Combustion as a Process of Reconfiguration of the Historical Space: The Potrero Mendieta Context in Southwestern Ecuador (~3000 BCE)

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Illuminated Communities: The Role of the Hearth at the Beginning of Andean Civilization" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In this presentation, the historical processes of the Formative Period in the Ecuadorian Andes are evaluated through the material renderings of fire from the site Potrero Mendieta. In this context, they are associated with a swift restructuring in the use of the circular architectural structures identified at the site and immediately precede the interment of the structures and the possible abandonment of complex during the 9th century BCE. The site may have been occupied as early as 3,500 BCE and this shift, associated with a well-used hearth, occurred at the end of the culture-history placement of the Initial Period. This event coincides with the rapid reconfigurations in settlement patterns seen in the region. Moreover, burning and interment events would have reconfigured the experience of time and place for the inhabitants, who had connections that spanned the central Jubones River Basin (Ecuador) and extended to the Amazonian cloud forest to the east and to the Pacific coast to the west. The event associated with this hearth would have altered their social interaction processes and their shared experience of the historical landscape.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Illuminated Communities: The Role of the Hearth at the Beginning of Andean Civilization   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25094