Early Metallurgy from Waywaka in the South-Central Highlands of Andahuaylas, Apurimac, Peru: New AMS Dates and XRF Analysis

Summary

This presentation will discuss the results of processing eight high-resolution Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon determinations on charcoal found in association with poorly dated ceramics and copper-alloy artifacts recovered from an important pre-Inca site, Waywaka, in the south-central highlands of Andahuaylas, Apurimac, Peru. Excavations at Waywaka revealed a naturally stratified series of deposits of Pre-Inca cultures spanning nearly four millennia. In the bottom-most layers was evidence of early pottery making and gold working in the Andes which included an actual gold worker's tool kit. Higher in the stratified sequence the excavation yielded a subsequent culture, the Qasawirka style, which produced a range of small (2 - 5 cm ) copper-alloy artifacts. It is the antiquity of this early copper-alloy technology that is in question. It is the proposition of this AMS testing strategy that the Qasawirka style copper-alloy artifacts from the site of Waywaka could conceivably date to a significantly earlier period in Andean prehistory, possibly EIP - Early Intermediate Period. The presentation will also discuss these Qasawirka copper-alloy artifacts in terms of their constituent, non-copper, trace-elements using new portable XRF (X Ray Fluorescence) scanning equipment at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO)/NASA laboratory of Columbia University.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Archaeometallurgy of the New World: Current Research, Approaches, and Methods

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 13197