Yutopian: Archaeology, Ambiguity, and the Production of Knowledge in Northwest Argentina 9781477303948
Around 400 BCE, inhabitants of the Southern Andes took up a sedentary lifestyle that included the practice of agricultur
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English Pages 396 [436] Year 2015
Polecaj historie
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Yu to p i an
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In situ anthropomorphic Candelaria sherd from Estructura Uno, eager to tell its story.
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Yutopian Archaeology, Ambiguity and the Production of Knowledge in Northwest Argentina
J oan M . G e ro
University of Texas Press Austin
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Copyright © 2015 by the University of Texas Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First edition, 2015 Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to: Permissions University of Texas Press P.O. Box 7819 Austin, TX 78713-7819 http://utpress.utexas.edu/index.php/rp-form The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of ansi/niso z39.48-1992 (r1997) (Permanence of Paper). Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gero, Joan M., author. Yutopian : archaeology, ambiguity, and the production of knowledge in Northwest Argentina / Joan M. Gero. — First edition. pages cm — (The William and Bettye Nowlin series in art, history, and culture of the Western Hemisphere) Includes bibliographical references. isbn 978-0-292-77201-4 (cloth : alk. paper) — isbn 978-0-292-77202-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) — isbn 978-1-4773-0394-8 (library e-book) — isbn 978-1-4773-0395-5 (non-library e-book) 1. Catamarca (Argentina : Province)—Antiquities. 2. Argentina, Northwest—Antiquities. 3. Excavations (Archaeology)—Argentina. 4. Indians of South America—Argentina—Catamarca (Province)—Antiquities. 5. Community archaeology—Argentina. 6. Archaeology— Fieldwork. I. Title. II. Series: William & Bettye Nowlin series in art, history, and culture of the Western Hemisphere. f2821.1.c3g47 2015 982'.45— dc23 2014047158 doi:10.7560/772014
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Facts “Zurich is in the Alps” I learned that, and had a fact. But I thought the Alps were in South America. Then I learned that’s the Andes—the Alps were somewhere else. And Zurich is famous, for something. So I gave up fact and went to myth: Zurich is the name of a tropical bird that whets its bill on the ironwood tree in South America singing about life and how good facts are. The Alps are a people who raise reindeer, somewhere else. Then it became important that the moon be a close friend. I wanted the wind always to make that same sound, sustaining us through all the seasons, and always around us—the night, and then the world. Moons have changed many times by now, and the wind has a voice more peremptory. Clear nights have deepened all the way to the stars. Zurich is famous and far from here, And there isn’t enough room for all the facts— In this world. William Stafford
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Contents
List of Figures
xv
List of Tables
xxi
Acknowledgments
xxiii
Frameworks | 1
1. Introduction
2
2. Framework: Knowledge production at Yutopian
8
3. Framework: Ambiguity and the lust for certitude
12
Project Context | 17
4. Narrative: Project origins in a British steak dinner
18
5. Socio-politics: Finding Northwest Argentina
23
6. Narrative: Archaeologists and lugareños meet at Yutopian
28
7. Backstory: Chronology in Northwest Argentina
35
8. Argument: Ceramic sequences and social processes
45
9. Narrative: Why excavate at Yutopian?
48
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Contents
10. Socio-politics: Should North American archaeologists dig in Argentina?
51
Starting to Dig | 55
11. Argument: The positionality of practice
56
12. Episode: Digging test pits
60
13. Raw data: What the test pits told us
63
14. Narrative: The incredible Pozo de Prueba 18
65
15. Episode: Extending test pit excavations
67
16. Andean ways: Inadvertent human remains
70
17. Episode: Opening Estructura Uno
71
18. Raw data: Inventory of artifact counts and special finds from Units 300, 301 and 302
76
19. Narrative: Emotional moments
79
20. Andean ways: The rodeo
81
21. Argument: Excavation forms
83
Estructura Dos | 89
22. Narrative: Coming and going
90
23. Episode: Expectations and excavations in Estructura Dos
92
24. Los hermanos
98
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Contents
25. Raw data: Inventory of special finds from Estructura Dos
99
26. Narrative: Why was Estructura Dos disappointing?
100
27. Backstory: Why live in a semi-subterranean house?
102
Estructura Uno | 107
28. Episode: Excavating Estructura Uno
108
29. Descriptive data: A tour of the occupation floor of Estructura Uno
112
30. Raw data: Inventory of special and general finds from Estructura Uno, Units 303–306
117
31. Major ambiguity: Metallurgy in the house?
120
32. Argument: How the gendered household works
123
33. Andean ways: Buy the cage and get the chicken
127
34. Episode: Analysis in the field
128
Estructura Tres | 131
35. Narrative: Arrivals, decisions, decisions!
132
36. Backstory: Andean ethnobotany and flotation at Yutopian
135
37. Episode: Excavating Estructura Tres
138
38. Raw data: Inventory of special finds from Estructura Tres
142
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Contents
39. Narrative: The peculiar pits of Estructura Tres
143
40. Andean ways: Honoring Pachamama
148
Interpreting Núcleo Uno | 153
41. Episode: Exploring Núcleo Uno’s shared patio
154
42. The square feature in the round patio
157
43. Descriptive data: The entranceways of Núcleo Uno
160
44. Narrative: The life history of Núcleo Uno
163
45. Cooking the data: Changing patterns of lithic consumption in Núcleo Uno—Chalcedony and obsidian 166 46. Narrative: How unique is Núcleo Uno at Yutopian?
169
47. Backstory: How unique is Núcleo Uno in the world?
171
Estructura Once and the Issue of Remodeling Houses | 175
48. Episode: The call of Estructura Once
176
49. Andean ways: Eating quirquincho (armadillo)
181
50. Raw data: Diagnostic ceramics by level from Estructura Once
183
51. Descriptive data: Remodeling and repositioning the doorways
184
52. Narrative: What did we learn from Estructura Once?
186
53. Puzzle: What about the saucer-shaped house floors?
188
x
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Contents
54. Episode: Pozos de Prueba 12 and 12a
190
Estructura Cuatro | 193
55. Episode: Opening up Estructura Cuatro (1996)
194
56. Narrative in two modalities: The tri-lobate hearth
197
57. Descriptive data: The hearth occupation level in Estructura Cuatro
201
58. Narrative: Last-day fervor in Estructura Cuatro
205
59. Socio-politics: Good-byes
207
60. Episode: Estructura Cuatro excavations in 1998— The lower occupation
209
61. Raw data: Inventory of special finds from Estructura Cuatro 213 62. Descriptive data: The cache pit
215
63. Andean ways: Chañar drinks
218
Looking for Núcleo Dos | 221
64. Narrative: Where was Estructura Cuatro’s entranceway?
222
65. Episode: Searching for Cinco and Núcleo Dos
226
66. Raw data: Inventory of special finds from Estructura Cinco 231 67. Narrative: Radical remodeling in Núcleo Dos
232
68. Argument: Estructura Cuatro—Ritual and quotidian
235 xi
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Contents
69. Narrative: A lab for all reasons
237
70. Socio-politics: Yutopian in the community
239
Understanding Yutopian as an Early Formative Settlement | 243
71. Raw data: Comparative characteristics of Yutopian structures
244
72. Raw data: Radiocarbon chronology
245
73. Narrative: The Formative settlement at Yutopian
250
74. Backstory: Plazas and a “public”
254
75. Argument: Yutopian’s boundaries and the site map
258
76. Socio-politics: Why Yutopian has so little Formative context
261
77. Entranceway ideologies
263
78. Andean ways: Water management at Yutopian
266
Data from the Experts | 269
79. Data from the experts: Agricultural practices at Yutopian (with Jack Rossen) 270 80. Data from the experts: Plants and diet, now and then (with Jack Rossen)
274
81. Data from the experts: Phytolith facts
277
82. Data from the experts: Faunal remains (with Andrés Izeta)
279
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Contents
83. Data from the experts: Ceramic forms and designs (with M. Fabiana Bugliani)
284
84. Cooking the data: Chalcedony and obsidian, part 2
290
85. Data: Stone tools from other angles
292
86. Data: Cross-mends and what they tell us
299
87. Data: Beads and spindle whorls
302
Cardonal by Comparison | 307
88. Narrative: The “other” Early Formative site—Cardonal
308
89. Argument: Testing archaeology and its methods
312
90. Socio-politics: Traveling to Cardonal
314
91. Episode: A short field season testing Cardonal house structures
317
92. Raw data: Special finds from the 2004 Cardonal field season
323
93. Socio-politics: North-South collaborations in archaeology
325
94. Backstory: Grinding stones (conanas, cutanas, morteros) and the holes in them
327
95. Episode: Later work at Cardonal
331
96. Andean ways: Llama caravans and long-distance exchange
333
97. Narrative: Cardonal and Yutopian
337
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Contents
Wrap-Up and Postscript | 341
98. Wrap-up: Putting the project to bed
342
99. Postscript: Early Formative society— Where’s the monumental?
345
100. Follow-through: References cited
350
100. Index
361
xiv
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Figures frameworks
Figure 1. Early Formative bronze bracelets
3
Project Context
Figure 2. Map of Northwest Argentina, showing Santa María Figure 3. Santamariana burial urn in the form of a woman with cup Figure 4. Formative period incised ceramics Figure 5. Map of the Valle del Cajón Figure 6. Calchaquí Mountains Figure 7. View of the Valle del Cajón Figure 8. Preparing the mules at La Hoyada for survey Figure 9. Contemporary homestead in the Valle del Cajón Figure 10. Jorge Chaile with image of San Juan Figure 11. The pilgrims’ procession toward Yutopian Figure 12. Yutopian ridge and the Chaile homestead Figure 13. Jorge Chaile and family in 1993 Figure 14. Manuel Zavaleta overseeing excavation, ca. 1900 Figure 15. Santamariana urns Figure 16. Quilmes, a reconstructed Regional Development period site Figure 17. Santamariana urn sequence Figure 18. Loma Alto: Individual homesteads characteristic of the Early Formative Figure 19. Variety of Early Formative ceramic styles Figure 20. Condorhuasi ceramics Figure 21. Early Formative suplicante sculpture Figure 22. Early Formative pipe Figure 23. Aguada ceramic, Museo de La Plata
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19 20 21 22 24 26 29 29 30 31 33 34 35 37 37 39 40 41 41 42 42 44
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Figures
Starting to Dig
Figure 24. Map of Yutopian and the first 20 test pits Figure 25. Opening the first pozos de prueba (test pits) Figure 26. Conana and mano framed by Pozo de Prueba 18 Figure 27. Map of northern sector of Yutopian Figure 28. Opening Units 300, 301 and 302 in Estructura 1 Figure 29. Construction pattern of northern wall of Estructura 1 Figure 30. Grinding stone and fractured black bowl Figure 31. Bone tool (“spatula”) from Estructura 1, Unit 302 Figure 32. Polished black bowl from Estructura 1, Unit 300 Figure 33. Ramona and Jorge vaccinating cows
58 61 66 72 73 74 75 78 80 82
Estructura Dos
Figure 34. Reconstructing large olla from Estructura 1 Figure 35. Male bonding at Yutopian Figure 36. Estructura 2 view, with entranceway Figure 37. Map of Estructura 2 Figure 38. Small points from Estructura 2, Unit 310 Figure 39. Estructura 2 at bedrock Figure 40. Los hermanos (laminating stones) Figure 41. Freshly made adobe bricks Figure 42. Contemporary house in La Quebrada
90 91 93 95 96 97 98 104 104
Estructura Uno
Figure 43. Plant-impressed daub from Estructura 1, Unit 303 108 Figure 44. Calendaria vessel in situ in Estructura 1, Unit 303 109 Figure 45. Escoria from Estructura 1, Unit 304 110 Figure 46. Estructura 1 at bedrock 111 Figure 47. Map of Estructura 1 occupation floor 113 Figure 48. Cylindrical mortero from Estructura 1 occupation floor 114 Figure 49. Reconstructed Calendaria vessel from Estructura 1 115 Figure 50. Carbonized Phaseolus vulgaris bean from Estructura 1 116 Estructura Tres
Figure 51. Donkey loaded with field equipment Figure 52. Improvised flotation system used at Yutopian Figure 53. Estructura 3 at 90 cm
133 137 139
xvi
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Figures
Figure 54. Map of Estructura 3 at bedrock Figure 55. Section across Estructura 3 occupation floor Figure 56. Estructura 3 at bedrock Figure 57. Paul standing in Estructura 3 central pit Figure 58. Partial contents of large pit, Estructura 3 Figure 59. Puma figurine from Estructura 3 Figure 60. Double pit during excavation Figure 61. Estructura 3 Pachamama offering Figure 62. Jorge’s Pachamama altar
140 141 144 145 145 147 147 150 151
Interpreting Núcleo Uno
Figure 63. Map of patio excavation units, Núcleo 1 Figure 64. Jorge and Santo’s “patio” and hearth Figure 65. Square feature, Núcleo 1 patio Figure 66. Large Aguada sherd from square feature Figure 67. Estructura 1 threshold stone Figure 68. Llama cranium ladle from Estructura 2 Figure 69. Formative patio groups from Taf í del Valle
155 156 158 159 161 162 170
Estructura Once and the issue of remodeling houses
Figure 70. Upper floor, Estructura 11 Figure 71. Map of late (upper) floor of Estructura 11 Figure 72. Late (RDP) pottery from Estructura 11 Figure 73. Map of Formative floor of Estructura 11 Figure 74. Clay post molds associated with Estructura 11 Formative entranceway Figure 75. Charcoal-laden pit PP 12
176 178 179 179 180 191
Estructura Cuatro
Figure 76. Upper occupation level, Estructura 4 Figure 77. Map of upper occupation level, Estructura 4 Figure 78. Estructura 4 tri-lobate upper hearth Figure 79. Copper wires from Estructura 4 Figure 80. Chañar from Estructura 4 hearth and modern chañar Figure 81. Río Diablo vessel from Estructura 4 and similar vessel from Valle del Cajón Figure 82. Llama figurines from Estructura 4 Figure 83. Section across Estructura 4 upper occupation floor
194 195 198 199 202 202 204 204 xvii
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Figures
Figure 84. Large sherds with undulating incised appliqué strip Figure 85. Yutopian crew, 1996 Figure 86. Superimposed hearths of Estructura 4 Figure 87. Lower floor of Estructura 4 Figure 88. Federico next to Estructura 4 cache pit Figure 89. Contents of Estructura 4 cache pit Figure 90. Entranceway steps on east wall of Estructura 4 Figure 91. Estructura 4 entranceway with broken conana in situ Figure 92. Broken entranceway conana, Estructura 4 Figure 93. Segment of Estructura 4 west wall and possible steps Figure 94. Map of Núcleo 2 Figure 95. Relationship of Estructuras 4 and 5 Figure 96. Pit between Units 346 and 349, Estructura 5 Figure 97. Portal stones defining doorway, Estructura 5 Figure 98. Working with solar-powered light
206 208 210 212 215 216 222 223 223 225 227 227 229 230 240
