En el apéndice de su articulo reciente, Bracco (2006:511-540) realiza una serie de comentarios e interpretaciones de la evidencia científica interdisciplinaria producida por nuestro equipo en el sitio de Los Ajos en el sureste de Uruguay. Entre otras cosas, Bracco nos imputa: (a) de haber retrocedido la problemática de investigación en el área veinte años atrás, (b) de desconocer los trabajos anteriores realizados en la región, (c) de forzar nuestros datos paleoambientales a la secuencia cultural, y (d) de alegar, sin evidencia, la naturaleza doméstica de los montículos durante el período Montículo Precerámico en Los Ajos. En este comentario, nosotros respondemos a las alegaciones de Bracco.

An artificial structure was discovered under a natural skylight inside Grutas de Tzinacamóztoc, in the vicinity of the archaeological site of Cantona. The structure is made up of piled rocks, defining a pentagonal enclosure with a central mound. Detailed measurements and computer modeling allowed tracing of the sunbeam path projected on the structure and on the cave floor, particularly for dates of astronomical and/or Mesoamerican calendrical importance. This corroborates the possible prehispanic use of this site as a complex and sophisticated gnomon.

Throughout its 200 years, the Museu Nacional (National Museum) in Rio de Janeiro has been the principal museum of natural history in Brazil. It certainly has been among the most important research institutions in the Americas. Many of the greatest national and international scholars worked in or visited its collections, exhibitions, and laboratories. Botanists, zoologists, ecologists, geologists, paleontologists, anthropologists, archaeologists, and so many other scientists frequented the research facilities of the São Cristóvão Palace, its hallways, internal gardens, associated buildings, and park. They established friendships, scientific partnerships, and antagonisms, engaging in intense and productive exchanges that advanced science in each discipline yet with a multidisciplinary spirit. This thriving space, which we all always referred to as “our home,” was utterly destroyed by the tragedy of September 2018, when we watched in astonishment as the fire consumed our lives.

Se presenta el primer análisis composicional, morfológico y contextual de objetos metálicos de la Puna Meridional argentina (1430-2070 aP) para contribuir al conocimiento de la metalurgia centro-surandina del cobre, desde un espacio marginal a los principales centros productivos relacionados con esta tecnología. Mediante microscopia electrónica de barrido y análisis de energía dispersiva de rayos X (MEB-EDS) se identifican cobres sin alear y aleaciones de cobre-arsénico y de plomo-arsénico, con una variedad de elementos minoritarios que corresponderían a distintas menas y, potencialmente, distintos lugares de producción en los Andes centro sur. El metal habría circulado a largas distancias en distintos trayectos en el marco de las redes sociales que vincularon ámbitos a diferentes alturas en ambas vertientes andinas. La Puna Meridional constituiría un nodo en esta circulación durante el período Medio. Allí el metal se integró a rituales domésticos del grupo corresidente de fundación, de clausura y referidos al ciclo anual agropastoril, mediante los cuales se propiciarían sus animales domésticos y se reclamaría el territorio.

Desde hace unos 25 años, en Argentina comenzó el desarrollo de un nuevo campo de investigación arqueológica centrado en los espacios que sucesivamente funcionaron como fronteras interétnicas y/o territorios rurales en la región pampeana, el norte de Patagonia y sus inmediaciones, desde la colonia hasta la consolidación del estado-nación, a fines del siglo diecinueve. Este campo de estudio, en sentido amplio “arqueología de los espacios fronterizos y rurales”, se encuentra consolidado dentro de la arqueología histórica argentina mediante un número creciente de proyectos y el trabajo sistemático de distintos equipos que, desde diferentes perspectivas teórico-metodológicas, han recorrido múltiples caminos. Aquí se efectúa un análisis crítico sobre el desarrollo, el estado actual y las perspectivas de dicha especialidad, centrado en dos ejes: (1) su surgimiento y evolución y (2) el perfil y la inserción de los equipos de investigación. Ambos ejes muestran su gran dinamismo que se refleja en la diversificación sostenida de los temas, espacios y períodos abordados. El análisis pone en diálogo este nuevo campo, uno de los rasgos más destacados de la arqueología argentina en las últimas décadas, tanto con las coyunturas académico-institucionales y los contextos históricos locales como con el ámbito mayor de la arqueología histórica sudamericana.

