Revisiting the pre Moche - Moche transition on the El Brujo geological terrace: A spatially significant ceramic analysis

Summary

Revisiting the pre-Moche - Moche transition on the El Brujo geological terrace; A spatially significant ceramic analysis.

Understanding the social relationships represented by Salinar, Gallinazo, and early Moche ceramics remains one of the important, disputed issues in archaeology on the north coast of Peru. All three ceramic styles are present in material collected during excavations of architectural nuclei around the El Brujo geologic terrace in the Chicama valley over the last 25 years. Here we present an analysis of these ceramics which relate to the transition between the Formative and Early Intermediate Periods with the objective of characterizing the vertical and horizontal distributions of the different styles. A comparison of the macro-features of the PACEB material with those mentioned in previous studies allows us to identify both charachteristics specific to the El Brujo terrace and those that seem to remain constant between sites. By combining these findings with an analysis of the sherds’ spatial distribution using ArcGIS, we examine the accuracy of the major pre-Moche models proposed in the roundtable on Gallinazo in 2009. Our results contribute to the discussions started at this first meeting by investigating the role of El Brujo in this pre-Moche time period.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage