<html>Terminally Formative: Early Ecuadorian Social Complexity Fifty Years After Donald Lathrap’s <i>Ancient Ecuador: Culture, Clay and Creativity</i></html>
Author(s): Corey Herrmann
Year: 2025
Summary
This is an abstract from the "Reflections and Ripples of the Caiman: Papers in the Spirit of Don Lathrap" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.
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The year 2025 marks the semicentennial of the Real Alto project led by Donald Lathrap and Jorge Marcos. It is also the fiftieth anniversary of one of Lathrap’s most impactful publications, Ancient Ecuador: Culture, Clay and Creativity (3000-300 BC), written to accompany a multi-year international exhibition of the same name. Ancient Ecuador was a chance for Lathrap to present a synthesis of coastal Ecuadorian pre-Columbian social development distinct from Betty Meggers’ Ecuador (1966). In particular, Ancient Ecuador gave Lathrap the opportunity to demonstrate the deep cultural connections between the Ecuadorian coast and the Amazon Basin, drawing rich interpretations of social behavior and longue-duree culture change out of iconic Valdivia, Machalilla, and Chorrera ceramic vessels. This paper reflects on Ancient Ecuador fifty years after its publication, and examines some of the issues that Ecuadorian archaeology has confronted since 1975. Not least of these is coastal Ecuadorian archaeology’s own frustrations with maintaining a critical mass of study, and shifting priorities of research. However, as in Amazonian archaeology, many of Lathrap’s interpretations remain workable hypotheses for 21<sup>st</sup> century Ecuadorian archaeologists to test. In this way, the Gran Caiman continues to make ripples in our field long after his passing.
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Cite this Record
Terminally Formative: Early Ecuadorian Social Complexity Fifty Years After Donald Lathrap’s Ancient Ecuador: Culture, Clay and Creativity. Corey Herrmann. Presented at The 90th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. 2025 ( tDAR id: 509536)
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Record Identifiers
Abstract Id(s): 50571