Understanding Yutopian as an early formative settlement
Figure 99. Artist’s reconstruction of Núcleo 1 Figure 100. Yutopian’s northern plaza Figure 101. Examples of menhir stones from Taf í del Valle Figure 102. Map of Alamito, Catamarca Figure 103. Jorge’s Candelaria vessel Figure 104. Copper bracelet recovered by Álvaro
250 252 256 256 260 260
data from the experts
Figure 105. Contemporary corn types at Yutopian Figure 106. Álvaro’s garden plot Figure 107. Worked camelid bones Figure 108. Candelaria vessels from Estructuras 1 and 4 Figure 109. Vessel types from Núcleo 1 (Bugliani 2010) Figure 110. Vessel types from Núcleo 2 (Bugliani 2010) Figure 111. Projectile point sequence from Estructura 11 Figure 112. Distribution graph of Yutopian projectile points Figure 113. Slate knives from Estructura 4 Figure 114. Distribution graph of Yutopian slate knives Figure 115. Large basalt scraping tools (raederas) Figure 116. Side-struck flakes from Estructura 4 cache Figure 117. Lapis lazuli beads from Estructura 4 Figure 118. Flat turquoise beads from Estructura 2 Figure 119. Spindle whorls
271 271 280 287 288 288 293 294 295 296 296 297 301 303 304
xviii
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Figures
Cardonal by Comparison
Figure 120. Map of Cardonal showing initial test pits Figure 121. Overview of Cardonal enclosures in Sector I Figure 122. Cardonal crew at dinner Figure 123. Broken cutana at Cardonal Figure 124. Cardonal enclosure and doorway Figure 125. Map of Cardonal Sector I and test pits Figure 126. Circular pit with raised bedrock rim, Cardonal Figure 127. Map of Structure 1 floor plan Figure 128. Bedrock morteros at Cardonal Figure 129. Cutanas at Cardonal Figure 130. Burro caravan at Yutopian Figure 131. Caravaneros singing coplas with Jorge Figure 132. Ceramic pipe fragments from Cardonal Figure 133. Snuff tablets or palates
308 –309 310 316 319 319 321 322 322 329 330 334 335 339 339
Wrap-Ups and Postscripts
Figure 134. Fingerprints from the past
349
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Tables
Table 1. Ceramic counts from 1994 test pits, arranged north to south Table 2a. Inventory of general artifact counts from Estructura 1, Units 300, 301 and 302 Table 2b. Inventory of special finds from Estructura 1, Units 300, 301 and 302 Table 3. Inventory of special finds from Estructura 2 Table 4a. Inventory of special finds from Estructura 1, Units 303, 304, 305, and 306 Table 4b. Inventory of general finds from Estructura 1, all units Table 5a. New female and male PhDs focused on paleoethnobotanical research Table 5b. Female and male contributors to edited volumes on paleoethnobotanical research Table 6. Inventory of special finds from Estructura 3 Table 7a. Distribution of chalcedony within Núcleo 1 Table 7b. Distribution of obsidian within Núcleo 1 Table 8. Diagnostic ceramics by level from Estructura 11 Table 9. Seed remains from PP 12A (1996) and other contexts Table 10. Inventory of special finds from Estructura 4 Table 11. Inventory of special finds from Estructura 5 Table 12. Comparative characteristics of Yutopian structures Table 13a. Calibrated 14C dates (BP) from Yutopian, arranged earliest to latest, given at 1-sigma and 2-sigma confidence levels Table 13b. Calibrated 14C dates from Yutopian showing their relationships to excavated structures Table 13c. Distribution of 14C calibrated dates (BP) across Yutopian site sectors Table 14. Deposits associated with passageway entrances Table 15. Distribution of faunal taxa at Yutopian Table 16. Distribution of ceramic vessel forms by structure at Yutopian Table 17. Distribution of obsidian in Núcleo 2
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63 77 77 99 118 119 136 136 142 167 168 183 191 213 231 244 246 247 247 263 282 286 29o
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Tables
Table 18. Distribution of small denticulated triangular points Table 19. Distribution of side-struck flakes by size and depth Table 20. Distribution of ceramic cross-mends in Estructura 4 Table 21. Distribution of lapis lazuli beads in Estructura 4 Table 22. Distribution of spindle whorls from Yutopian Table 23. Comparative features of Yutopian and Cardonal Table 24. Distribution of test pits and ceramic counts across Cardonal Table 25. Inventory of special finds from the 2004 Cardonal field season
291 298 299 300 305 311 320 324
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Acknowledgments
At the heart of this book stand Jorge Chaile and his family who own Yutopian and who housed us and cared for us for many years; their innumerable generosities and kindnesses, diligent work and insightful understanding of archaeology and archaeologists have made this study possible. I thank them humbly and gratefully and daily. Most sincere gratitude also goes to Álvaro and Federico Chaile for their fine contributions to the project and beyond. It has been a great pleasure not only to participate in the intimacies of the tiny community of Yutopian but also to share experiences with many people of the larger Valle del Cajón, and I hope my appreciation and fondness have made themselves clear for the Aroaz family in Lagunita, Ramona Chaile and her children in San José, the Pachaos in Ovejería, Marcos Chayle and Julia Vargas de Chayle in La Quebrada, and so many other lugareños who taught and gave us so much. In Santa María, we are so lucky and appreciative of friends like Noemi Rodriguez and Mario Caserez; we still mourn Mario’s premature death. The work at Yutopian and Cardonal was conducted under the auspices—and with the kind assistance— of officials in Santa María, especially Rubén Quiroga, Director of the Museo Provincial Arqueológico “Eric Boman.” At the provincial level we recognize the help of the Catamarca Dirección General de Antropología, especially Carlos Nazar. The municipalities of San José and Santa María generously provided transport into the field, and the town of Santa María allowed us to use their camping facilities as our laboratory; they have also stored our artifacts. South Carolina Electric and Gas generously provided the solar panels to Yutopian. Sincere thanks to Dr. Terence D’Altroy for the generous loan, in 1996, of his state-of-the-art total station mapping equipment, along with his field crew trained to use it. Cristina Scattolin’s superb skills in mapping and identifying ceramics were critical to the success of the project. Patricia Escolar provided invaluable assistance with the visual identification of obsidians from different quarry sites and generously consulted with the project about Formative lithics on several occasions; Marisa Lazzari analyzed Yutopian’s obsidian samples. Guillermo Men-
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Acknowledgments
goni kindly loaned his expertise to evaluating Yutopian’s faunal samples before Andrés Izeta joined in the project. Pamela Vandiver of the Smithsonian Conservation Analytical Laboratory analyzed the scoria from Yutopian, and Ron Hatfield at Beta Analytic recalibrated the C14 dates, many initially run 16 years earlier. Alejandro Haber and his students at the Universidad Nacional de Catamarca Escuela de Arqueología taught me a great deal and helped the project in innumerable ways. It was a privilege to communicate with Mr. Gene Titmus (1936–2010) of Jerome, Idaho, about stone tools from Yutopian, and I am sincerely indebted to him for his insightful experimentation on how side-struck flakes were produced. Financial support to locate and work at the site of Yutopian was provided by the University of South Carolina Research and Productive Scholarship Program, the Josephine Abney Award for gender research (University of South Carolina), the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research International Collaboration Award and supplementary grant, the Fulbright Commission, the Universidad Nacional de Catamarca Escuela de Arqueología and American University’s Faculty Research program. For the work at Cardonal, thanks are due to the Heinz Foundation for Latin American Archaeology. I appreciate the logistical support generously provided by the Smithsonian Institution’s ASC Program. Writing was undertaken with generous support at Clare Hall at Cambridge University, the Dumbarton Oaks PreColumbian Library in Washington, DC, the Bald Mountain Writing Center in Fairlee, Vermont, and at the Chauncey Loomis Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. I owe enormous thanks to Joanne Pillsbury, Colin McEwan, Bridget Gazzo, Lynne and Bill Fitzhugh, Claudine Scoville and Craig Loomis for enabling and enriching these intellectually stimulating opportunities in some of the loveliest places I have known. It has been a special delight to work with students on this project: Dante Coronel (1992); Juan Leoni (now Dr.), Laura Pérez-Jimeno, Hugo Puentes, Catherine Heyne, Liliana Arenas (1994); Rachel Campo, Josh Fletcher, Cecilia Fraga, Paul Lewis, Leticia Martinez (now Dra.), Ramón Quinteros (1996); Michael Clem, Lauren Ebin, Rosemary Lyon, Dolores Tobias (1998); Fabiana Bugliani (now Dra.), Ilana Hahnel, Andrés Izeta (now Dr.), Elsa Mabel Mamani, Jessica Streibel (1999); and Jodi Barnes (now Dra.), Ali Ghobadi, Jocelyn Knauf (now Dra.), Lisa Munns, Hide Nishizawa (now Dr.) and Jeremy Walter (2004). Robert Thompson collected and analyzed phytoliths, and Jack Rossen served with grace and humor as ethnobotanist for much of the project. Josh Fletcher and Rachel Campo made special contributions drafting maps and excavation profiles at Yutopian, finalized by Houston Ruck and Jesús Quiroz. I am xxiv
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Acknowledgments
particularly grateful to Fabiana Bugliani, who drew the ceramic profiles and coauthored Bit 83 about the ceramics from Yutopian; to Andrés Izeta, who coauthored Bit 82 on faunal remains; and to Jack Rossen, who coauthored Bits 79 and 80 on plants and diet. Thanks also to Vicky Surles, who finalized the map of Cardonal. And, finally, I was very lucky to get Helen Langa’s icons. A few “bits” included in this book take shape out of my earlier writings. Bit 2 on knowledge production takes off from a chapter I contributed to Gender and Archaeology, edited by Rita Wright (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996). Bit 3 on ambiguity follows the argument I presented in the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, vol. 14 (2007), edited by Margaret Conkey and Alison Wylie, and Bit 32, “How the Gendered Household Works,” follows an argument I presented (with M. C. Scattolin) in a chapter of In Pursuit of Gender, edited by Sarah Milledge Nelson and Myriam Rosen-Ayalon (Altamira Press, 2002). I appreciate permission to revisit those arguments here. Bit 22 on excavation forms was first presented in an archaeology colloquium at Cambridge University in 1990, and Bit 36 uses data compiled by me and Anita Cook for an SAA presentation in 2012. William Stafford’s poem “Facts” is reprinted with kind permission from The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems 1998 (copyright 1993 by William Stafford and the Estate of William Stafford; permission granted by The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, www.graywolfpress.org). The challenges of producing this book were eased, enlightened and made more fun with generous help from unexpected places as well as from dear friends: Catherine Allen, Mitch Allen, Linda Brown, Geoff Burkhardt, Anita Cook, MaryJo Figuerero, Alejandro Haber, Regina Harrison, Hedy Kalmar-Rosenthal, Willy Mengoni, Adriana Muñoz, Tim Murtha, Javier Nastri, Axel Nielsen, Dolores Root, Pamela Vandiver, Brett Williams, and my wonderfully professional editor at the University of Texas Press, Theresa May. I am particularly grateful for the generous, thoughtful and thorough “anonymous” reviews from Benjamin Alberti and Axel Nielsen, whose invaluable comments have often been incorporated wholesale into the text; I couldn’t have had better critics and I thank them effusively for their help and their suggested readings. Cristina Scattolin’s thoughts and practices are deeply interwoven in much that is presented here, but she is not to be faulted for the writing or interpretations offered. As always my deepest gratitude, respect and love go to Stephen, chief mood elevator, wind spirit restorer, heart back-up. Thank you inexpressibly for making the book happen and keeping post-book dreams alive. You are my sunshine. xxv
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Yu to p i an
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FRAMEWORK
1 Introduction During field seasons in 1994, 1996, 1998 and 1999 archaeological teams from the United States and Argentina worked at the site of Yutopian, and additionally in the nearby town of Santa María, to recover and analyze cultural material from what proved to be an unusual Formative period site. The area where we worked, the northwest region of Argentina, comprises the southern end of the Andean chain, and within Argentina it is the mountainous part of the country where traditional lifeways and languages, crops and communities are the least directly impacted by Argentina’s modern state apparatus. Many of the joys of the project have come from being able to live and work, if only for short stints of time, among agricultural people who recognize North Americans as being as equally remote as Argentineans who come from the faraway capital city of Buenos Aires: we are all strangers made to feel welcome according to our generosity, with expressions of conversation as well as more material formulations. The site that this book focuses on, Yutopian, was first occupied during what Argentineans call the Early (or Lower) Formative period, 200 BCE to 500 CE,1 the period when intensive agriculture and sedentary village life were first practiced in this region. By generalized accounts, differentiated camelids (suggesting domestication) appear in the Argentinean highlands by 2000 BCE (Olivera 2001:94), and corn is identified roughly around 100 BCE (Gil et al. 2006:201). Settlements belonging to this period vary according to the region in which they occur but in general—and particularly in Catamarca where we worked—the settlements are homesteads characterized as replicative, dispersed individual or clustered structures, either freestanding or interspersed among walled agricultural fields and animal corrals; few examples of these have been excavated (Berberián 1989; Gero and Scattolin 2002; Núñez Regueiro 1998; Olivera 2001; Scattolin 1990). Nearby, in the Tafí Valley, domestic sites sometimes include standing worked stones called by their excavators menhires (Gonzáles and Núñez Regueiro 1960), although these are otherwise absent at Early Formative sites, and in the Alamito region there are well-published examples of what have been described as Early Formative ceremonial sites composed of circles of mounds with a central patio (Tartusi and Núñez Regueiro 1993). 2
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Figure 1. Early Formative bronze bracelets recovered from Laguna Blanca. From the collection of Benjamín Muniz Barreto, Museo de La Plata. Photograph courtesy of Cristina Scattolin.
