The Rock Art of the Fortaleza Ignimbrite: 4,200 Years of Landscape Inscription in the North-Central Andes

Summary

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

The Fortaleza Ignimbrite (FI) is a geologic formation, situated at the headwaters of the Fortaleza and Santa Rivers in highland Ancash Peru. A 2014 survey of the FI by the Proyecto de Investigación Arqueológica Arte Rupestre del Alto Fortaleza (PIA ARAF) documented 192 rock art places on the FI, demonstrating correlations between specific images and production techniques with ecological tiers. Informed by these findings, the 2016 PIA ARAF field season focused excavations on three puna rock shelters that hold dense petroglyph panels and one collective tomb, with an associated pictograph panel, and which is located in the lower- altitude quechua ecozone, to place the FI's corpus of rock art in time. Survey data is paired with data from radiocarbon analysis, photogrammetry, digital illustration, and both ground and art panel stratigraphy to produce a typology and a spatio-temporal map for the rock art of the FI, spanning from 3,000 BC to AD 1820. These data are then cross-referenced with 16th-century Spanish ethnohistoric accounts from these river valleys to link specific motifs with named ayllu groups. These findings may offer insights regarding the temporality of other rock art sites as well as the nature of social emplacement in the region.

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): 26159