Southwestern Ecuador and Northwestern Peru between 500 and 1470 AD: Data, Questions, and Perspectives

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Life on the Edge: Investigations in the Department of Piura, the “Extreme North” of the Central Andes, Peru" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

For political and geographic reasons, the extreme south of the Ecuadorian coast and extreme north of the Peruvian coast have been relatively little investigated, let alone taken as a single study area. However, pioneering models developed by archaeology in the 20th century have considered this region as a strategic zone integrated in regional exchange circuits.

Who exactly were the inhabitants of this area? How homogeneous was it from an ethnic, linguistic and political point of view? What concrete evidence do we have of its status as an exchange zone - for example, what material elements of the cultures of the Peruvian extreme north are found in what is today the southern coast of Ecuador and conversely? What exactly was the status of this zone in relation to the neighboring coastal political nuclei of the Northern and/or Central Andes? Was it really a periphery or rather a rather autonomous area?

Based on an updated review of archaeological, ethnohistorical, linguistic and ethnographic data, the aim of this talk is to address these questions by proposing a balance of what is known and what remains to be known.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Life on the Edge: Investigations in the Department of Piura, the “Extreme North” of the Central Andes, Peru

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 53087