Tent City and Midden Islands: Spatial Organization and Domestic Architecture at the Eleventh-Century Los Batanes (Southern Peru)

Summary

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

In the wake of Tiwanaku state collapse (eleventh century CE), the hyperarid coast of southern Peru became a refugium for diasporic groups who abandoned their homes in the south-central Andean highlands and middle valleys. The reorganization of post-Tiwanaku society in the region manifests in shifting settlement patterns and subsistence strategies, and new material styles and technological innovation. Domestic architecture, as shaped by deeply rooted cultural behaviors and the practicalities of terrain, geography, and building resources, provides a particularly salient lens for examining the transformation of social identities through making and being “at home.” Recent survey and excavations at the site of Los Batanes (500 m asl; Tacna, Peru) identified surface and subsurface architectural features that point to distinct functional, chronological, or social uses of space within the site. Here we integrate multiple lines of data—drone imagery, elevation data from RTK receivers, stratigraphic profiles, and artifact analyses—to obtain a better understanding of spatial organization and occupation across the site. Comparison with earlier and contemporaneous settlements throughout the northern Atacama Desert of southern Peru and northern Chile inform how landscape, land use, and cultural identity factored into the organization and occupation of Los Batanes.

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): 36942.0