Tabuchila Ceramics of the Jama River Valley, Manabí, Ecuador

Summary

Archaeological excavations by the Proyecto-Paleoetnobotánico Río Jama (PAPRJ) in the Jama River Valley of northern Manabí, Ecuador, have established a cultural chronology spanning over three millennia of prehispanic occupation. One of these occupations, the Tabuchila Complex of the Late Formative Period (1000 BC – 500 BC), remains poorly understood. Excavations at three sites in the Jama Valley in the 1990s recovered ceramic, lithic, obsidian, paleobotanical, archaeofaunal, and human skeletal remains from Late Formative Tabuchila contexts, with the goal of orienting Late Formative occupation of the northern Manabí region to its contemporaries in western lowland Ecuador. This study employs a methodology of modal ceramic analysis to recognize and catalogue formal and stylistic variation within the recovered Tabuchila ceramic assemblage. Through this analysis the Tabuchila assemblage is compared to other studies of Middle and Late Formative culture, to understand how Tabuchila represented a regional variant of and contributor to the formation of the Chorrera ceramic tradition.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Northern South America II: Mobility, Landscapes, and Socialscapes   •
• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 16956