Throughout the central area of Northwest Argentina, this same period is characterized by the circulation of exotic goods, including complex ceramics such as Condorhuasi polychrome and Candelaria modeled and incised wares, copper and gold ornaments, and bronze bracelets and bells (Fig. 1),2 although often these elaborated goods lack excavated provenience (Tarragó and Scattolin 1999). It was difficult for us to reconcile the dispersed population settlement pattern and apparent lack of social complexity in the central portion of NOA (Northwest Argentina) with the obvious complexity of circulating manufactured goods that exhibited high investments of productive energy and sometimes rare raw material composition. We defined this apparent paradox as the focus of our research project: identifying sites where some of these goods may have been produced and sites where these elaborated goods were used or consumed, in relation to the supposedly uniform low-density “egalitarian” settlement system. The fact that we ended up working at Yutopian was either the luckiest of coincidences or a wonderful example of finding what you want to find. Over the years Yutopian proved to be a surprising site for many 3
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reasons. Not only was the site unusually well preserved with its living floors apparently abandoned and intact, but it was also a rich source of prehistoric materials, some of which were new to the profession and some of which were newly revealed in Early Formative contexts and arrangements. From such rich data, we can now produce new information about the Early Formative period in Northwest Argentina and the particular site of Yutopian, some of it requiring paradigms to be rewritten and some of it relevant on more local scales: for the first time we can document the presence of established villages in this region during this period; we can describe the organization of Formative production sequences in distinct technological areas; we can show different transgenerational household arrangements as well as the remarkable persistence of agricultural regimes over more than a thousand years. Significantly, we can point to the appearance of new forms of power relations closely intertwined with other social developments and emerging at a time when egalitarian societies are supposed to have predominated. These archaeological conclusions are among the results reached after we had spent three field seasons at Yutopian, one additional season conducting analysis in Santa María, and a field season at the site of Cardonal. But not surprisingly, as we were working toward new archaeological understandings, we were also learning about how to do archaeology most effectively in this region. For instance, we came to know how our flotation systems needed to be modified by water availability, how to recognize and treat rodent burrows, how the daily morning frosts in July and August changed our field schedule. We also came to know what risks were entailed in our long- and short-term storage arrangements, whom we should employ on the project to accomplish our goals and keep peace in the community, what local materials could be pressed into service when “northern” products or procedures proved inadequate, how the Argentinean permitting system restricted and opened researchers’ access to project areas, how to answer questions about why North Americans come to excavate in Argentina. As we acquired knowledge about doing archaeology at Yutopian, we also became familiar with Andean lifeways more generally; we learned which work tasks are gendered and which are not, what people mean by particular local phrases or gestures, what subjects or actions are never discussed/undertaken by local people, how seasonal schedules of subsistence and ritual obligations are observed, where community leadership lies and how it is defined, how meals are organized, what foods are portable, how settlements and population movement have changed over time, where given resources are gathered and what they were used for, and much more. Finally, we constantly learned about ourselves as we worked at Yuto4
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pian: about how consistent we were able to be in our decisions, whether we operated better giving incisive instructions or preferred a consensual style on the project, who was most affected by hunger or fatigue or cold, with whom we worked well, and what we could and could not tolerate: Messiness/fastidiousness? Obsessiveness/relaxed work modes? Working constantly in two languages? In fact, we learned a lot about our individual strengths and weaknesses in the field. All these areas of new learning were absolutely critical—and inevitable—as the project moved forward; they constituted an intertwined and parallel learning trajectory to gaining archaeological knowledge. For significant reasons that I explain in the next two “frameworks,” I have chosen not to erase these histories of our knowledge making at Yutopian and not to shut out the wonderfully unfamiliar context in which we worked. Here the scientific work is not foregrounded at the expense of obliterating its context, but instead the context (regional, historical, political, intellectual, professional) is recognized as modifying the work at every turn. Possibly because I collaborated very closely with Argentinean archaeologists and archaeology students in this project, and because sometimes we didn’t take the same approach to our field studies (see Bit 11, “The positionality of practice”), I recognize that the decisions made in conducting field research (or in any scientific undertaking) play a fundamental role in shaping the knowledge produced in that project. That is, a wide range of considerations and alternate choices ultimately contribute to what we recognize as our knowledge outcomes, and it is not irrelevant that this project was undertaken by a joint US/ Argentina research team, nor that I had conducted previous research in other parts of the Andes, nor that I identify as a feminist and that my interests include gendered accounts of the past, nor that my Argentinean collaborator had distinct research interests at the time, nor a host of other things that matter to how we did archaeology at Yutopian. Different researchers, a different research context, different concerns would all produce different knowledges, which does not make our outcomes less trustworthy, only more singular. The book I’ve written here explores the venerated genre of archaeological writing called “the monograph,” wherein a field researcher reports her methodology and findings on a specific, self-contained project. The conventional format for such a work is highly specified: it begins with an introduction to why the research is important and describes the location of the study area with its topographic features and environmental aspects. Then the methodology employed at the site is offered in moreor-less generalized terms, and the results detailed one area at a time, or more commonly by one raw material class after another. A final section called “Conclusions” and/or “Discussion” ends the work. 5
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While this format for reporting archaeological work served the discipline well for many decades (and I still use some of these conventions), its empirical and atheoretical bias has put it out of favor more recently. Moreover, it leaves out much of interest. The people who worked at the site are invisible; the constantly changing emotional landscape that accompanies hard physical labor with unfamiliar peoples in faraway locations is seldom mentioned; the puzzlement and lack of closure about interpretations and the crucial strategic and methodological decisions we must constantly make are almost never brought up. Painfully, the unfamiliar codes of behavior and expectations between visiting archaeologists and host landowners/land workers—which are constantly being negotiated and redefined—are buried deep beneath the surface accounts of what “happened” and what was “found.” There are many reasons for these omissions. Archaeologists carefully circumscribe what they write about, not just merely to observe page limits and produce books of manageable sizes. And it is not only to keep focused on the archaeology that they regularly omit so much of beauty and interest from their accounts. I believe much of the broader visual, cultural, emotional and intellectual context is kept “off site” because the veracity of archaeological accounts depends on it. Indeed, objectivity, the notion that lies at the heart of science itself, requires that all unique, personal experiences be considered largely irrelevant and removed from consideration; to include emotions or cultural practices discounts the veracity of what was “discovered.” Needless to say, I don’t accept this view. This book narrates our investigations, describing the chaîne operatoire of research practices employed in collecting data and summarizing the results of our archaeological investigations. If it is a “site report,” it has been reconfigured by contemporary interests and understandings. Most notably, I highlight the contingent aspects of the knowledge we are building, how our knowledge depends on and takes form around what was previously known/not known, and how the actions and decisions of specific individuals are closely tied to how this specific knowledge was produced, as opposed to other bodies of knowledge that other investigators might have produced. Personalities, time constraints, convictions and uncertainties all play major roles here. If the content of this “site report” is odd, so too is the manner in which I have organized it. Although the presentation of material more or less follows the chronological order in which we proceeded, I have tried to distinguish separate threads, with each section, or “Bit,” designated as belonging to a particular thread. I lay out a basic chronological “Narrative” that explains our work at each stage of the project, but then intersperse the central narrative with “Arguments,” my term for the a priori intellectual positions I brought to the project which colored my 6
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understandings and my research decisions; “Episodes” (identifying and describing segments of archaeological fieldwork); “Backstories” (offering background information); “Andean Ways” (relating particularly vivid moments or activities at Yutopian, not as ethnographic parallels but rather to stir the imagination about how lives are lived differently, where other peoples’ daily routines and foundational assumptions nudge us to think broadly and creatively in reconstructing prehistoric life); and “Socio-politics” (where we are forced to confront the social, moral, economic, and politic realities of both the immediate and the larger worlds in which we practice archaeology). The partitions I use are often awkward, partially because everything here is, after all, a narrative of one sort or another, and “Narratives” do not always separate cleanly from “Episodes” while “Socio-politics” admittedly underlie many aspects of work, etc. Taxonomies are always messy. Perhaps the most difficult thread to construct has been the interspersed segments called “Data,” where I link summaries of what we actually found and what we learned at Yutopian, making it easy for readers to get a no-nonsense picture of the “results” of our excavations and analysis. This has been especially frustrating because “data” are everywhere, clinging to parts of the narratives at every point and intertwining themselves throughout our observations and procedures. I’ve done what I can, sometimes separating “raw data” (e.g., numbers) from “descriptive data,” and sometimes recognizing the “cooking” of data, but I’ve also been forced to concede that this thread hardly does justice to all that we learned about Early Formative life from Yutopian. Still other insertions into the basic narrative are not threaded but punctuate the text to draw attention to contingencies that impacted the research. In general it can be seen that narrative and contextual bits figure more heavily in the earlier stages of research while research results (data) congregate in the concluding sections. One further complication: all the work at Yutopian was conducted by me in conjunction with an Argentinean collaborator, M. Cristina Scattolin of CONICET and the Museo Etnográfico “Juan B. Ambrosetti” as well as the Universidad de Buenos Aires. Lic. Scattolin contributed essential and extensive background knowledge about Formative period sites in the region, offered critical information about ceramic forms and designs and phases, brought wonderful well-trained students to the project, introduced sophisticated and productive archaeological techniques into all phases of work at the site, and suggested constructive and innovative ways of thinking about Yutopian. But Scattolin has since distanced herself from my interpretations of the site in several important regards—some of which I will take up specifically—and declined to collaborate in writing this book. Thus although all credit is due to 7
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Cristina Scattolin and her invaluable contributions to the project, I wish to emphasize that the interpretations put forward here are my own and are not to be attributed to her, as is her wish. Notes
1. Following current usage, dates here are given as BCE (Before the Common Era) and CE (Common Era) rather than the older form of BC and AD dates. 2. Eighty metal bracelets were collected from La Quebrada by Rodolfo Schreiter and sold in 1930 to Erland Nordenskiöld at the Göteborg Museum in Sweden where they were recently analyzed by Stenborg and Muñoz (1999). See also Muñoz and Fasth (2006).
2 Framework
Knowledge production at Yutopian In earlier work (Gero 1993, 1996) I tried to demonstrate how facts are produced in archaeology, as a strategy for feminist archaeologies but also as a program for challenging the unacknowledged agendas of science. My argument was that if we could identify the part that human agency plays in knowledge production, documenting the stream of human and social elements that science often deliberately obscures, we would open up the process of fact production to alternative ways and voices. This strategy is familiar to feminists who have long raised epistemological questions about how the world is known; we have challenged the arrangements and practices that fix “knowledge” as “science” and argued for recognition of the relationship between the exclusion of women from science and the myth of science as rational and transparent. These commitments lead feminists to pose ontological questions about what we know, raising crucial questions about who can be a “knower,” about the relationships between the community of knowers and the knowledge they cooperatively produce, and about the moralization of objectivity. Feminists speak of problematizing common understandings—using new ideas to make the everyday world strange. 8
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Cristina Scattolin and her invaluable contributions to the project, I wish to emphasize that the interpretations put forward here are my own and are not to be attributed to her, as is her wish. Notes
1. Following current usage, dates here are given as BCE (Before the Common Era) and CE (Common Era) rather than the older form of BC and AD dates. 2. Eighty metal bracelets were collected from La Quebrada by Rodolfo Schreiter and sold in 1930 to Erland Nordenskiöld at the Göteborg Museum in Sweden where they were recently analyzed by Stenborg and Muñoz (1999). See also Muñoz and Fasth (2006).
2 Framework
Knowledge production at Yutopian In earlier work (Gero 1993, 1996) I tried to demonstrate how facts are produced in archaeology, as a strategy for feminist archaeologies but also as a program for challenging the unacknowledged agendas of science. My argument was that if we could identify the part that human agency plays in knowledge production, documenting the stream of human and social elements that science often deliberately obscures, we would open up the process of fact production to alternative ways and voices. This strategy is familiar to feminists who have long raised epistemological questions about how the world is known; we have challenged the arrangements and practices that fix “knowledge” as “science” and argued for recognition of the relationship between the exclusion of women from science and the myth of science as rational and transparent. These commitments lead feminists to pose ontological questions about what we know, raising crucial questions about who can be a “knower,” about the relationships between the community of knowers and the knowledge they cooperatively produce, and about the moralization of objectivity. Feminists speak of problematizing common understandings—using new ideas to make the everyday world strange. 8
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These related strategies and concerns underpinned our work at Yutopian and provide a framework for this account. Most obviously I am eager to show that what we learned at Yutopian was fundamentally linked to how we worked—which itself proceeded from, and directly reflected, our intellectual, social and professional worlds. I sketch my approach here. In traditional site reports, as in most genres of scientific writing, the history of fact production is either erased from its context of production or cleverly inverted and distorted in ways that make it appear automatic, neutral and transparent, suggesting that anyone excavating the same bit of soil matrix would have “found” what we found and would put forward an account similar to this one. Like other scientists, archaeologists write as though objects, facts, sometimes even laws, are givens, and that such facts and laws merely await the timely revelation of their existence by devoted scholars. Since archaeologists “unearth” our data, literally brushing off the dirt that covered them for centuries, we are inclined to think of our facts as being removed from any human agency that was responsible for having produced them. We merely part the darkness that had kept these truths from being known more generally and had kept us in ignorance, and happening to look where we did, shedding new light on our subjects, we then “found” our answers. In the constructivist view, however, science is not about “discovery” but about making order out of disorder, about finding the right interpretations or arguments to reduce noise in data, about chains of decisions and negotiations that must be made on the basis of previous decisions (Garfinkle 1967). In this way, researchers build an internally consistent argument or framework that is publicly advanced and that “works” in its own terms and with its own instrumentation, but that can operate only in this historically fixed logic rather than being descriptive of any disarticulated, external reality. The knowledge we produce arises directly out of—and is profoundly structured by—the everyday features and practices that we build into, and count on as, “doing archaeology”: the assumed, mundane, unquestioned procedures and routines in research, the accepted use of specific tools and instruments, and the carefully inculcated technical abilities that we teach and expect of practitioners. Within this system of shared knowledge, each practical learned and natural-seeming activity is “doubly contextual in being both contextshaped and context-renewing” (Heritage 1987:242), and the “facts” emerging from such a context (such as at Yutopian) are thoroughly situated within its rules and organization. But the science (or archaeology) that is reported in the formal literature goes to great lengths to present another science: universal, context-free and “objective” because the people are systematically 9
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removed. Monographs and site reports regularly distort and obscure the organization of knowledge construction (Gilbert and Mulkay 1984). We notice, for instance, that archaeological reports will regularly ignore or invert temporal sequences as though we already knew at the beginning what we actually only learned by the end. Archaeologists will summarize a generalized methodology that is presumed to have been in use for the entire operation when, in fact, changes in procedures are almost always introduced during the course of work for many practical reasons, including that we learn more as we go and our early procedures seem clumsy or unnecessary. We also run out of materials, run out of time, find ways to use team members efficiently even if it violates strict procedure. We make practical on-the-spot revisions when we need to. But our conventional reports omit this. They omit the negotiations about what counts as an adequate record of what was observed, or what counts as “the same thing,” or what counts as “agreement.” They omit names of crew members, emotions, emergencies, weather, beauty, luck (good or bad) and a host of other circumstances because archaeology as a science relies on the belief that anyone excavating a given location would make the same observations and discoveries, and that the experience of a specific excavation is therefore largely irrelevant. The orthodox scientific report is impoverished by these rules and conventions when context is absent and people have no place. At Yutopian, I tried to be alert to ways that our conventional archaeological practices constituted a research environment or “context” that in turn conditioned what we “found.” I wanted to observe how archaeologists and archaeological practice embodied and reproduced in our everyday work activities, and especially in our decision chains, some aspects of “external” values that ultimately were shaping our results. At the scale I imagined this transpiring, I couldn’t record it. I couldn’t video the embedded, implicit “background” assumptions and practical skills, the language use and technical know-how that gave form to our interactive work because, as co-director, I was constantly involved in the “foreground”: the decision making, planning, assessing and evaluating. The video camera was seldom available even when conscious decisions were being made, and since we conducted business in both Spanish and English, it wasn’t always clear to monolingual video assistants when they should be capturing the moment. If filming our sequences failed, other media were needed to highlight this process, and this account partially attempts to do so. Without delving into the romances and animosities, the body odors, fashion statements and cross-cultural misunderstandings (with generally hilarious but sometimes painful outcomes), I hope you will 10
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see the crew (including me) at work here. I will try not to gloss over the messy parts and ambiguous bits (see Bit 3). Without wanting to produce a full-length confessional document, at least I will try not to replicate the sins of my forbearers by making the facts look obvious, unambiguous, transparent and natural. I hope that the constructedness of the information we produced at Yutopian— our very human agency—and the points at which we established and reinforced knowledge structures that we needed will be apparent one way or another in the following pages. Beyond detailing how we worked, in this account I want to lay out what we learned from working at Yutopian. But I must also confess that I’m not always sure about the distinction between what we “learned” and what we should already have known, or actually did know! That is, the boundary between what is “known” and what is “new” is neither consistent nor stable since knowledge doesn’t circulate uniformly through a population, or even very predictably over time and space. Had we known— or been able to know—all there was about the prehistory of this zone from the eighteenth century on, and been familiar with the work of researchers from different countries (some publishing in languages I can’t read), and if I understood in greater depth what there is to understand about clays and plant materials and architectural variants of post and beam construction, et cetera, and if I remembered all I had ever read, then perhaps what I claim here as “new” would be less so. That is, what we’ve learned is clearly and closely related to what we knew when we started, what we should have known, and what we came to realize we knew as we worked. There were things that some of us knew but others learned, and we taught each other. And there were certainly things that we revealed but never understood because we weren’t in a position to learn them or learn from them! As always, ignorance shapes what is known in complex ways, and it is not only and always a passive and monolithic ignorance, but rather a plurality of ignorances: some political and concerned with power relations, some resistant to improvement because of deeply held prejudices and inclinations, some idiosyncratic because of the particularities of the researchers. I feel sure we produced new knowledge working at Yutopian, but the knowledge we produced is conditioned by and reflects what was known previously and most surely is different from what another researcher might have learned by working here.
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3 Framework
Ambiguity and the lust for certitude The second (related) framing concern of this account—which also grows out of feminist issues and practices—is how archaeologists address ambiguity in our work . . . or rather, how we insistently and silently dismiss the high degree of uncertainty that surrounds every phase and feature of archaeological research. The archaeological literature is filled with pronouncements, declarations and assertions of knowledge wrested from archaeological sites without any discussion of the confusion and ambiguity that adheres to many of the facts we recover. Even where we qualify archaeological conclusions by degrees of probability and temper them with calls for more data, it is certainty that characterizes how archaeological results are reported in our scholarly work and in the popular press. There is no mention that much archaeological research requires difficult or even impossible interpretive assessments and decisions on the basis of evidence that is incomplete, unfamiliar, indeterminate and/or bewilderingly complex: whether we can detect soil color changes all the way across a profile, whether “this” is a tool, whether various artifacts are “associated” or various events related, et cetera. Animated discussions and anxious deliberations over such matters evaporate in our final accounts and the evidence for the losing side is never seen again. At Yutopian and in this account I embrace ambiguity, not just as good feminist practice but also as a call for greater responsibility in archaeology. Feminism has generally aligned itself on the side of greater reflexivity in knowledge production, encouraging self-awareness both about how we reach conclusions and about the broader relations between knowledge and knowledge makers (Gero 2007). The acceptance and preservation of ambiguous archaeological evidence also strengthens a central tenet of feminist practice in archaeology: to work toward an archaeology that interrogates the past (and more generally challenges the singularity of the real) instead of advancing conclusions as exclusively and exhaustively final and correct (e.g., Conkey and Gero 1991; Kus 2006). That the taming, ignoring, erasing and redefining of ambiguity is contradictory to the long-term interests of accumulating accurate 12
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information about the past should become clear in the course of this book. I will urge that we resist imposing meaning on the past—meaning that is modern, disciplinary, homogenizing and universalist—and move instead toward honoring (instead of erasing) the evidence that will not yield to closure. Much of the ambiguity we confront in archaeology emerges from the data that are frequently incomplete or partial (“indeterminate”), but also stand a good chance of being highly complex, where different interpretive factors are all simultaneously relevant to the same interpretive problem. Issues of “interpretive complexity” require that the related pieces of evidence each be well understood, plus we need to understand how these parts might be interacting, compounded by the fact that we don’t always know the nature or degree of relationship between parts. We also recognize that the evidence usually does not determine one unique interpretive or explanatory conclusion and preclude all other alternatives (“under-determination”); there is simply an absence of deciding factors that allow us to choose among other plausible determinations. Issues of under-determination can introduce ambiguity at every level of archaeological understanding, from large explanatory frameworks (characterizations of specific archaeological “cultures” or matters of causation) to chronological and classificatory relationships (“Is this a slightly atypical Condorhuasi sherd?”). Longer discussions of each type of ambiguity are offered in Gero (2007). In addition to these ontological sources of ambiguity—that is, where the ambiguity lies within the evidence itself—there are many epistemological issues that resist certitude, issues that arise from what archaeologists themselves bring to their studies: community values, limits of our experience or our judgments or our imaginations, inconsistencies among researchers or within the same researcher over time, and so on. But I want to focus on one central epistemological issue that we might be able to do something about, an issue I call “the reductionist starting principle.” In seeking unambiguous “facts” in archaeology, we frequently adopt simplified and simplifying assumptions about the pasts we are reconstructing. For instance, we use simplifying assumptions about time and simultaneity, about what is to count as “contemporaneous” in archaeological time. We construct a flattened time frame in archaeology (a house “occupation” or a ceramic “period”) that has little to do with how life is lived in the real world, as continuous and fluid, always actively stringing together events over space. We assume all the houses in a village were simultaneously occupied. An activity area of ceramic production gains stability and immobility for hundreds of years. “Populations” of people are motivated for all time by similar values and respond in similar ways 13
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to timeless stimuli; all females are women and all males men. We have come to settle for definitions and descriptions of social realities in the past that are flat and dead, bearing little resemblance to the complicated, shifting and nuanced realities featured in ethnographic and other social accounts. The case against reductionist starting principles can be made another way. Contemporary research into social (or political or economic) issues allows social scientists access to “all” the data, and problems of underdetermination and indeterminacy are supposedly foreclosed because research subjects are fully observable, recordable and open to questioning or inspection by different and complementary modes. Yet researchers of the modern world still can’t decide what causes a recession or why the Taliban proves popular. Resolutions to questions posed today are also ambiguous because social realities are complex, multicausal, interdeterminant and multivocal, changing from each person’s perspective. Ultimately, we must confront the profound discrepancy between the complicated social realities that we inhabit every day and the flattened, disarticulated, unidimensional and, yes, unambiguous social realities that we depict and justify in archaeological pronouncements. What kind of social reality do we think we’re describing in the reductionist, oversimplified reconstructions we offer about the past? Or is this just a disciplinary-wide, taken-for-granted wink at a social reality that could not have possibly existed in these simplistic terms but is the best we can manage? Or are we saying prehistoric human systems were actually structured along such lines, effectively denying that human societies and relationships had the same degree of complexity in the past as they do today? Like simplifying our starting assumptions, archaeologists use other conventionalized practices that stabilize evidence and interpretation, and produce less ambiguous knowledge. I call these practices “mechanisms of closure,” including the four listed here: • Cleaning the data: This first strategy is a broad and inclusive set of practices that reduce ambiguity by dampening variance within data and making data sets seem homogeneous. In many instances, “cleaning up data” is classification; it involves using a limited set of semantically broad but conceptually limiting categories into which all evidence is accommodated (band/tribe/chiefdom/state, or tool /utilized flake/debitage). Once grouped semantically (classified), individual pieces of evidence are imbued with stability and similitude by the assumption that evidential classes contain homogeneous materials and, more significantly, homogeneous meanings hold across different times and contexts. Once a data class is defined as an 14
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entity (“kitchen area” or “deteriorating environment” or “Europeanmade object”), items can be inventoried, compared by size, mapped in space, and read as carrying the same meanings (or functions, or causal implications) in comparable contexts. A related form of cleaning data (dampening variance) is to pose dichotomous binary options (A vs. Not-A), effectively removing all nonconforming data from consideration. Cleaning up data may involve concentrating on central tendencies and eliminating or ignoring gradients or outliers; often we draw arbitrary boundaries around what we will consider relevant to a problem at hand as a strategy for reducing complexity. Examples of devices that help clean up the data include using Munsell color charts; drawing trowel lines on profiles or feature outlines to assist in illustration; assigning sites to ecological zones and coloring each zone distinctively on a projected slide; drawing isotherms of median artifact densities; clustering data into evolutionary stages or periods. • Pushing the data is what I call the practice of sequentially building an interpretive assertion by first drawing tentative conclusions and then using one’s own tentative conclusions as an authority to firm up these conclusions in a later stage of the interpretation until, in the final summing up, one pronounces one’s findings as a secure and unambiguous conclusion. So, “it is possible that” later in the text becomes “most likely, this was” and concludes: “as shown previously, it appears that. . . .” • Stretching the data means finding the general in the specific, or generalizing to make “big claims” from specific cases. A plausible functional or causal relationship in a local context is said to hold widely or to stand for a larger class of interpretations where the same relationship would hold. “Stretching the data” is undertaken at all levels of archaeological practice: in abstracting and generalizing stratigraphy to larger regional areas in the form of “A” and “B” horizons, or in erecting typologies for regions from single sites, or in creating semantic categories for variable features. More significantly, “stretching the data” can include pairing one feature in a local context with a large, widely recognized process, thus “demonstrating” the wider process at the local site. • Machining data involves describing or characterizing data by means of an impersonal, often technologically sophisticated machine, or otherwise observing or measuring data not in cultural context but rather against some universal standard, to give an unambiguous reading on specific variables (density, refractivity, chemical composition, etc.) which then forms the basis of the analysis. These practices eliminate intra- and inter-subject variation in interpretation and reduce ambiguity, while also removing cultural significance. 15
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In the archaeological account that follows, I use some of these strategies myself; after all, I am schooled in the practice of archaeological conventions, in the field and the lab and at my desk. But I believe we can do better (1) at identifying and drawing boundaries around some of the specific difficulties in interpretation that are systematically abused and denied, and (2) at honoring unresolved features of archaeological evidence as worthy enigmas to stimulate the imagination and preserve for the future (rather than disappearing them by ignoring them or incorporating them too readily in modern systems of meaning). I hope I make some progress in the pages that follow.
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4 Narrative
Project origins in a British steak dinner My sabbatical for the academic year 1990–1991 should have passed in the mountains of north-central Peru, extending summer field seasons at and around the site of Queyash Alto into an intensified year-long investigation. Instead, the revolutionary political movement known as Sendero Luminoso had been increasingly active throughout the Peruvian highlands, and both the 1988 excavations and the 1989 laboratory work in the regional museum had been marked by threatening face-to-face encounters, murders of acquaintances and bombs too close to ignore. I ended up in Cambridge, England, writing articles and wondering if I would ever be able to return to Queyash. Cambridge attracts sabbatical scholars, and among the small fellowship of visiting archaeologists was a charming mid-career Argentine, Gustavo Politis, who was suffering the British cuisine, sorely missing Argentinian meat. On one occasion, we drove out of town to a country inn where Gustavo treated himself to a large British steak, thus improving his mood and prompting him (perhaps) to invite me to come and lecture at the university where he was dean while I might also consider a new field project in Argentina. And there it was. Four months later I arrived in Buenos Aires and was presented to a potential collaborator for archaeology in the Argentinean Andes: Lic. Cristina Scattolin. Scattolin was an experienced and talented archaeologist from the metropolitan center of La Plata and had been conducting research for 20 years in the mountains of Northwest Argentina. Within weeks we set off to tour that part of the country, focused on one of the heartland regions of Argentine archaeology, the north-south-running Calchaquí Valley, with the regional capital city of Santa María located in its southern section (Fig. 2). The Calchaquí Valley lies on the eastern side of the Andean cordillera and plays a key role linking the high Andean puna and altiplano along the Chilean border on the west with the lower intermontane valleys of Argentina to the south and east. When the Inka expanded their imperial empire in the fifteenth century, they encountered a series of large fortified settlements forming a chain along the high western margins 18
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Figure 2. Map of Northwest Argentina (NOA), showing Santa María.
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of the Calchaquí Valley, built on both sides of the defining Sierra de Quilmes: on the eastern Santa María side and on the western Valle del Cajón side. These were the local Santamariana chiefdoms, and indeed all accounts of Argentinean prehistory feature the famous Santamariana burial urns of the Calchaquí Valley from this era, the Regional Development period (900–1480 CE), just before Inka domination. It was not surprising to find the small regional museum in Santa María offering a fine sample of these impressively large face neck Santamariana pots that sometimes take the form of women’s bodies but also feature geometric designs of various sorts Figure 3. Santamariana burial urn in the form of a woman with cup, (Fig. 3). from the Museo Provincial Arque But our attention was directed to the ológico “Eric Boman,” Santa María earlier prehistory of this zone, an exten(Catamarca), Argentina sive chapter that had received almost no attention since the early years of the twentieth century when proto-archaeologists, travelers and unorthodox scholars had extracted smaller, more finely crafted ceramic vessels from funerary contexts in these areas. Unlike the Santamariana ceramics, the finely polished and modeled grey or black Formative pottery, frequently with incised and punctate markings (Fig. 4), was associated with early settled agricultural life in parts of Northwest Argentina. It was this pattern of Formative life that Scattolin had been focusing on, and that I would join her in studying. We were fascinated by the possibilities of the Cajón Valley, an enclosed side valley off the Calchaquí that lay just on the other side of the Sierra de Quilmes from Santa María. Scattolin had barely entered the valley previously and recognized it as a region long neglected by archaeologists although research had been conducted there in the mid-1900s (Arena 1975; Cigliano 1958, 1961). At the same time, I was seeking a project area that didn’t challenge current projects being undertaken by Argentineans. If my training was in the imperialist tradition of Americans working abroad, then at least I didn’t want to overlap with or intrude on research conducted by contemporary Argentinean scholars. Moreover, I am drawn to working in circumscribed regions where prehistoric processes can be studied in a naturally bounded research area and was pleased that the Cajón was delineated by mountain ranges on three sides 20
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Figure 4. Formative period (Candelaria) incised ceramics. Photographs by Martin Franken (VC 9207 and VC 8555) and Claudia Obrocki (VC 6501 and V C 1641), reproduced with kind permission of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Ethnologisches Museum.
(Fig. 5). Although it lacked all amenities like paved roads, electricity and modern facilities, it was also only three or four hours by pickup truck from Santa María. Its Formative period was an inviting empty book. By the end of our 1991 tour Christina and I were discussing codirecting a new project in the Valle del Cajón. She would bring local 21
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Figure 5. Map of the Valle del Cajón.
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knowledge, experience and an adventuresome intellect to the project, plus help with bureaucratic arrangements, and I would try to organize some funding and bring new ideas about gender to the archaeology of Northwest Argentina. Our students would work together in a rich intercultural mix, and together we would forge new methodologies and theoretical perspectives. I also believe we both thought we might enjoy working together.
5 Socio-politics
Finding Northwest Argentina The bus trip from Buenos Aires into the northwest regions starts by crossing the low flat pampas with grazing cows and soybean fields, then climbing through the drizzly rain forest of the eastern Andean slopes with a bus change in the industrial city of San Miguel de Tucumán. From there a regional bus drives due west through the tourist town of Tafí del Valle, climbs up and over the far lip of that valley which divides the Province of Tucumán from the Province of Catamarca, and descends into the lovely southern portion of the Calchaquí Valley (Fig. 6). The remarkable mineral-loaded mountains banded in deep purple, green and red flank the road heading south into Santa María, the small-town capital of the Department of Santa María. With luck, the 1260-km trip from Buenos Aires has taken just under 20 (sleepless) hours. In Argentina, the northwest region is often referred to as NOA; it includes the treeless altiplano or puna lands on the west, and the yungas (jungles) (selvas occidentales) on the east, with the valliserrana (valley/ mountain zone) in between. Remote from the bustle of Buenos Aires, life in the northwest region is slow paced and not what Argentina’s recent President Menem had in mind when he called his country “a first world nation in a third world continent.” In 1991, 1993 and 1994 the town of Santa María occupied only a few blocks of low buildings built around the central plaza with its elegant old trees painted white at their bases. Here in the shadow of the dramatic Sierra de Quilmes to the west, and heated by the bright mountain sun at 23
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knowledge, experience and an adventuresome intellect to the project, plus help with bureaucratic arrangements, and I would try to organize some funding and bring new ideas about gender to the archaeology of Northwest Argentina. Our students would work together in a rich intercultural mix, and together we would forge new methodologies and theoretical perspectives. I also believe we both thought we might enjoy working together.
5 Socio-politics
Finding Northwest Argentina The bus trip from Buenos Aires into the northwest regions starts by crossing the low flat pampas with grazing cows and soybean fields, then climbing through the drizzly rain forest of the eastern Andean slopes with a bus change in the industrial city of San Miguel de Tucumán. From there a regional bus drives due west through the tourist town of Tafí del Valle, climbs up and over the far lip of that valley which divides the Province of Tucumán from the Province of Catamarca, and descends into the lovely southern portion of the Calchaquí Valley (Fig. 6). The remarkable mineral-loaded mountains banded in deep purple, green and red flank the road heading south into Santa María, the small-town capital of the Department of Santa María. With luck, the 1260-km trip from Buenos Aires has taken just under 20 (sleepless) hours. In Argentina, the northwest region is often referred to as NOA; it includes the treeless altiplano or puna lands on the west, and the yungas (jungles) (selvas occidentales) on the east, with the valliserrana (valley/ mountain zone) in between. Remote from the bustle of Buenos Aires, life in the northwest region is slow paced and not what Argentina’s recent President Menem had in mind when he called his country “a first world nation in a third world continent.” In 1991, 1993 and 1994 the town of Santa María occupied only a few blocks of low buildings built around the central plaza with its elegant old trees painted white at their bases. Here in the shadow of the dramatic Sierra de Quilmes to the west, and heated by the bright mountain sun at 23
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Figure 6. Calchaquí Mountains from Caspischango, overlooking the Santa María Valley.
1900 m above sea level, the unrushed people of the town would congregate on benches and eat ice cream, or stroll around the statue of stern General Belgrano that dominates the plaza’s intersecting diagonal walkways. There was a Hotel Turista in Santa María but a couple of homes (residenciales) also offered rooms to travelers and didn’t seem to mind the hefty trunks and overstuffed backpacks that archaeological teams stashed while they shopped and made field arrangements in town. But more recently we have witnessed Santa María’s rapacious growth, in tandem with the development of the Bajo La Alumbrera sluice mine that opened in 1995 about 30 km southeast of Santa María. With the mine in operation, Santa María now bustles with new enterprises and money. Bajo La Alumbrera is the largest gold mine in South America, controlled by Canadian and Australian multinational corporations and seeking to remove as much as 85,000 tons of crude per day. As the rich deposits of gold and copper—mixed with silver, zinc and lead—are drawn up, washed and slushed overland to Tucumán 65 km to the east, new restaurants, hotels, nightclubs and housing blocks have sprung up in large developments; now there are several traffic lights and three car dealerships. No matter that this environment is a fragile high desert, receiving only a few inches of rain a year. The water table is conveniently plumbed, and many local people who practiced subsistence agriculture only a few years ago now rotate working at the mines for shifts of twelve 24
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days on, four days off. These workers are not the patrons of the new restaurants, hotels and car dealerships in town; it is the engineers and managers from other large cities who support the new enterprises, often buying homes in this attractive region where there is sun 365 days a year, as the pamphlets remind us. We archaeologists (the Yutopian project is among several that operate out of Santa María) find this burgeoning development both irritating and facilitating. New hardware stores, copy centers and office supply stores undoubtedly make it easier to locate and replace necessities for the field. Finding hot water at the end of a busy day is also much appreciated. The archaeology museum “Eric Boman” has moved to a prominent location on the plaza and is spruced up to attract visitors, partly with our well-labeled exhibitions about Yutopian. Still, the traditional Andean flavor of old Santa María is palpable, with horses being ridden into town on market days and homespun clothing frequently in evidence. Ironically, when archaeologists are in town we look like the mine managers in our dress and physical appearance: we’re too tall and too light-skinned to be locals. We too wave our government permits that legitimate what we do here (plumb the earth for its treasures); we also have goals that align with interests outside the local region rather than in it. We like to think we treat people well and that we make significant contributions to the Santa María schools and museum (see Bit 70), but when an agenda is set many miles away, and when that agenda has consequences for the local people who have had little to do with establishing or implementing it, it is always, arguably, a form of imperialism (see Bit 10). After we have made our purchases and photocopied our field forms, checked in with local authorities and made last phone calls, we are ready to head off to Yutopian. During the first years of the project our transportation into the field from Santa María depended on tracking down Señor Beto Llampa who might be anywhere in town. Importantly, he owned and drove a pickup truck regularly into the Valle del Cajón west of Santa María to ferry people and goods back and forth. He told us only that he had relatives in one of the valley communities, but later we figured out that he had grown up in the Cajón and, like many others, had abandoned his land and farming to do construction work in Santa María. (Now, of course, Don Beto works in the new mine, and we have had to rely on the municipality for travel to the field.) For $100 he would pile all of us and our gear, food and supplies into the pickup and head south on Route 40, the famous north-south highway through western Argentina from the Bolivian border down to Patagonia. For the first 45 minutes out of Santa María, the road to Yutopian follows the base of the Sierra de Quilmes and the course of the Río Colorado 25
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Figure 7. View of the Valle del Cajón (looking east).
which flows at its feet, going through small villages with colorful names like Palo Seco (Dry Stick), Loro Huasi (Parrot Home) and Casa de Piedra (Stone House). But at the southern terminus of the Quilmes range we leave Route 40 as the river and our new road make a dramatic hairpin twist around the base of the mountain and head northward, entering the pocket-shaped side valley known as the Valle del Cajón (cajón means “drawer”). On dusty roads we follow the river north toward its source at the constricted head of the valley 90 km away (Fig. 7), bumping over rises and dips, through threatening patches of sand strewn with cactus wood to ease the passage. Occasionally we pass an isolated adobe house with adjacent corrals, or a few free-ranging goats or cattle, or a rare llama in the dry scrub chaparral landscape. On one trip, Don Beto pulled off the dirt road and unloaded some plastic sacks and cardboard boxes next to a big tree with no buildings or people in sight—and drove off. “They expect this delivery and will come by tonight,” he told us, but we couldn’t imagine who that would be or where they would come from. With luck it takes three hours to the center of the valley where we abruptly turn left at a marker that is invisible to us city dwellers and head west across the valley, sometimes driving in the riverbed and sometimes through steep bedrock formations until we reach the mountains that define the far western margin of the valley, the Sierra del Hombre Muerto (Dead Man Mountains). There we climb more slowly up onto the lower slopes as the road gets less and less traveled toward Yutopian. Gaining elevation, we can see the Valle del Cajón spread out below: a flat expanse of dry uplands dotted with saguaro cacti and boulder outcroppings. The steeply defined mountains that enclose the valley on the east (Sierra de Quilmes) are often visible from the western margins since the 26
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valley is only 20 km wide at this point. Because we are usually there during the Argentinean winter (summer in North America), there is often a dusting of snow on the highest peaks (see Fig. 6). The few homesteads we can spot are marked by plantings of álamos (poplar trees), visual clues to habitations in an otherwise treeless landscape. What is striking overall is the absence of villages or even homesteads here, the extremely low population density, while the nearby Calchaquí Valley has strings of villages along the roads and many towns between them. Cristina tells me that the Valle del Cajón was known in earlier decades of the twentieth century as a prosperous region with a healthy population and strong agricultural production. It was also known for its Peronista political sympathies, and when Juan Perón was ousted in 1955, the new “Radical” government refused to make improvements or provide resources to the area. This bit of apocrypha may only partially explain why neither electricity nor telephones have ever been installed here even though they are commonplace and long in use elsewhere; in the Cajón there are no paved roads and no jobs, and the population is dwindling. In the 12 years we worked there, I personally knew 14 people who died or moved away, and I knew of no new families who moved in. Most people who live in Santa María have never been in this valley although it lies just on the other side of the Quilmes range which they look at every day and treat as a boundary to their known universe.
