Long-Term Puna Landscape Use in the Chanka Heartland of Andahuaylas, Southern Peru

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This poster examines the enduring role that puna landscapes played across time and space in the Andahuaylas region of southern highland Peru. Results from a recent archaeological landscape survey, entitled the Andahuaylas Puna Project, confirms that the expansive puna to the south of the main Chumbao Valley was intensively used and intermittently occupied for over two millennia from the late Formative period through modern times, with the most intensive occupation occurring during the Chanka phase (~AD 1000-1400). The survey of a 40 km² tract of puna (~3600-4400 m.a.s.l.) recorded a range of water sources (e.g., springs, cochas, and bofedales) and 158 archaeological sites, including single and multiple corral structures, residential pastoral sites, cist tombs, chullpas, small ritual enclosures, and paths/roads among others. Taken together, preliminary survey results indicate that the lower puna region in Andahuaylas played a number of important roles for local polities by serving as an economic region for intensive camelid pastoralism, but also as a ritually charged landscape (for the living and the dead) and a corridor/connector between lower valleys (e.g., suni, quechua) and higher puna regions.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24492