Peer-Reviewed Publications by Jacob Bongers
Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 2023
In the Chincha Valley of southern Peru, pigmented human remains and grave goods were found in ove... more In the Chincha Valley of southern Peru, pigmented human remains and grave goods were found in over 100 large and accessible mortuary structures associated with the Late Intermediate Period (1000-1400 CE), the Late Horizon (1400-1532 CE), and the Colonial Period (1532-1825 CE). We characterize 38 red pigment samples, reveal their potential sources and how they were processed and applied to human remains, and determine the demographic profiles of pigmented individuals. Results suggest that cinnabar-(HgS) and hematite (Fe 2 O 3)-based pigments, likely from local and nonlocal sources, were mixed in water and applied to skeletonized and disarticulated individuals of different age and sex categories. We interpret red pigment application to human remains as part of a prolonged process of social dying that transitioned the ontological status of the dead and contributed to the development of social difference and group identity. Multidisciplinary research designs are ideal for studying red pigment practices, which are activities concerning the production and use of red pigment that range from procurement to the treatment of the dead. Here, we advance a methodology integrating archaeometric, archaeological, and bioarchaeological analyses with anthropological theories of personhood and social dying to investigate red pigment practices.
Antiquity, 2022
The post-mortem manipulation of human bodies is documented in many regions of the world, includin... more 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.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2020
Ancient DNA (aDNA) analysis provides a powerful means of investigating human migration, social or... more Ancient DNA (aDNA) analysis provides a powerful means of investigating human migration, social organization, and a plethora of other crucial questions about humanity’s past. Recently, specialists have suggested that the ideal research design involving aDNA would include multiple independent lines of evidence. In this paper, we adopt a transdisciplinary approach integrating aDNA with archaeological, biogeochemical, and historical data to investigate six individuals found in two cemeteries that date to the Late Horizon (1400 to 1532 CE) and Colonial (1532 to 1825 CE) periods in the Chincha Valley of southern Peru. Genomic analyses indicate that these individuals are genetically most similar to ancient and present-day populations from the north Peruvian coast located several hundred kilometers away. These genomic data are consistent with 16th century written records as well as ceramic, textile, and isotopic data. These results provide some of the strongest evidence yet of state-sponsored resettlement in the pre-Colonial Andes. This study highlights the power of transdisciplinary research designs when using aDNA data and sets a methodological standard for investigating ancient mobility in complex societies.
African Archaeological Review, 2020
For at least four decades, archaeologists have identified irrigation as playing a potentially maj... more For at least four decades, archaeologists have identified irrigation as playing a potentially major role in the rise of Aksumite civilization. Based on a systematic survey covering the area between Aksum and Yeha (Ethiopia), Joseph Michels proposed that large-scale irrigation systems introduced from Southwest Arabia contributed to the rise of Yeha as a major center of Pre-Aksumite civilization. To evaluate spatial patterning of archaeological sites with respect to water availability, this paper reports on results from archaeological survey of a 100 km 2 region surrounding Yeha conducted by the Southern Red Sea Archaeological Histories (SRSAH) Project from 2009 to 2016. The SRSAH Project recorded 84 sites dating from the Pre-Aksumite to the Post-Aksumite periods (c.800 BCE to 900 CE). No ancient irrigation systems were identified and results do not show a correlation between archaeological sites and water resources. This suggests that irrigation was less important than Michels contended and that rainfed agriculture, terraces, and small-scale irrigation comparable with practices evident in the region today were sufficient to sustain ancient populations.
Variation in textile production processes from archaeological contexts can distinguish communitie... more Variation in textile production processes from archaeological contexts can distinguish communities of weavers and signal distinct group identities. In this paper, we present an analysis of 141 textiles recovered from a single grave located in the mid-Chincha Valley, Peru that dates from the Late Horizon (1400–1532 CE) to the Colonial Period (1532–1825 CE). This sample represents one of the largest and best-preserved textile assemblages from a clearly defined and radiocarbon-dated archaeological context in the Chincha Valley. For this study, we document techniques used in two distinct phases of textile production: yarn production (spinning and plying) and weaving. We 1) develop a manual hierarchical classification method for identifying groups of textiles featuring consistent associations among techniques used for each production phase and 2) assess how these groups vary in terms of thread count, size, garment type, and design. Our results reveal six groupings of textile production techniques that account for 71% of the assemblage by count. We compare these results to that of an independent cluster analysis that examines the joint co-occurrence of yarn production and weaving techniques and find that they are largely in accordance with each other. We suggest that these multiple textile groups corresponded to distinct communities or households of weavers associated with this grave. Our study provides a methodology for analyzing the variation and consistency of textile production to learn about communities of weavers within and outside the Andes.
