A Network Analysis of Embedded Pathways at Mawchu Llacta, Perú (1591 – 1617 C.E.)

Summary

This paper investigates the occupation of a planned 16th century Spanish colonial resettlement named Santa Cruz de Tute, hereafter referred to as Mawchu Llacta. My analysis incorporates data compiled for the Proyecto Arqueológico Tuti Antiguo (PATA), with a particular focus on colonial census records from 1591, 1604, and 1617, which detail land tenure and livestock holdings. I argue that the construction of a computer-based representation of pathways in ArcGIS platform contributes to the delimiting of an historical and ecological context in which cultural activity is dialectically engaged in the transformation of an environment over time. Drawing on historical ecology, I demonstrate that the physical pathways embedded in the landscape are a product of human-environment relations, and that they reveal tangible evidence of a sustained use of land over time from a space of habitation to a space of subsistence.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

Keywords

Spatial Coverage