Excavations at Cerro Azul, Peru


Book Description

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.




The Burials of Cerro Azul, Peru


Book Description

Burial material from excavations at Cerro Azul in Peru's Cañete Valley, a pre-Inca fishing community.




Coastal Ecosystems and Economic Strategies at Cerro Azul, Peru


Book Description

Cerro Azul, a pre-Inca fishing community in the Kingdom of Huarco, Peru, stood at the interface between a rich marine ecosystem and an irrigated coastal plain. Under the direction of its noble families, Cerro Azul dried millions of fish for shipment to inland communities, from which it received agricultural products and dried llama meat.




Late Intermediate Occupation at Cerro Azul, Perú, A Preliminary Report


Book Description

Cerro Azul was a late prehistoric fishing community on the south-central coast of Peru. It was one of several communities that belonged to the region of Huarco before falling to the Inca. This volume is the preliminary report of an interdisciplinary project carried out at the site from 1982 to 1986. The remains of many buildings exist on the site. During this project, crews excavated four of these, as well as middens and burials.




The Ancient Central Andes


Book Description

The Ancient Central Andes presents a general overview of the prehistoric peoples and cultures of the Central Andes, the region now encompassing most of Peru and significant parts of Ecuador, Bolivia, northern Chile, and northwestern Argentina. The book contextualizes past and modern scholarship and provides a balanced view of current research. Two opening chapters present the intellectual, political, and practical background and history of research in the Central Andes and the spatial, temporal, and formal dimensions of the study of its past. Chapters then proceed in chronological order from remote antiquity to the Spanish Conquest. A number of important themes run through the book, including: the tension between those scholars who wish to study Peruvian antiquity on a comparative basis and those who take historicist approaches; the concept of "Lo Andino," commonly used by many specialists that assumes long-term, unchanging patterns of culture some of which are claimed to persist to the present; and culture change related to severe environmental events. Consensus opinions on interpretations are highlighted as are disputes among scholars regarding interpretations of the past. The Ancient Central Andes provides an up-to-date, objective survey of the archaeology of the Central Andes that is much needed. Students and interested readers will benefit greatly from this introduction to a key period in South America’s past.




Advances in Titicaca Basin Archaeology-2


Book Description

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.




The Archaeology of Political Organization


Book Description

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.




Archaeology of the Chinese Bronze Age


Book Description

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.




Vilcabamba and the Archaeology of Inca Resistance


Book Description

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.




Interregional Interaction in Ancient Mesoamerica


Book Description

Interregional Interaction in Ancient Mesoamerica explores the role of interregional interaction in the dynamic sociocultural processes that shaped the pre-Columbian societies of Mesoamerica. Interdisciplinary contributions from leading scholars investigate linguistic exchange and borrowing, scribal practices, settlement patterns, ceramics, iconography, and trade systems, presenting a variety of case studies drawn from multiple spatial, temporal, and cultural contexts within Mesoamerica. Archaeologists have long recognized the crucial role of interregional interaction in the development and cultural dynamics of ancient societies, particularly in terms of the evolution of sociocultural complexity and economic systems. Recent research has further expanded the archaeological, art historical, ethnographic, and epigraphic records in Mesoamerica, permitting a critical reassessment of the complex relationship between interaction and cultural dynamics. This volume builds on and amplifies earlier research to examine sociocultural phenomena—including movement, migration, symbolic exchange, and material interaction—in their role as catalysts for variability in cultural systems. Interregional cultural exchange in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica played a key role in the creation of systems of shared ideologies, the production of regional or “international” artistic and architectural styles, shifting sociopolitical patterns, and changes in cultural practices and meanings. Interregional Interaction in Ancient Mesoamerica highlights, engages with, and provokes questions pertinent to understanding the complex relationship between interaction, sociocultural processes, and cultural innovation and change in the ancient societies and cultural histories of Mesoamerica and will be of interest to archaeologists, linguists, and art historians. Contributors: Philip J. Arnold III, Lourdes Budar, José Luis Punzo Diaz, Gary Feinman, David Freidel, Elizabeth Jiménez Garcia, Guy David Hepp, Kerry M. Hull, Timothy J. Knab, Charles L. F. Knight, Blanca E. Maldonado, Joyce Marcus, Jesper Nielsen, John M. D. Pohl, Iván Rivera, D. Bryan Schaeffer, Niklas Schulze