This Andean coast research has identified 113-plus geoglyphs spanning the Formative (1800–100 BC) to the Inka period (AD 1470–1532). The project combined digital technology and Remotely Piloted Airborne Systems to locate the sites. The authors also documented examples of ceramics and intricate road systems and suggest that the finds represent meticulously ritualised landscapes.

Archaeological cultures present allegories of ethnic identities across the centuries or millennia but such conceptualisations are necessarily incomplete and lack the resolution to explore transitions between cultures. Here, exploration of the archaeological contexts, production methods, stylistic variation and radiocarbon dating of 20 preserved textile fragments facilitates an examination of cultural change at Huaca del Sol (Huacas de Moche, northern Peru). While occupants of the site experienced many outside cultural influences, including those from the highland Wari Empire, continuity in textile traditions suggests that some sense of Moche identity was maintained through the tenth century and after the perceived end of the Moche culture.

Systematic investigation of caves and rockshelters in Uruguay is revealing the archaeological importance of these sites and their association with earthen mounds. Multiple periods of human occupation at Tamanduá rockshelter are revealed through stratigraphic analysis, and radiocarbon dates suggest recurrent occupation from the Early Holocene up to the historic period.

The Redes Andinas (Andean Networks) project assesses the complexity of ancient road networks in the archaeological record in the Andes, beyond the Inca roads system. A multiscale methodological approach allows us to characterise the transformation and resilience of the road networks over the past millennium, in the context of the 18°South parallel's vertical transect.

This project in southern Chile's Lake Region analysed late Pleistocene human–environment interactions. Two field seasons in 2020 and 2022 provided a new lithic collection dating to around 17 300–12 800 cal BP, which indicates human presence in north-western Patagonia prior to the Younger Dryas period.

Imagery-based survey is capable of producing archaeological datasets that complement those collected through field-based survey methods, widening the scope of analysis beyond regions. The Geospatial Platform for Andean Culture, History and Archaeology (GeoPACHA) enables systematic registry of imagery survey data through a ‘federated’ approach. Using GeoPACHA, teams pursue problem-specific research questions through a common data schema and interface that allows for inter-project comparisons, analyses and syntheses. The authors present an overview of the platform's rationale and functionality, as well as a summary of results from the first survey campaign, which was carried out by six projects distributed across the central Andes, five of which are represented here.

This new project studies the diversity of socioecological niches across the agropastoral transition in the Andes, utilising a multi-isotope approach to track human territories and allocate subsistence tasks. During the agropastoral period, we discriminate different diachronic niches with varying extents of maize farming and altitudinal mobility.

Research carried out in the Carangas region of highland Bolivia has identified a surprising concentration of pre-Hispanic religious sites, which are linked both to ancient Andean cults of wak'a (sacred mountains, tutelary hills and mummified ancestors) and to the Incan settlement of the region. Of these sites, one ceremonial centre stands out for its unprecedented characteristics for the Andes.

The Andes offers a particularly effective focus for an archaeology of mobility because their extreme topography compresses enormous vertical resource diversity across short horizontal distances. In this article, the authors combine findings from two large-scale archaeological studies of adjacent watersheds—the Nasca-Palpa Project and One River Project—to provide the necessary context in which to explore changing mobilities from the Archaic Period to the Inca Empire, and from the Pacific coast to the high Andes. Analyses of obsidian lithics and stable isotopes in human hair are used to argue that changing patterns of mobility offer a new way of defining the ‘Horizons’ that have long dominated concepts of periodisation here.

Humans have engineered their environments throughout the Holocene, especially in the construction of hydraulic infrastructure. In many regions, however, this infrastructure is difficult to date, including the vestiges of water-management systems in the Andean highlands. Focusing on silt reservoirs in the upper Ica drainage, Peru, the authors use cores and radiocarbon dates to demonstrate the pre-Hispanic construction of walls to enhance and expand wetlands for camelid pasture. Interventions dated to the Inca period (AD 1400–1532) indicate an intensification of investment in hydraulic infrastructure to expand production capacity in support of the state. The results are discussed in the context of the hydraulic strategies of other states and empires.

Processual models of the early state envisioned hierarchical societies with stable social and political structures. More recent research, however, has questioned this vision. Here, the authors explore Middle Horizon (AD 700–1000) Wari state iconography to provide an example of early state social and political organisation from the Central Andes. Social network analysis (SNA) of human figures (‘agents’) depicted in Wari art identifies links between individual agents, as visualised on objects and between the objects’ findspots. The results suggest that the Wari state was more heterarchical than previously imagined. Similar applications of SNA could be used to explore the iconographic evidence of other early, pre-literate states around the world.

The post-mortem manipulation of human bodies is documented in many regions of the world, including South America. Recent archaeological fieldwork in the Chincha Valley, Peru, adds to this catalogue nearly 200 examples of the threading of human vertebrae onto reed posts. Here, the authors report on the distribution and composition of these ‘vertebrae-on-posts’, which are radiocarbon-dated to the Late Horizon (AD 1400–1532) and Colonial (AD 1532–1825) periods. The authors argue that these modified remains represent a social process that reconstructed the dead in response to Colonial-period looting. This manipulation of human remains reflects protracted relationships between the living and the dead, and the enduring social lives of human remains.