Andes: Middle Horizon (Other Keyword)
201-225 (243 Records)
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 1" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The way that communities cared for their living and dead holds great potential to elucidate the cosmovision of the Moche. Ritual practices during the Moche period involved human offerings that include women, children, and men at different stages of...
Stress and Sociocultural Reactions to Environmental Change in the Late and Terminal Lima on the Central Coast of Peru (2018)
This project examined evidence of stress in 469 excavated human skeletons of the pre-Hispanic Lima population from Huaca 20 in the Maranga Complex in modern day Lima, Peru dating to the end of the Early Intermediate Period (ca. 200-600 AD) and the beginning of the Middle Horizon (ca. 600-900 AD). This period saw the movement of the populations on both the North and Central Coasts of the Andes inland to areas with greater access to the critical water supply (Shimada, 1994). While the majority...
A Study of Incised Designs within a Wari D-Shaped Temple Complex (2023)
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. With the discovery of a Wari D-Shaped temple and other adjacent architectural structures in 2019, the 2022 field season at Huaca del Loro focused on excavation of the temple complex. Well preserved mud plaster still remained on many of the walls and floors of the structures. Examination of the walls in the...
A Study of Social Inequality at the Andean Prehistoric Site of Ak’awillay (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While most research on emerging inequalities in prehistoric societies has focused on the elaboration of inequality in villages and polities on the periphery of large states, less attention has been placed on settlements existing outside influential regional centers. In this paper, we present the case of the Andean Middle Horizon (600-1000 C.E.) site of...
Symbolic Behavior in Household Archaeology: A Study of Late Nasca Period and Loro Period Figurines from Zorropata, Nasca, Peru (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. 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...
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 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...
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...
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)...
The Timespace of the Pre-Hispanic City of Cerro de Oro (2018)
This work uses the concept of timespace (Schatzki 2010) to follow the construction and habitation of the prehispanic city of Cerro de Oro within the lower Cañete valley between ca. 500-900 AD. The concept of timespace assumes that the temporality and spatiality of the social are considered as intertwined elements that form the dynamic infrastructure where social phenomena such as power, social organization or coordinated action are constituted. ...
Tiwanaku Pastoralism, Highland Bofedales, and Grasslands in Far Southern Peru: Creating a Strontium Baseline and Isoscape to Understand Cultural Connections (2019)
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. Camelid pastoralism was an economic mainstay of the Tiwanaku Empire (~AD 600-1000). Communities of colonists in Moquegua, Peru were connected to their Tiwanaku capital near Lake Titicaca through an informal trade route traversing the altiplano. One component of Tiwanaku hegemony involved the movement of goods via llama caravans...
Two Individuals, One Urn Burial from La Real, Peru: A Bioarchaeological Investigation of Urn Burial Practices (2018)
The site of La Real, located in the southern, near-coastal region of Peru, was an elite burial ground where mortuary contexts reveal Wari imperial influence during the Middle Horizon (600-1000 CE). This study examines the mortuary treatment of two human fetus/neonate skeletons placed inside a decorated, ceramic urn and compares funerary treatment to Wari fetus/neonate burials and others in the Andes to evaluate the geographic reach, chronological depth, and cultural significance of this funerary...
Understanding Nasca ‘Trophy Head’ Individuals from the Site of Zorropata in Peru Using Isotopic and Biochemical Methods (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Myriad factors shaped cultural practices such as ‘trophy head’ taking in Andean prehistory. Zorropata, located in the Las Trancas Valley, Nasca, Peru, was a large domestic site with likely ceremonial function occupied relatively continuously from the Late Nasca period (c. AD 450-600) until the early Middle Horizon/Loro period (c. AD 600-1000). Archaeological...
Understanding Quilcapampa (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Wari and the Far Peruvian South Coast: Final Results of Excavations in Quilcapampa" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As the papers in this session have demonstrated, the site of Quilcapampa La Antigua in a previously isolated region of southern Peru is notable for its long-distance connections, strong Wari influence, and brief occupation during the tenth century AD. In this closing paper on our excavations, I want to...
Ungendering Sex in Moche Ceramics (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Future Is Fluid...and So Was the Past: Challenging the 'Normative' in Archaeological Interpretations" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Moche ceramic art (Peru, first millenium) is a corpus of veristic images including explicit depictions of sex acts and human genitalia. Because anatomical sex is so visible in these artifacts, the temptation to collapse sex and gender is strong – but what if we begin, instead, by...
The Upper Marañón after Chavín and before the LIP: Glimpse into Poorly Documented Times (2024)
This is an abstract from the "After the Feline Cult: Social Dynamics and Cultural Reinvention after Chavín" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While the Late Intermediate period (LIP) in the upper Marañón region is well known for its unique surface stone architecture such as tall multistoried tombs, the periods immediately following the Early Horizon are still poorly documented and understood. Nonetheless, excavations at the site of Rapayán in Ancash...
Use-Wear Analysis of the Middle Horizon (2019)
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. Use-wear analysis is a qualitative method of study that observes abrasion patterns on material remains. Wear traces can come from stirring, lids, storage techniques, and other culinary practices. Apparent wear patterns and abrasion coarseness are features that help infer the use of different vessel forms. I applied this technique...
Variability among the Dead: Population Structure and Inferred Cultural Adaptations to the Changing Environmental and Sociopolitical Landscapes during the Late Moche (AD 650–800) Era in the Jequetepeque Valley, Peru (2018)
Recent bioarchaeological and archaeological research regarding the environmentally influenced demise of the Moche (AD 200 – 800) of the Jequetepeque Valley, Perú, indicates a variety of responses, including population dispersals, political fragmentation, cultural hybridization, and new political alliances with recently arrived foreigners at ceremonial centers. Biodistance analyses suggest that adjacent highland Cajamarca peoples from the adjacent highlands arrived in the Jequetepeque and likely...
Violence among the Gallinazo: New Insights from Pampa la Cruz, Moche Valley (2018)
The Moche of the North Coast of Peru, are well known for their ritualized culture of violence. Warriors, prisoners, weapon bundles, and sacrifice are commonly depicted in a variety of Moche media, and archaeological evidence from urban centers suggests such acts were practiced. What is not known is if the Early Intermediate Period ancestors of the Moche also engaged in such acts of violence. Pre-Moche, Gallinazo phase urban sites were often located in defensible settings and some show evidence...
Violent Ritual and Inter-regional Interaction during the Early Intermediate Period and Early Middle Horizon in the Majes Valley, Arequipa, Peru (2018)
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...
Walking in Tiwanaku Shoes: Small Things, Quotidian Cues and Tiwanaku Identities in Diaspora (2018)
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...
Warfare and Captive Sacrifice in the Moche World: New Data from Excavations at Pampa la Cruz, Moche Valley, Northern Coastal Peru (2023)
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...
Wari and the Southern Peruvian Coast: A Reevaluation (2021)
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...
Wari Bats? An Iconographic Analysis of Some Very Curious Zoomorphic Figures on Middle Horizon Andean Pottery (2019)
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...