Los Morteros (5726-5041 cal.BP) is a pre-pottery archaeological site located in Chao valley, northern Peruvian coast. Excavations in 2016-17 recorded a context composed by stone hearths, marine fauna and remains of at least 9 human bodies some of them with fire exposure signs. This assemblage...
En el mundo andino, la cruz de mayo es un ritual católico conocido por ser un sincretismo de creencias europeas e indígenas, ya que hay casos en que estas cruces han sido elevadas sobre sitios de antiguas wakas. Sin embargo, en el valle de Azapa, en la frontera con Chile, Perú, y Bolivia, estos...
Based on an ongoing collaborative project to revitalize an 18th century Afro-Ecuadorian cemetery in the community of La Concepcion, Northern Andes of Ecuador, this presentation explores the archaeological heritage of cimarronaje as an active process for historical reparations. The cemetery named...
This paper will discuss a type of women’s ceremonial mantle worn in Aymara-speaking communities during the colonial period (1532-1825 CE), currently mis-identified in the existing literature as a male garment. Based on archaeological evidence from the temple of Inti at Pachacamac and the...
Archaic projectile points from the Andean Altiplano exhibit a curious trend of increasing size over time in contrast to a size reduction commonly observed throughout North America. We hypothesized that the increase compensated for decreasing dart momentum or accuracy resulting from shortening of...
Settlement pattern studies in the Central Andes have been a key archaeological tool for 75 years. Familiar challenges – chronologies, palimpsests, paleoenvironments – remain, and the loss of sites to expanding agriculture and peri-urban development presents a sobering reality. As a result,...
This poster explores the past, present, and future efforts and challenges of educational archaeology in Peru using as a case study my involvement with the Nivín community in Casma. Since 2011, collaborative efforts of teachers and students at the school and its museum have led to the creation of...
Cerro Baúl, a site perched on a ridge-top mountain in the Moquegua Valley (Peru), is well known as the southernmost outpost of the Wari Empire (600-1000 C.E.). Over the last decades, the Proyecto Arqueológico Cerro Baúl has brought to light nearly seventy Wari decorated ceramics, ranging from...
After the Spanish conquest, the Acarí and Yauca Valleys- agriculturally circumscribed ‘linear oases’- underwent depopulation and repopulation with in-migration of highland native people and the introduction of African slaves. By circa 1800, successive censuses document a complex pattern of socio...
As early as the 7th Inka Yawar Waqaq, the Inka initiated construction operations in the Sacred Valley, where they encountered a political landscape populated by diverse communities and architectonic traditions. This paper will present results of 2019 fieldwork involving the reconnaissance of...
Archaeology has a limited ability to observe the direct effects of infectious diseases. Historic sources often lack quantifiable measures of disease impacts; furthermore, many diseases are skeletally invisible, making interpretation difficult. Here, we use archival census data from colonial-era...
The Spanish invasion of the Inka Empire went hand in hand with the arrival of the African Diaspora in the Andes, and the people of that diaspora became as common in Peru as Europeans. The coastal cities are known for the early and growing presence of black populations, but what can be said about...
In 2017 an intriguing, sub-modern burial was discovered at the site of Castillo de Huarmey, Peru. The individual buried in the area of pre-Columbian huaca was of Chinese origin and came to Peru as a part of a big immigration wave from between 1849 and 1874. Over 100.000 Chinese workers were...
Based on a land sale held by the cacique of the Collique ethnic group to a slave in the early 1560s, I argue that inter-ethnic relations, between Indians and Afro-descendants, produced transformations in the landscape of the lower valley of the Chillón River. Questioning the traditional readings...
We evaluated the likely geographic origin of camelid fiber used in the manufacture of pre-Hispanic textiles found in the coastal regions of the northern Atacama Desert, Chile. To achieve this, stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis was employed on 189 archaeological fiber samples to...
"Men were hunters, women were gatherers" is common knowledge that reinforces gendered labor structures in contemporary society. Recent discovery of a female hunter burial in the high Andes, 9 ka, causes us to question this model. We show that the burial is the oldest secure hunter burial in the...
Multi-tissue (bone collagen, tooth enamel, hair) stable isotope analysis (carbon, nitrogen, strontium) on six individuals from the lower Virú Valley identified a mixture of local and non-local isotope signatures. One individual, had a stable isotope signature unlike any previously found on the...
The Ica Highlands during the late Prehispanic Period and early Spanish Colony were a contested area between the Chocorvos, the Incas and the Spanish. The settlement site of Viejo Sangayaico and the sacred mountain-top (or apu) site of Huinchocruz encapsulates these dichotomies of conquest and...
In 2009, the Peruvian government apologized to its citizens of African descent for the discrimination enacted against them from the colonial period to the present. However, Afro-Peruvians continue to face marginalization in contemporary society. The underrepresentation of African diaspora...
