Se analizan las redes de tráfico de la Quebrada de Humahuaca en tiempos del “fenómeno Isla”, evaluando críticamente el protagonismo atribuido a Tiwanaku en su organización. Con este fin se presentan las investigaciones realizadas en Muyuna —uno de los principales sitios de la época en la Quebrada— ofreciendo información novedosa sobre contextos domésticos y funerarios, economía y modo de vida. Un análisis bayesiano de todas las dataciones disponibles para el componente Isla lo ubican entre fines del siglo once y comienzos del siglo catorce dC. Estos resultados, junto con el probable origen de los bienes presentes en estos contextos, llevan a concluir que las interacciones con otras regiones de los Andes circumpuneños fueron más importantes para los procesos de diferenciación social en las comunidades Isla que las relaciones con el estado Tiwanaku. En este marco, cobran especial relevancia la relación con el Río Grande de San Juan y la gravitación de ciertos colectivos supra-regionales (pastores, consumidores de alucinógenos) que podrían introducir una dimensión heterárquica en la organización de las redes sur andinas.

Most population estimates for Maya sites are for the Late Classic period, a time of peak population in the Central Maya Lowlands. At Naachtun, Guatemala, a major city during the Early Classic that continued into the Late Classic period, researchers recently carried out an ambitious program of test pitting in residential areas; its aim was to model the growth of residential units during the entire Classic period and so better contextualize the rise of Classic Maya dynasties and the scale of their economic and political power. This article presents an improvement to the existing method for estimating population for periods preceding the population apex (in this case, the Early Classic period): it not only estimates the occupancy rate of residential units occupied pre-apex but also assesses their size, using a typology I developed based on their morphology and pattern of transformation.

Since the 1970s, hundreds of khipus—Andean knotted-string recording devices—have been named after academic researchers. This practice disassociates individual khipus from their places of origin and reifies scientific inequity. Here, a new convention of the form KH#### (e.g., KH0125) is proposed, which we believe represents a more neutral, direct, and accurate nomenclature. The change is implemented in the Open Khipu Repository (OKR), the largest khipu database.

Este informe discute intentos iniciales por cultivar maíz con el uso de agua procedente de Hierve el Agua, y también evalúa los análisis de agua y los datos palinológicos disponibles en las terrazas de dicho sitio. La discusión se extiende también a la toxicidad de boro en el sitio, así como al origen de los minerales disueltos en el agua. Urge cooperación entre instituciones de México y en los Estados Unidos de Norteamérica con el motivo de experimentar con el cultivo de plantas en Hierve el Agua.

Investigations at sites across northwestern Honduras—inside and outside the Maya area—have revealed diverse food activities and ingredients. Paralleling the evidence from durable artifact assemblages, we see transformation over time in materials and practices, as well as the movement of elements across the landscape. Botanical evidence points toward a dynamic overlap between northern and southern societies, with northwestern Honduras serving as a sort of regional crossroads. In this article, we compare cuisines from several ancient communities in northwestern Honduras, using microbotanical and macrobotanical residues. We briefly address the political and historic context of the region and provide abridged biographies of several culinary taxa. Of particular interest are milpa annual crops such as maize and squash, managed and cultivated palm species, wild and managed herbaceous species, edible fruit species, and root and tuberous crops such as lerén, sweet potato, and manioc.

En contestación a la nota de Bischof (1991) refutando nuevamente la aseveración de Bonavia (1990), sobre la falsedad de la pintura occidental de felino de Cerro Sechín, el autor se reafirma en su posición presentando la argumentación que considera pertinente para demonstrar lo que él juzga es el error de Bischof.

Understanding the complex relationships among social identities, long-distance exchange, and migration has long been an important issue in archaeology. In the central Andes, archaeologists have grappled with these issues to understand highland–coastal interaction. We present a case study of these relationships in the coca-growing zone of the Moche Valley (chaupiyunga zone, 200–1,200 m asl) during the Early Intermediate period (400 BC–AD 600). We focus on reconstructing the social identities of the people who lived at Cerro León, a large hill town situated astride an important access route into the chaupiyunga from the highlands. Unlike most sites in the chaupiyunga, the site is dominated by highland-style pottery. Petrographic analysis indicates that the sources of the highland-style pottery were in the adjacent highlands. Our analysis of daily domestic activities, vernacular architecture, personal adornment, and ritual practices, including burial practices, indicates that most of the residents of Cerro León were immigrants from the highlands. We argue that these immigrants produced and reproduced a distinctive highland (Culle) identity throughout the occupation of the site, which lasted 100 to 200 years. Evidence demonstrates that site residents had extensive exchange relationships with coastal Yunga communities in the lower and middle Moche Valley.

This report presents survey and excavation results from the site of Río Chico, located near the city of Puyo, Ecuador. Currently, Río Chico is the oldest multicomponent village-type mound site of the Pastaza drainage, one of the great rivers of the Amazon basin. It is part of a series of monumental sites in the Upper Amazon of Ecuador but is unique in the area because of its evidence of consumption of certain plants and interregional trade.