Journal of Archaeological Science, 2012
The western Lake Titicaca basin is marked by above-ground funerary towers, known as chullpas, loc... more The western Lake Titicaca basin is marked by above-ground funerary towers, known as chullpas, located in a variety of geographical contexts and dating to the Late Intermediate Period, or LIP (AD 1100e1450), and Late Horizon (AD 1450e1532). Over the years, interpretations of these tombs have concentrated upon their roles as loci for ancestral veneration and their abilities to perpetuate memory, delineate social ties and territories, and demarcate access to resources. These views share the implicit or explicit assumption that these mortuary structures were intended to be highly visible. Yet this assumption has never been formally tested. By using GIS-based geospatial tools and statistical analysis, this paper investigates the extent to which chullpas surveyed in the western Lake Titicaca basin visually dominated the landscape. These tombs were not positioned in random locations; they exhibit a high degree of clustering and were built in highly visible areas that could be seen from sites of occupation and regions of economic importance such as Lake Umayo. This paper suggests that this landscape of death was deliberately constructed to have an enduring social impact.
World Archaeology, 2014
Three-dimensional imagery is rapidly transforming the reconstruction, visualization and conceptua... more Three-dimensional imagery is rapidly transforming the reconstruction, visualization and conceptualization of ancient monuments. We report (and reflect on the value of) digital reconstruction of a third-millennium BC megalithic tower and surrounding landscape using a combination of architectural drawing, 3D photogrammetry and geographic information systems (GIS) mapping. Our results indicate that at least 181 metric tons of limestone (mean boulder weight 386kg) were hewn to create a monument 20m in diameter and at least 4m high. In addition to considering possible practical functions, including water extraction and a potential defensive purpose, we argue that this tower's central significance lay in its monumentality. At least sixty comparable Umm an-Nar period towers are known; and, as much as the model itself, the process of planning and executing a 3D model led us to recognize that a community of skilled builder/architects used a sophisticated mental template (with variation on a theme) to design and construct them.
Advocates of traditional, agriculture-based models of sociopolitical evolution argue that the ado... more Advocates of traditional, agriculture-based models of sociopolitical evolution argue that the adoption of domesticates is requisite for developments such as sedentism, village life, ascribed status, hereditary leadership, and other features that underpin institutionalized political complexity. We counter in this essay with a well-documented suite of politically complex hunter-gatherer (CHG) societies that exhibit these same features, thereby demonstrating that reliance on agriculture per se—or any other specific food regime such as fishing—should be excised from explanations of emergent political complexity. Despite the failure of the agricentric model to account for a significant number of cases of institutionalized complexity, some of its architects remain entrenched in their disbelief and rigidly ignore the implications of CHG studies. By continuing to situate farming as foundational to everything complex, they perpetuate not only a story of human cultural evolution over the last 10,000 years that is incomplete but also a narrative that is incorrect. We reject subsistence (domesticates) as the central organizing principle and introduce here a new forum for thinking about how societies operate and evolve. We propose a model consisting of integrated platforms of societal dynamics that are inclusive (encourage discourse of all societies), nonprogressive, and serve as an organizational structure to discuss cultural evolution in any comparative or singular ethnographic context. The platforms are nonhierarchical and not fixed in order or importance. They are (1) agency and authority, (2) social differentiation, (3) participation in communal events, (4) organization of production, (5) labor obligations, (6) articulation of ecology and subsistence, and (7) territoriality and ownership. All sociopolitical cases and all topics can be productively discussed on these platforms, from bands to the largest empires, comparatively or diachronically. In the present article, we use the platforms to examine political evolution. We assemble considerable evidence that a variety of dietary regimes are associated with the emergence of institutionalized political complexity. Rather than diet, it is the ways people integrate and use labor that demands our attention.