Facts • The Cajón is 90 km long and 30 km wide at the southern entrance. • Pico Colorado, the highest peak in Sierra del Hombre Muerto, reaches 4450 masl. • Cerro Negro, the highest peak in Sierra de Quilmes, reaches 4720 masl. • Average annual rainfall is approximately 250 mm/year, mostly in summer.
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6 Narrative
Archaeologists and lugareños meet at Yutopian In the North American summer of 1993, after university classes had ended and last grades were passed in, I went off to survey the Valle del Cajón for Formative sites. I had secured five weeks of grant money for Cristina Scattolin and myself but at the last minute Cristina had to stay in La Plata with family health issues; I would have to go up to Northwest Argentina alone and find another companion. On top of that, the July weather at 3000 m above sea level was colder than usual and very much colder than the South Carolina summer I had just left. I was able to convince a University of Catamarca archaeology student to accompany me, a young man with a sullen, provincial swagger whose eagerness to earn a salary and gain archaeological experience in an unknown region was barely greater than his reluctance to take orders from a foreigner—and a female at that. Prospects seemed bleak. We arranged with Don Beto for a ride to a central point in the Cajón, the community of La Hoyada with its regional school (grades 1–9), a dozen adobe houses, a well-maintained soccer pitch, and assorted noisy animals including, critically, several mules that were quickly enlisted for transport (Fig. 8). With the school custodian Tango as guide, we made our way through the valley from one isolated homestead to another, staying with local families and asking about archaeological sites. The modern settlement pattern conformed closely to our model of Formative life: extended families dispersed across the landscape, each maintaining its own field systems and corrals, while homesteads were composed of single-room structures arranged around a central open patio where a wide range of domestic and agricultural tasks were undertaken (Fig. 9). But the archaeological sites we encountered did not conform to this pattern and were clearly not Formative; they were large with extensive and densely packed architectural remains, littered with the well-known Santamariana painted ceramics of the Regional Development period. We encountered none of the polished grey or black ceramics or the incised or punctate sherds that would correspond to earlier occupations. 28
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Archaeologists and lugareños meet at Yutopian Figure 8. Preparing the mules at La Hoyada for survey.
Figure 9. Contemporary homestead in the Valle del Cajón, similar to Early Formative cluster of structures around an open patio.
By the end of two weeks we were dirty and discouraged, and my Argentinean companion had had just about enough of traveling with a demanding gringa boss who insisted on starting work at 8:30 a.m. and eating sandwiches instead of a proper cooked midday meal. We had traveled widely, on foot and on animals, and only the extreme western margins of the valley were left to explore. It was unclear whether it would be worth the effort to get there given how tired we were, how unsure the route, and how absent Formative sites seem to be in this valley. But leaving the valley wasn’t easy either. And the family at La Ovejería, the last homestead we visited, was especially kind and encouraging (and prosperous), showering us with hospitality, taking time to show us an Inka site on the edge of their terrain, cooking us hot meals and letting us sleep in the warmest part of their house. Also, the next day they expected a party of neighbors—pilgrims!—to pass through their rancho en route to the very area we wanted to visit on the western flanks of the valley, and surely the group would be pleased to take us with them. My disgruntled student wasn’t convinced, and I was getting sick with a stuffy head and pounding headache that didn’t go away no matter what I drank, ate or swallowed. We vacillated. This last opportunity to access 29
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the isolated western valley margins would also take us farther from the only routes out of the valley. The grumpy student muttered and kicked dust around with his boots. The following day was bright and sunny, and the expected group arrived at La Ovejería, having walked 45 km down to Route 40 and 45 km back, carrying a wooden litter with a boxed image of San Juan on various stalwart shoulders. They had attended the festival at Cerro Colorado where San Juan, patron saint of the valley, had been blessed by the itinerant priest, and they had conducted some trading as well. Everyone had been drinking and now had to share more sustenance and drink with the Pachao family before they set off again on the final 12 km of their journey. We were introduced and they agreed to take us west with them. We could stay with the man called Jorge Chaile, a handsome farmer about 40 years old who was one of the image bearers (Fig. 10). Jorge removed his black fedora and held it in front of his chest, bowed a tipsy little bow, and assured us (if we understood him correctly) that his very modest home was ours if we wished to stay there as long as we understood that it was very humilde (humble). I protested mildly, feeling pretty awful and unfit for travel, but when our host saddled a horse for me and I was too ambivalent to argue, my fate was sealed. Never mind that the journey seemed wildly improbable. “How would I be able to return the horse?” I asked. Don Roque was unconcerned: I had only to unsaddle her at Jorge’s place, remove her bridle, slap her on the rump and she would come home! There was nothing more to say. We set off then, our procession, winding our way through the empty hills, filling them with plaintive music, a bright sinuous line of color and sound against the muted earth tones and the otherwise complete silence of the winter landscape. We were 14 people all told, some on foot and others on horseback or mule, led by Figure 10. Jorge Chaile with his family’s image of San Juan. a flag-waving patriot and fol30
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Archaeologists and lugareños meet at Yutopian Figure 11. The pilgrims’ procession toward Yutopian.
lowed by two other banner carriers, two drum players, several flautists and an accordion player(!), plus a grandmother riding side-saddle on a mule, another grandmother walking firmly, a passel of children and several pack mules. Flags unfurled, San Juan in his box hoisted high, the music in full tilt under the midday sun, we filled the landscape and multiplied our numbers with sound and motion so that our small group was almost a crowd and couldn’t be swallowed by the landscape. I was feverish on my swaying horse and managed to take only a few wobbly, out-of-focus photos as we moved through the motionless landscape (Fig. 11), entrusted entirely to our guides who sang, banged and blew their way west, carrying their blessed saint home. Forty-five minutes from Jorge’s residence we stopped and Jorge lit a contained brush fire to signal ahead that we were on our way, and I rested gratefully on the ground a few moments. In the last rays of daylight when our destination finally came into view, it was hard to make it out; the long adobe house and the linear hill behind it were made of the same soft brown earth. The four side-by-side rooms of the house opened in the same direction onto a narrow terrace that served as a common activity area. Other terraces fell from the house to the fields below and also rose up behind it, but lest the house disappear entirely into the landscape, several old álamo trees rose in sharp peaks around it, marking this location from the vast space around it. Smoke rose from the central kitchen room with sweet cooking aromas greeting us amid calls of welcome and grand gestures of flinging down burdens and gear. We were invited to a beautifully laid table to celebrate the homecoming of the now-blessed saint. But this was not for me: this food, this chatter, this animation. I asked whether I could lie down anywhere; my head was throbbing and I was alternately shivering and perspiring. Jorge took me to the last room at the end of the house, a storage room where a straw bed was quickly 31
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made up for me with sheets and heavy home-woven blankets. San Juan himself was housed here, together with the musical instruments, various changes of clothes and a heap of agricultural tools. I fell on the bed greedily, not bothering to take off my shoes. All my joints were aching, my head felt like it would explode and I closed my eyes as if forever. Sometime later Jorge returned, accompanied by his sister Ramona (the cook of the feast) to look in on me. “Would you like to be cured?” they asked. I didn’t hesitate: “Yes, thank you,” I snuffled, hot and shivering, I certainly did want to be cured. So Jorge and Ramona set about the task: they noted my fever and explained that was why my feet were cold. They took off my shoes and rubbed my feet wonderfully with something that felt cool, wet and divine; they rubbed my hands and reached down into my sweater to rub my shoulders as well. Then they offered me a warm infusion that smelled of flowers and sweet herbs which I drank slowly and gratefully, and then they covered my head with a sheet, speaking chants or prayers that I couldn’t understand. They sat with me in silence. Then Jorge briefly took my hands, and when I started to cry, surely from the fever and the relief of lying down, Jorge pronounced that it seemed I was sick because of a recent death of a loved one. Taken aback, I snuffled and cried some more, thinking of my recently deceased mother, and then I fell asleep to the distant noises of laughter and singing and eating, a candle still burning in front of the newly returned saint. I awoke 36 hours later when the Catamarca student burst into my room. His happiness was uncontained: on the ridgetop behind the house was an extensive Formative site with terraced levels carved into its northern and eastern faces and covered with sherds of burnished grey and burnished black pottery, some incised and some punctated, as well as the preserved foundations of stone houses. Indeed, the sherds he was holding were exactly what we’d been searching for, and within hours I was up on the ridgetop myself, verifying that the site promised everything we had been looking for to investigate Formative lifestyles, but larger and more elaborate than the regional Formative sites we knew. Surface materials included a piece of hammered bronze, lithic debris of an unusual variety of raw materials, several figurines—and from the highest point, a view across the entire Cajón Valley (Fig. 12). I asked Jorge what he called this ridge, this unexpected new archaeological place with so much promise, and he told us “Yutopian.” I just had to laugh out loud with the rightness of it all: a most excellent Formative site delivered up by a saint and called by a name which in Quechua means something about a hill full of partridges but that sounded to my English-trained ears precisely like the word UTOPIA!!!! That Catamarca student never worked with our project again. But we worked at Yutopian in 1994, 1996 and 1998, conducted an analysis 32
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Archaeologists and lugareños meet at Yutopian
Figure 12. Yutopian ridge with the Chaile homestead on the right and walled gardens in the center.
season in Santa María in 1999, and worked at nearby Formative Cardonal in 2004. Through these years, many archaeologists and students of archaeology from Argentina and the United States would come to know and respect, depend on and admire Jorge Chaile and his family (Fig. 13). When we returned the following year, in 1994, Jorge’s mother had passed away at what was believed to be age 91. Jorge, a bachelor, had by then built himself a two-room adobe house some 40 m above his family’s old homestead and had moved the image of San Juan up the hill with him. Down below in the old house, his adoptive sister Ramona still lived with her three young children. Two of Jorge’s uncles, Federico (58 years old) and Álvaro (45), were also unmarried and each lived by himself within a 10– to 15-minute walk from Jorge’s house in different directions. Jorge’s birth sister Celia lived with her husband Nicholas Araoz (“El Blanquito”) and their three girls 4 km away in a location they called Lagunita, or Little Lake, which we could just make out from the height of Yutopian. Jorge’s aunt Elisa lived with her husband Cleto 2 km in the other direction, at La Arroyo, where they ran a tiny store in one of their outbuildings, our major source of matches, noodles, candles, soap powder and locally produced red wine. Much later, we learned that Jorge had two other aunts who also lived within a radius of 10 km from him. By the last time we visited Yutopian in 2004, Jorge had married Santo, the eldest daughter of Don Roque Pachao from La Ovejería, 33
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perhaps because he had saved enough money and gained enough status by working with our project to now be considered properly eligible. They do not have children. Jorge has continued his weaving, together with keeping his free-ranging chickens, goats and cows, planting and harvesting a wide range of edible crops, and building several more outbuildings at Yutopian above the old homestead. Although he owns a new gas stove, stored carefully in an adobe room in its original plastic, he and Santo continue to cook outside over fires on the patio in front of the house. There is a new rabbit hutch and the beginning of a workshop building Figure 13. Jorge Chaile and family for weaving. The old homestead below in 1993. stands empty, and the thatched roof has caved in irreparably. Ramona now has five children and has moved to San José, near Santa María, because the large old house was too hard to keep up by herself. Her oldest daughter, Jenny, whom we first met when she was seven, is now a mother herself. Neither Federico nor Álvaro has married, although Álvaro had a visiting girlfriend for several years (the cook at the regional school in La Quebrada, 8 km to the south). Celia’s husband Nicholas now works in town regularly and visits the Cajón only on weekends; their oldest and most capable daughter María Louisa has also moved to San José to attend high school, interrupted briefly by the birth of her first child.
Facts • In 1994–1999 the population at Yutopian was eight, plus five at Lagunita. • In 2004 the population at Yutopian was three, plus three at Lagunita. • Elevation of site: 3200 masl. • Yutopian ridgetop: 330 m long (N-S) and 100 m across (E-W).
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Chronology in Northwest Argentina
7 Backstory
Chronology in Northwest Argentina In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries impressive collections of beautifully made ceramics, elaborate bronze pieces, stone masks and other archaeological treasures were amassed without science or ceremony from Northwest Argentina (Fig. 14) and sold to museums across Europe and the Americas. It wasn’t until the mid-twentieth century however that scholars began to propose chronological frameworks for understanding these objects and the cultures that produced them (Bennett et al. 1948; Cigliano 1958, 1961; González 1955, 1963;
Figure 14. Manuel Zavaleta (right) overseeing excavation of Santamariana burial urns, ca. 1900. Photograph from Zavaleta 1906: 298. 35
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BACKSTORY
González and Cowgill 1975; González and Núñez Regueiro 1962). Rex González’s scheme for subdividing prehistoric time was based on a taxonomy of chronologically significant, commonly used ceramic styles (beginning with a Preceramic period). An alternative, explicitly Marxist system of periodization was put forward based on contrastive modes of production (Núñez Regueiro 1974, 1978) or on adaptive phases (Olivera 1987, 2001), beginning with a “predatory” or pre-agricultural phase (hunters and gatherers) and essentially representing evolutionary stages of human adaptation. Over time and with the accumulation of 14C dates, a broad outline of prehistoric social change across Northwest Argentina has solidified, although nomenclature and dates still vary from author to author and valley to valley (cf. Leoni and Acuto 2008; Tarragó 2000); in a generalized fashion it looks something like this (loosely following Johansson 1996:63): • Archaic period (1000–200 BCE), characterized by a hunting and gathering way of life, with cultivation gradually playing an increasing role in the economy; • Formative period (200 BCE–900 CE), associated with the practice of agriculture and village life, with marked regionalization. This period is frequently subdivided into an Early Formative (200 BCE–500 CE) and a Late Formative (500 CE–900 CE); • Regional Development period (900 CE–1480 CE), when ranked or stratified societies appeared, eventually to be conquered by the Inka. Not surprisingly, the archaeology of the Regional Development period (RDP) is the most prominent and best-documented cultural time period in the Santa María Valley as a result of its rich material past and many decades of survey and excavation, but also from the ample discussion and debate about the justly famous RDP Santamariana funerary urns displayed in provincial museums throughout Northwest Argentina (Fig. 15). In fact, RDP sites produced a large proportion of the massive nineteenth-century collections, and Santamariana was the first archaeological style to be identified and named (Lafone Quevedo 1892, cited in Nastri 2008:9). RDP sites are recognized as large population agglomerations covering extensive areas of housing that consist of irregularly agglutinated structures. Houses are spacious and apparently accommodated extended groups or families; storage facilities are typically located within the domestic structures. Populations are supported by extensive terraced agricultural zones of maize, some irrigated. Cemeteries with infant burials in huge ceramic urns are common, and adults are interred in cyst graves (Ottonello and Lorandi 1987:82). 36
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Figure 15. Santamariana urns in the Museo Provincial Arqueológico “Eric Boman,” Santa María.
