Middle Formative Plant Use on the Taraco Peninsula, Bolivia

Summary

The Middle Formative (800-250B.C.) on the Taraco Peninsula was a period of burgeoning status and wealth differentiation that saw the rise of platform mound construction and the intensification of quinoa farming nearby the shores of Lake Titicaca. This paper will present data from a macrobotanical analysis of the site Alto Pukara, a 3.25 hectare village excavated in 2000 and 2001. A thorough examination of the distribution of charred plant remains across all contexts of a single structure will be undertaken with the goal of explaining use of space and general patterns of plant use. These data will be compared to those generated from prior analyses of two other villages on the Taraco Peninsula: Chiripa and Kala Uyuni. Through this, the paper will contribute to a regional chronology of plant use spanning the entire Formative period (1500 B.C. - A.D. 500), with particular attention to how fuel and foodways shifted in relation to status differentiation and farming practices. Due to an absence of botanical data from the heavy fraction for Alto Pukara, the paper will also focus on the statistical analysis of how the heavy fraction of flotation samples affects the archaeobotanist's view of past plant use.

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Like Frejoles in a Pod: Examining the Current State of Paleoethnobotany in Peru   •
• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage