Kaillachuro: The Emergence of Burial Mounds in an Egalitarian Community of the Titicaca Basin, South-Central Andes, 5.0 Ka

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The extent to which emergent complexity involved hierarchical organization in small-scale societies remains an unresolved anthropological question. The research presented here examines inequality among individuals buried some 5,000 years ago at the Kaillachuro burial mound site in the southwestern Lake Titicaca basin, Peru. This is the earliest known mound site in the region and thus signals the emergence of new social dynamics at a time when economies began shifting from foraging to farming. Excavation of the site, new radiocarbon dates, and preliminary analysis of the materials suggest that the rise of the mound phenomenon occurs within a relatively egalitarian community dynamic that involved few grave goods, male and female mound burials, and modest diets dominated by low-fat vegetable foods.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36229.0