Latin American Antiquity最新文献

In “How Can Spin, Ply, and Knot Direction Contribute to Understanding the Quipu Code?” (2005), mathematician Marcia Ascher referenced new data on 59 Andean khipus to assess the significance of their variable twists and knots. However, this aggregative, comparative impulse arose late in Ascher's khipu research; the mathematical relations she had identified among 200+ previously cataloged khipus were specified only at the level of individual specimens. This article pursues a new scale of analysis, generalizing the “Ascher relations” to recognize meaningful patterns in a 650-khipu corpus, the largest yet subjected to computational study. We find that Ascher formulae characterize at least 74% of khipus, which exhibit meaningful arrangements of internal sums. Top cords are shown to register a minority of sum relationships and are newly identified as markers of low-level, “working” khipus. We reunite two fragments of a broken khipu using arithmetic properties discovered between the strings. Finally, this analysis suggests a new khipu convention—the use of white pendant cords as boundary markers for clusters of sum cords. In their synthesis, exhaustive search, confirmatory study, mathematical rejoining, and hypothesis generation emerge as distinct contributions to khipu description, typology, and decipherment.

This article examines Middle and Late Preclassic period ritual activity and caches discovered in the Central E Group complex at the ancient Maya site of Cival, which is located in northeastern Peten, Guatemala. It focuses on a series of excavations conducted in 2013 and 2014 at Structure 9, the E Group's western radial pyramid and uses theories of social memory and sacred place to provide insight into the recently discovered caches, termination rituals, and the deliberate destruction of architectural features found there. It also draws on previous ritual activity conducted in the Central E Group plaza and the site's broader history to obtain a more comprehensive understanding of the role of this complex as a sacred place and hub of memory at Cival for more than 1,000 years.

This report examines the deposit of a sixteenth-century cache of silver aquillas within a Chachapoya household at the site of Purun Llacta de Soloco. The report examines their context and contents. These findings have implications for a larger examination of social value in Andean societies and the specialized treatment and use of ritual objects during the tumultuous colonial period.

La navegación, la tecnología naval, la vida a bordo y las actividades llevadas a cabo en barcos de época moderna y contemporánea han sido temas ampliamente estudiados dentro de la arqueología marítima y náutica. Sin embargo, el devenir de los náufragos sobrevivientes de accidentes y las correspondientes evidencias materiales en la costa, no fueron abordados en grado semejante. Las investigaciones muestran un desarrollo dispar, destacando los trabajos realizados en el Pacífico occidental. En Latinoamérica, esta problemática se encuentra aún apenas esbozada. El estudio arqueológico de campamentos de náufragos puede aportar información novedosa para conocer las relaciones humanas, interpersonales e intergrupales, en situaciones de crisis. En este artículo, presentamos los primeros resultados del análisis arqueológico-histórico de la materialidad asociada al sitio Faro Segunda Barranca 4, localizado en el Partido de Patagones, Provincia de Buenos Aires, Argentina. A partir de una discusión de las diferentes líneas de evidencia, identificamos los restos como un campamento de náufragos en el marco de la Guerra del Brasil o Guerra de Cisplatina (1825-1828).