Local and Inca Cross Regional Interactions: studies from the Northern Ecuador frontier.

Summary

This paper focuses on the importance of interregional contact along border zones as we seek to understand the nature and impacts of interactions between cultural worlds. We are particularly concerned with how archaeologists construct and methodologically recover evidence of these interactions. Ultimately, and not surprisingly, people within these zones show innovative ways of expanding, exploiting or resisting transfers of knowledge, styles, technologies, raw materials and material culture.

Our case study involves the Pais Caranqui of Northern Ecuador during the Late and Inca Periods. XRF studies of obsidian and ceramics display the varied networks were created during these periods to obtain and exchange goods, while ceramic analysis shows the incorporation of non-local "thinware" from the oriente. While these trade networks were established primarily by the indigenous polities before the arrival of the Inca, some networks and products were heavily utilized by the Inca after their arrival in the Northern Highlands, while still others were dismantled or blocked entirely. We see these dynamics play out in particular at the important border zone site of Pukarito. Our paper will thus show the varied nature of these interactions along the frontier and their effect on the social, political and economic realms of Northern Ecuador.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Itinerant Matters and Hybrid Objects: Research on material transfers and contact products

Keywords

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