Papers by Jacob Bongers
PNAS, 2020
Ancient DNA (aDNA) analysis provides a powerful means of investigating human migration, social or... more Ancient DNA (aDNA) analysis provides a powerful means of investigating human migration, social organization, and a plethora of
other crucial questions about humanity’s past. Recently, specialists
have suggested that the ideal research design involving aDNA would
include multiple independent lines of evidence. In this paper, we
adopt a transdisciplinary approach integrating aDNA with archaeological, biogeochemical, and historical data to investigate six individuals found in two cemeteries that date to the Late Horizon (1400 to 1532 CE) and Colonial (1532 to 1825 CE) periods in the Chincha Valley of southern Peru. Genomic analyses indicate that these individuals are genetically most similar to ancient and present-day populations from the north Peruvian coast located several hundred kilometers away. These genomic data are consistent with 16th century written records as well as ceramic, textile, and isotopic data. These results provide some of the strongest evidence yet of state-sponsored resettlement in the pre-Colonial Andes. This study highlights the power
of transdisciplinary research designs when using aDNA data and
sets a methodological standard for investigating ancient mobility
in complex societies.
Dissertation by Jacob Bongers
This research explores the relationship between mortuary practice and sociopolitical change among... more This research explores the relationship between mortuary practice and sociopolitical change among a collection of communities incorporated into the Inca Empire. I conducted this work in the Chincha Valley of central Peru, an area controlled by a complex polity known as the Chincha Kingdom in the Late Intermediate Period, or LIP (AD 1000 – 1400). During the Late Horizon (AD 1400 – 1532), the Chincha Kingdom fell under the rule of the Inca Empire. In this study, I investigated a dense, well-preserved distribution of graves in the middle Chincha Valley. Using methods from archaeology, GIS, and Bayesian statistical modeling, I examined the nature and development of local mortuary practice in the mid-valley from the LIP to the Late Horizon and recorded over 500 well-preserved graves that cluster into 44 mortuary sites. These sites vary in layout and have two distinct grave types that differ in architecture and use: above-ground and subterranean graves (chullpas) and subterranean cists. Radiocarbon data indicate continuity, change, and innovation in tomb use and treatment of the dead through time. I argue that these diachronic mortuary patterns were products of negotiations among indigenous groups and the Inca. Mid-valley peoples manipulated the remains of their dead to produce new deceased persons before and during their incorporation into the Inca Empire. They dynamically reconfigured the ways relationships among the living and the deceased were performed, thereby transforming their sociopolitical landscape in the face of imperial conquest. This study provides support for a model of mortuary practice as an interface through which interactions between complex societies and expansionist empires occurred.
Andean Past by Jacob Bongers
by Monica Barnes, Dan Sandweiss, Ruth Anne Phillips, Catherine M. Bencic, Sara L Juengst, Camille Weinberg, Benjamin Nigra, Maria Cecilia Lozada Cerna, Jacob Bongers, Alejandro Chu, Simón Urbina, Leonor Adán Alfaro, Estefanía Vidal Montero, and Alina Alvarez Larrain This volume of Andean Past contains the following articles, research reports, and obituaries: "Ed... more This volume of Andean Past contains the following articles, research reports, and obituaries: "Editor's Preface" by Monica Barnes; "Donald Frederick Sola" by Monica Barnes; Paulina Mercedes Ledergerber-Crespo" by A. Jorge Arellano-Lopez; "Death Notices (Robert Ascher, Bernd Lambert, Daniel W. Gade, and George Bankes) by Monica Barnes and Bill Sillar; "Obsidian Procurement and Cosmopolitanism at the Middle Horizon Settlement of Conchopata, Peru" by Richard L. Burger, Catherine M. Bencic, and Michael D. Glascock; "Characteristics and Significance of Tapia Walls and the Mochica Presence at Santa Rosa de Pucala in the Mid-Lambayeque Valley" by Edgar Bracamonte; "Health at the Edge of the Wari Empire: An Analysis of Skeletal Remains from Hatun Cotuyoc, Huaro, Peru" by Sara L. Juengst and Maeve Skidmore; "Demographic Analysis of a Looted Late Intermediate Period Tomb, Chincha Valley, Peru" by Camille Weinberg, Benjamin T. Nigra, Maria Cecilia Lozada, Charles Stanish, Henry Tantalean, Jacob Bongers, and Terrah Jones; "Macrobotanical Remains from the 2009 Season at Caylan: Preliminary Insights into Early Horizon Plant Use in the Nepena Valley, North-Central Coast of Peru" by David Chicoine, Beverly Clement, and Kyle Stich; "Obsidian Technology at the Wari Site of Conchopata in Ayacucho, Peru" by Catherine M. Bencic; "Incahuasi, Canete" by Alejandro Chu; "Luis Barreda Murillo's Excavations at Huanuco Pampa, 1965" Monica Barnes; "Early Village Formation in Desert Areas of Tarapaca, Northern Chile (Eleventh Century B.C.--Thirteenth Century A.D.)" by Simon Urbina, Leonor Adan, Constanza Pellegrino, and Estefania Vidal; and "Don Mateo-El Cerro, a Newly Rediscovered Late Period Settlement in Yocavil (Catamarca, Argentina) by Alina Alvarez Larrain.
