Archaeology In South America Research Articles

Towards an Open Digital Ecosystem for Archaeology in South America: The BADACor (Córdoba Archaeological Sites Database) as a case of an open digital archaeological source for heritage management in central Argentina

BaDACor is a database that contains a comprehensive inventory of archaeological sites located in the province of Córdoba, Argentina. The creation of this database was the result of a top-down approach, which involved the collaboration of decision-makers and professionals from the academic and state-governmental sectors. Furthermore, the database has also been utilised in a bottom-up approach, whereby interest groups and citizens concerned with heritage preservation have made use of it. This has been particularly important in light of the construction of Highway 38, which has resulted in damage to natural habitats and the destruction of territories of communities with traditional ways of life. Additionally, the construction of the highway has also endangered the integrity of ancestral territories loaded with symbolism for aboriginal communities. BaDACor has been employed in legal claims in cases of conflict with the state, and has proved to be an invaluable tool for heritage management. This is especially significant for local communities and indigenous groups who have historically had their heritage desecrated, destroyed, and hidden. The availability of BaDACor on different platforms has facilitated better access to information while also ensuring the preservation of digital data. The use of digital media has been reinforced through talks, conferences, and meetings with stakeholders to ensure that the voices of affected communities are heard in decision-making processes.

Indigenous Archaeology, Community Archaeology, and Decolonial Archaeology: What are we Talking About? A Look at the Current Archaeological Theory in South America with Examples

In this article, I review the various forms of political commitment in the field of archaeology in South America over recent decades using three cases: one from Argentina and two from Colombia. The several types of political engagements that can be categorized involve multiple levels of work, from the use of archaeological excavation in projects with indigenous peoples to the rejection of the application of archaeology within the purposes of the indigenous social movement; in between those two options, we distinguish practices such as multiculturalism and its reification of culture. At this level, past, heritage, and history become merchandise for cultural markets.

Development and Disciplinary Complicity: Contract Archaeology in South America Under the Critical Gaze

In South America, as elsewhere, development projects have to go through environmental permitting, a component of which is the archaeological assessment of the areas to be impacted. Because such an assessment is paid for by the development companies seeking such a permit, it has come to be known as contract archaeology. Given the accelerated pace of development projects in the region, it is not surprising that contract archaeology has grown exponentially. The academic literature dealing with it and related fields has also witnessed a rapid growth, which this article seeks to review. In doing so, it discusses the literature that accepts and promotes contract archaeology ( a) as a part of environmental permitting; ( b) as the primary stimulus responsible for widening the job market, whose structure has transformed disciplinary practice to a large extent; and ( c) in terms of its relationship with the archaeological record and with heritage education. This article also reviews a growing literature, both supportive and critical, that assesses contract archaeology.

Stories from below: human remains at the Gothenburg Museum of Natural History and the Museum of World Culture

This article adopts a ‘cultural biography’ approach to the examination of an archaeological collection from Arica, Chile, involving two museums located in Gothenburg, Sweden. It provides a comprehensive overview of the history of the collection and how the meanings and contexts of a cranium belonging to this collection have changed over time. Different stages in the biography of the cranium are reconstructed here: we document and describe a shift within the western museum world, focusing on Sweden, from considering the scientific value of human remains to considering another dimension linked to livelihood and personhood; we claim that following the intimate trajectory of an object permits us to move through and document the changing value systems in the history of museums in Sweden and its links to the early development of archaeology in South America, together with the collecting practices of Swedish and German scholars such as Max Uhle and Erland Nordenskiöld.

ALBERTO REX GONZÁLEZ, DEAN OF SOUTH AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGY

1 Nota del Editor: Este comentario/obituario esta basado en una carta de apoyo a la postulacion de Alberto Rex Gonzalez al premio Lifetime Achievement Award Society for American Archaeology enviada por el autor al comite ad hoc de la Sociedad Americana de Arqueologia en diciembre de 2008. 2 Rebecca Webb Wilson University Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, Religion, and Culture and Professor of Anthropology and Latin American Studies, Department of Anthropology, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37325, Tel: 615-3228379. tom.d.dillehay@Vanderbilt.Edu neighboring countries such as Chile, Bolivia, and Uruguay made him an international figure. A man of great wit and warmth, as well as learning, he trained generations of anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians. He was a master synthesizer, and his major works contained many of his most provocative and influential writings. Outside of South America, he was perhaps best known for his research into the Formative cultures of Northwest Argentina, the La Aguada post-Formative culture, and art and iconographic analyses of a wide range of archaeological materials. For many of us, one of the most important features of Rex’s approach to anthropology was that he always maintained an empirical dimension without becoming atheoretical. He was always focused on data collection, which necessitated intensive and extensive fieldwork. Beginning in the late 1940s, Rex built on the work of other scholars to establish the basic groundwork for an understanding of the major attributes of several important cultures, including Tafi, Cienega, Condorhuasi, Belem, among others. His field collaborations with other scholars were of such scope that many widely used terms for archaeological cultures derive from these investigations. Terminologically, then, he leaves an indelible imprint on the archaeology of South America. He also laid the empirical and theoretical groundwork for understanding one of the earliest complex societies of Northwest Argentina –the La Aguada culture. In recent decades, Gonzalez’s middle-range theoretical interests in comparing and dating cultures led him to pioneer innovative ways of analyzing artifacts. To trace relatedness and change in cultures through ceramic classification, for instance, he defined many type-variety ceramic models in Northwest Argentina. For Gonzalez, the comparative Dr. Alberto Rex Gonzalez was an Argentine archeologist and anthropologist who I knew for more than thirty years. His intellectual and professional achievements and influences are highly worth honoring and remembering here. Dr. Alberto Rex Gonzalez was the Dean of southern cone South American archaeology and the founding father of modern Argentine archaeology. For over 60 years, his experience in archeology focused on the first human populations in the southern cone, the beginnings of complex societies in the Andes, and the art and symbolism of those societies. He supervised, oversaw, or helped to arrange archeological excavations at sites all over Argentina. Rex’s long distinguished career in anthropological archaeology established the first basic chronology for most of Argentina. He meticulously documented cultural sequences for contiguous regions in Northwest Argentina, northern Patagonia, southern Bolivia, and northern Chile, and once radiocarbon dating became more available in the 1950s and 1960s, he was able to substantiate the timing of migrations and diffusions over considerable distances. He also was one of the major players in the debates surrounding the development and application of the period/ horizon style concept in Andean archaeology. Yet, his interests were not purely in formal chronology and phase building. Early in his career, he was concerned with questions of diffusion, migration, environmental change, political economy, symbolism, and others. As a consequence, he helped to place the archeology of Argentina and particularly Northwest Argentina on the South American map and in the international arena. Although his archeological and anthropological research were largely concentrated in Argentina, his professional visits and talks and his widespread development of students and proteges in Volumen 44, No 2, 2012. Paginas 205-208

