Chavin

In this monograph, Richard E. Daggett elucidates the life and work of pioneering Peruvian archaeologist Julio C. Tello. He emphases the influence that national and professional politics had upon Tello, often setting up obstacles that had to be overcome. Daggett bases himself largely on contemporary newspaper accounts.

El presente ensayo es una recopilación de los principales aportes al desciframiento de la iconografía chavín, que han utilizado como herramienta metodológica la comparación o la analogía con diferentes narraciones de la mitología amerindia. En particular, este trabajo se enfoca en la comparación de las interpretaciones mitológicas de la única pieza lítica que presenta en su superficie una estructura narrativa: el Obelisco Tello. Las imágenes entrelazadas entre sí sobre la piedra constituyen un conjunto de motivos aislables como elementos mínimos de significado (mitemas), que articulan un discurso narrativo con elementos estructurales recurrentes en diferentes variantes de mitos histórica y etnográficamente identificables. Este estudio representa solo una primera etapa de una investigación de más amplia envergadura sobre la identificación, análisis e interpretación del mito cosmogónico grabado en el Obelisco Tello.

This volume contains the following articles, research reports, and obituaries: "John Victor Murra (August 24, 1916 - October 16, 2006): An Interpretative Biography" by Monica Barnes with a "Bibliography of Works by and about John Victor Murra" by David Block and Monica Barnes; "Introduction to John Victor Murra: A Mentor to Women" by Heather Lechtman and Freda Yancy Wolf de Romero; "Anthropology is My Village" by Heather Lechtman; "Mentors as Intellectual Parents" by Freda Yancy Wolf de Romero; "an Extraordinary Teacher Who Taught All the Time" by Patricia Netherly; "Kicking Off a New Perspective in Ethnohistory" by Ana Maria Lorandi; "The Ability to Bestow Confidence and Stimulate New Ideas" by Victoria Castro; "The Green Pachwork Paper" by Rolena Adorno; "Do Anthropology the Way Poets Write Poetry" by Inge Maria Harman; "Eight Thousand Solutions to the Same Problem" by Silvia Palomeque; "Kinsmen Resurrected: John Victor Murra and the History of Anthropology" by Frank Solomon; "Costanza Di Capua Di Capua (December 17, 1912 - May 5, 2008) by Karen Olsen Bruhns; "Reconstruction of the Burial Offering at Punkuri in the Nepena Valley of Peru's North-central Coast" by Victor Falcon Huayta; "An Analysis of the Isabellita Rock Engraving and Its Archaeological Context, Callejon de Huaylas, Peru" by Victor Manuel Ponte R.; "Strange Harvest: A Discussion of Sacrifice and Missing Body Parts on the North Coast of Peru" by Catherine M. Gaither, Jonathan Bethard, Jonathan Kent, Victor Vasquez Sanchez, Teresa Rosales Tham, and Richard Busch; "A Design Analysis of Moche Fineline Sherds from the Archaeological Site of Galindo, Moche Valley, Peru" by Gregory D. Lockard; "More than Meets the Eye: A Study of Signs in Nasca Art" by Ana Nieves; "Early Cotton Network Knotted in Colored Patterns" by Grace Katterman; "Climate, Agricultural Strategies, and Sustainability in the Pre-Columbian Andes" by Charles R. Ortloff and Michael E. Moseley; "Experiences with the Institute of Andean Research 1941-42 and 1946" by Gordon R. Willey with an "Introduction" by Richard Daggett; "Archaeological Investigations at Antumpa (Jujuy): Contributions to the Characterization of the Early Ceramic Period in the Huamahuaca Region" by Juan B. Leoni; "San Pedro de Atacama" by Carolina Aguero, Muricio Uribe, and Carlos Carraso; "Tarapaca Region" by Mauricio Uribe, Leonor Adan, Carolina Aguero, Cora Moragas, and Flora Viches; "New Archaeological and Rock Art Projects in Bolivia" by Matthias Strecker, Freddy Taboada, and Claudia Rivera; "Exchange at Chavin de Huantar: Insights from Shell Data" by Matthew P. Sayre and Luisa Lopez Aldave; "La Forteleza at Ollantaytambo" by J. Lee Hollowell.

Abstract de la ponencia presentada en el Primer Simposio Internacional sobre la Cultura Recuay (Ancash, Perú 100-700 dC), organizado por Jorge Gamboa y George Lau
Universidad Nacional Santiago Antúnez de Mayolo, Escuela de Arqueología & University of East Anglia, Sainsbury Research Unit
Huaraz, 12 al 14 de julio del 2017

L’étude tomodensitométrique (TDM) d’un crâne avec mandibule siège d’une déformation crânienne intentionnelle de type bilobé est présentée pour la première fois à notre connaissance. Une étude macroscopique et TDM médicale et médico-légale a été réalisée sur un crâne sec de la nécropole d’Ancón au Pérou. Le crâne est conservé au Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle (MNHN) de Paris. Le crâne est le siège d’une déformation antéro-postérieure brachycéphale, oblique, asymétrique et bilobée. La TDM a permis la réalisation de mesures, et de reconstructions 3D du crâne, de l’endocrâne, et de l’épaisseur de la voûte. L’endocrâne montrait la déformation et l’asymétrie du cerveau. L’étude du crâne et des variations d’épaisseur de la voûte a montré que la déformation était ante mortem. La TDM a aidé à évaluer la localisation et l’étendue de la pression par un appareil déformateur complexe. Elle a permis la création infographique à partir de la littérature d’un appareil sophistiqué adapté à la forme du crâne, et la réalisation d’impressions 3D du crâne et de la mandibule à échelle 1. Le même appareil déformateur, adapté à l’impression 3D du crâne, a pu être reconstitué à la main en bois et en coton.

This study uses stable isotope analysis to identify the possible origin and taxon of unusually large worked bone artifacts recovered from the site of Chavín de Huántar in the central highland of Peru (3200–2200 BP). The site was traditionally considered to be an ideal trading point halfway between the Pacific coast and the Amazon jungle. The archaeological specimens were discovered in a workshop area located in the La Banda sector across from the main temple, and they were analyzed for the stable isotopes of carbon, nitrogen, sulfur, and oxygen. Results indicate that the worked bone artifacts are marine in origin and are likely from a cetacean or large pinniped. Their exotic origin and elaborate work have implications about ancient production practices and exchange, and they provide benchmark data and a comparative approach for future analysis of exotic bone artifacts.

Among the grandest and most controversial proposals for a holistic, cross-disciplinary prehistory for humanity is the hypothesis that it was the adoption of agriculture that lay behind the dispersals of the world’s greatest language families. Conspicuous by its absence from this debate, however, is one of humanity’s rare independent hearths of agriculture and ‘pristine’ civilisation development: the Central Andes.

Here we look to this region’s little-known linguistic prehistory, particularly the initial expansions of its two major indigenous language families, Quechua and Aymara. We then set these scenarios alongside archaeological evidence on where, when and how agriculture originated there. The different time-depths of these processes appear to preclude any simplistic cause-and-effect relationship between the two.

Yet we go on to identify significant idiosyncrasies in the origins and development of food production in the Andes, which call for a number of refinements to the basic agriculture—language dispersals hypothesis. These are framed within a generalising principle able to reconcile the appealing explanatory power of the hypothesis at great time-depths with a reining-in of any claims to unique and universal applicability in more recent times. The Andean case ends up transformed — an exception that more proves the rule than refutes it.