This proposal seeks to present new research related to localized art in the Sacred Valley. This paper will examine the church of San Martin de Tours in Huarocondo, Perú, to explore how indigenous patrons established their identity with paintings depicting Inca elites, who were owners of...
Este proyecto es un trabajo en progreso que intenta comparar la evidencia fáunica de contextos arqueológicos en haciendas de época colonial en los Andes septentrionales del Ecuador. Las haciendas se diferencian en términos de fuerza de trabajo, temporalidad y tipo de propiedad...
Applying lessons from data visualization and qualitative cartography this paper experiments with ways to visually reconstruct the contributions and agency of Indigenous and African actors to the Spanish invasion. Andean authors like Waldemar Espinoza Soriano, Edmundo Guillén Guillén, and others...
In 2015, a cemetery containing 138 funerary contexts, including 78 mummy bundles, was excavated outside of the walls of the Sanctuary of Pachacamac. The bundles are quite diverse, they are not associated with rich offerings and they may represent a diverse collection of individuals. Thus, this...
Rachel Sarah O’Toole is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of California, Irvine where she teaches classes on colonial Latin America, the African Diaspora, and sex and gender. Her monograph, Bound Lives: Africans, Indians, and the Making of Race in Colonial...
Durante la dominación incaica, el Pucará de Tilcara funcionó como un centro de primera jerarquía en la Quebrada de Humahuaca (Provincia de Jujuy, Argentina), posicionándose como capital de la wamani de Omaguaca. Este trabajo se propone abordar, desde una perspectiva interdisciplinaria, el rol...
En esta ponencia damos a conocer un grupo de 7 tubos contenedores de hueso con iconografía Tiawanaku, procedentes de distintos hallazgos realizados en San Pedro de Atacama y en el altiplano boliviano. El análisis de su iconografía nos permitió, entre otras cosas, ampliar el círculo de las...
Esta investigación se efectúo para conocer el sitio ceremonial en el nevado Coropuna, y la relación de esta ceremonia con los cambios climáticos, siendo esta montaña una de las más sagradas por los Incas, debido a su altitud y hielos permanentes. Se encontró tres sitios ceremoniales importantes...
The soft hair of viscacha, a rodent of the Chinchilla family, according to Garcilaso de la Vega in his 1609 Royal Commentaries, was spun into yarns for garments of the nobility. This paper—resulting from over ten years of research in various phases—including the examination of historical texts,...
In this paper, we report the results of recent excavations carried out at Pampa la Cruz (PLC), a new mass sacrifice site dating to between cal. AD 1100-1200 and cal. AD 1500-1520. PLC is the second mass sacrificial site found in the Huanchaco area, located approximately 2 km north of the Chimú...
Around 2300-2000 BP durable residential structures were constructed for the first time in Anfama (Tucumán, Argentina), a humid valley of the scarcely analyzed eastern slopes of the south-central Andes. The emergence of built environments implied the development of an unprecedented social...
Studies of social identities in the Andes have become increasingly common, but there has been limited analysis focusing on older individuals. This study presents newly generated age-at-death estimations using transition analysis combined with mortuary analyses to explore the manner in which...
This paper considers the background and interests of the Inca descendant, don Luis Chalco Yupanqui and his participation in the 1590 manuscript version of an illustrated chronicle, Historia General del Pirú (1616), on Inca history and the Spanish invasion compiled by the Basque Mercedarian friar...
This paper studies Black social movements in Peru and Ecuador have impacted the political landscape of their states. I assess impact using the following indicators: 1) public policies targeted towards the Black population; 2) state institutions established specifically to aid the Black...
La Huaca del Sol del valle de Moche es uno de los edificios prehispánicos icónicos de la región. Forma parte del Complejo Arqueológico Huacas de Moche, que es, a su vez, uno de los asentamientos más importantes de la cultura Mochica (c. 100-850 d. C.). No obstante, durante mucho tiempo, sus...
The toponyms study in cartographic documents can show the impact of colonialism through immaterial footprints in space and time. Between 1412 and 1822, Colta constituted an example of cartography and toponymy as praxis of colonialism because of the sequential colonization in which linguistic...
Shoymal, corresponde a un sitio ubicado en la Alta Amazonia del nororiente peruano, donde hasta el momento identificamos una construcción elaborada con grandes rocas talladas, algunas con grabados que exhiben imágenes similares a las observadas en Huaca Prieta, La Galgada, Jaiva, Huaca Ventarrón...
We present several lines of evidence from Atalla and other sites in Huancavelica, Peru, to explore the utility of Murra’s model of vertical control for the late Initial Period (1200-800 BC). We argue that several coeval sites located in the vicinity of the Santa Barbara mine represent primary...
Agricultural landscapes in South America have a complex and diverse history and encompass a wide range of contexts, from the high plateaus and arid mountains of the Andes to the eastern Amazonian forests and beyond. We address here the evidence gathered at the Sierra El Alto-Ancasti mountain...