The cultural transformations associated with the Formative period are pivotal for understanding the prehistory of the Americas. Over the last five decades, investigations in southwestern Ecuador have provided an early and robust set of archaeological data relating to Archaic-to-Formative transformations as exemplified by the Las Vegas, Valdivia, Machalilla, and Chorrera archaeological traditions. However, recent archaeological research in adjacent zones of the equatorial Andes indicates that the transformations in southwestern Ecuador were paralleled by coeval but distinct developments. Recent (2006–2007) excavations in the Department of Tumbes, Peru, have documented previously unknown Formative transformations, including the development of substantial domestic architecture during the Archaic (ca. 4700–4330 B.C.E.) and early Formative (ca. 3500–3100 B.C.E.), the shift from elliptical pole-and-thatch dwellings to rectangular wattle-and-daub structures at ca. 900–500 B.C.E., and the construction of public architecture and the establishment of a two-tiered settlement system by ca. 1000–800 B.C.E. These recently discovered archaeological patterns from Tumbes and additional data from southern Ecuador provide the basis for revised comparative perspectives in which southwestern Ecuador is a significant—but no longer the only—vantage point for understanding the evolution of Formative societies in the equatorial Andes.

This article examines the urban layout and development of the ancient city of Angamuco (AD 250–1530)—a populated urban center located within the core area of the Purépecha Empire in Michoacán, Mexico—through the lens of its complex road network. Image and network analysis of lidar datasets revealed more than 3,000 roads distributed throughout the site, identified the main patterns of road arrangement, and documented variable accessibility within the city. After presenting a summary of these results, I propose that road networks are fundamental components of urban centers that can help reveal social configurations, local interactions, and models of governance. The study of the road network at the site of Angamuco suggests that this city developed organically without the strong influence of political hierarchy a few centuries prior to the formation of the Purépecha Empire. Angamuco inhabitants organized and negotiated space and settlement within their immediate community and had access to virtually all areas of the city.

This article revises the spatial and temporal boundaries of the Casas Grandes tradition associated with northwest Chihuahua, Mexico, based on new data collected in neighboring northeastern Sonora. The Casas Grandes tradition attained its greatest extent during the Medio period (AD 1200–1450/1500) followed by a dramatic demographic and political collapse. Hunter-gatherer groups subsequently occupied most of northwest Chihuahua. Data from the Fronteras Valley, Sonora, presents an alternative scenario, with a clear pattern of cultural continuity from the eleventh century to the colonial period in which sedentary farmers occupied the same landscapes and occasionally the same villages. These observations contribute to our understanding of the spread and subsequent demise of the Casas Grandes tradition in hinterland regions. For the Fronteras Valley, we infer that immigrant groups originally introduced Casas Grandes traditions and that uneven participation in a suite of shared religious beliefs and practices was common to all the hinterlands.

For many years, the existence of ancient human settlements in the Amazon was deemed impossible, particularly those as old as 12,000 BP as found in Pedra Pintada Cave in Monte Alegre, in the state of Pará, by Anna Roosevelt and colleagues in the 1990s and by Edithe Pereira's team in 2014. In this article, we present the results of the technological analyses of the bifacial tools found in the cave, focusing on raw materials, techniques, shaping and retouching methods, and technical procedures. The analyses indicate careful knapping, with no mistakes, in hundreds of flakes in the shaping and retouching phases, as well as fragmented tools with flaws. Whenever possible, we compare the results to the data published by Roosevelt and colleagues in 1996 from the same site.

Archaeological research carried out in the altiplano locale of Escaramayu (in the community of Escara, Potosí, Bolivia), revealed a prehispanic metallurgical establishment (ninth to fifteenth centuries AD) for the extractive processing of copper ores and, to a lesser extent, lead-silver ore exploited at the nearby Pulacayo mine. The number and variety of metallurgical equipment identified in this establishment for smelting metallic ore and for refining the metal indicate a deep level of technological experience and experimentation among the resident Escaramayu metalworkers during the Middle Horizon (MH) and Late Intermediate periods (LIP). In Escaramayu we find the first known antecedents of Andean wind furnaces (wayras) and a model of a prehispanic reverberatory furnace that was widely used in the southern Andean altiplano during the colonial period.

