dead in their domestic areas and used parts of bodies of the dead in various ways...
Breathtaking Landscapes, Big Questions, and Fabulous Feasts: Celebrating the Contributions of Dr. Charles Stanish (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. In this introductory paper, we celebrate Dr. Stanish’s impact from both personal and professional angles. We review some of the major contributions of Dr. Stanish’s career over four immensely productive decades, including long-term research projects in several regions and “big ideas” that have significantly influenced Andean...
Buried Sites in the Chincha Valley Floodplain (2019)
This is an abstract from the "From the Paracas Culture to the Inca Empire: Recent Archaeological Research in the Chincha Valley, Peru" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Peruvian coastal valley of Chincha is the largest in the south coast of Peru. Research by our team since 2011 has discovered and excavated a number of archaeological sites that date from 3200–1000 BP. The data from this research provide exciting data to test models of early social...
Castellated Rims and Silica Bodies: Rethinking Valdivia (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Innovations in Ecuadorian Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Initial attempts to explain the origins of pottery on the coast of Ecuador and in the rest of the Americas focused on transpacific contact. During the last few decades this debate has quieted as the Vegas and Valdivia phases of southwest Ecuador became better known. Nevertheless, there has remained a chronological hiatus between the two...
Ceremonial Waterscapes: The Desaguadero River Valley in Antiquity (2018)
The Lake Titicaca Basin in the Bolivian Andes was a dynamic place that saw the development of early religious centers like Chiripa and Khonkho Wankane, the subsequent emergence and expansion of the Tiwanaku state, and the incursion of the Inca empire. The Desaguadero River is the only river that drains Lake Titicaca, flowing south and connecting the region to the central altiplano and Lake Poopó some 250 kilometers downriver. This paper examines the ceremonial and political importance of the...
Children at the Heart of Buen Suceso (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Finding Community in the Past and Present through the 2022 PARCC Field School at Buen Suceso, Ecuador" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Children in antiquity provide bioarchaeologists with a window into the past as they embody the environment and culture around them (Halcrow and Tayles 2011). Due to subadults’ sensitivity to biocultural factors, they are excellent indicators of the health and nutrition of a society...
Combustion as a Process of Reconfiguration of the Historical Space: The Potrero Mendieta Context in Southwestern Ecuador (~3000 BCE) (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. In this presentation, the historical processes of the Formative Period in the Ecuadorian Andes are evaluated through the material renderings of fire from the site Potrero Mendieta. In this context, they are associated with a swift restructuring in the use of the circular architectural structures...
Communal Before Domestic? Preceramic Contexts of Exotic Food Adoption in North Peru (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. Archaeologists have long hypothesized the causes and conditions of the transition from foraging to food production. Of specific interest here are the social and ecological conditions generating the adoption of exotic plants. Some of the best-documented paleoecological and archaeological evidence for initial food production and the adoption...
A Comparison of Ceramic Compositions from Canchas Uckro (Ancash) and the Cave of the Owls (Huánuco), Peru: Implications for an Upper Amazon Interaction Sphere (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Despite decades of archaeological research, the economic and social ties connecting the eastern Andes and Upper Amazon remain underexplored. Stylistic and compositional comparison of ceramics from the sites of Canchas Uckro (ca. 1100-850 BCE), a large monumental platform situated above the Puccha River, and the Cave of the Owls, on the Monzón River near...
Conveying Inka Ideology of Warfare for Establishing and Maintaining Political Control (2023)
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. Ancient empires relied on warfare to conquer other groups and incorporate them politically. However, they did not always resort to armed conquest and often annexed new territories through negotiation backed by the perception of the empire’s military strength, which also underpinned the consolidation and perpetuation of political control in...
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...