Conference papers by Jacob Bongers
86th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, 2021
In this paper, David Chicoine, George F. Lau, and Jacob Bongers present preliminary results of ou... more In this paper, David Chicoine, George F. Lau, and Jacob Bongers present preliminary results of our 2019 excavations at the centers of Cerro San Isidro (Nepeña) and Pashash (Pallasca) in the Moro and Cabana regions of north-central Peru, respectively. Both are multi-component hilltop sites that developed into major post-Chavín elite centers, and witnessed a series of later occupations. Data on occupational sequences, fortifications, ceremonial architecture, offering contexts, and material culture are presented to shed comparative light on post-Chavín political developments in two neighboring regions that witnessed apparently quite different trajectories following the demise of the Chavín phenomenon. We focus on materialities of post-Chavín developments and their impact on the rise of new forms of political authority, including the strategic reuse, manipulation and ritual engagement with abandoned places, buildings and things. The comparison helps frame new understandings of about the proliferation of divine lordships in Ancash and the central Andes more broadly.
Journal articles by Jacob Bongers
Journal of Field Archaeology, 2022
This article examines the rise of native, segmentary lordships in the highlands of north-central ... more This article examines the rise of native, segmentary lordships in the highlands of north-central Peru. It reports on new excavations and mapping at the seat of a prehispanic polity, Pashash (Recuay culture), a large hilltop center that developed after the collapse of Chavín civilization. Fieldwork revealed monumental constructions and two special activity contexts radiocarbon-dated to ca. a.d. 200–400: an offering area in a large palatial compound and a room-complex with chambers closed off and sealed with feasting refuse. Multiple lines of evidence help reconstruct a regional picture for the establishment of wealthy local elites. Cultural innovations explicitly link new leaders to roles in defense and warfare, economic production, and early burial cult within a high-status compound. The current data underscore a major break from earlier systems of authority and elite material culture, comprising an organizational pattern that was a precursor to the ethnic polities that predominated in later Andean prehistory.
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Peer-Reviewed Publications by Jacob Bongers
Papers by Jacob Bongers
other crucial questions about humanity’s past. Recently, specialists
have suggested that the ideal research design involving aDNA would
include multiple independent lines of evidence. In this paper, we
adopt a transdisciplinary approach integrating aDNA with archaeological, biogeochemical, and historical data to investigate six individuals found in two cemeteries that date to the Late Horizon (1400 to 1532 CE) and Colonial (1532 to 1825 CE) periods in the Chincha Valley of southern Peru. Genomic analyses indicate that these individuals are genetically most similar to ancient and present-day populations from the north Peruvian coast located several hundred kilometers away. These genomic data are consistent with 16th century written records as well as ceramic, textile, and isotopic data. These results provide some of the strongest evidence yet of state-sponsored resettlement in the pre-Colonial Andes. This study highlights the power
of transdisciplinary research designs when using aDNA data and
sets a methodological standard for investigating ancient mobility
in complex societies.
Dissertation by Jacob Bongers
Andean Past by Jacob Bongers
Conference papers by Jacob Bongers
Journal articles by Jacob Bongers
other crucial questions about humanity’s past. Recently, specialists
have suggested that the ideal research design involving aDNA would
include multiple independent lines of evidence. In this paper, we
adopt a transdisciplinary approach integrating aDNA with archaeological, biogeochemical, and historical data to investigate six individuals found in two cemeteries that date to the Late Horizon (1400 to 1532 CE) and Colonial (1532 to 1825 CE) periods in the Chincha Valley of southern Peru. Genomic analyses indicate that these individuals are genetically most similar to ancient and present-day populations from the north Peruvian coast located several hundred kilometers away. These genomic data are consistent with 16th century written records as well as ceramic, textile, and isotopic data. These results provide some of the strongest evidence yet of state-sponsored resettlement in the pre-Colonial Andes. This study highlights the power
of transdisciplinary research designs when using aDNA data and
sets a methodological standard for investigating ancient mobility
in complex societies.