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Desert Ground Drawings in the Lower Santa Valley, North Coast of Peru

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

David J. Wilson*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX 75275

Abstract

New data are presented on prehispanic ground drawings discovered and mapped during the 1979-1980 settlement-pattern research in the Santa Valley region, north coast of Peru. Among the drawings, which appear to date to the Early Suchimancillo/Gallinazo time period (ca. B.C./A.D. to A.D. 200), are a number of naturalistic figures-including humans, sierra-related llamas and condors, and a jungle-related (possible) cayman. These figures, and other lines of evidence such as rock-walled corral enclosures, suggest the existence of a strong ideological focus on sierra-related animals that probably reinforced intensive coast-sierra socioeconomic relations involving the use of llama pack trains.

Type
Reports
Copyright
Copyright © Society for American Archaeology 1988

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References

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