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Department of Anthropology and Geography

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https://hdl.handle.net/10217/100326
These digital collections contain publications, theses, and dissertations from the Department of Anthropology and Geography. Due to departmental name changes, materials from the following historical department are also included here: Anthropology.

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Browsing Department of Anthropology and Geography by Subject "Andes"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Ceramic analysis of the Tabuchila Complex of the Jama River Valley, ManabĂ­, Ecuador
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2016) Herrmann, Corey A., author; Van Buren, Mary, advisor; Zeidler, James, advisor; Fisher, Christopher, committee member; DiCesare, Catherine, committee member
    Archaeological excavations by the Proyecto Arqueológico-Paleoetnobotánico Río Jama (PAPRJ) in the Jama River Valley of northern Manabí, Ecuador, have established a cultural chronology spanning over three millennia of prehispanic occupation. One of these occupations, the Tabuchila Complex of the Late Formative Period (1000 – 500 BCE), remains poorly understood. Excavations at three sites in the Jama Valley in the 1990s recovered ceramic, lithic, obsidian, paleobotanical, archaeofaunal, and human skeletal remains from Late Formative Tabuchila contexts, with the goal of orienting Late Formative occupation of the northern Manabí region to its contemporaries in western lowland Ecuador. This study employs modal ceramic analysis to recognize and catalogue formal and stylistic variation within the recovered Tabuchila ceramic assemblage. Through this analysis the Tabuchila assemblage is compared to other studies of Late Formative Chorrera assemblages to understand how Tabuchila represented a regional variant of and contributor to the formation of the Chorrera ceramic tradition. In addition, a sovereignty-based theoretical approach explores how this ceramic assemblage reflects deeper processes of emergent social complexity and early attempts at establishing inequality in northern Manabí's regional mound center of San Isidro. Results and discussions of the analysis examine a community connected with its Middle and Late Formative contemporaries across the western lowlands and engaged in feasting activity in the vicinity of the central mound of San Isidro.
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    Death and the family: testing Andean lineage tombs through cranial non-metrics
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2016) Herrera, Sarah Frances, author; Magennis, Ann, advisor; Van Buren, Mary, advisor; Lacy, Michael, committee member
    Historical records indicate that ancestor worship was practiced as part of ayllu social organization in the Inka empire during the Late Horizon and beginning of the Colonial Period (1440 A.D. - 1650 A.D.). This same set of beliefs and practices is often ascribed to the Late Intermediate Period (900 A.D. – 1440 A.D.) throughout the Andes by many researchers (Doyle 1988; Herrera 2003; Ibarra 2013; Isbell 1997; Mantha 2006; Martiarena 2014). It is important for the study of any site so far removed from the historical records to be cautious when using these documents for the interpretation of the archaeological record. The significance of this study is that little has been done using a bioarchaeological approach to test the assumptions of ayllus and ancestor worship based on historical records in the Conchucos region far removed from the center of the Inka empire. The site of Marcajirca is located on the ridge of a sacred ancestor mountain, Mt Llamoq, in North Central Peru. Although the site is a village, it has an especially large amount of mortuary architecture consisting of above ground tombs or chullpas, as well as caves, and underground structures that contain human remains. One way to infer ayllu organization and ancestor worship as well as validate the use of historical records for Marcajirca would be to identify affinity and kinship structure through family burials in combination with material evidence that these burials were used for ancestor worship. Were the chullpas and caves at the Late Intermediate Site of Marcajirca reserved for family burials and ancestor worship? In order to test this, I attempted to determine if the people in one tomb were significantly different biologically from the people found in other tombs based on the relative prevalence of heritable non-metric traits. Twenty four non-metric traits on 106 crania from 15 different tombs were scored. The frequencies of these non-metric traits were used to calculate the mean measure of divergence to produce a numerical summary of the biological distance between groups of skeletal remains. There were a few noticeable patterns from the non-metric analyses at Marcajirca. Cave 19 differs the most from other tombs at statistically significant levels. Many of the other caves and chullpas do not exhibit statistically significant differences and often exhibit negative distance values. These results do not provide enough information to positively identify each tomb as a unique family burial, but may be more indicative of a wider ayllu group present at Marcajirca. Only Cave 19 represents a distinct group, possibly from an outlying community that considered itself as part of the larger ayllu linked by their belief in Llamoq as its founding ancestor. In the case of Marcajirca, it does appear as though many of these records can be accurately applied to the archaeological interpretations for this site and its role in the regional ayllus. Future research based on intersite biodistance analysis could be used to determine if there was a real biological distinction between the various ayllus reported to exist in the Conchucos Region.
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    Merchants and muleteers: infrastructure, identity, and inequality in the 18th century Andes
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2021) Ballance, Matthew, author; Van Buren, Mary, advisor; Henry, Edward, committee member; Carlyon, Jonathan, committee member
    In this thesis, I examine the way that infrastructure helped structure inequality in the 18th century Andes through the production of qualitatively different experiences of movement. Using a combination of historical, geospatial, and archaeological methods, I argue that an individual's experience of movement and lodging along the road system was mediated by their position in a hierarchy of labor. This hierarchy was principally divided between business travelers and muleteers, two positions that emerged from an 18th century economic context in which those who did the labor of physically moving goods were increasingly separated from those who owned those goods. El Lazarillo de Ciegos Caminantes is used as a historical source through which to view an elite understanding of labor identity and its relationship to infrastructure. This historic document is then analyzed using GIS techniques in order to see spatial relationships between infrastructure and class associated patterns of movement. Archaeological data is used to reveal alternative systems of infrastructure that supported the movement of labor. Ultimately, I argue that the disconnect between textual and material sources of information sheds light on both the biases of 18th century authors, as well as the persistence of Andean pastoral traditions even in a context of shifting labor dynamics.
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    The Potosi-Cobija route: archaeology of colonial transportation in the south Central Andes
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2017) GarcĂ­a-Albarido, Francisco, author; Van Buren, Mary, advisor; Leisz, Stephen, committee member; Yarrington, Doug, committee member
    In this thesis, I analyze Andean colonial transportation in archaeological and historical terms based on the Potosi-Cobija route case. Potosi was a strategic extractive region during the expansion of the world-economy. In this region, the Spanish Empire obtained large quantities of silver and produced the main international trade currency used between the 16th and 19th centuries. The Potosi-Cobija route was one of the most significant scenes of colonial commerce and smuggling in the South Central Andes. A total of 34 archaeological sites were identified on the route using a methodology constituted by remote sensing and archaeological inspection of targets. This case is used to discuss the modern European imperial economic control of peripheral regions. In the case of the Spanish Empire, the characteristics of mercantilism and expectations about imperialism suggested a centralized control over the flow of silver to Spain, an important reorganization of transportation labor, and official investment in imperial road infrastructure. However, my results contradict the idea of centralized imperial control of the peripheral flow of resources based on official road infrastructure. They indicate the continuity of native transportation labor practices along with some transformations during colonial times, suggesting transportation organized by local agents for their own economic purposes. I conclude by discussing the idea of peripheries as passive channels that ensure the flow of resources to the early modern European metropolis and providing new methodological directions for this type of historical archaeology in the Andes.