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A Functional Analysis of “Horizon Styles” in Peruvian Archaeology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2018

Gordon R. Willey
Gordon R. Willey*
Affiliation:
Bureau of American Ethnology, Washington, D. C.
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Extract

Since the beginnings of scientific archaeology in Peru investigators have employed the concept of the “horizon” or “horizon style” in attempting to reconstruct the major outlines of Central Andean prehistory. This formulation of the horizon is an abstraction based upon the recurrence of specific features of style or manufacture in prehistoric artifacts, ‘mainly pottery, from one region to another so that the phenomena become pan-Peruvian in scope and coordinate our knowledge of the past in a broad temporal and spatial scheme. This integration is made possible when the same stylistic or technical complex of traits is found in the respective culture sequences of geographically widely separated regions, and by this means the two or more sequences are brought together and equated in time. The constructs of horizons have been useful synthesizing elements in the understanding of Peruvian archaeology on the level of time-space systematics. As yet, however, there has been little consideration of their functional significance in the prehistoric native societies of which they were a part. This present exploratory analysis ventures to define and characterize as cultural forces on the level of social interaction what heretofore have been viewed chiefly as historical phenomena.

Type
Peru as a Whole
Information
Memoirs of the Society for American Archaeology , Volume 4: A Reappraisal of Peruvian Archaeology , 1948 , pp. 8 - 15
Copyright
Copyright © Society for American Archaeology 1945

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References

1 Although not referring specifically to the idea of horizon styles, Uhle, throughout most of his Peruvian work (1903, 1906, 1910, 1913a, 1913b) viewed his data in such a scheme. Similarly, Kroeber (1925, 1927) synthesized Peruvian archaeology in this fashion before defining horizon styles in detail (Kroeber, 1944, pp. 108-11). See also Bennett (1943) and Willey (1945).

2 John W. Bennett (1944) outlines a similar methodology in connection with the problem of Middle American- Southeastern United States prehistoric relationships. Bennett evaluated the structure or type of both Middle American and Southeastern cultures in endeavoring to show what particular cultural media, or what culture period, in the Southeast would have been most receptive to Middle American ideas and traits.

3 These stages differ in detail from those put forward at the 1946 Chiclfn conference (see Willey, 1946, pp. 133-4) and by Strong (1947, p. 6). The general objective, however, seems to be the same: to conceptualize the cultural growth of the Peru-Bolivian area into successive stages of development in order to accentuate the major changes in cultural structure and direction.

4 See Hay and others, 1940, p. 488; Strong, 1943; Willey, 1943a, p. 196; Willey, N.D.; Kroeber, 1944, p. 113; Bennett, 1946a, p. 80.

5 Tello, 1923, 1929; Bennett, 1943; Kroeber, 1944, pp. 81-93.

6 Tello, 1943.

7 Willey, 1945.

8 Larco, 1944.

9 Bennett, 1944a.

10 Rowe, 1944, pp. 17-18.

11 Kroeber, 1944, pp. 108-10.

12 Strong, 1947.

13 Bennett, 1944a, p. 106.

14 Rowe, 1945.