Andean prehispanic textiles are renown for being complex masterpieces made with labor-intensive techniques and high-quality raw materials. Nevertheless, the vast majority of textiles, those used by the population at large, were plain, simple, and without any decoration. We study a sample composed of the most common textiles used by people living at Cerro de Oro in the Cañete Valley, Peru. Our analysis focuses on fiber selection, yarn thickness, and the presence of errors throughout the process of weaving. We discuss relevant aspects of the social process of textile production, such as the role played by plain-weave textiles in different contexts, their use in different types of garments, and the varied ways community members, with particular skill levels, participated in clothing the living and the dead at Cerro de Oro.

In this study, we address interpersonal violence during the transition between the Middle and the Late Formative periods in the Central Andes, a critical period of political disintegration, hypothesized population pressure, and reorganization of the belief systems that is poorly known from a bioarchaeological viewpoint. Our objective is to understand the nature of the violence and associated factors in this context based on a detailed description of skeletal trauma in 67 well-preserved individuals (20 adolescents and adults and 47 subadults) recovered from Quebrada Chupacigarro cemetery (500–400 BC); this site is located in the middle valley of Supe on the Peruvian north-central coast. To detect patterns and potential causes, we registered the prevalence of traumatic injury according to age, sex, anatomic location, mechanisms (blunt, sharp, mixed, etc.), timing (antemortem or perimortem), and manner (inflicted or accidental). The results show a high prevalence of fractures in the whole population, but especially in adolescents and adults. Eighty percent of the adolescents and adults perished due to the intentional trauma and show patterns that suggest repetitive episodes of interpersonal violence. Perimortem injuries in the skull, face, and thorax are compatible with lethal interpersonal violence. The findings support a probable scenario of intercommunity violence in the middle valley of Supe around 500–400 BC.

In the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, the term cerrito was traditionally used to designate archaeological phenomena that emerge in the form of mounds in different landscapes. Except for recent research developed in the southwestern region of the Patos Lagoon, few advances have occurred since the 1980s in the study of cerritos in Brazil. This article presents an analysis of the lithic industries of sites with mounds in the southwestern region of the Patos Lagoon and in the central region in the current territory of Rio Grande do Sul. The results, along with other data from the sites, suggest that coastal sites were occupied by sedentary fisher-hunter-gatherers, who also possibly domesticated certain plants. Lithic material was scarce there and was mainly produced from pebbles and quartz cobbles using the anvil technique. In contrast, central region formations presented mounds on outcrops, using land, pebbles, and boulders; the area was occupied by a hunter-gatherer group that had projectile points and other instruments carved mainly by façonnage and débitage.

Las enfermedades infecciosas fueron señaladas como la causa principal de muerte en las sociedades pasadas. Sin embargo, hasta el momento son escasos los conocimientos acerca del modo en que afectaron a las poblaciones humanas del sur de Sudamérica. El objetivo de este trabajo es estudiar el impacto que las enfermedades infecciosas tuvieron sobre las poblaciones de cazadores-recolectores que habitaron Patagonia Austral, a partir de la identificación, descripción e interpretación de lesiones óseas en restos humanos del Holoceno medio y tardío (aproximadamente 5200-100 años aP). Se analizaron macroscópicamente 54 individuos hallados en 50 sitios arqueológicos, sobre los cuales se describieron presencia, localización, lateralidad, tipo de formación de hueso nuevo (woven, lamelar, mixto) y distribución de las lesiones óseas. Se registraron lesiones diagnósticas y altamente compatibles con infecciones óseas en ocho (14,8%) individuos (sin diferencias entre sexos y edades), seis de los cuales (75,0%) provienen del sur de Tierra del Fuego. Cuatro individuos presentaron lesiones compatibles con osteomielitis y dos con tuberculosis (un no-adulto y un adulto). Esto último representa un hallazgo relevante para discutir la presencia de tuberculosis en poblaciones pasadas y su evolución en América. Los resultados presentados sugieren además que las evidencias de procesos infecciosos pueden ser recurrentes en análisis específicos sobre muestras esqueletales de cazadores-recolectores.

En la subcuenca de Magdalena en el estado de Jalisco, los pueblos asentados en las inmediaciones del lago aprovecharon los recursos disponibles para la producción artesanal de bienes útiles y suntuarios. La presencia del Volcán de Tequila, el Lago de Magdalena y el sistema Lerma-Chapala-Santiago, facilitaron el acceso a recursos y la movilidad de productos para su distribución. En el centro del cuerpo acuífero fósil se eleva Atitlán, isla que resguarda evidencia de actividades de producción que se relacionaron con el aprovechamiento de recursos minerales y acuáticos por lo menos a partir del año 450 dC y hasta el 1500 dC. Dentro de las evidencias estudiadas sistemáticamente a nivel de superficie, es de nuestro interés una acumulación de objetos de obsidiana que se extiende en un área de 56.400 m2. El análisis espacial de distribución, junto con los de morfología, desgaste y microscopía aplicada a la identificación de huellas de uso, nos permiten explicar que se trató de un espacio de producción especializado de instrumentos de obsidiana mediante la técnica de talla, los cuales fueron empleados para el aprovechamiento de recursos perecederos.