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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
(Re)Constructing The Sacred: Landscape Geoarchaeology At Chavín De Huántar, Peru, Daniel A. Contreras
(Re)Constructing The Sacred: Landscape Geoarchaeology At Chavín De Huántar, Peru, Daniel A. Contreras
Daniel A. Contreras
Chavín de Huántar is a first millennium B.C.E. Central Andean ceremonial center set in a steep mountainous landscape that is at once dynamic and, traditional Andean belief systems would suggest, sacred and animate. Landscape geoarchaeology at the site serves to examine both of these factors, characterizing the site’s dynamic environment while also examining the ways in which Chavín’s inhabitants interacted with their fraught surroundings. Using mapping of geomorphic hazards, the character and chronology of the site’s construction and expansion, and ethnohistoric information on the relationships of indigenous Andean peoples to their environments, I discuss ways of examining this interaction. Landscape …
The Character And Use Of The Soros Hill Obsidian Source, Antiparos (Greece), Tristan Carter, Daniel A. Contreras
The Character And Use Of The Soros Hill Obsidian Source, Antiparos (Greece), Tristan Carter, Daniel A. Contreras
Daniel A. Contreras
This article details the geological and elemental character of the obsidian from the Soros Hill source on the Cycladic island of Antiparos, Greece. EDXRF was used to analyse 40 geological geo-referenced samples. The products are clearly chemically discriminated from those of the other Aegean sources, and those from the Carpathians and central Anatolia. While the obsidian is of excellent tool-making quality, the small size of its nodules seems to have made it a less attractive raw material, attested at only a handful of prehistoric sites in the central Cyclades.
Reconstructing Landscape At Chavin De Huantar, Peru : A Gis-Based Approach, Daniel A. Contreras
Reconstructing Landscape At Chavin De Huantar, Peru : A Gis-Based Approach, Daniel A. Contreras
Daniel A. Contreras
The landscape around the prehistoric Peruvian ceremonial center of Chavin de Huantar has undergone extensive geomorphic and anthropogenic change since the beginning of monumental construction at the site in approximately 1200 BCE. Archaeological and geomorphic stratigraphy from the site and its near periphery provide the data necessary to characterize these changes in detail. This paper reports on the use of GIS-based interpolation tools to approximate a complex prehistoric land surface using unevenly scattered point data. Such an interpolated surface serves as the basis for the reconstruction of the pre- Chavin landscape and assessment of landscape change contemporary with the site.
Implications Of The Fluvial History Of The Wacheqsa River For Hydrologic Engineering And Water Use At Chavín De Huántar, Peru, Daniel A. Contreras, David K. Keefer
Implications Of The Fluvial History Of The Wacheqsa River For Hydrologic Engineering And Water Use At Chavín De Huántar, Peru, Daniel A. Contreras, David K. Keefer
Daniel A. Contreras
Channeling of water through a variety of architectural features represents a significant engineering investment at the first millennium B.C. ceremonial center of Chavín de Huántar in the Peruvian Central Andes. The site contains extensive evidence of the manipulation of water, apparently for diverse purposes. The present configuration of the two local rivers, however, keeps available water approximately 9m below the highest level of water-bearing infrastructure in the site. Geomorphic and archaeological investigation of the fluvial history of the Wacheqsa River has revealed evidence that the Chavín-era configuration of the Wacheqsa River was different. A substantially higher water level, likely the …