Landscapes and Ecologies of Chachapoya Ancestral Sites: Preliminary Results from the MAPA-SACHA Project

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Tropical Montane Cloud Forests" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In limestone cliffs and on lush slopes of northeastern Peru’s montane cloud forest, Indigenous Andean communities known as the Chachapoya built mortuary architecture for their dead for centuries before Spanish colonization. For Indigenous Andeans, ancestors are powerful social agents that can intercede in the lives of descendant communities and the nonhuman environment. The MAPA-SACHA project (Medio Ambiente, Paisajes y Arquitectura de los Sitios Ancestrales Chachapoya) examines how these ancestral sites mediated the relationship between people and the environment across the central traditional Chachapoya territory, from approximately 800 to 1470 CE. In this talk, we present the preliminary results from fieldwork in which we collaborate with local guides to conduct aerial drone photography, participatory mapping, architectural survey, and sampling of building materials. Local ecological and spatial knowledge combined with aerial photogrammetry documents relationships of visibility and proximity of ancestral sites with water bodies, groves, residences, and agricultural terraces across the landscape. Analysis of construction technologies and building materials, like clay mortar, plaster, and preserved wood beams provides a refined chronology for Chachapoya ancestral sites and insight into their socioecological significance. Finally, local forestry knowledge informs our application of dendro-climatology to reconstruct ancestor-environment relations through study of growth rings from archaeological wood.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)   •
• The Archaeology of Tropical Montane Cloud Forests

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37542.0