Figure 16. Quilmes, a reconstructed Regional Development period site in the Santa María Valley.
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In the Santa María Valley, RDP residential sites often occupy extensive areas on the flanks of hills while the hilltops themselves are fortified. A series of such RDP hill town/forts is located along the eastern flanks of the Sierra del Cajón at approximate 10-km intervals.1 Quilmes, one of the best-known and earliest excavated of these, is clearly composed of distinct sectors: a protected slope of enclosed structures on the upper hillside and, at some distance, a densely populated village with its own water reserves. The site of Quilmes has been reconstructed in recent times and is an important tourist destination today (Fig. 16). Two other RDP sites in the Santa María Valley have been studied in longterm, ongoing research projects that have yielded especially valuable information: Rincón Chico, studied by Myriam Tarragó and her team from the Museo Etnográfico in Buenos Aires, and El Pichao, studied by a Swedish project from the University of Göteborg under the overall direction of Per Cornell. RDP ceramics are typically painted, often employing black and red designs on a white painted surface (Santamariana tricolor), or using black designs on a white surface (bicolor), or less often black designs on a red surface. In fact, surface collections from RDP sites show painted ceramics outnumbering plainwares (Nastri 2008:12). Large open bowls and pots are common, but scholars of Santamariana ceramics focus on the highly decorated funerary urns produced not only in RDP times but throughout the Inka (1480–1536) and early Colonial (1536–1650) periods. Often the urn is used with a shallow bowl inverted over its opening. Urns vary in overall size, sometimes reaching a height of 65 cm, but proportions of vessel bodies and vessel necks also vary, as do the design fields and designs. Various typologies are argued; major groupings of distinctive urns have been recognized by region, each named for the area where it was first encountered: San José (generally considered the earliest type), Santa María, Belén and Famabalasto (Johansson 1996; see also Weber 1978, 1981). A six-phase typology has been constructed specifically for the urns of the Santa María Valley by Podestá and Perrota (1973; Perrota and Podestá 1978) and is still used today (Nastri 2008); this sequence suggests the evolution of an increasingly human form, first female (Weber 1981) but giving way to more masculine forms until in the last phase urn designs become highly abstracted (Fig. 17). The projectile points of this period are small, stemless, triangular points attached to arrow shafts and mobilized with bows. When we turn to the earlier Formative period, and especially in the Santa María Valley, the research is significantly less well developed (Scattolin 2007; Tarragó and Scattolin 1999). An Early and a Late Formative period (also called Lower and Upper Formative) are distinguished, defined on the basis of distinct ceramic styles and supported with 14C 38
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Chronology in Northwest Argentina Figure 17. Drawing of Santamariana urn sequence (after Nastri 2008: Figure 5; and Perrota and Podestá 1978: Figures 5, 6).
dates. But conceptually the Early Formative has largely served as a placeholder in a grand evolutionary scheme, a developmental stage parallel to the European Neolithic and associated with the adoption of an agropastoral lifestyle along with the tools that make that lifestyle possible: ceramics, weaving and permanent settlements (Tarragó 2000:302). Early Formative people are portrayed as having lived in egalitarian societies exhibiting little social differentiation and organized by kinship along the lines of simple tribal societies (Raffino 1991; Tarragó 1980); their dispersed residences appear to have grown by replication and fission in relation to available lands to provide access to resources and exchange networks (Tarragó 2000:307). In contrast Núñez Regueiro (1999; Tartusi and Núñez Regueiro 2001) characterizes the Early Formative as evidencing some degree of ranking, arguing that a special-function ceremonial center exists at Alamito (Tartusi and Núñez Regueiro 2001). Under either argument, most of the Early Formative population is held to have lived in dispersed, low-density distributions across the landscape, conforming to different settlement formations. In much of the region, but especially in the central dry valliserrana (valley-mountain) area where Santa María and Yutopian are situated, isolated homesteads are composed of two or three agglutinated structures surrounded by agricultural fields and corrals, sometimes terraced to conform to the surrounding gradients (Tarragó 2000:308) (Fig. 18). Alternatively, residences may consist of circular dry-stone walled habitations arranged around a central circular patio, as in the Tafí Valley east of Yutopian (Berberián 1989). In addition to the Early Formative settlements in the valliserrana zone (including Condorhuasi, Ciénaga and Saujil), Early Formative set39
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Figure 18. Loma Alto: Individual homesteads surrounded by field and corral enclosures, characteristic of dispersed Early Formative settlements (after Scattolin 1990: Figure 5).
tlements are known from the quebradas that connect with the upland puna zone (Alfarcito, Las Cuevas, Campo Colorado) and from the puna itself (Tebenquiche, Laguna Blanca), as well as from the lower selvas occidentales (Candelaria) (Ottonello and Lorandi 1987:67–68). By 500 CE villages—and a village way of life—had emerged widely, evidenced in some places by large mounds of successive occupations. The ceramic styles identified with the Early Formative period vary by region rather than composing a solid chronological sequence. In the central valliserrana zone, the most widely recognized Early Formative ceramic styles include the temporally overlapping Candelaria, Condorhuasi, Río Diablo and Vaquerías, with Ciénaga extending somewhat longer in time (Figs. 19 and 20). Many of these styles are defined with subphases or variants (Tartusi and Núñez Regueiro 2001) and some 40
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examples rival the finest pottery made anywhere in the Andes.2 Early Formative vessels throughout Northwest Argentina (and in many parts of the Americas) are burnished or polished, punctated and incised; the use of polished black and polished grey (unpainted) ceramics, and sometimes polished redwares, is widespread. Sometimes Early Formative vessels are slip-painted a single color, red (or on the Candelaria face
Figure 19. Variety of Early Formative ceramic styles (Candelaria, Yokasil and Vaquerías). Photographs by Martin Franken, reproduced with kind permission of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Ethnologisches Museum.
Figure 20. Condorhuasi ceramics from the Museo Provincial Arqueológico “Eric Boman,” Santa María. 41
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Figure 21. Early Formative stone sculpture known as a suplicante. Photograph courtesy of Cristina Scattolin.
Figure 22. Early Formative pipe. Photograph by Claudia Obrocki, reproduced with kind permission of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Ethnologisches Museum.
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neck vessels at Yutopian, white), but the paint is always applied before they are fired (in contrast to the RDP postfire painting of vessels). Even the two- and three-color Condorhuasi sherds, highly burnished and painted, had the color applied before firing. In addition to ceramics, Early Formative signature materials include elaborate stonework including the iconic sculptures known as suplicantes (supplicants) (Fig. 21), stone mortars with complex shapes, and masks of polished stone. Long ornate tubular pipes (Fig. 22) made in both stone and ceramic with elaborated modeled, incised or sculpted bowls occur at all Early Formative sites going back to the earliest, around 600 BCE; these are used “ritually” for smoking hallucinogenic herbs (Ottonello and Lorandi 1987:70). Alloys of copper were employed by most Early Formative groups to make decorative ornaments such as bracelets (see Fig. 1) or small chisels or bells, but Early Formative copper masks have also been recovered (Scattolin 2006:364, Fig. 7; Scattolin et al. 2007/2008; Scattolin et al. 2010). In the chronology of Northwest Argentina, the Early Formative period ends around 500 CE and is followed by a “lapse” of several hundred years before the Regional Development period begins in 900 CE. Only in the valliserrana area in central NOA is this lapse accounted for with a Late Formative (also called the Regional Integration period) associated with the widespread adoption of Aguada pottery. Known from more than 2000 tombs in the Hualfín Valley (González 2000:288), Aguada refers to a fine burnished blackware incised within delimited zones, with white paint filling in the incised lines (Fig. 23). Aguada ceramics show a clear derivation from late Ciénaga incised pots but are readily recognized for their shallow bowl forms and figurative decorations including motifs of felines with guerreros (warriors or decapitators) or individuals with elaborated headdresses or trophy heads. Population growth during this period may account for why Aguada people were forced to conquer new agricultural lands, leading to themes of aggression and war (Ottonello and Lorandi 1987:79). The conventionalized iconography of Aguada pottery has suggested a unifying ideology observed throughout the central part of Northwest Argentina where population growth led to widespread village life. New indications of high-ranked statuses and increases in ceremonial space suggest a surge toward complexity (Tarragó 2000:302), and new types of maize appeared during this time, but in many regards life was still deeply embedded in Early Formative ways, and a great deal of continuity in lifeways is observed. Pipes continue in use. Both Early and Late Formative ceramics include undecorated thin-walled polished and burnished grey- and blackware bowls and jars, sometimes with appliqué rims and even small nubbins or animal head motifs on the rims. 43
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Figure 23. Aguada ceramic from the Museo de La Plata.
This brief outline of NOA chronology and ceramic types requires a confession: other archaeologists working in the region know far more about ceramic types than I do, and it is always impressive to watch groups of young researchers poring over collections and energetically calling out sherd designations, demonstrating their skill at recognizing fine distinctions in what I consider a bewildering array of terms within different systems of nomenclature. I have more to say about this situation in the next Bit. Notes 1. These and other RDP settlements also contain substantial Inka period and sometimes even later components. 2. Tartusi and Núñez Regueiro (2001) argue that Early Formative contemporaneous “styles” might represent a separation between utilitarian and votive functions.
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Ceramic sequences and social processes
8 Argument
Ceramic sequences and social processes My Argentinean colleagues are adamant, and they are certainly not alone, that ceramic typologies—and the chronologies that can be built from them—lie at the heart of archaeology. No matter that the difficult methodical and technical work required to build a chronological sequence—for a valley or a watershed or a modern political unit—is tedious. The fact is (they say) that whether we ultimately want to reconstruct patterns of social, political or economic life, or understand cognitive processes, risk tolerance or how individuals in the past experienced their lives, we first need control over the chronology so we can “see” what went with what. Only after we assign chronological dates to sites, or to the occupations within sites and to the activities and artifacts within occupations, placing each in its associative chronological position— only then can we determine which activities, occupations and sites are contemporaneous and therefore participated in the same social patterns. Given the widely accepted view that we must have temporal control before we can learn about social arrangements, it is frustrating that the elaborate, decorated Formative ceramics of Northwest Argentina resist easy temporal ordering. While Rex González and others have taught us how to identify Early Formative versus Late Formative or RDP ceramic styles with relative ease, these still correspond to gross blocks of time of several hundred years each. And despite the elaborate terminology that formalizes sometimes minute differences between Formative ceramic styles, archaeologists have had little success identifying fine-grained sequences of specific attributes within these styles that might correspond to shorter use spans and thus offer more accurate ceramic chronometrics. This failure of Argentina’s ceramics to yield fine-grained chronological sequences is all the more frustrating because such sequences have been worked out successfully in other parts of the Andes. Argentinean Early Formative pottery (200 BCE to 500 CE), for instance, is roughly contemporaneous with Early Intermediate period (“Master Craftsman period”) styles of the Peruvian Andes. Like the Argentinean 45
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Condorhuasi and Candelaria styles, the well-known Peruvian Nazca and Moche pots are finely tempered, smoothed and finished, thin-walled and figurative. By many ceramic measures, the Peruvian and Argentinean styles would be considered equally specialized, equally fine, and equally labor intensive: they all require select raw materials and control over technical production details such as sequencing joins of separate clay parts, firing vessels that have parts of different thicknesses, postfiring treatment to obtain smooth finishes, and material know-how to produce a range of paint pigments. It is certain that both sets of ceramics were produced by trained specialists who, in each area, must also have understood the aesthetic conventions and degree of conformity required or permitted. Yet the Peruvian Moche and Nazca styles have been seriated (based on burial lots), so that we can identify early and late variants within each style (Donnan 1978:52–53, after unpublished notes by Larco Hoyle; Proulx 1968, after Rubini and Dawson n.d.), while the Argentinean Early Formative ceramics remain resistant to even the most earnest efforts to produce sequences. Without Early Formative pottery sequences, Argentinean archaeologists are forced to rely on 14C dates to date archaeological components (Bit 71), a requirement that is both expensive and not always possible to fulfill. Archaeologists of the Argentinean Early Formative might legitimately suffer from “Moche envy” in lacking ceramic attributes that collectively and reliably change over time. But I offer a more optimistic reading of this situation, one that stands the starting assumption on its head and denies that effective chronological sequences must be in place before we can understand social processes. At least some social understandings—specifically about the social, economic and political arrangements of ceramic production— are open to us precisely because the ceramics will not yield to seriation. Let’s look back at the Moche (Peruvian) Early Intermediate period ceramics where we know quite a lot about the socio-political arrangements underpinning high-status pottery production. Archaeology done at Moche workshops (e.g., Chapdelaine 2008) and the high degree of iconographic standardization suggest that producers of fine ceramics were almost certainly attached specialists (that is, high-ranking producers who were directly supported by elites in order to fashion high-status pottery). As we understand these arrangements, innovation and change would have been initiated at the top of a hierarchy of producers, and regular stylistic shifts would occur more or less simultaneously over an entire region controlled by the commissioning lord, as his or her specialists incorporated new features into a carefully controlled workshop repertoire. 46
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But how was the elaborate pottery of Northwest Argentina produced? No empirical clues have been produced so far, but everything we know suggests very different socio-political conditions and organizational arrangements, still yielding exquisite, labor-intensive ceramics but without the broadly observed and tightly sequenced stylistic shifts. In NOA, recognized Early Formative styles were produced continuously over a longer sustained period within a distinct region. Thus, traditions of Condorhuasi or Ciénaga pottery most likely correspond to the work of independent specialized ceramicists, perhaps hereditary potters who worked as specialized families or clans, and who continued to make specific kinds or styles of pottery which they provisioned to surrounding populations in some kind of exchange network. Such family-controlled pottery production groups are known today in different parts of Africa (Rod and Susan McIntosh, personal communication), illustrating a set of arrangements where there is little incentive to change styles and more constraints that keep styles (or “types”) stable over time. Transgenerational, family-controlled pottery-production “guilds” are only one suggestion for how the regionally based variation in Early Formative ceramics might have been structured, but some such independent production system provides a strong model for understanding the complexity of Early Formative ceramic styles that we observe across Northwest Argentina. I raise this argument for two reasons. First, it will quickly be seen that in this volume I make little reference to the welter of differentiated ceramic types and subtypes that Argentinean researchers rely upon to describe their materials. I excuse myself partly because in Northwest Argentina, ceramics do not lead to fine-grained chronological understandings in any direct manner. And as I’ve tried to argue here, even if we did have well-developed ceramic sequences in NOA, these would not necessarily lead to greater understanding of social, political or economic arrangements. In fact just the opposite is true: by understanding social processes we can gain insights into how chronological indicators work (or don’t). My other reason for offering this argument is that if we think we have to solve the chronology issues before we can understand social, political and economic arrangements in prehistory, we are doomed to devise ever finer stylistic distinctions, forever naming what we see without seeing what we aim for.
