Early Ceremonial Architecture in the Cajamarca Highlands of Peru: A Newly Recorded Circular Court at Callacpuma within the Cajamarca Basin

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 presents data on a newly recorded monumental circular court located within the Cajamarca Basin of the northern Peruvian Highlands. Large circular courts, better known from the Initial and Formative Periods of the Andean Central coast and highlands, are very rare or at least not well known for the northern Andes. Recent work has investigated an 18 meter diameter court surrounded by concentric walls of vertical standing stones. Preliminary results indicate that this court dates to the Huacaloma Period (~1000 BC) and that it may have been the location of ritual deposition and action involving the large-scale consumption of food. This court is located near the summit of the 250 hectare multi-component site of Callacpuma located on the northern fringe of the Cajamarca Basin. Here, we contextualized this court within our current understanding of early monumental architecture in the region from sites including Kuntur Wasi, Pacopampa, Layzón, and Huacaloma, as well as the broader tradition of circular courts in the central Andes.

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): 25799