andes (Other Keyword)
101-125 (135 Records)
This paper examines the relationships between food, identity, and social inequality on the Prehispanic Peruvian North Coast through a paleoethnobotanical perspective. We reconstruct household culinary practices to address the roles that food played in the migrant experience of highlanders that settled in a traditionally coastal river valley. This migration occurs just prior to the consolidation of the Southern Moche polity, one of the earliest state polities in the Americas and characterized by...
Reconstructing a Recuay Feasting Event at Hualcayán, Peru through Ceramic Analysis (2015)
Although research of the Recuay Culture has heavily focused on the practices and materials of Recuay feasts, these studies are limited to a few archaeological sites. Consequently, the variation of Recuay feasting practices between communities in highland Ancash is still unclear. This poster presents a typological and spatial analysis of Recuay ceramics excavated from the archaeological site of Hualcayán to reveal the local ritual practices of food preparation and consumption during the Early...
Reconstructing Andean pasts: archaeology, biology, or ethnohistory? All of the above, please. (2016)
Over the last several decades Andean archaeology of the late prehispanic through early Spanish colonial periods has grown to the point that critical reassessments of ethnohistorical materials and the anthropological models constructed from them are not only possible but necessary. Taking as a premise that language and material culture are primary transmissions of cultural life through time, this presentation summarizes recent archaeological research in Cuzco, Huamachuco, Pachacamac, and...
A rectory divided: mediation of space in a colonial town in the southern Peruvian highlands (2017)
During the 16th century Viceroy Toledo ordered a series of reforms in the Viceroyalty of Peru that involved the forced resettlement of the native population into planned nucleated settlements (reducciones). Toledo believed that these standardized built environments, in conjunction with ecclesiastical regulation, would produce idealized colonial communities. This paper presents the initial results of recent excavations in the rectory at Mawchu Llacta, a reducción in the Colca Valley. The rectory...
Refuge, Frontier, No Man's Land: The Changing Nature of the Andean Cloud Forests (2017)
This paper will consider the Amaybamba Valley of southern Peru as an ecological and political frontier zone, from the late prehistoric era until the early colonial period. The Amaybamba region is a part of the cloud forest zone of the eastern Andean slopes, and is thus located where the highlands rapidly shift into the warm tropical lowlands of Amazonia. It is a region that has a complex and highly variable history, one reflecting its environmental characteristics, but often in unpredictable...
Regionality and Relations to the State in the Andagua Valley, Southern Peruvian Andes (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Itinerant Bureaucrats and Empire" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. In the mid-18th century, spurred by recent Bourbon reforms and claiming years of unpaid tribute, Spanish colonial officials journeyed to the town of Andagua in the high Southern Peruvian Andes. Yet upon arriving they encountered firm resistance to their regional colonial authority that coalesced around the leaders of reputed ancestor cults, nearly...
Rejection and Reinvention: a diachronic perspective on ritual and collapse in the south central Andes (2017)
Scholarship on Tiwanaku (AD 600-1000) emphasizes the ceremonial nature of its capital city and the role of ritual practice in incorporating diverse groups as the state’s influence expanded across the south central Andes. Although debate continues about its cause, recent research indicates that the Tiwanaku state’s political collapse played out over several centuries. In this paper, I draw on data spanning that period of fragmentation to take a diachronic perspective on the ways in which ritual,...
Remodeling the Liturgical "Backstage" of the Parish of Santa Cruz de Tuti, Colca Valley (Arequipa, Peru) (2017)
The Toledan resettlement during late decades of the 16th century in the viceroyalty of Peru involved a series of changes in the territory for Andean people at different levels, from household to the public and religious spheres. In the case of the reducción (planned colonial town) of Santa Cruz de Tute, the religious sphere was transformed and materialized into a new core of buildings and spaces: the church, its parish, and plazas. The parish and casa cural (rectory) was a liminal space in terms...
Representing Difference in the Pre-Columbian Andes: An Iconographic Examination of Physical "Disability" (2015)
This paper will review iconographic representations of physical disabilities and differences from several Andean societies from different time periods, such as the Inka, Chimú, Wari, Tiwanaku, and Moche. People with physical disabilities were actively included in many societies throughout the Pre-Columbian Andes. Many cultures developed their own social perceptions that benefited people with physical disabilities and differences and they often thought the disabled were more intimately connected...
Ritual Practices and the Negotiation of Wari-Tiwanaku Relations at Cerro Baúl (2016)
The presence of both Wari and Tiwanaku colonies in the Moquegua Valley (southern Peru) offers a unique opportunity to study the colonial strategies of these empires and their interactions during the first millennium AD. Here, we more specifically explore the role of ritual practices in mediating relations between the Wari and Tiwanaku empires. We focus on a Titicaca basin inspired platform and court complex located outside of the main Wari administrative sector of the site of Cerro Baúl,...
Rojo Grafitado is not graphite. A slow-science interpretation of the production of an Andean ceramic style. (2015)
Building upon the slow-science movement, and the work of Olivier Gosselain and others, this presentation examines how our understanding of ancient ceramic production depends upon the path a research may take. It argues for a re-articulation and re-evaluation of qualitative observation, small number of samples and quantitative data. The Rojo Grafitado case presented arose from research hazards, curiosity, and a regional perspective on ceramic production. During the first millennium B.C. in the...
San Catequilla de Pichincha and Catequil, the cult to Lightning (Illapa) in the context of Inca expansion (2015)
Natural features, hills, subterranean springs, etc., designated as, ‘Catequilla,’ in northern Ecuador were huacas associated with Catequil, a religious cult to lightning (Illapa), worshiped from Quito to Cuzco, in the context of Inca expansion. San Catequilla de Pichincha is located in the Pomasqui Valley of northern highland Ecuador and the only huaca under the equator at 0°0’02" South Latitude. Ethnohistoric accounts indicate it was one of the most highly venerated Andean huacas, in part...