Recent Landscape Archaeology in South America

South American archaeologists use the term landscape to analyze a broad range of relationships. Examples include intensive agriculture and political power, myth and place, and climate change and cultural development. Landscape archaeology is necessarily spatial analysis, but scholars work at different scales and use different methods. This essay highlights the influence of geography, anthropology, and new methodologies on four definitions of landscape: ecological habitat, built environment, a stage for performance, and integrating subsistence and settlement. In a number of cases, landscape archaeologists, stakeholders, and researchers from different traditions work at different scales to meaningfully share information, clarify their differences, and compare their analyses and conclusions.

“Looking South”: Historical Archaeology in South America

An overview of the history and development of historical archaeology in South America from its beginnings to the present is presented here, covering the origins, theoretical frameworks, and subjects of investigation. Historical archaeology in South America has experienced an accelerated growth since the mid-1980s. Taking these circumstances into account, some of the most outstanding projects headed by South American archaeologists during the last decades are analyzed.

Race and racism in South American archaeology

This article addresses the issue of race and racism in the archaeology of South America taking into account contemporary contributions in order to analyse and discuss the subtle functioning of racist thinking and ideas. It also provides a theoretical framework of departure for deconstructing and interpreting race and racism as social and cultural phenomena trying to elucidate the powerful effects implied by racist feelings. In a more general sense, this paper attempts to show that race and racism are still vivid in many social and cultural fields – including scientific and academic ones, functioning sometimes as a powerfully rooted belief.

The South-American Connection Gaston Maspero, Egyptology and Americanist Archaeology at Montevideo (Uruguay), 1868

In 1867, young Gastón Máspero arrived in Montevideo, Uruguay, to translate a book written by the Argentine historian Vicente Fidel López, who, while during his exile conducted his campaign to run for office, also devoted himself to Quechua and the linguistics from Perú. The year he spent in Montevideo coincided with the presence of other travelers, antiquarians and pioneers of archaeology in South America, as well as with the exhibition of major Egyptian collections at Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro. He was in the right place at the right time. Eventually, in spite of having concentrated on Egyptology, would never lost contact with Americanism or with the South American countries.

Hunter-Gatherer Archaeology in South America

▪ Abstract A general overview of hunter-gatherer archaeology in South America is given by recognizing the main problems in a South American context. Environmental framework and Paleoecological changes are summarized. Pleistocene and Holocene archaeology is reviewed in terms of these particularities. With respect to the Pleistocene, I review Pre-Clovis human presence in South America, technological differences between North and South America, variability in South American subsistence strategy, colonization and demographic models, and migratory routes. The Holocene archaeology is divided into Early and Late. For the former, I consider establishment of adaptive strategies (as marine adaptations), new artifact designs, and mortuary behaviors. For the latter, I consider exchange networks, emergence of complex hunter gatherers, mortuary behavior, origins of food production, and the contact with European populations.

On archaeological praxis, gender bias and indigenous peoples in South America

This article discusses several aspects of the practice of archaeology in South America, specifically in the Southern Cone. Examining two key issues: the socio-political context of knowledge production and the positioning of South American archaeology in relation to its European and North American counterparts. Three cases that bridge these issues are examined. First, Gero’s argument for gender bias in the recording of field data, based in her ethnographic work during the excavation of the Paleondian site of Arroyo Seco 2. Second, the reburial of the human remains of Inakayal (an Indian chief who died at the end of the nineteenth century). Third, the excavation of the Inca mummies of the Llullaillaco peak in the southern Andes. The first is a critique on methodological grounds, the second demonstrates that Argentinean archaeology cannot free itself from its colonial past and the third illustrates the ethical dimension of archaeological praxis, specifically the complex interaction between local and foreign archaeologists.

Archaeology. History, and Historical Archaeology in South America

This paper discusses the relationship between history and archaeology in general, their common concerns and links with historical archaeology. It deals with the development of historical archaeology in three related South American countries, Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay, and pays attention to recent trends in the theory and practice of the discipline in the area.

On Population, Foraging Efficiency, and Plant Domestication

On Population, Foraging Efficiency, and Plant Domestication

Archaeological Work in South America, 1934 to 1936

Two years ago Lothrop (1934) published a summary of archaeological work in South America covering the years 1931–1934. This article continues the summary up to 1936. Relatively few archaeological expeditions have come to my attention in this period and consequently the review is based largely on published accounts. Such field reports as are available are incorporated under the proper sections. Thompson (1936) has published a guide leaflet on the archaeology of South America, reviewing the various fields included. Other publications refer more specifically to single sections. The review of sections starts in the Andean region, and continues with the eastern South American countries.