Download or read book Recent advances in the Archaeology of the Northern Andes written by Augusto Oyuela-Calcedo and published by Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press. This book was released on 1998-12-31 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Northern Andes is a pivotal region for understanding many of the social, economic, political, and ideological changes that pre-Columbian cultures experienced. Topics inc. recent investigations on human colonisation of the region, origins of sedentism and food production, rise of chiefdoms, and importance of symbolism and iconography.

Download or read book Handbook of South American Archaeology written by Helaine Silverman and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008-04-04 with total page 1228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Perhaps the contributions of South American archaeology to the larger field of world archaeology have been inadequately recognized. If so, this is probably because there have been relatively few archaeologists working in South America outside of Peru and recent advances in knowledge in other parts of the continent are only beginning to enter larger archaeological discourse. Many ideas of and about South American archaeology held by scholars from outside the area are going to change irrevocably with the appearance of the present volume. Not only does the Handbook of South American Archaeology (HSAA) provide immense and broad information about ancient South America, the volume also showcases the contributions made by South Americans to social theory. Moreover, one of the merits of this volume is that about half the authors (30) are South Americans, and the bibliographies in their chapters will be especially useful guides to Spanish and Portuguese literature as well as to the latest research. It is inevitable that the HSAA will be compared with the multi-volume Handbook of South American Indians (HSAI), with its detailed descriptions of indigenous peoples of South America, that was organized and edited by Julian Steward. Although there are heroic archaeological essays in the HSAI, by the likes of Junius Bird, Gordon Willey, John Rowe, and John Murra, Steward states frankly in his introduction to Volume Two that “arch- ology is included by way of background” to the ethnographic chapters.

Download or read book Advances in Andean Archaeology written by David L. Browman and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2011-06-03 with total page 601 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Advances in Titicaca Basin Archaeology written by Charles Stanish and published by Cotsen Institute of Archaeology. This book was released on 2005 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Advances in Titicaca Basin Archaeology-I is the first in a series of edited volumes that reports on recent research in the south central Andes. Volume I contains 18 chapters that cover the entire range of human settlement in the region, from the Early Archaic to the early Colonial Period. This book contains both short research reports as well as longer synthetic essays on work conducted over the last decade. It will be a critical resource for scholars working in the central Andes and adjacent areas.

Download or read book Andean Archaeology III written by William Isbell and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008-02-01 with total page 548 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The third volume in the Andean Archaeology series, this book focuses on the marked cultural differences between the northern and southern regions of the Central Andes, and considers the conditions under which these differences evolved, grew pronounced, and diminished. This book continues the dynamic, current problem-oriented approach to the field of Andean Archaeology that began with Andean Archaeology I and Andean Archaeology II. Combines up-to-date research, diverse theoretical platforms, and far-reaching interpretations to draw provocative and thoughtful conclusions.

Download or read book Incidence of Travel written by Jerry D. Moore and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2017-03-01 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Incidence of Travel, archaeologist Jerry Moore draws on his personal experiences and historical and archaeological studies throughout South America to explore and understand the ways traditional peoples created cultural landscapes in the region. Using new narrative structures, Moore introduces readers to numerous archaeological sites and remains, describing what it is like to be in the field and sparking further reflection on what these places might have been like in the past. From the snow-capped mountains of Colombia to the arid deserts of Peru and Chile, ancient peoples of South America built cities, formed earthen mounds, created rock art, and measured the cosmos—literally inscribing their presence and passage throughout the continent. Including experiences ranging from the terrifying to the amusing, Moore’s travels intersect with the material traces of traditional cultures. He refers to this intersection as "the incidence of travel." Braiding the tales of his own journeys with explanations of the places he visits through archaeological, anthropological, and historical contexts, Moore conveys the marvelous and intriguing complexities of prehistoric and historic peoples of South America and the ways they marked their presence on the land. Combining travel narrative and archaeology in a series of essays—accounts of discoveries, mishaps of travel, and encounters with modern people living in ancient places—Incidence of Travel will engage any general reader, student, or scholar with interest in archaeology, anthropology, Latin American history, or storytelling.

Download or read book Advances in Titicaca Basin Archaeology 2 written by Abigail R. Levine and published by Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press. This book was released on 2013-12-31 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume, the second in a series of studies on the archaeology of the Titicaca Basin, serves as an excellent springboard for broader discussions of the roles of ritual, authority, coercion, and the intensification of resources and trade for the development of archaic states worldwide. Over the last hundred years, scholars have painstakingly pieced together fragments of the incredible cultural history of the Titicaca Basin, an area that encompasses over 50,000 km2, achieving a basic understanding of settlement patterns and chronology. While large-scale surveys will need to continue and areas will need to be revisited to further refine chronologies and knowledge of site-formation processes, the maturation of the field now allows archaeologists to fruitfully invest energy in single locations and specialized topics.

