Download or read book Archaeology at El Per Waka written by Olivia C. Navarro-Farr and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2015-08-15 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Archaeology at El Perú-Waka’ is the first book to summarize long-term research at this major Maya site. The results of fieldwork and subsequent analyses conducted by members of the El Perú-Waka’ Regional Archaeological Project are coupled with theoretical approaches treating the topics of ritual, memory, and power as deciphered through material remains discovered at Waka’. The book is site-centered, yet the fifteen wide-ranging contributions offer readers greater insight to the richness and complexity of Classic-period Maya culture, as well as to the ways in which archaeologists believe ancient peoples negotiated their ritual lives and comprehended their own pasts. El Perú-Waka’ is an ancient Maya city located in present-day northwestern Petén, Guatemala. Rediscovered by petroleum exploration workers in the mid-1960s, it is the largest known archaeological site in the Laguna del Tigre National Park in Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve. The El Perú-Waka’ Regional Archaeological Project initiated scientific investigations in 2003, and through excavation and survey, researchers established that Waka’ was a key political and economic center well integrated into Classic-period lowland Maya civilization, and reconstructed many aspects of Maya life and ritual activity in this ancient community. The research detailed in this volume provides a wealth of new, substantive, and scientifically excavated data, which contributors approach with fresh theoretical insights. In the process, they lay out sound strategies for understanding the ritual manipulation of monuments, landscapes, buildings, objects, and memories, as well as related topics encompassing the performance and negotiation of power throughout the city’s extensive sociopolitical history.
Download or read book The Chanka written by Brian S. Bauer and published by Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press. This book was released on 2010-12-31 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In AD 1438 a battle took place outside the city of Cuzco that changed the course of South American history. The Chanka, a powerful ethnic group from the Andahuaylas region, had begun an aggressive program of expansion. Conquering a host of smaller polities, their army had advanced well inside the territory of their traditional rival, the Inca. In a series of unusual maneuvers, the Inca defeated the invading Chanka forces and became the most powerful people in the Andes. Many scholars believe that the defeat of the Chanka represents a defining moment in the history of South America as the Inca then continued to expand and establish the largest empire of the Americas. Despite its critical position in South American history, until recently the Chanka heartland remained unexplored and the cultural processes that led to their rapid development and subsequent defeat by the Inca had not been investigated. From 2001 to 2004, Brian Bauer conducted an archaeological survey of the Andahuaylas region. This project represents an unparalleled opportunity to examine theoretical issues concerning the history and cultural development of late-prehistoric societies in this area of the Andes. The resulting book includes an archaeological analysis on the development of the Chanka and examines their ultimate defeat by the Inca.
Download or read book Archaeological Investigations in Peru written by and published by . This book was released on 1983 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book New Technologies for Archaeology written by Markus Reindel and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2009-02-07 with total page 510 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This heavily-illustrated book covers recent developments in archaeometry and offers a multidisciplinary approach to reconstructing complex cultural histories. It also presents a detailed history of human development in South America’s Nasca region.
Download or read book Frontier Life in Ancient Peru written by Melissa A. Vogel and published by . This book was released on 2015-08-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Thorough studies such as this are relatively rare in the northern Peruvian coast archaeological literature. This pioneering work is the first English-language excavation monograph detailing the material culture of the Casma polity."--Jonathan D. Kent, Metropolitan State College, Denver Melissa Vogel's Frontier Life in Ancient Peru offers a new perspective on ancient Peruvian life and geopolitics during a pivotal period of Andean cultural transformation between AD 900 and AD 1300. Focusing on the frontier site of Cerro la Cruz in the Chao Valley (located on the northern border of the Casma polity), this volume richly details the role of cross-cutting social networks and the dynamics of shifting political boundaries in prehistoric north coast Peru. The rise of the Chimú Empire caused the Chao Valley to become a border zone between the Casma and their encroaching neighbors. The artifacts recovered from sites in this area paint an illuminating picture of the everyday lives of ancient Andean people in this unique yet--until recently--under-studied culture. Vogel's systematic and comprehensive volume synthesizes information about the societies in this region while also expanding and clarifying the definition of Casma-style ceramics and architecture for comparison with other sites. As the first English-language work on the Casma polity, this is a powerful new resource for understanding an important pre-Inca culture as well as a fascinating investigation of the forces at work in the development and collapse of complex societies. Melissa A. Vogel is assistant professor of anthropology at Clemson University.
