Category: Latin America

Gheo-Shih: An Archaic Macroband Camp in the Valley of Oaxaca

Gheo-Shih, an Archaic site in the Valley of Oaxaca, was a 1.5 hectare open-air macroband camp near the Mitla River. It was repeatedly occupied in the summer rainy season during the period (cal.) 7500–4000 BC, possibly by 25–50 people. At other times of the year the local population dispersed in smaller, family-sized groups, occupying microband camps in caves and rockshelters. The available macrofossil and palynological data suggest that between 5000 and 4000 BC, the inhabitants were cultivating maize, squash, gourds, and (possibly) runner beans, while continuing to collect wild plants and hunt deer, rabbit, and mud turtle.

This site report describes the discovery of Gheo-Shih and the subsequent research carried out there: a systematic surface pickup, a series of test pits, targeted excavations, and analysis of the materials recovered.

The Burials of Cerro Azul, Peru

Joyce Marcus directed excavations at the site of Cerro Azul in Peru’s Cañete Valley. In two previous volumes she reported on (1) a fish storage facility and the architecture, ceramics, and brewery in an elite residential compound, and (2) the inner workings of the coastal economic system.
In the course of her fieldwork, Marcus came across areas where Late Intermediate (AD 1000–1470) burials had been disturbed by illegal looting. She decided to salvage as much information from these looted burials as she could. Among her discoveries were that men at Cerro Azul were often buried with fishing nets, slings, and bolas, while women were frequently buried with belt looms, workbaskets, cotton and woolen yarn, barcoded spindles, and needlecases. This third Cerro Azul volume provides an inventory of all the burial data that Marcus was able to salvage.

Zapotec Monuments and Political History

Joyce Marcus

M 61

Joyce Marcus, curator of Latin American Archaeology at the University of Michigan Museum of Anthropological Archaeology and Robert L. Carneiro Distinguished University Professor of Social Evolution, excavated in Mexico’s Valley of Oaxaca for decades. Here she draws on her own work and that of other scholars to create an encyclopedic, lavishly illustrated work on the origins and use of Zapotec writing.

Cueva Blanca: Social Change in the Archaic of the Valley of Oaxaca

Kent V. Flannery and Frank Hole

M 60

Archaeologists Flannery and Hole excavated a series of Archaic sites in the Valley of Oaxaca, including Cueva Blanca, as part of a project on the prehistory and human ecology of this region of Mexico. This cave yielded artifacts from the Late Pleistocene through the Early Archaic to the Late Archaic.

Coastal Ecosystems and Economic Strategies at Cerro Azul, Peru: The Study of a Late Intermediate Kingdom

Joyce Marcus

M 59

Cerro Azul, a pre-Inca fishing community in the Kingdom of Huarco, Peru, stood at the interface between a rich marine ecosystem and an irrigated coastal plain. Under the direction of its noble families, Cerro Azul dried millions of fish for shipment to inland communities, from which it received agricultural products and dried llama meat.

Excavations at San José Mogote 2: The Cognitive Archaeology

Kent V. Flannery and Joyce Marcus

M 58

San José Mogote is a 60-70 ha Formative site in the northern Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico, which was occupied for a thousand years before the city of Monte Albán was founded. Filling 432 pages and utilizing more than 400 photographs and line drawings, this book describes in detail more than 35 public buildings, including men’s houses, one-room temples, a performance platform, two-room state temples, a ballcourt, and two types of palaces.

The Northern Titicaca Basin Survey: Huancané-Putina

Charles Stanish, Cecilia Chávez Justo, Karl LaFavre, Aimée Plourde

M 56

This landmark book synthesizes the results of more than a decade of fieldwork in southern Peru—where Stanish and his team systematically surveyed more than 1000 square kilometers in the northern Titicaca Basin—and it details several hundred new sites in the Huancané-Putina River valley.

Prehispanic Settlement Patterns in the Upper Mantaro and Tarma Drainages, Junín, Peru: Volume 2, The Wanka Region

Jeffrey R. Parsons, Charles M. Hastings, Ramiro Matos M.

M 53

This monograph is based on six months of systematic regional survey in the Wanka Region of Peru’s sierra central, carried out in two field seasons in 1975–1976 by the Junin Archaeological Research Project (JASP) under the co-direction of Jeffrey R. Parsons (University of Michigan) and Ramiro Matos Mendieta (Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos).

Advances in Titicaca Basin Archaeology–III

Alexei Vranich, Elizabeth A. Klarich, Charles Stanish

M 51

The focus of this volume is the northern Titicaca Basin, an area once belonging to the quarter of the Inka Empire called Collasuyu. The original settlers around the lake had to adapt to living at more than 12,000 feet, but as this volume shows so well, this high-altitude environment supported a very long developmental sequence.

Domestic Life in Prehispanic Capitals: A Study of Specialization, Hierarchy, and Ethnicity

Linda R. Manzanilla, Claude Chapdelaine

M 46

With major differences in size, urban plans, and population density, the capitals of New World states had large heterogeneous societies, sometimes multiethnic and highly specialized, making these cities amazing backdrops for complex interactions.

The Last Pescadores of Chimalhuacán, Mexico: An Archaeological Ethnography

Jeffrey R. Parsons

AP 96

Based on his study of the nearly vanished aquatic economy of Chimalhuacán in the Valley of Mexico, Parsons describes the surviving vestiges of aquatic insect collection and fishing and considers their developmental and archaeological implications within a broad context of historical, ethnographic, biological, ecological, and archaeological information from Mexico, North and South America, the Near East, and Africa.

Excavations at San José Mogote 1: The Household Archaeology

Kent V. Flannery and Joyce Marcus, with a multidimensional scaling of houses by Robert G. Reynolds

M 40

San José Mogote, an early village and chiefly center in Mexico’s Oaxaca Valley, was excavated over a fifteen-year period. This volume reports in detail on every Early and Middle Formative house recovered, including a complete inventory of artifacts, features, plants, animal bones, and craft raw materials by house, with extensive piece-plotting of items on house floors and dooryards.

Plants of the Petén Itza’ Maya: Plantas de los maya itza’ del Petén

Scott Atran, Ximena Lois, Edilberto Ucan Ek’

M 38

The Itza’ Maya of the Petén in Guatemala preside over a unique rainforest biosphere in danger of disappearing. Equally at risk is their own botanical knowledge, from taxonomy to medicinal uses. This volume contains a history of the Petén Itza’ Maya; explanation of Itza’ taxonomy; tables and keys to plant usage; common names in English, Spanish, and several indigenous languages; and much more.

The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico: An Archaeological Ethnography

Jeffrey R. Parsons

AP 92

In the 1980s, a few traditional saltmakers were still manufacturing several kinds of salt in the eastern Valley of Mexico. This in-depth study of the methodology of this dying craft includes a comparative study of pre-industrial saltmaking around the world and considers the implications of this knowledge for future archaeological research.