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9 Narrative
Why excavate at Yutopian? Locating Yutopian in 1993 already produced exciting new information about the little-known Early Formative: the site was larger than other regionally known sites of the period and contained clusters of circular enclosures, representing a bigger settlement than the expected dispersed farming homestead (if we could be sure they were all Early Formative structures, which we didn’t know). It also showed us worked metal on the surface, although again this might belong to a later period given that significant amounts of Santamariana materials were also found on the surface. In any case we could already recognize a wide diversity of Early Formative surface materials with high densities in places, so that even without digging, we could report a substantial Early Formative presence at the location. Did we have to dig at Yutopian? Or to put the question another way, was digging at Yutopian the optimal way to learn more about the Early Formative period in the region? To be honest, at the time that question never occurred to me. I had, after all, been looking for a site at which to focus our excavations; excavation is a mode of inquiry I am trained in and comfortable with. On the other hand, I was quite concerned with whether Yutopian presented too many logistical issues. Jorge and his family had been extraordinarily gracious hosts (and medics) and made us feel welcome to work there, but Yutopian really was remote, with not even dirt roads for parts of the trip between Santa María and the site; logistics and communications would be difficult. Was this the site in which to invest so much time and effort? In 1993, before I ended my visit to the Cajón, I was shown a second Formative site on the same west side of the valley, 8 km south of Yutopian. It was situated near the regional school, the church and the few houses that make up the community of La Quebrada, also important for being the terminus of the dirt road from Santa María. Two families in La Quebrada had pickup trucks which would radically facilitate travel and transport. And this site, Cardonal, was also large with much Early
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Formative material on the surface and many undisturbed structures in evidence. Although lacking metal on the surface, this could have simply been sampling error. All of this made the original choice difficult. (We later did conduct excavations at Cardonal [see Bits 87–96] and it does appear to lack the diversity and richness of Yutopian’s material culture, but this was just a hunch at the time.) In the end we excavated at Yutopian primarily because it held great promise for excellent new data on Formative society, but admittedly also because it seemed a lovely lucky place, we would be in excellent company with the Chaile family, it was a small enough community that we could employ everyone, and not entirely irrelevant: the views were excellent! We now needed a provincial archaeology permit and, importantly, adequate funding to bring Argentinean–North American teams here to work. The project would have to be described in terms acceptable to local bureaucrats, regional managers of cultural patrimony and competitive US funding agencies and foundations. What could we say about wanting to dig here when we still knew so little about the site!? How could our gut excitement about Yutopian’s archaeological potential, and the joy of finding ourselves in this spot, be coupled to current archaeological theory and methodology to sell ourselves and the site? What would make it an attractive project for foundations to support when they would never get to visit this place and savor its tremendous appeal? Years later I still recall the brain strain of trying to recast the elegant site that held such Formative promise, the warm caring people and the long vistas, the sounds of roosters crowing, the broad fleshy cactus leaves and carefully tended peach trees, the homespun blankets and homemade pots, trying to translate all this into an abstract research question. To be honest, for us the site was an answer, not a question. We decided to focus on the unusual variety of objects and different raw materials that we had seen on the surface, especially the classic Formative pottery types and the hammered bronze pieces. And we hoped the site would back us up if we argued that we might be seeing an actual Early Formative village here, and not the dispersed, low-density homesteads we kept reading about. Building on Cristina’s bibliography and library survey of all the research previously done in the region, I wrote North American grant applications: In the chronology of Andean (Northwest) Argentina, Formative culture (400 BC–600 CE) is characterized as segmentary, egalitarian and selfsufficient, with strong regional or microregional characteristics (Olivera 1988:87; Ottonello y Lorandi 1987:67ff.; Tarragó n.d.). Low-density settlements typically consist of dispersed, undifferentiated individual or clus-
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tered domestic structures, freestanding or with walled agricultural fields adjoining them (Berberián 1989; Raffino 1991:4; Scattolin 1990). Yet in the central area of Northwest Argentina the circulation of exotic goods, including complex ceramics like Condorhuasi polychromes and Candelaria modeled wares, copper and gold adornments, and bracelets and bells of bronze, is well documented for the Formative period (Scattolin 1990; Scattolin and Williams 1992). How these specialized goods functioned in the egalitarian context of Formative society, and what the context of production and consumption might have been for such goods, has not been questioned. Our interest in the Formative, then, focuses on how specialized goods articulate with a model of Formative life that is characterized as replicative, egalitarian and gendered. At the household level in small-scale societies, with low densities of alienable goods, non-market distribution systems, and unspecialized, unconcentrated labor, how are we to understand the lateral cycling of specially crafted “surplus energy” products? Specifically, the links between the production of a small class of elaborated material culture and the everyday processing of agricultural products needs to be examined in terms of distinct (or overlapping) facilities, production regimes and social relations of production that would have guided each production arena. How these contrastive/compatible production routines, singly or together, would have maintained, reinforced or transformed gender relations in the context of Formative society is valuable to consider. . . .
The grant applications felt distant, even arbitrary and invented, compared to the deeply personal experiences at Yutopian. The proposals assured the granting commissions of scholarly purpose and well-prepared intellectual history; they fairly bristled with the authority of knowledge production in the hands of well-trained professionals. But the passionate memories of the site still resonated strongly. For the moment they sat side by side, intellectual curiosity and personal pleasure, both contributing to a growing keenness to explore further at Yutopian. In several months’ time, the Fulbright grant was awarded and Yutopian research was scheduled to begin.
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Should North American archaeologists dig in Argentina?
10 Socio-politics
Should North American archaeologists dig in Argentina? Applying for research funds for Yutopian made me consider the large number of North American agencies and foundations that exist to fund North American archaeological projects abroad. In fact, there is a long distinguished history of Euro-American projects in the Andes— and even specifically in Northwest Argentina. Pioneering investigators from North America and Europe have contributed to understanding the prehistory of NOA (Bennett et al. 1948; Métraux 1930; Nordenskiöld 1903; Ten Kate 1893; Uhle 1912, 1923; Willey 1946, 1971), and such studies have continued into the present (Cornell 1993; D’Altroy et al. 2000; DeMarrais 1997; Johansson 1996; Pollard 1983). As well, Argentineans have trained in North America (González 1955, 1963; Nielsen 1996a, 1996b; Núñez Regueiro 1998). The list could be longer, but the point is clear: a handful of rich and powerful nations (mostly my own country—the United States—as well as Canada, several western European nations and Japan) undertake prehistoric research outside their national borders, developing the initial chronological sequences and establishing the logic of archaeology as the dominant scientific paradigm. At the same time, archaeologists of less-developed countries travel to the western centers to be trained in this logic and these methods but conduct their own research almost entirely within their own national borders. The “archaeology-exporting” nations are also among the wealthiest industrial nation-states, controlling raw resource extraction from all corners of the world, mobilizing inexpensive labor to make the commodities we covet, consuming disproportionate amounts of energy, and disproportionately polluting the planet. Perhaps we should not be surprised to recognize that the international research programs we archaeologists design are often carried out in low-income countries, sometimes among the least-developed and lowest-income countries— countries that utilize the least amount of the world’s energy and contribute the least pollution. With all our sophistication at recognizing colonialist enterprises, the parallel is surely evident: archaeological resources (such as sites and 51
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archaeological labor) are exploited in less-developed countries just like other raw materials we use to make our lives convenient and pleasing. We who conduct international archaeology take what we can at the lowest cost and least effort to ourselves, following the same capitalist principles as in our nations’ other extractive activities. Of course international researchers are not simply callous capitalists out to maximize research gain and minimize project costs, and many instances of colleagues’ highly ethical conduct and extraordinary generosity are known to us, in service to the administrative structures of host countries, to the communities in which guest researchers work, and to fellow scholars and students in host countries. Nevertheless, the asymmetrical global arrangements that underpin international research make great injustices possible, and the minimal standards of behavior set by host countries in their permitting requirements do not prevent these from happening: excavated materials are left in disarray; neither field reports nor field notes are filed with the excavated collections; no results are published in the language of the host country; local scholars are not kept informed or—worse yet—become angry about perceived infractions of agreements. Sometimes I am asked, in the Santa María schools or even in the Valle del Cajón communities, why I have come from North America to do research here. I answer that this is one of few places in the world where the origins and “rise” of an autochthonous state (the Inka) can be studied. We can argue that the Andes have special significance in regard to cultural evolution and the human condition, that studying Andean prehistory is too important to be restricted to scientists from a single country. Just as UNESCO strives to protect significant cultural heritage in different nations of the world, so too should the Andes be open to investigation from different national perspectives. But this argument doesn’t convince people. They know rather that it is the powerful financial and scholarly resources of First World states (e.g., their libraries, advanced scientific equipment, research foundations, publication opportunities), backed by greater hegemonic power, that rationalize Euro-American scholars’ domination of the research regions of the underdeveloped world. Commonly, at least part of the material results of such research comes to be housed in European and North American museums and universities, and the archaeological publications accumulate far from the people who today live near these sites. Until recently this situation required no justification; practitioners like Heinrich Schliemann and Mortimer Wheeler provided models for conducting archaeological investigations in the heat and dust of under52
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developed countries, and generations of researchers from privileged countries followed in their footsteps. But today it is not so easy to rationalize continuing to work in other people’s past and training students to do the same. The critique of continuing imperialistic forms of archaeological practice takes form around two related perceptions: (1) Archaeology is a manner of accruing power, of control over information that is extracted like any resource that destroys the context it comes from (oil, minerals, etc.). Its undertaking requires, perpetuates and intensifies unequal power as does any extractive enterprise performed by the core in the periphery; (2) archaeology provides a particular logic, one of any number, for charting the past, and the imposition of this logic— this specific impersonal manner of viewing the past through its material remains—is often not the accustomed manner of accounting for the past in other regions of the world. Thus the imperialist archaeologist not only takes pieces of the past away from the countries s/he visits, but at the same time forces an unfamiliar means of recounting (pre)history onto a still developing country (Gero 2006). From this perspective, how do I come to terms with my own practices? Even while I admit to the deep pleasure of traveling to, living in and working in places that surprise and delight me every day, and relish the opportunity to explore their contemporary as well as their ancient social arrangements, is it ethical? How do I live with myself, conscious as I am of the inherent contradictions of doing archaeology in less advantaged countries than my own? What can I say? Is it enough to argue that I try extremely hard to do it well? To point out that throughout the Yutopian project, I worked closely with an Argentinean collaborator, although we sometimes talked past one another and ultimately may not have been successful as a team? Does it help that we trained both Argentinean and North American students on our project, hoping they would establish long-term research partnerships? And that we tried to enrich the communities in which we worked, with museum exhibits and frequent public talks about what we did, with meaningful material gifts and good pay? Whom do we ask if we were acceptable in what we did, in how we worked and what we accomplished? Whose opinion counts?
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ARGUMENT
11 Argument
The positionality of practice The data and ultimately the knowledge produced at Yutopian were thoroughly conditioned by the practices we employed, a fact made clear to us early in the project. That Cristina and I had been trained in different fieldwork traditions was not surprising, and we were prepared to find that we brought different techniques to the investigations. What was not clear at the outset, however, were the links between how we each practiced archaeology and how we each thereby contributed to a different sort of knowledge. As is common in Argentina, Cristina had been involved more in survey work than excavations, and the excavation focus I brought to Yutopian was somewhat uncomfortable to Cristina who regretted not having broader knowledge about the Formative landscape of the Valle del Cajón. On the other hand my feminist perspectives were better served by excavations that could reveal the intimacies of everyday life. In the end the matter was resolved for us by a simple administrative coup in which the provincial administrator of cultural heritage allowed us excavation rights only at Yutopian and Cardonal, but no further permission to survey (Bit 75). As soon as we began mapping at Yutopian, we discovered that our foundational practices were hugely different. Without giving it much thought, I employed my familiar tripod-ed instruments to read in a N-S baseline, the longest on which a grid could be constructed, and staked it off at 20-m intervals. At the same time Cristina began an organic map of the structures, working from point to point with a hand-held compass and tapes, constantly checking herself with back readings. Cristina worked from what she encountered on the ground whereas my map was imposed on the topography of the site, starting with the longest continuous north-south line that could be shot down the length of the Yutopian ridge with the transit, and adjusted 30° west from a true N-S bearing to create a “map north-south” line. We then shot in “map east-west” lines at right angles to our baseline to reach the edges of the ridgetop, thus completing a grid on which we could plot Cartesian reference points for anywhere on site. Our perspective was situated in a contemporary 56
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instrumented landscape, a framework of our own creation having nothing to do with how the landscape had been occupied in Formative times. We had erected a standardized organizational framework and would put the “knowledge” into it. Meanwhile, Cristina’s “sketch map” was made more quickly, while we were still shooting in baselines. This map directly reproduced the structures and their relations to one another, and her representation was so accurate that we could locate any point on the ridgetop by measuring compass angles and distances to the nearest structure. There were no arbitrary reference points or lines that originated with the researcher rather than from the site itself; the site was not abstracted as a surface to be investigated but rather reflected the visible patterns of Formative life on the ground. All the reference points for this knowledge are internal to the knowledge itself. When we later brought in a total mapping station with its laser and digital accuracy to record the topography, structures and placement of our archaeological work, we found it somewhat less accurate than Cristina’s map because the sophisticated mappers were not familiar with the site or with Formative archaeology in the region and simply couldn’t determine the best mapping points to fix with their state-of-the-art equipment (Fig. 24). We also encountered “positional” differences in analysis, again fixed by our distinct conventions of practice and underpinned by different foundational logics. I assumed charge of the analysis of lithic materials, while Cristina organized the ceramic analysis. I immediately came up with a standardized form on which to record information from every excavated stratum. Each bag of lithic material was to be sorted into discrete raw material categories and then into size categories (which had to be juggled until we found categories that produced the most balanced counts). Tools were separated out in a different column, and distinctive tools were traced on the back of the analysis sheets. Meanwhile, Cristina and her students located all the ceramic sherds that retained a portion of the vessel rim and drew each ceramic profile individually, recording and preserving its integrity. The only categorical notation that Cristina made was to assign each sherd to either “coarse ware,” “intermediate ware” or “fine ware” depending on the paste, temper and surface finish.1 Part of the difference in analytical practice here emerges out of the different materials we assigned ourselves to analyze. Stone is less likely to suffer post-depositional transformation or fracture, and thus its size and raw material correspond more closely to how it appeared and was used in prehistory. In contrast, ceramic sherds bear little resemblance to the sizes and shapes in which they were first produced and used, so recording simple standardized attributes is more difficult. Still, if I had been analyzing the ceramics, I’m sure I would have constructed 57
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Figure 24. Map of Yutopian showing the placement of the first 20 test pits, with test pit results. Note also the location of excavation areas during subsequent field seasons.
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The positionality of practice
abstracted categories to “describe” the paste, temper and surface finish, perhaps thickness of sherd, decoration, et cetera. The contrast in analytical styles is similar to what we had observed in mapping. While I extracted knowledge in my own heavily constructed categories, Cristina hewed closely to the actual Formative forms, imposing little of her world on them. There were surely other instances at Yutopian where contrasting archaeological practices revealed different underlying logics, but I noted only one more. When I encountered what I called an archaeological “feature,” I found to my surprise that Argentinean archaeologists have no generalized word for a nonspecific archaeological anomaly, perhaps again because the notion of a “feature” is abstracted from the specifics of the archaeological record, and in Argentina the archaeological “record” is not an abstract idea; here are only the physical remains themselves. It is tempting to ponder the cultural— or political—utility of these practices, their practical origins in different contexts. How much was my scientific training tied to a conveniently homogenizing view of the world configured by issues of control and extraction? More speculatively, how much does Cristina’s training—and the worldview that gives rise to it—serve to protect and give meaning to the specifics and the uniqueness of her historic national context? These are speculations perhaps, but I argue that here and elsewhere in our international collaborative project we found ourselves working within the constraints of different research logics; that the scientific paradigm in which I worked did not derive from more expensive or precise equipment, nor from a determination to be accurate. Cristina was more accurate and precise than I was. But I worked relative to sampling spaces, hypotheses, views of social change and abstracted populations that were external to the past we recovered, while Cristina worked within a prehistory that originated in, and was conditioned by, the traces of the past that we recovered. I am sure our understandings of the past were both enriched and frustrated by this complementarity. Note 1. Cristina regularly assigned sherds to typological classes, but during our wrap-up season of laboratory analysis, her organizing summation for recording ceramics consisted of drawing vessel profiles.
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12 Episode
Digging test pits By the time we arrived back at Yutopian in 1994, I had a Fulbright award to teach archaeology at the University of Catamarca and alternately to work at Yutopian, and Cristina had assembled a team of Argentinean archaeology students interested in “Northwest research”: Juan Leoni, Laura Pérez Jimeno and Hugo Puentes. We converged in Santa María in March, a wonderful autumnal season in the mountains, windy and clear and considerably warmer than my 1993 July–August survey. I was the only yanqui. Cristina began by mapping Yutopian, although at times we didn’t understand how specific wall segments were related. Simultaneously we started to lay out and excavate our first pozos de prueba (test pits) in order to understand the fundamental composition of the site: the depth and density of cultural deposits across the site, and the relative frequency and distribution of Early Formative remains (Fig. 25). Interestingly, my field journal from 1993, my first visit to Yutopian, already notes some distributional hunches: [July 21] Moving to the southern end of the site, there is better preservation across the entire ridge width, even showing some enclosures and walls on the west side, in contrast to the steep east slopes of the ridgetop. Also it appears (emphasis in original) that the frequency of red sherds and black-on-red painted sherds increases moving south, almost as though the earliest Formative parts [of the site] were “near” the height of the hilltop, where I observed esp nice circular recintos and no immediately apparent “red” sherds at all!