Camelid pastoralism, agriculture, sedentism, surplus production, increasing cultural complexity, and interregional interaction during northern Chile's Late Formative period (AD 100–400) are seen in the flow of goods and people over expanses of desert. Consolidating evidence of material culture from these interactions with a bioarchaeological dimension allows us to provide details about individual lives and patterns in the Late Formative more generally. Here, we integrate a variety of skeletal, chemical, and archaeological data to explore the life and death of a small child (Calate-3N.7). By taking a multiscalar approach, we present a narrative that considers not only the varied materiality that accompanies this child but also what the child's life experience was and how this reflects and shapes our understanding of the Late Formative period in northern Chile. This evidence hints at the profound mobility of their youth. The complex mortuary context reflects numerous interactions and long-distance relationships. Ultimately, the evidence speaks to deep social relations between two coastal groups, the Atacameños and Tarapaqueños. Considering this suite of data, we can see a child whose life was spent moving through desert routes and perhaps also glimpse the construction of intercultural identity in the Formative period.

Despite the abundance of lithic debitage at preceramic sites in the Maya Lowlands, these data have rarely been studied in detail. We analyzed the chipped chert debitage from Caye Coco and Fred Smith, two Archaic period sites in the Freshwater Creek drainage of northern Belize, to evaluate strategies of lithic raw material procurement, stone tool production, and tool use. The technological and use-wear analyses of the debitage demonstrate that the sites’ inhabitants procured most of their tool stone from the Northern Belize Chert-bearing Zone (NBCZ) and relied on hard-hammer percussion to produce flakes for use as expedient tools and some crude bifaces and unifaces. Although similar patterns of raw material procurement and tool production are demonstrated at both sites, some differences exist, including bipolar reduction at Caye Coco. Based on use-wear analysis, the debitage at the island site of Caye Coco was primarily used for working wood, shell, and hard contact materials and for digging soil. On the shore at Fred Smith, most use-wear is consistent with working wood, plants, and hard contact materials, as well as digging soil. For both sites, analyses suggest the increasing importance of a horticultural subsistence strategy with reduced mobility and reliance on some cultigens that were locally produced.

In this study, we analyze extensive segmented and standardized agricultural fields in the marginally productive terrain of the Pampa de Guereque in the Jequetepeque Valley on the north coast of Peru. Although portions of the associated canal system were constructed continuously from late Formative to Chimú times, the segmented fields date to the late Chimú–Inka period and were only partially finished, apparently never fully used, and ultimately abandoned. We provide description of field plots and irrigation canals and discuss the implications of state-level construction and labor management of the fields, as well as the probable reasons for their abandonment.

Este trabajo discute las estrategias vinculadas al aprovechamiento de animales durante dos ocupaciones del sitio San Francisco Inca (puna transicional de Chaschuil, Catamarca, Argentina): una incaica (ca. siglos catorce y quince dC) y otra preincaica (ca. siglos diez a trece dC). Los grupos agropastoriles preincaicos que ocuparon estacionalmente el sitio desarrollaron una estrategia de diversificación, intensificación y almacenamiento de los recursos de origen animal para hacer frente a la impredecibilidad puneña y al contexto regional de restricción ambiental. Esta incluyó la caza de vicuñas, la tendencia a evitar el sacrificio de llamas durante dicha ocupación, el procesamiento relativamente intensivo de partes de bajo retorno de los camélidos, el secado de elementos del esqueleto axial y, posiblemente, el consumo diferido de la médula ósea de los metapodios. Durante la ocupación incaica, el Estado organizó festines para legitimar su presencia en la región y sirvió comidas basadas fundamentalmente en los recursos brindados por animales silvestres capturados localmente (vicuñas y, en menor proporción, roedores, aves y guanacos). Además, se plantea la posibilidad de que en dichos eventos festivos se hayan realizado sacrificios de llamas y producido carne seca para su consumo diferido en otros pisos altitudinales o para el intercambio.