Download or read book Archaeological Investigations in Peru Selected papers written by and published by . This book was released on 1983 with total page 672 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Art and Archaeology of the Moche written by Steve Bourget and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2009-06-03 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Renowned for their monumental architecture and rich visual culture, the Moche inhabited the north coast of Peru during the Early Intermediate Period (AD 100-800). Archaeological discoveries over the past century and the dissemination of Moche artifacts to museums around the world have given rise to a widespread and continually increasing fascination with this complex culture, which expressed its beliefs about the human and supernatural worlds through finely crafted ceramic and metal objects of striking realism and visual sophistication. In this standard-setting work, an international, multidisciplinary team of scholars who are at the forefront of Moche research present a state-of-the-art overview of Moche culture. The contributors address various issues of Moche society, religion, and material culture based on multiple lines of evidence and methodologies, including iconographic studies, archaeological investigations, and forensic analyses. Some of the articles present the results of long-term studies of major issues in Moche iconography, while others focus on more specifically defined topics such as site studies, the influence of El Niño/Southern Oscillation on Moche society, the nature of Moche warfare and sacrifice, and the role of Moche visual culture in decoding social and political frameworks.
Download or read book Ancient Households on the North Coast of Peru written by Ilana Johnson and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2021-02-01 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ancient Households on the North Coast of Peru provides insight into the organization of complex, urban, and state-level society in the region from a household perspective, using observations from diverse North Coast households to generate new understandings of broader social processes in and beyond Andean prehistory. Many volumes on this region are limited to one time period or civilization, often the Moche. While Ancient Households on the North Coast of Peru does examine the Moche, it offers a wider thematic approach to a broader swath of prehistory. Chapters on various time periods use a comparable scale of analysis to examine long-term continuity and change and draw on a large corpus of prior research on states, rulership, and cosmology to offer new insight into the intersection of household, community, and state. Contributors address social reproduction, construction and reinforcement of gender identities and social hierarchy, household permanence and resilience, and expression of identity through cuisine. This volume challenges common concepts of the “household” in archaeology by demonstrating the complexity and heterogeneity of household-level dynamics as they intersect with institutions at broader social scales and takes a comparative perspective on daily life within one region of the Andes. It will be of interest to both students and scholars of South American archaeology and household archaeology. Contributors: Brian R. Billman, David Chicoine, Guy S. Duke, Hugo Ikehara, Giles Spence-Morrow, Jessica Ortiz, Edward Swenson, Kari A. Zobler
Download or read book Pikillacta written by Gordon F. McEwan and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2009-05 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The origin of the first Andean imperial state has been the subject of lively debate for decades. Archaeological sites dating to the Peruvian Middle Horizon time period, A.D. 540 to 900, appear to give evidence for the emergence of an expansive empire that set the stage for the development of the later Inca state. This archaeological investigation of Pikillacta, the largest provincial site of Peru’s pre-Inca Wari empire, provides essential background for interpreting the empire’s political and cultural organization. With engineering skills rivaling those of the builders of Cuzco itself, the Wari at Pikillacta erected more than seven hundred buildings covering nearly two square kilometers, with a fresh water supply and an elaborate underground sewage system but, enigmatically, only seven short streets and a near total lack of windows. In this long-awaited volume, Gordon McEwan and his colleagues report on the labor costs of construction (nearly 6 million man-days), the typology of Pikillacta's enigmatic architecture, and the site’s spectacular hydraulic system as well as its ceramics and chronology, human remains, and metal artifacts. In the final section, building on his years of research and excavation, McEwan develops a hypothetical model of Wari provincial administration in the Cuzco region, arguing that the Wari were innovators of techniques of statecraft that explain the function of and the labor investment in the Pikillacta complex. His book not only substantively contributes to our understanding of when and exactly how and why Pikillacta was built and what it was used for, it also illuminates the political and cultural antecedents of the Inca state.
Download or read book Ritual Violence in the Ancient Andes written by Haagen D. Klaus and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2016-07-26 with total page 487 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traditions of sacrifice exist in almost every human culture and often embody a society’s most meaningful religious and symbolic acts. Ritual violence was particularly varied and enduring in the prehistoric South American Andes, where human lives, animals, and material objects were sacrificed in secular rites or as offerings to the divine. Spectacular discoveries of sacrificial sites containing the victims of violent rituals have drawn ever-increasing attention to ritual sacrifice within Andean archaeology. Responding to this interest, this volume provides the first regional overview of ritual killing on the pre-Hispanic north coast of Peru, where distinct forms and diverse trajectories of ritual violence developed during the final 1,800 years of prehistory. Presenting original research that blends empirical approaches, iconographic interpretations, and contextual analyses, the contributors address four linked themes—the historical development and regional variation of north coast sacrifice from the early first millennium AD to the European conquest; a continuum of ritual violence that spans people, animals, and objects; the broader ritual world of sacrifice, including rites both before and after violent offering; and the use of diverse scientific tools, archaeological information, and theoretical interpretations to study sacrifice. This research proposes a wide range of new questions that will shape the research agenda in the coming decades, while fostering a nuanced, scientific, and humanized approach to the archaeology of ritual violence that is applicable to archaeological contexts around the world.