Scale, Interaction, and Society: Constituting Social Boundaries in the Northern Peruvian Andes (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Dedication, Collaboration, and Vision, Part I: Papers in Honor of Tom D. Dillehay" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists often look to certain practices, such as interregional trade, local feasting, or inter-community warfare, as having defined different kinds of social boundaries—between corporate groups, communities, polities, ethnicities, or regions. Tom Dillehay’s interdisciplinary work on a variety of...
Silver Production and Inka Expansion in the South Central Andes (2017)
Silver was an important component of the Andean prestige economy with bestowal and display of silver and silver-alloyed objects constituting a vital tool of Inka statecraft. The quest for mineral wealth was thus a motivating factor for Inka conquest of the South Central Andes. Nonetheless, the impacts of imperial incorporation on the organization and technology of metal production differed across this region of the empire. Focusing on the purification of silver ores, we present two case studies...
So Many Chenopods: Paleoethnobotany of the Late Intermediate Period, Puno, Peru (AD 1100-1450) (2016)
Following the collapse of Tiwanaku in the Andean altiplano, warfare, sociopolitical balkanization, and a severe drought lead to economic hardships during the Late Intermediate period (LIP) between A.D. 1100 and 1450. Previous research in the region has shed light on how martial conflict between and possibly among competing ethnic groups incited people to live in defensive fortified hilltop villages. Although scholars have previously speculated on the severity of lifeways for residents of...
Social Differentiation and Hierarchy at a Central Place in the Eastern Andes of Ecuador (2017)
This paper focuses on the development of a central place in the Quijos Valley, Eastern Andes of Ecuador. Based on an intensive survey of the site complemented by small excavations, I offer a spatial, demographic, social and economic characterization of this central place with the goal of discussing and contrasting views on the development of social differentiation, hierarchy, and centralized political authority in ancient chiefdoms. Contextualizing this in a body of regional settlement pattern...
Social Interactions at Gramalote: A Ceramic Production Perspective (2016)
Recent petrographic analysis of ceramics and comparative samples from the Formative site of Gramalote, on the North coast of Peru, allows us to brush a tentative portrait of ceramic production at or for Gramalote. Considering ceramics as part of a socio-economic network, the identification of different paste groups yields information relative to some of the interactions occurring at that time period in the Gramalote region.
Social Memory and the Development of Monumental Architecture in the Southern Jequetepeque Valley, Peru (2017)
Numerous theoretical concepts associated with social memory have been employed by archaeologists working throughout the world as a means of explaining continuities and discontinuities in the archaeological record. These social memory-based approaches are varied and include specific avenues of inquiry such as how social memories were actively manipulated for political gain; the role played by monumental architecture in the coalescing of shared memories; and the interrelationship between social...
Space is the place: integrating context through GIS and geophysical surveys at Santa Cruz de Tuti, Peru (2017)
The reducción of Santa Cruz de Tuti (AKA Espinar de Tuti) in the Colca Valley is a complex archaeological site in the high Andes with occupational phases representing the Inka, colonial, and republican periods. Multiple geophysical instrument surveys conducted during planning phases, as well as concurrently with a large-scale excavation program in 2016, provided critical information on site use and depositional environment. Spatial, pattern and visual analyses reveal how domestic, public, and...
Surveillance and control in a landscape of war: An examination of mobility and fortification in the Colca Valley, Peru (2016)
Mobility is frequently examined in terms of interaction, confluence and circulation. During periods of conflict, however, roads and paths can become arenas for the negotiation and control of people, lands and resources, and thus bring into sharp relief the often tense politics of mobility. This paper draws on regional survey of Late Intermediate Period (AD 1100-1450) hilltop fortifications in the Colca Valley to examine the use of fortification to monitor and control mobility during a period of...
Surviving Trepanation: Approaching the Relationship of Violence and the Care of "War Wounds" through a Case Study from Prehistoric Peru (2015)
The political instability that characterizes the early Late Intermediate Period (ca. AD 1000—1250) in Andean prehistory had widespread impacts on how people lived, ranging from changes in settlement patterns to an increase in skeletal trauma and infectious disease. This paper explores the social experiences of violence and its implications for healthcare, primarily through the analysis of a notable case study: a young male from Andahuaylas, Peru, whose skeleton evinces multiple lesions and...
Taraco Peninsula Site Database
Site database for the Taraco Peninsula Archaeological Survey
Taraco Pensinula Archaeological Survey
Systematic Survey of about 98 km2 of the Taraco Peninsula in Bolivia, conducted in the late 1990s.
A Technical Attribute Analysis of Textile Band Production at Uraca, Peru (2016)
As with other forms of technology, normative patterns in textile production can suggest information about the communities of weavers that produced them. Through an analysis of technical attributes, this poster establishes the normative patterns involved in the production of textile bands at the mortuary site of Uraca in the Majes Valley of Peru and suggests how these patterns relate Uraca to broader textile traditions within the region. More specifically, it examines how Uraca relates to the...
Textile conceptual ideas as mobility indicators between highlands and coast, Central Andes, c. 200BC-600AD (2016)
Textiles are important artifacts when looking at mobility since they constitute a matrix of complex conceptual ideas, are important identity markers, and they travel easily with their owners. Pre-Columbian textiles have seldom been preserved in the wet Andean highlands, making it difficult to evaluate their past diversity and to identify them among the vast quantity of pieces discovered on the arid coast of Peru. Nevertheless, combining the study of present highland weaving practices with the...