Download or read book Moche Tombs at Dos Cabezas written by Christopher B. Donnan and published by Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press. This book was released on 2007-12-31 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Moche civilization flourished on the north coast of Peru between approximately AD 100 and 800. Although the Moche had no writing system, they left a vivid artistic record of their beliefs and activities in beautifully modeled and painted ceramic vessels, remarkable objects of gold, silver, and copper, sumptuous textiles, and carved and inlaid bone, wood, and stone. Tens of thousands of these objects can be seen today in museums and private collections throughout the world. Unfortunately, nearly all of them have been looted from Moche tombs by grave robbers, and thus there is no record of the grave, or the archaeological site, or even the valley from which they came. This lack of information severely limits what could have been learned about the Moche if the graves had been excavated archaeologically and their contents systematically recorded. This study focuses on five extraordinary Moche tombs that were archaeologically excavated at the site of Dos Cabezas. The tombs are remarkable not only for the wealth of objects they contained but also because we know how the tombs were constructed, how they relate to one another both spatially and temporally, and what individuals they contained. The tombs provide an unusual opportunity to understand aspects of Moche funerary practice that are lost when tombs are looted, and to appreciate the extraordinary artistic and technological sophistication of this ancient Peruvian civilization.

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 Kasapata and the Archaic Period of the Cuzco Valley written by Brian S. Bauer and published by Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press. This book was released on 2007-12-31 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although the Cuzco Valley of Peru is renowned for being the heartland of the Incas, little is known concerning its pre-Inca inhabitants. Until recently it was widely believed that the first inhabitants of the Cuzco Valley were farmers who lived in scattered villages along the valley floor (ca. 1000 BC) and that there were no Archaic Period remains in the region. This perspective was challenged during a systematic survey of the valley, when numerous preceramic sites were found. Additional information came from excavations at the site of Kasapata, the largest preceramic site identified during the survey. It is now clear that the Cuzco Valley was inhabited, like many other regions of the Andes, soon after the retreat of the Pleistocene glaciers and that it supported thriving cultures of hunters and foragers for hundreds of generations before the advent of permanent settlements. This edited volume provides the first overview of the Archaic Period (9000 - 2200 BC) in the Cuzco Valley. The chapters include a detailed discussion of the distribution of Archaic sites in the valley as well as the result of excavations at the site of Kasapata. Separate chapters are dedicated to examining the lithics, human burials, faunal remains, and obsidian recovered at this remarkably well-preserved site.

Download or read book The Archaeology of Political Organization written by Barbara L. Stark and published by Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press. This book was released on 2022-01-01 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume, Barbara Stark examines settlement in the coastal plain of lowland Mesoamerica, which was richly endowed with fertile soil and valued tropical resources such as jaguars, cacao, avian species with bright plumage, and cotton. The book provides basic archaeological data about regional settlement from three decades of survey research in south-central Veracruz in the western lower Papaloapan basin, a region with low density urbanism. The data reveals political and social change, with consolidation of wealth by elite families during the Late Classic period. The political analysis considers archaeological evidence related to several organizational principles: collective versus autocratic, corporate versus exclusionary/network, and segmentary (unspecialized versus specialized). Many variables related to these principles used by other scholars are either suited to historically documented states, not archaeological ones, or ambiguous. Many published studies either focus on a particular city or use documents or other evidence drawn from the top of the settlement hierarchy, characterizing the whole society politically from a biased sample. This political analysis is regional in scope and attentive to variation in the settlement hierarchy, providing a guidepost to analysis of political principles with archaeological data.

Download or read book Vilcabamba and the Archaeology of Inca Resistance written by Brian S. Bauer and published by Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press. This book was released on 2015-12-31 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The sites of Vitcos and Espiritu Pampa are two of the most important Inca cities within the remote Vilcabamba region of Peru. The province has gained notoriety among historians, archaeologists, and other students of the Inca, since it was from here that the last independent Incas waged a nearly forty-year-long war (AD 1536-1572) against Spanish control of the Andes. Building on three years of excavation and two years of archival work, the authors discuss the events that took place in this area, speaking to the complex relationships that existed between the Europeans and Andeans during the decades that Vilcabamba was the final stronghold of the Inca empire. This has long been a topic of interest for the public; the results of the first large-scale scientific research conducted in the region will be illuminating for scholars as well as for general readers who are enthusiasts of this period of history and archaeology.

Download or read book Roman Foodprints at Berenike written by Rene T. J. Cappers and published by Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press. This book was released on 2006-12-31 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the Graeco-Roman period, Berenike served as a gateway to the outside world together with Myos Hormos. Commodities were imported from Africa south of the Sahara, Arabia, and India into the Greek and Roman Empire, the importance of both harbors evidenced by several contemporary sources. Between 1994 and 2002, eight excavation seasons were conducted at Berenike by the University of Delaware and Leiden University, the Netherlands. This book presents the results of the archaeobotanical research of the Roman deposits. It is shown that the study of a transit port such as Berenike, located at the southeastern fringe of the Roman Empire, is highly effective in producing new information on the import of all kinds of luxury items. In addition to the huge quantities of black pepper, plant remains of more than 60 cultivated plant species could be evidenced, several of them for the first time in an archaeobotanical context. For each plant species detailed information on its (possible) origin, its use, its preservation qualities, and the Egyptian subfossil record is provided. The interpretation of the cultivated plants, including the possibilities of cultivation in Berenike proper, is supported by ethnoarchaeobotanical research that has been conducted over the years. The reconstruction of the former environment is based on the many wild plant species that were found in Berenike and the study of the present desert vegetation.