Download or read book Magdalena de Cao written by Jeffrey Quilter and published by Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University Publications Department. This book was released on 2020 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Touching on themes of colonialism, cultural hybridity, resistance, and assimilation, Magdalena de Cao is the first in-depth and heavily illustrated examination of what life was like at one town and church complex in Peru during the early Colonial Period, when native peoples and Christian arrivals met.
Download or read book How the Incas Built Their Heartland written by R. Alan Covey and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In How the Incas Built Their Heartland R. Alan Covey supplements an archaeological approach with the tools of a historian, forming an interdisciplinary study of how the Incas became sufficiently powerful to embark on an unprecedented campaign of territorial expansion and how such developments related to earlier patterns of Andean statecraft."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Lake Titicaca written by Charles Stanish and published by Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press. This book was released on 2011-12-31 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lake Titicaca and the vast region surrounding this deep body of water contain mysteries that we are just beginning to unravel. The area surrounding the world's highest navigable lake was home to some of the greatest civilizations in the ancient world. These civilizations were created by the ancestors of the Aymara and Quechua peoples who continue to live and work in Peru and Bolivia along the shores of this ancient body of water. This lavishly illustrated book provides a state-of-the-art description and explanation of the great cultures that inhabited this land from the first migrants ten millennia ago to the people who thrive here today. We will also discover the world of myth and legend that has grown up around this mysterious place, including the lost continent of Mu, the land of Paititi, El Dorado and the many mystic ruins of Titicaca. We then explore the results of a century of scientific research that provide an even more fabulous tale than the legends and myths combined. This book is an indispensable guide for any visitor who has an interest in archaeology, history and culture. It is likewise an excellent introduction for the interested reader who yearns to know more about this fascinating place.
Download or read book Las Varas written by Howard Tsai and published by University Alabama Press. This book was released on 2020-08-04 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Archaeological data from Las Varas, Peru, that establish the importance of ritual in constructing ethnic boundaries Recent popular discourse on nationalism and ethnicity assumes that humans by nature prefer “tribalism,” as if people cannot help but divide themselves along lines of social and ethnic difference. Research from anthropology, history, and archaeology, however, shows that individuals actively construct cultural and social ideologies to fabricate the stereotypes, myths, and beliefs that separate “us” from “them.” Archaeologist Howard Tsai and his team uncovered a thousand-year-old village in northern Peru where rituals were performed to recognize and reinforce ethnic identities. This site—Las Varas—is located near the coast of Peru in a valley leading into the Andes. Excavations revealed a western entrance to Las Varas for those arriving from the coast and an eastern entryway for those coming from the highlands. Rituals were performed at both of these entrances, indicating that the community was open to exchange and interaction, yet at the same time controlled the flow of people and goods through ceremonial protocols. Using these checkpoints and associated rituals, the villagers of Las Varas were able to maintain ethnic differences between themselves and visitors from foreign lands. Las Varas: Ritual and Ethnicity in the Ancient Andes reveals a rare case of finding ethnicity relying solely on archaeological remains. In this monograph, data from the excavation of Las Varas are analyzed within a theoretical framework based on current understandings of ethnicity. Tsai’s method, approach, and inference demonstrate the potential for archaeologists to discover how ethnic identities were constructed in the past, ultimately making us question the supposed naturalness of tribal divisions in human antiquity.
Download or read book Archaeological Investigations in the Upper Huaura Basin central Peru written by Andrzej Krzanowski and published by . This book was released on 1977 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Life And Death At Paloma written by Jeffrey Quilter and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2005-02-15 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gold, pomp, and circumstances surrounded the mummies of Inca emperors, but the elaborate funerary rites at the end of prehistory were only part of a tradition that began thousands of years earlier. Life and Death at Paloma, the first in-depth treatment of burials from a preagricultural South American village, analyzes the life of its people during a revolutionary time in prehistory: the transition from a hunting-gathering-fishing way of life to a more sedentary horticultural society. Drawing upon the data that he collected as part of the University of Missouri's excavations at Paloma, Jeffrey Quilter gives us the first study of preceramic Peruvian life through his analysis of this site's graves and contents. His extensively illustrated book is also the first attempt to infer social organization from such data for this period—circa 5000 to 2500 B.C.—in Peru. In addition, he presents the only available summary and discussion of the known preceramic interments from western South America. Coastal Peru is one of the few New World regions where the early development of complex societies can be studied. Life and Death at Paloma will greatly assist such research by specialists in mortuary studies, in Andean prehistory, and in hunter-gatherer societies.
Download or read book Archeological Investigations in the Corozal District of British Honduras written by and published by . This book was released on 1938 with total page 1352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: