South American Archaeology Seminar (SAAS)

Geospatial corridor models as an insight into the formation of the Early Horizon Chavin Interaction Sphere

Benjamin Vining (University of Arkansas); Michelle Young (American Museum of Natural History); Justin Jennings (Royal Ontario Museum)

Abstract

Migration and long-distance mobility networks were critical in the development of civilisations and provided mechanisms by which people, cultural ideas, religio-political structures and material goods moved throughout the central Andes. This paper presents a modular, analytical geospatial framework that can be used to develop and test questions about the role of mobility at various points in Andean prehistory, and how this may have contributed to the subsequent emergence of political centres; economic networks; socially, ethnically, and biologically differentiated populations; and environmental changes. Using an iterative corridor-estimation approach, we show how movement between specific resource locations and early Initial Period politically- and religiously-important centres throughout central – northern Peru may have contributed to the emergence of cultural networks in the subsequent Formative period, especially the Chavin phenomenon. These results confirm relationships between long-distance transport of exotic commodities and the emergence of expansive networks that have long been hypothesised, but rarely tested explicitly.   
 

New carved monoliths at Pashash (AD 200-700): Perspectives on production and use in Peru’s north highlands

George Lau (Sainsbury Research Unit, University of East Anglia)

Abstract

Recent investigations at the archaeological site of Pashash (Pallasca, Ancash department, Peru) unearthed several dozen new monoliths (whole and fragmentary), found within and around a large, walled palatial compound. Most were mounted as stelae, friezes and tenon-heads on its interior walls as architectural ornament. Several others were portable (game)boards, and one was an unprecedented freestanding monument in the form of a condor. In terms of sheer number documented on-site in the Andes, Pashash is now only surpassed by Cerro Sechín, Chavín de Huántar and Tiwanaku. In addition, many hammerstones of different sizes were found, indicating local production overseen by chiefly elites at the compound over many centuries. The imagery and carving techniques link to the principal Recuay substyles to the south, but also examples in Santiago de Chuco and Huamachuco to the north. Besides augmenting the known range of images and forms, the new discoveries improve our knowledge about the context of production, use and cultural significance of carved stone in the Recuay tradition. 
 

Recuay and Wari at Play: A Re-Appraisal of the chronology and the significance of ancient Andean compartmentalised boards

Samuele Tacconi (Sainsbury Research Unit, University of East Anglia)

Abstract

A widespread yet still poorly understood class of artefact in the archaeological record of the pre-Hispanic Central Andes is a type of compartmentalised board, variably referred to as yupana, maqueta, or tablero/taptana, which has been interpreted as a counting device, architectural model, or gameboard. Characterised by a standardised layout organized into two symmetrical halves, these objects show a remarkably wide distribution, extending from southern Peru to southern Ecuador and offer a unique perspective on interregional interactions and shared practices. Drawing from new radiocarbon dates and archaeological data, this talk reassesses their temporal framework and regional trajectories, situating them within the social processes of the Early Intermediate Period and Middle Horizon.

The contribution of El Olivar site to understanding the pre- and post-Inca periods of Chilean Diaguita culture: Mortuary practices, visual art, shamanism and Andean ontologies

Paola González Carvajal (El Olivar Archaeological Rescue Project, Sociedad Chilena de Arqueología)

Abstract

The Chilean Diaguita culture (1000-1536 AD) is notable for the creation of an abstract and symmetrical pottery iconography of great complexity and beauty, linked to shamanic practices and the inhalation of psychoactive powders. For a long time, understanding of this culture depended almost exclusively on the study of its visual art, given the scarcity of chronological and contextual information. However, in the last decade, thanks to research on the Diaguita residential and funerary settlement of El Olivar (La Serena, Chile), we have been able to generate valuable background information that allows us to contextualise the abstract visual art of the Diaguita culture. Research at the El Olivar site sheds light on Diaguita chronology, mortuary practices, genetic affiliations, the process of ethnogenesis, integration into long-distance interaction networks, and many other relevant topics. 

In the pre-Inca period, it is postulated that there existed a relational and animistic ontology in the realm of death, very similar to the Amerindian shamanic perspectivism described by Viveiros de Castro for Amazonian peoples. Based on the relationships observed between people, animals and objects, we postulate that the ontological boundaries between them become blurred. 

The new absolute dates obtained at El Olivar (n=62) determined that the site was occupied approximately between 1150 and 1536 AD. The burials associated with articulated camelids coincide with the beginning of the occupation of the site and extend until the 15th century AD. Their disappearance coincides with the incorporation of the Diaguita culture into the Tawantinsuyu. It is therefore interesting to refer to the Inca strategies of domination, from and beyond visual art.

