Formative Influences: A Gathering in Honor of J. Scott Raymond

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

Over a lifetime of work in South America, Scott Raymond has greatly contributed to the archaeology of the neotropics. Beginning with his dissertation on the archaeology of the Upper Amazon of Peru, under the supervision of Donald Lathrap at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, Scott later moved his focus to the Valdivia culture of Early Formative Period Ecuador. During the span of his productive career his interests have included ceramic classification methodologies, the nature of subsistence systems, settlement patterns, and the social formations of Early Formative Ecuador. Friends, colleagues, and students of Scott will present on some of the ideas, research areas, and influences he has had on our discipline.

Other Keywords
Peru • andes • Ceramics • Irrigation • Historical Archaeology • Plantation • Zooarchaeology • Plant Domestication • Currency • archaeobotany

Geographic Keywords
South America • Department of Martinique (Country) • Republic of El Salvador (Country) • Department of Guadeloupe (Country) • Antigua and Barbuda (Country) • Belize (Country) • Anguilla (Country) • Republic of Guatemala (Country) • Republic of Honduras (Country) • St. Lucia (Country)

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  • Documents (8)
Documents
  • Colonization of Paradise: Historical Ecology and Archaeology of El Progreso Plantation, Galápagos (1870–1904) (2017)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Fernando J. Astudillo. Peter W. Stahl. Florencio Delgado. Ross W. Jamieson.

    Colonization of the Galápagos Islands started soon after Ecuadorian separation from the Gran Colombia in 1830. During this decade the Islands were legally claimed by the Republic of Ecuador and colonization projects started. Exploiting concessions were approved to national and international companies. One of these concessions was assigned to Ecuadorian businessmen Manuel J. Cobos and José Monroy to create an agricultural colony on San Cristóbal Island; 1000 km west from the Ecuadorian coast in...

  • A Late Formative Period Site in Chimborazo Province, Ecuador (2017)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Laurie Beckwith.

    Compared to the coastal areas of Ecuador, the central highlands of Ecuador are not well known archaeologically, especially for the Formative Period. This paper will report on preliminary survey and excavation research carried out in the Chibunga River Valley, to the south of the modern city of Riobamba, during the 2009 and 2012 field seasons. Test excavations were carried out at the site of Collay, located on a mesa at 3100 masl, to obtain a sample of material culture and material for dating....

  • Precolonial irrigation systems and settlement Patterns in the valley of Rimac - Peru. (2017)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Jose Narvaez.

    This investigation is an archaeological analysis of the lower Rimac River Valley, located in the Peruvian Central Coast, where several irrigation channels, that were originated from the River allowed the cultivation of a great extension of land in this valley. The objectives of this study were to establish the occupation sequence and settlement pattern in those artificial valleys in Precolonial times and their relation with this irrigation system. Modern and old maps and aerial photos were used...

  • Really ugly Nasca pots of ancient Peru, and why they are important. (2017)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Patrick Carmichael.

    Polychrome ceramics of the Nasca culture (south coast of Peru, c. 100 BC - AD 600) are world renowned as one of the most colorful and artistically complex creations of the ancient Americas. Up to ten distinct colors depicting fabulous supernatural creatures adorn unique vessel forms with eggshell thin walls fixed in perfect oxidizing firings. Such masterpieces fill art books and spawn enthusiastic but fanciful speculations about Nasca society and its artisans. This paper rounds out the view of...

  • Rethinking the Formative Stage: A reconsideration from two archaeological sites on the Colombian Caribbean lowlands (2017)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Diana Carvajal Contreras.

    The concept of formative in Colombia is traditionally framed as a transitional period within the unilineal cultural evolution in the Americas, characterized for several indicators such as sedentary life, diversity of socio-economic forms and the emergence of new technologies such as pottery. In this paper, we revised two archaeological sites: Monsu and Puerto Hormiga, incorporating zooarchaeological analysis, technological and use–wear analyses to provide understanding into past human behavior...

  • The Secret Life of Cacao in the Ecuadorian Upper Amazon (2017)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Sonia Zarrillo.

    Genetic studies suggest that cacao (Theobroma cacao L.) domestication occurred in the Upper Amazon of southeastern Ecuador and northeastern Peru and was then transported by humans northwards to Central America and Mexico. As such, we should expect to find the earliest archaeological evidence of cacao use in the tropical forests of South America. This paper presents starch granule evidence for the early use of cacao from the Upper Amazon site of Santa Ana-La Florida during the Ecuadorian Early...

  • Sedentism and plant domestication: North west Amazonia (2017)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Santiago Mora.

    Two different scenarios have been proposed to explain sedentarization and the transition from foraging to sedentary societies. In the first a key resource or a combination of resources allows the stability of the population giving rise, over time, to sedentarization; in the second, a population concentration caused by an external change such as drastic climatic fluctuation or regional population increase with its concomitant social problems force the adoption of a sedentary way of life. In these...

  • Tokens of Oppression: Coinage at a Nineteenth-Century Galapagos Sugar Plantation (2017)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Ross W. Jamieson.

    In the 1870s Manuel J. Cobos founded the El Progreso plantation agricultural operation on the Island of San Cristóbal in the Galapagos. It is known that he used "scrip," or company-issued cash, to force workers to only spend their wages at the company store. Archaeological recovery of hard rubber tokens from several plantation contexts brings up many questions of economics and labour relations surrounding this remote location which was also tied to the global economy through steam power,...