Deep Histories and Persistent Places: Repetitive Mound-Building and Mimesis in the Jama Valley Landscape, Coastal Ecuador

Summary

This paper explores the notions of ‘material memory’ and human agency in deep time as expressed in the repetitive reconstruction of earthen platform mounds over some three millennia in the Jama Valley of coastal Manabí Province, Ecuador. Empirical evidence of repetitive mound-building is presented over a long stratigraphic record extending from approximately 2030 BCE to about 1260 CE, and special emphasis is given to the site of San Isidro, a major civic-ceremonial site and ‘persistent place’ located in the central Jama Valley. This long archaeological sequence is punctuated by evidence of three separate volcanic disasters and subsequent hiatus periods of valley abandonment. Repetitive rebuilding of monumental architecture was carried out by peoples of different cultural traditions that colonized the valley several hundred years after each natural disaster, represented by the Formative Period Terminal Valdivia and Chorrera cultures, followed by the long Jama-Coaque tradition. Finally, consideration is given to Dušan Borić’s (2002) argument (following Gell 1998) that such repetition and citation of past monumental material culture, as well as its mimetic representation as miniaturized art forms, have apotropaic or protective properties that benefit society at large, or social groups and individual agents within that society.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20874