Download or read book Settlement and Subsistence in Early Formative Soconusco written by Richard G. Lesure and published by Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press. This book was released on 2010-12-31 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Soconusco region, a narrow strip of the Pacific coast of Mexico and Guatemala, is the location of some of the earliest pottery-using villages of ancient Mesoamerica. Mobile early inhabitants of the area harvested marsh clams in the estuaries, leaving behind vast mounds of shell. With the introduction of pottery and the establishment of permanent villages (from 1900 B.C.), use of the resource-rich estuary changed. The archaeological manifestation of that new estuary adaptation is a dramatic pattern of inter-site variability in pottery vessel forms. Vessels at sites within the estuary were about seventy percent neckless jars -- "tecomates" -- while vessels at contemporaneous sites a few kilometers inland were seventy percent open dishes. The pattern is well-known, but the the settlement arrangements or subsistence practices that produced it have remained unclear. Archaeological investigations at El Varal, a special-purpose estuary site of the later Early Formative (1250-1000 B.C.) expand possibilities for an anthropological understanding of the archaeological patterns. The goal of this volume is to describe excavations and finds at the site and to propose, based on a variety of analyses, a new understanding of Early Formative assemblage variability.

Download or read book Archaeology of the Chinese Bronze Age written by Roderick B. Campbell and published by Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press. This book was released on 2014-12-31 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Archaeology of the Chinese Bronze Age is a synthesis of recent Chinese archaeological work on the second millennium BCE--the period associated with China's first dynasties and East Asia's first "states." With a focus on early China's great metropolitan centers in the Central Plains and their hinterlands, this work attempts to contextualize them within their wider zones of interaction from the Yangtze to the edge of the Mongolian steppe, and from the Yellow Sea to the Tibetan plateau and the Gansu corridor. Analyzing the complexity of early Chinese culture history, and the variety and development of its urban formations, Roderick Campbell explores East Asia's divergent developmental paths and re-examines its deep past to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of China's Early Bronze Age.

Download or read book Excavations at Cerro Azul Peru written by Joyce Marcus and published by Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press. This book was released on 2008-12-31 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recipient of the Jo Anne Stolaroff Cotsen Prize During the Late Intermediate period (AD 1100-1470), the lower Canete Valley of Peru was controlled by the walled Kingdom of Huarco. While inland sites produced irrigated crops, the seaside community of Cerro Azul, 130 km south of Lima, produced fish for the rest of the kingdom. Cerro Azul's noble families lived in large, multipurpose compounds with tapia walls. Their pottery had its strongest ties with valleys to the south, such as Chincha and Ica. During the course of excavation, the University of Michigan Project excavated two tapia buildings in their entirety, saving every sherd from every room, walled work area, feature, and midden. This remarkable volume is the final site report on the architecture and pottery of Late Intermediate Cerro Azul.

Download or read book The South American Camelids written by Duccio Bonavia and published by Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press. This book was released on 2009-02-01 with total page 657 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most significant differences between the New World's major areas of high culture is that Mesoamerica had no beasts of burden and wool, while the Andes had both. Four members of the camelid family--wild guanacos and vicunas, and domestic llamas and alpacas--were native to the Andes. South American peoples relied on these animals for meat and wool, and as beasts of burden to transport goods all over the Andes. In this book, Duccio Bonavia tackles major questions about these camelids, from their domestication to their distribution at the time of the Spanish conquest. One of Bonavia's hypotheses is that the arrival of the Europeans and their introduced Old World animals forced the Andean camelids away from the Pacific coast, creating the (mistaken) impression that camelids were exclusively high-altitude animals. Bonavia also addresses the diseases of camelids and their population density, suggesting that the original camelid populations suffered from a different type of mange than that introduced by the Europeans. This new mange, he believes, was one of the causes behind the great morbidity of camelids in Colonial times. In terms of domestication, while Bonavia believes that the major centers must have been the puna zone intermediate zones, he adds that the process should not be seen as restricted to a single environmental zone. Bonavia's landmark study of the South American camelids is now available for the first time in English. This new edition features an updated analysis and comprehensive bibliography. In the Spanish edition of this book, Bonavia lamented the fact that the zooarchaeological data from R. S. MacNeish's Ayacucho Project had yet to be published. In response, the Ayacucho's Project's faunal analysts, Elizabeth S. Wing and Kent V. Flannery, have added appendices on the Ayacucho results to this English edition. This book will be of broad interest to archaeologists, zoologists, social anthropologists, ethnohistorians, and a wide range of students.