Technological styles and production practices in the Río Grande de San Juan Basin (Argentinean-Bolivian border) during the Late Intermediate Period

Summary

The lack of direct ceramic production evidence, coupled with the lack of technical studies, hinder the understanding of ceramic production practices and its organization across the south central Andes. Yavi-Chicha ceramics associated with a diversity of sites in the Río Grande de San Juan Basin (straddling the border of Bolivia and Argentina) provide a unique entry point to explore socio-political dynamics during the Late Intermediate (AD 1000-1450) and Inka (AD 1450-1540) periods. Framed within a larger project that examines the mechanisms through which state ideologies were materialized by the Inka, in this case specifically through the use and manipulation of local ceramic styles, this poster presents preliminary results on the technological styles and production practices employed during the Late Intermediate Period, using indirect evidence (macroscopic and archaeometric data including petrography, Raman spectroscopy, and SEM). Drawing from my analysis of materials from two discrete sites in two subregions of the Río Grande de San Juan Basin, Chipiwayco and Finispatria, located in the core and the periphery of the region, I discuss the relevance of technological variability for understanding craft production practices and socio-political organization at the intraregional level.

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

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage