Paracas Art and Architecture: Object and Context in South Coastal Peru

Museum Anthropology, 1993

Antiquity, 2021

This comprehensive book by Christian Mader forms part of the ever-expanding scientific output from the Paracas Archaeological Project, led by Markus Reindel and Johny Isla (PAP: 1996 to the present day). The PAP is probably the most wide-ranging, detailed and engrossing archaeological project in the Central Andes from the last 30 years, a worthy example of that German tradition somewhat hubristically termed totale archäologie by the late Henning Bischof (1936-2014). Indeed, the formidable PAP database includes over 1500 recorded sites and years of research, ranging from archaeological surveys and excavations to the latest in scientific methods. It has also been instrumental in producing a large quantity of high-quality PhD research projects over the years. Christian Mader is one of the latest contributors to this increasing field, and this book bears witness to that research. Aside from delving into this rich database, Mader selects 11 sites on which to base his original research, including extensive excavations on three of them: Jauranga near the coast at 285m, Collanco in the productive tropical coastal area known as the yunga (1630m) and Cutamalla at 3300m on the cusp between the temperate, high-valley quechua agricultural and increasingly herding-intensive grassy tundra and high-altitude plateaus known as the suni and puna ecozones. Rather modestly, Mader's stated aim is to reconstruct the pre-Hispanic economic system of the Paracas (800-200 BC) Culture, especially its Late Paracas (370-200 BC) iteration, along the western slopes of the Palpa River drainage of the Andes in southern Peru; yet the book covers much more than that. Over the last 100 years, the Paracas Culture has been mainly known for the impressive richness of its textile and ceramic art styles and iconography. Here, however, Mader takes the significantly less glamorous theme of the Late Paracas prehistoric economy, based around the transport and exchange of obsidian, seashells and animals (camelids). In so doing, early on (Chapters 2 and 4) he provides the most up-to-date and comprehensive analysis of existing theories and positions on the prehistory of Andean economies. Covering ecological complementarity and verticality, circuit mobility, caravanning, transhumance and markets, Mader delves into the anthropology, ethnology and archaeology behind these various economic systems as detailed by stalwarts such as John V. Murra, Lautaro Núñez, Tom Dillehay and Axel Nielsen, among others. It is an impressive synthesis. Against this slew of economic systems, Mader sets up his own, termed economic directness. Economic directness borrows from each of the existing Andean economic models and describes

This article describes and analyzes a highly significant archaeological context discovered in a late Paracas (400–200 BCE) sunken patio in the monumental platform mound of Cerro Gentil, located in the Chincha Valley, Peru. This patio area was used for several centuries for ritual activities, including large-scale feasting and other public gatherings. At one point late in this historical sequence people deposited a great deal of objects in what is demon-strably a single historical event. This was quickly followed by a series of minor events strati-graphically immediately above this larger event. This entire ritual process included the consumption of liquids and food, and involved the offering of whole pottery, pottery fragments , botanical remains, bone, lithics, baskets, pyro-engraved gourds, mummies, and other objects. We interpret these events as an " abandonment ceremony " or " termination ritual " during the late Paracas period, one that may have lasted for weeks or even months. The subsequent Topará occupation at the site (ca. 200 BCE-AD 100) involved the architectural enhancement of the mound area, but the pattern of use of the patio itself ended. Such a termination ritual signals a reorganization in the regional political structure of Paracas society.

Oxford Research Encyclopedias, Latin American History., 2021

Paracas society spread over a large geographical area on the southern Peruvian coast between 800 BCE and 200 BCE. Unlike an "archaeological culture" that has uniform economy, politics, and ideology and is integrated under a single political structure, the Paracas phenomenon was a series of communities adopting different forms of economic and political organizations that were, nevertheless, economically linked and sharing the same religious ideology. The social mechanisms by which all these communities and political entities were linked included exchange, ritual, and religion, which allowed them to share a series of artifacts, social practices, rituals, and religious iconography. In each of the valleys, every entities, or group of communities, had their own architectural and artisanal features and were economically and politically autonomous. The famous archaeological sites associated with Cerro Colorado on the Paracas peninsula seem to have been more than a central place for Paracas society, a social space of integration in which the worship of ancestors stood out as an ideological and religious sustenance that connected communities and elites from different areas of the southern coast of Peru.

The Return of the Living Dead, 2015

1991. In Paracas Art and architecture: object and context in south coastal Peru, Anne Paul, ed., pp. 240-314. University of Iowa Press, Iowa City.

Forschungen zur Archäologie Außereuropäischer Kulturen 16, 2019

The research presented in this volume reconstructs the economic system of the Paracas culture (800-200 BC) in southern Peru. In doing so, the main emphasis is on economic exchange at the western slope of the Andes, with the Late Paracas period (370-200 BC) in the Palpa valleys (Andean Transect) serving as a case study. For this archaeoeconomic approach, Jauranga (285 m.a.s.l.), Collanco (1.630 m.a.s.l.), and Cutamalla (3.300 m.a.s.l.) – where extensive excavations were conducted by the Palpa Archaeological Project of the German Archaeological Institute – are the most important sites. The work is based on analyses of excavated materials, particularly obsidian artifacts, malacological finds, and camelid bones. Therefore, various methods including archaeometric techniques, quantification, artifact classification, and species determination are combined. The results show exchange processes in the western Andes that are characterized by unbalanced commodity flows. Resources from the highlands such as obsidian, camelids and their products arrived at the Pacific desert strip in large amounts, while marine resources such as sea shells reached highland regions only in small amounts. Raw materials were not just procured in the mountains, there were also strategic production centers like Cutamalla. All in all, consumption at coastal settlements like Jauranga needs to be seen as the driving force behind the Paracas economy.

Boletin De Arqueologia Pucp No 13 209 235, 2012