The role of wild and domesticated plants among pre-Hispanic Patagonian hunter-gatherers from a biomolecular perspective

Alejandro Serna (British Museum/Universidad Nacional de La Plata)

Abstract

The acknowledgment of plants as significant components in hunter-gatherer diets has provided new insights into past interactions between these groups and their environments, as well as between groups with different economies and social structures. The Patagonia region, South American Southern Cone, has been traditionally perceived as dominated by game hunting. This perception has changed by recognizing a broader spectrum of diet, where local wild and exotic domesticated plants, would have been intertwined in these hunter-gatherer lives. However, the nature of the archaeological record preservation obscures an accurate assessment of their role. In this presentation, we quantified the contribution of plants and other resources to hunter-gatherer paleodiets through biomolecular methods and statistical analysis (multivariate and Bayesian). We analyzed the carbon and nitrogen stable isotope composition (δ13Ccol, δ15N) of human remains and fauna/flora from Northern Patagonia, and radiocarbon dated specific individuals related to exotic domesticated plants (maize). Our results show that one-third of the overall intake was based on the systematic exploitation of local wild plants, while maize appears to have functioned as an imported edible commodity obtained from distant food producers.

The Origins of Amazonian Cuisine: Archaeobotanical evidence for early food preparation at Limoncillos, Colombia

Jose Julian Garay Vazquez (University of Cambridge)  

Abstract

Archaeobotanical research has demonstrated that early human groups successfully colonised Amazonian tropical forest environments by developing flexible subsistence strategies centred on plant resources. However, little attention has been paid to how these plants were processed and transformed into food. This paper addresses this gap by presenting the results of a comprehensive macrobotanical analysis of 24,994 carbonised plant remains from the Limoncillos rock shelter, Serranía de La Lindosa, Colombia, a site occupied from the Late Pleistocene (~12.5 cal ka BP) through the Late Holocene. The assemblage reveals a long-term reliance on arboreal resources, particularly palms (Palmae), and on plants with underground storage organs (USOs). Contrary to prevailing hypotheses that early Amazonian foragers primarily exploited palm mesocarp, the earliest occupations at Limoncillos are dominated by abundant charred palm endocarps—predominantly from the Cocoseae tribe—associated with nut-cracking stone anvils, suggesting a targeted focus on palm endosperm. Charred parenchyma fragments occur throughout the sequence, signalling sustained consumption of starchy roots despite the absence of grinding technologies. Notably, SEM analysis of amorphous, charred, multi-component plant aggregates provides some of the earliest direct evidence for the preparation of plant foods in Amazonia, suggesting that roots and possibly palm endosperm were mashed and cooked into composite meals. Middle Holocene layers show an expansion in resource use, including the first archaeobotanical evidence of Brazil nut (Bertholletia excelsa) in the Colombian Amazon. Domesticated crops appear only in Late Holocene contexts, with maize (Zea mays) and coca (Erythroxylum coca) representing the earliest direct macrofossil evidence of coca use in Amazonia. These findings demonstrate that early Amazonian cuisines were structured around palm nuts, roots, and fruits, highlighting sophisticated plant-processing traditions from the initial phases of rainforest colonisation

Places of Power and Memory: Ashaninka Transborder Cultural Landscapes

Cristiana Bertazoni  (University of Bonn)  

Abstract

In recent decades, interdisciplinary research has increasingly questioned the long-standing divide between Andes and Amazonia, highlighting historical connections between these regions during pre-Columbian times. Based on collaborative research with an Ashaninka community in Brazil, the project Mapping the Sacred Landscape of the Ashaninka reveals a cultural landscape, a network of sacred places structured across interconnected temporalities.

From the perspective of the Ashaninka of Brazil, this network is rooted in the Peruvian Selva Central, where the majority of the Ashaninka population is based, and extends into western Amazonia in Brazil, where a small Ashaninka community settled following migrations from Peru from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. For the Ashaninka of Brazil, sacred places in the Peruvian Selva Central remain present as mental and cosmological references, continuously activated through narratives and memory extending back to pre-Columbian times. At the same time, movements and social relations have gradually established new powerful places within the landscape of the Kampa of the Amônia River Indigenous Land in Brazil. Ashaninka cartography of powerful places challenges the long-standing separation between Andes and Amazonia, revealing a transborder network of sites that, from the perspective of the Ashaninka of Brazil, articulates these regions as interconnected across multiple temporalities and geographies within a continuous ancestral territory.
 

Material Reflections on European Extinction in the Caribbean

Jago Cooper, (Sainsbury Centre, University of East Anglia); Roberto Valcárcel-Rojas (Centro Leon, Dominican Republic); Alice Samson, Sophie Rabinow, Javier Montalvo Cabrera (University of Leicester)

Abstract

This paper examines how material culture and archaeology can tell an alternative story to history, in the re-telling of Caribbean global encounters in the 15th and 16th Centuries. The paper uses three lenses of food, bodies, and beliefs to provide an alternative cultural ​perspective that counters traditional text-based interpretations.  

The paper explores recent research at a series of remarkably preserved sites of intercultural encounter from a cross-disciplinary team to address the construction of the 16th Century Caribbean and wider colonial worlds. Not just what were people eating? What were people wearing? What were people thinking? But also what constitutes food, and who and what can eat and be eaten? What kinds of human, animal, and other bodies emerged? And how new practices and beings redefined fundamental ideas about life in this period. 

This project centres processes in which new arrivals from Europe were soon eating local foods, wearing Indigenous clothing, and redefining the foundations of their religions and identities. This fundamental reworking of foods, bodies, and beliefs reveals multiple competing visions of life, as well as new and irreversible relations, which significantly differ from conventional and popular understandings of how '1492' unfolded.