Los festines fueron una práctica común y recurrente en los Andes Centrales durante la época prehispánica. Sin embargo, no existe un consenso sobre los criterios utilizados en la caracterización arqueológica de estos eventos. En este artículo revaluamos las evidencias del Repositorio de Ofrendas 1 de Sipán, un sitio Mochica (siglos tres y cuatro dC) ubicado en el valle de Lambayeque, a través del empleo de una variable cuantitativa llamada “peso de carne disponible”. Asociado a la tumba del Señor de Sipán, este depósito contiene centenas de ofrendas de prestigio, pero también miles de restos de fauna. El análisis de estos últimos proporciona nuevas perspectivas sobre la comida funeraria dada en homenaje a este alto dignatario después de su entierro. El uso de la variable mencionada permite evaluar la magnitud de esta comida y muestra la importancia de definir criterios metodológicos fiables para seguir investigando los festines, eventos que constituyen una de las bases de las relaciones sociales y políticas de las sociedades prehispánicas.

We contend that political structures emerge in the course of interpersonal dealings conducted by people organized within overlapping social networks. It is through these webs that resources needed to define and achieve goals and exert control over others are mobilized. Elites seeking to construct hierarchies and concentrate power must restructure the preexisting matrix of networks to redirect the flow of assets to their benefit. In doing so, they seek to create an affiliation that transcends loyalties to extant social groups while securing for themselves positions of preeminence within the overarching affiliation. Such social engineering involves manipulating the material symbols by which interpersonal ties are made tangible and imbued with emotional significance. The resulting political structures are less nested sets of stable territorial groups than dynamic networks of networks through which assets are deployed in the practices by which power is exercised. This perspective is used to describe Late Postclassic (A.D. 1300-1532) political processes in the Naco Valley, northwestern Honduras, calling attention to how power of various sorts took shape through complex relations among diverse people and varied things orchestrated within overlapping social networks. The implications of a network approach for studying political processes generally are also considered.

Durante el Holoceno tardío en el archipiélago patagónico septentrional (~41°30′-47°S), convergerían sistemas culturales diferenciados, interrelacionándose grupos con tradiciones culturales portadoras de cerámica y economías basadas en la producción de alimentos (hortícolas) con grupos de cazadores-recolectores-pescadores marinos presentes desde el Holoceno medio. En este trabajo se evalúa los cambios y continuidades en los patrones de subsistencia y dieta de los grupos que ocuparon este archipiélago a lo largo de su secuencia de ocupación, de acuerdo a los resultados del análisis de los valores de δ13C y δ15N correspondiente a restos humanos de 27 individuos (~4400-150 años cal aP) del Archipiélago de Chiloé (~41°30´-43°S), los que son integrados con la información obtenida anteriormente de 36 individuos (~2000-300 años cal aP) provenientes del Archipiélago de los Chonos (~43°-47°S), así como con muestras complementarias de algas y arqueofauna. A partir de la dieta estimada de 63 individuos, se sugiere una baja intensidad de la interacción de estas trayectorias culturales a lo largo del tiempo en el archipiélago patagónico septentrional con continuidad de los sistemas de caza, pesca y recolección marina. Luego del contacto europeo, se reflejarían los mayores cambios en la subsistencia de estos grupos humanos, especialmente en el Archipiélago de Chiloé.

We examined copper production at the archaeological site of El Manchón, located in the Sierra Madre del Sur of Guerrero, using archaeological, historical, ethnographic, and materials engineering data. Thirty-six AMS wood charcoal samples from El Manchón, analyzed using Bayseian statistics, date the two domestic sectors of El Manchón from cal AD 1250–1440 (Sector 1) and cal AD 1280–1680 (Sector 3). The smelting sector (Sector 2) contains copper ore and slag and dates to cal AD 1630–1825. Historical sources show that the Spanish had no experience smelting copper metal and were forced to negotiate with indigenous specialists to acquire smelted copper. These specialists provided it in return for tax exemptions and other economic privileges. The indigenous specialists requested iron tools for mining; the Spanish suggested introducing bellows to smelt copper in volume. In the smelting sector we excavated the stone foundations and a slag cake that conform to the dimensions of a hand-powered bellows-driven furnace in which the copper ore was smelted in a circular depression known as a cendrada. Thus far, this furnace design has only been excavated at El Manchón. This bellows-powered furnace was likely operated by indigenous Manchón specialists, who probably initially smelted copper using the more ancient blowpipe technology. The dates for the smelting and occupation of El Manchón overlap.