andes (Other Keyword)
126-135 (135 Records)
This study examines cranial vault modification (CVM) frequency and styles among 35 crania from the Vegachayoq Moqo sector at the site of Huari, the former capital of the Wari Empire. The crania date to the post-Wari era (AD 1250 – 1400). In order to document the process by which they were modified, the crania were analyzed by noting the number of pad impressions and locations, as well as the center of applied pressure; the design of the modification devices was extrapolated from the observed...
Thinking outside the map: Alternative approaches to data visualization (2017)
One of the more promising applications of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in archaeology is the potential to incorporate aspects of human perception and experience of the landscape. Visibility analysis has been applied extensively to archaeological contexts, and models of movement, acoustics and other sensory experiences have recently received greater consideration. But despite the promise of moving beyond measurements of geographic space, most applications of experiential modeling continue...
Those Who Came Before: Investigating Diet, Health and Mobility in the Moche Valley, 1800 BC – AD 200 (2016)
Much sweat and ink has been shed investigating the Moche of north coastal Peru. But what of those who came before? In order to understand the Moche world, we must explore their history. To address this issue, the skeletal remains of over 850 individuals who lived in the Moche valley during the Guañape, Salinar or Gallinazo phases were examined. The collected bioarchaeological data including demographic patterns, oral health indicators, light and heavy isotopes, and pathological conditions allow...
Understanding heterarchy: Landscape and community in the northern Calchaquí Valley, Argentina (2016)
This presentation explores landscapes of heterarchy, investigating the ways that past peoples inhabited a south Andean landscape. In the northern Calchaquí Valley of Argentina, before the Inkas, power relations were predominantly decentralized and spatially extensive. As a consequence, lived experience, the built environment, and the wider landscape both constituted and reproduced a distinctive social order and cultural logic. Using data from regional survey, I argue first for a habitus that...
Uso de un Espacio Sagrado: Excavaciones de la Sacristía de una Reducción Colonial en la Sierra sur del Perú (2017)
Los espacios rituales han sido desde siempre lugares importantes dentro de las comunidades humanas pues son la expresión material de sus creencias y su fe. En el caso del Virreinato del Perú, la invasión española del siglo XVI significó un cambio radical en la concepción y materialización de la religiosidad practicada, donde la construcción de edificios de carácter religioso encarnó el cambio de vida y costumbres de los pueblos conquistados. Esta ponencia explora el espacio arquitectónico de la...
A View from the Past: A Reanalysis of Archaeological Collections from the Sama Valley and its Implications for Current Models and Chronologies of the Southern Andean Valleys (2017)
Although limited in area compared to the neighboring Moquegua, Caplina, and Azapa valleys, the Sama valley (Departamento Tacna, Peru) with its the warm temperature, perennial water sources and arable flood plain creates hospitable conditions for highlanders who settled the valley as early as Late Horizon period. In his 1567 visita, Garci Diez de San Miguel notes the presence of a Luqapa colony and an Inca Tambo at the site of Sama Grande near the modern town of Sama-Inclan. In addition, survey...
A view from the weaver’s fingertips: gesture and complexity in the South Central Andes (2016)
This paper traces the gradual acquisition of increasingly complex mental and haptic operations as a girl learns to weave in the Andes. She starts early with fingertip ‘synaesthetic’ knowledge of fleece thickness and quality as she prepares raw materials and spins them, and the mental-visual knowledge of counting herd animals in her pasturing duties. She passes on to the visual recognition of selection and counting patterns in simple crossed-warp weaves, in belt straps, and then to the...
Walls Speak: Architectural "Neighborhoods" in Late Intermediate Period Peru (2015)
In the Yanamarka Valley in central Peru, the Late Intermediate Period saw dramatic changes. Whole villages moved from the valley floors to dense, defensible hilltop settlements, and were still living there when the Incas colonized this region a century later. The remote locations of many of these sites – both those forcibly abandoned under Inca rule, and those which continued on into the early Colonial Period – mean that numerous domestic round houses, storage spaces, patio walls and pathways...
What’s in your ancient chicha?: Ethnoarchaeology and organic residue analysis (2015)
Ethnoarchaeological chicha brewing was conducted on modern ceramic sherd samples for organic residue analysis. The goal was to identify botanical biomarkers that can evidence the use of Schinus molle L., Erythroxylaceae coca, and Echinopsis pachanoi (San Pedro cactus) for ancient brewing in the Middle Horizon (MH) era (c. 600-1100 CE). There is strong evidence that during this period socio-political influence was inexorably linked to the ability to provide chicha in exchange for labor, goods,...
Where was Chachapoyas? A view from the South (2015)
To answer the query "what was Chachapoyas?" we must think in terms of time, space and identity. Chachapoyas scholars have encountered documentary and/or archaeological evidence of a mosaic of social identities, all undergoing transformations during successive pre-Inca, Inca, and Colonial times within a truly vast Andean region. In this paper, I consider notions of Chachapoyas internal and external boundaries as they have been conceived in the southern area where I conduct my research....