Although I had thought I observed an early-late distributional pattern in 1993, it was necessary in 1994 to document my casual observations and see how rigidly they obtained. Placing 1 × 1 m test pits across the site was my North American strategy, but this technique is not regularly used in Argentinean archaeology where researchers are more likely to place single sondage units after careful surface inspections. Certainly
60
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Digging test pits Figure 25. Opening the first pozos de prueba (test pits) (PPs 4 and 13).
how we tested the site fundamentally conditioned what we later came to know about Yutopian and, ultimately, about the Early Formative. We had little interest in applying a random sampling program to our test pits at Yutopian; rather, we wanted the pozos de prueba (test pits) to yield stratigraphic and distributional information across the site as well as to provide first clues in other lines of inquiry: could we identify functions of structures, discriminating between residences, patios, storage areas and walled gardens? What would we be able to learn about domestic economies? Were domestic structures swept clean or did they accumulate material? Could we locate middens? And ultimately, was gendered labor revealed in households? We dug twenty 1 × 1 m pozos in March, distributed as shown in Figure 24 and in Table 1. My explicit interest in households and the arrangements of household economies guided the placement of pozos inside and around structures. We placed the first five pits where architectural remains were most dense, between 50 and 150 m south of our datum, but we encountered mostly mixed materials and altogether fewer Formative diagnostic ceramics. The next five pits only extended the tested area to 12 m north of our datum. By Pozo de Prueba 13 (PP 13), however, we understood that we needed to test much farther north along the baseline because Formative materials systematically came from the northern part of the site. Ultimately we covered the entire 300-m length of the baseline. We dug all pozos in arbitrary levels of 10 cm because we didn’t yet know what the stratigraphy would look like. We quickly learned, however, that the well-drained soils of the ridgetop and terraces had suffered severe leaching over the millennia, and no traces of occupational 61
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lenses or other organic soil color changes were visible, apart from fire discolorations. All excavated materials were screened in ⅛-inch screens except when we needed to put extra screens into service and were forced to employ our only ¼-inch screen as well. Test pit depths varied from 30 to 110 cm depending on whether we found ourselves inside a semisubterranean structure or outside where bedrock was encountered after removing only a 20- to 30-cm level of topsoil. Testing was exciting; it was our first look at the prehistoric material in context, an intense learning period for us all: co-directors, crew, students and Chailes alike. Where test pits did not quickly peter out, the loamy soils in the upper three or four levels still frequently failed to produce noteworthy or diagnostic materials until suddenly in the fourth or fifth level, around 50 cm below ground surface, we would encounter higher percentages of finely made decorated pottery, larger pieces of animal bone and diverse lithic materials, including obsidian and colored cherts. Polished slate knives always came from lower levels as well. Sometimes the levels with quantities of interesting materials would occur just above bedrock, but sometimes these artifact-bearing levels extended another 40 or even 50 cm before bedrock. This was all valuable input for planning the larger excavation blocks. On the other hand, each test pit risked destroying the integrity of a larger archaeological unit, taking a bite out of the floor of a structure just to get a taste. Some test pits were placed deliberately to check for early or late occupations while others were placed to understand specific features of the site. The floor of PP 12, in what we thought was an area of cultivation, revealed a sharply defined diagonal line dividing bedrock on one side and a charcoal-laden pit on the other, with large quantities of burnt material and charcoal (Bit 53 and Fig. 75). One of the walls of PP 13 cut a vertical profile straight through a pit that had been dug into the bedrock, with a grinding stone and another large flat rock in it. The challenge in the test pit phase was to keep selecting locations for and staking out future test pits before they were needed so that no one was standing around waiting for something to do. While PP 12, 13 and 14 were being worked on, Cristina and I laid out PP 16, 17 and 18, later adding 19 and 20 to get to the southernmost extreme, and then we decided to stop and see where we were.
T
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What the test pits told us
13 Raw data
What the test pits told us Table 1. Ceramic counts from 1994 test pits, arranged north to south Test Pit #
Grid Location Test Pit Total Depth (north–south) Placement on Site (from surface to bedrock) 15 117N × 9W north plaza 18 cm 13 85N × 16W in small round 70 cm enclosure (Estructura 5) 18 77N × 13W in small round 110 cm enclosure (Estructura 1) 14 66N × 10W in small round 68 cm enclosure (Estructura 3) 9 12N × 10E outside a group 30 cm of enclosures 8 10N × 24E in large round 60 cm enclosure 7 10S × 27E in double-walled 45 cm rectangular enclosure 17 25S × 9W in double-walled 30 cm rectangular enclosure 16 31S × 32E in large central 64 cm round enclosure 10 44S × 3W central area be30 cm tween enclosures 5 50S × 33E in double-walled 30 cm small enclosure 11 60S × 48W between 40 cm enclosures 12 64S × 20W adjacent to poor- 60 cm ly defined wall 1 80S × 9E in central oddly 110 cm shaped enclosure 6 97S × 22E in small round 100 cm enclosure 3 100S × 12W in passageway 40 cm between structures 2 109S × 28E on first terrace, 60 cm east side of ridge 4 150S × 25W in large oval 40 cm gero pages new3.indd 63 enclosure
Total Ceramics Recovered 10 38
Early Diagnostic Ceramics 1 9
Late Diagnostic Ceramics — —
356
44
—
196
32
1
104
—
2
289
16
10
35
—
5
16
1
2
58
—
7
43
—
1
16
1
1
29
3
157
2
4
227
25
18
364
29
10
154
17
14
448
12
12
29
—
3
Table 1. Continued
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enclosure in large central 64 cm 58 — 7 round enclosure 10 44S × 3W central area be30 cm 43 — 1 tween enclosures 5 50S × 33E in double-walled 30 cm 16 1 1 RAW DATA small enclosure 11 60S × 48W between 40 cm 29 3 enclosures 12 64S × 20W adjacent to poor- 60 cm 157 2 4 ly defined wall test pits, arranged north to south Table 1. Ceramic counts from 1994 1 80S Table × 9E 1. Continued in central oddly 110 cm 227 25 18 shaped Test Grid Location Test Pit enclosure Total Depth Total Early Late 6 # 97S × 22E in small round 100 cmsurface 364 29 10 Pit (north–south) Placement on Site (from Ceramics Diagnostic Diagnostic enclosure to bedrock) Recovered Ceramics Ceramics 3 100S × 12W in passageway 40 cm 154 14 15 117N 9W north plaza 18 10 117 — between 13 85N × 16W in small round 70 cm 38 9 — structures enclosure 2 109S × 28E on first terrace, 60 cm 448 12 12 (Estructura 5) east sideround of ridge 110 cm 18 77N × 13W in small 356 44 — 4 150S × 25W in large oval 40 cm 29 — 3 enclosure enclosure 1) (Estructura 20 179S××10W 34W on small first terrace, 30 cm 361 53 14 66N in round 68 196 32 115 south end enclosure (Estructura 3) 19 183S × 22W badly preserved 52 cm 51 2 10 architectural area 30 cm 9 12N × 10E outside a group 104 — 2 of enclosures 8 10N × 24E in large round 60 cm 289 16 10 Cristina organized a rough classification of the test pit ceramics right enclosure field to see45the 7 10S there × 27E in the in double-walled cm distribution 35 of early and — late occupations 5 rectangular across the Yutopian ridgetop. Moving rapidly through the excavated materials,enclosure she noted the distribution of familiar diagnostic sherds from 17 25S × 9W in double-walled 30 cm 16 1 2 each pit and level. If intact Formative occupations existed, where could rectangular they bestenclosure be studied? A few cautionary points are needed here in interpreting her results. 16 31S × 32E in large central 64 cm 58 — 7 round enclosure 10 44S • × 3WDifferential central preservation area be30 cm — of diagnostic 43ceramic features: Most1 diagnostween enclosures tic Formative ceramics are thin-walled with polished surfaces readily 5 50S × 33E in double-walled 30 cm 16 1 1 recognized by sight and touch and not prone to erosion. Diagnostic small enclosure ceramics of the Regional 11 60S × 48W between 40 cm Development 29 period 3(RDP) are generally thicker-walled enclosures and their unpolished exterior painted surfaces erode easily. adjacent If the todiagnostic slips2 are missing, RDP 12 64S × 20W poor- 60 cmpaint or postfire 157 4 ly defined wall ceramics in the field resemble general cookwares and are easily clas1 80S × 9Esified “indeterminate” in central oddly 110 cm thus under-represented 227 25 in final 18 and counts. shaped enclosure • State of knowledge: In this early stage of research we were not yet 6 97S × 22E in small round 100 cm 364 29 10 familiar with Yutopian ceramics, and certainly when I participated enclosure in ceramic counts I 40 didn’t 3 100S × 12W in passageway cm understand 154 that both 17 the Tosco 14 Pulido (polished coarseware) and the Tosco Engobe Rojo (red-slipped between structuresare (or can be) Formative. We were also unfamiliar coarseware) 2 109S × 28E on first terrace, Formative 60 cm 12 with the Yutopian style 448 of Baño Blanco (white12 postfire east side of ridge slips). In hindsight, our early ignorance under-represented Forma4 150S × 25W in large oval 40 cm 29 — 3 tive ceramics. enclosure Research focus: In large ceramic counts, 20 179S• × 34W on first terrace, 30 cm 361 especially 53 early on, 15we concentrated on noting whether Formative materials were southspecifically end 19 183S × 22W badly preserved 52 cm 51 2 10 architectural area 64 16
31S × 32E
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What the test pits told us
included in each level (present or absent). The upper levels of PP 2, for instance, show no “late” materials, almost certainly because we were more interested in looking specifically for Formative sherds. Despite these biases, several patterns clearly emerge:
Table 1. Continued
• Test pits at the northern end of the site produced only early (Formative) ceramics. • Formative ceramics appeared everywhere on the ridgetop, in the north and the south. • The late period (RDP) ceramics came almost exclusively—and in much higher numbers—from the southern test pits. • Test pits in the center of the ridge invariably showed RDP ceramics overlying Formative ceramics. To test this pattern, Hugo and Álvaro excavated two additional test pits, PP 19 and 20, at the extreme southern end of the site (183S 22W and 179S 34W), and it held for the most part: we recovered tiny black-onred painted sherds and a tiny triangular (late) obsidian projectile point in these southernmost pits. But while I would have preferred otherwise (my lust for unambiguous patterns being deeply conditioned), I must force myself to admit there was also some Formative material in PP 20.
14 Narrative
The incredible Pozo de Prueba 18 Juan had dug 80 cm into PP 18 before he spied the glint of trowel on stone and saw the upper curved edge of a substantial horizontally placed grinding stone. Known locally as a conana, it is often associated with grinding corn, although other foods can be pulverized in it to make sauces or flours (Bit 94). By 90 cm it was completely uncovered and we were dazzled by the big (17 cm) polished mano set within the concavity of the conana, seemingly undisturbed over the perhaps 1700 years since the coupled implements were last used (Fig. 26). 65
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included in each level (present or absent). The upper levels of PP 2, for instance, show no “late” materials, almost certainly because we were more interested in looking specifically for Formative sherds. Despite these biases, several patterns clearly emerge:
Table 1. Continued
• Test pits at the northern end of the site produced only early (Formative) ceramics. • Formative ceramics appeared everywhere on the ridgetop, in the north and the south. • The late period (RDP) ceramics came almost exclusively—and in much higher numbers—from the southern test pits. • Test pits in the center of the ridge invariably showed RDP ceramics overlying Formative ceramics. To test this pattern, Hugo and Álvaro excavated two additional test pits, PP 19 and 20, at the extreme southern end of the site (183S 22W and 179S 34W), and it held for the most part: we recovered tiny black-onred painted sherds and a tiny triangular (late) obsidian projectile point in these southernmost pits. But while I would have preferred otherwise (my lust for unambiguous patterns being deeply conditioned), I must force myself to admit there was also some Formative material in PP 20.
14 Narrative
The incredible Pozo de Prueba 18 Juan had dug 80 cm into PP 18 before he spied the glint of trowel on stone and saw the upper curved edge of a substantial horizontally placed grinding stone. Known locally as a conana, it is often associated with grinding corn, although other foods can be pulverized in it to make sauces or flours (Bit 94). By 90 cm it was completely uncovered and we were dazzled by the big (17 cm) polished mano set within the concavity of the conana, seemingly undisturbed over the perhaps 1700 years since the coupled implements were last used (Fig. 26). 65
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NARRATIVE
Figure 26. Pozo de Prueba 18 framing a large horizontal grinding stone (conana) and mano in situ on the occupation floor. PP 18 was later incorporated into Estructura 1, Unit 301.
When we placed this test pit within an arbitrarily selected, wellformed northern recinto, of course we couldn’t know what lay beneath the surface, so it was truly amazing that our 1 × 1 m pozo managed to come down upon and contain the entire grinding stone. Equally impressive was that the mano looked as if it had just been laid there for a moment while the grinder stepped away to take care of other business. Such placement is neither casual nor disturbed, so with great excitement we could now conclude that Yutopian contained at least some intact structures with utensils left in place on occupation floors. In my public accounts of work at Yutopian I make much of this find. I generally say that our excavation plan fell into place after our incredible luck finding a conana complete with its associated mano in their “original” functional positions in PP 18. The logic is clear and compelling and the outcome of how we came to excavate our first structure is neatly explained: we proceeded to excavate Estructura 1 based on what we learned from PP 18. And so it was, but slightly more complicated. 66
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Extending test pit excavations
15 Episode
Extending test pit excavations Here’s the truth. After we had located the compelling and intact conana in PP 18, we did not actually begin to excavate the occupation floor on which it lay. The linear story is a convenient abbreviation, skipping over a difficult, ambiguous time to create a more elegant economical account of our practices. What actually unfolded was messier because we still weren’t ready to establish a large excavation block, even after the conana was exposed. In fact, PP 18 showed only a few artifacts in association with the conana, none of them distinctly Formative, plus we were still unsure at that point about the spatial distribution of Formative versus RDP occupations along the ridge. Finally, we needed to account for the fact that from what we had seen so far, we hadn’t located any clear RDP occupation and virtually all of our excavated diagnostic material was Formative, despite the fact that our extensive surface collecting had included many later period ceramics. We definitely needed to speed up artifact washing to classify the test pit ceramics, so we opted to move in two directions: while Cristina organized a washing and classifying team, I would open up contiguous excavation units in two different areas of the site where Formative materials had seemed abundant. We had placed PP 6 inside a semi-round or sub-rectangular structure that sat amid other well-defined structures midway along the ridge (97 m south) on its eastern slope (22 m east of the baseline), with terraces falling off sharply below the structure on the east. The 1 × 1 m test pit had yielded a broken conana and polished mano in the level 40–50 cm below surface (bs) associated with little diagnostic material. But below that, in Level 8, between 70–80 cm bs, many Formative diagnostic sherds had been recovered, together with llama bones and an obsidian biface stem. This seemed to promise enough Formative material to identify a Formative occupation, possibly an occupation floor, so I decided to open three additional 1 × 1 m test units around PP 6 to form a 2 × 2 m excavation block. We tentatively called this area Sector I. Meanwhile, the crew who had worked on PP 3 had also recovered impressive quantities of Formative material. This test pit (100S 12W) 67
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had been placed between two walls that appeared to define a passageway littered with surface material including polished greyware pottery and obsidian flakes. Although the test pit had only gone down 30 cm and had both early and late period ceramics, there was sufficient Formative material to test further. We had also found fragments of what seemed to be a human cranium in the shallow fill. We first laid out two adjacent 1 × 1 m units and then expanded this area yet another 3 m2, so that in the end the five additional 1 × 1 m excavation units contiguous to PP 3 were referred to as Sector II. While Cristina concentrated on analyzing the frequencies and distributions of test pit ceramics (among other things), crews spent five days working in Sectors I and II, using notes from the first test pit in each sector as a guide to where to expect Formative materials. Our goal in these expanded test pit sectors was to locate clearly defined Formative occupations interesting and extensive enough to warrant a large block excavation and meanwhile allow us bigger pictures of the spatial arrangements of artifacts within the tested zones to perhaps offer clues to the functional use of space. We learned a lot from Sector I: that the house we were excavating had a clear double occupation with large coarse and combed ceramics down to 50 cm bs, a level rather empty of finds between 60 and 80 cm bs, and a clear Formative occupation below 80 cm where the finds continued below the (apparently later, remodeled) external wall but where there was only one late sherd. We also learned that the bedrock levels and the living floors sloped down toward the centers of the structures and that the external walls sometimes sloped outward, causing Álvaro to comment, “We are in a tasa [cup]!” (We were to learn later that this last feature, walls that sloped outward at the top, was most surely a feature of remodeling houses in later periods.) Altogether this was a satisfying expansion of a test unit, giving us the sense of gaining knowledge. Sector II on the other hand, with considerable investment of time and effort, was less satisfying. The expanded area now included both the PP 3 “passageway” space and part of the interior of the adjacent structure. My March 12 notes remind me: “Clearly diagnostic Formative pieces from the upper levels of excavations and NO late pieces from the excavations, despite a heavy scatter of late pieces on the surface!” But as we removed the stones of the inner “passageway” wall (that is, the actual wall of the structure), we unexpectedly began to uncover the remains of a shallow burial, scapula first, then ribs, then arms doubled under the body (see Bit 16). The lack of a prepared burial chamber or special preparation of the body left few clues and had given no warning of this development. Clearly the burial had been placed before the wall was built. 68
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Many questions arose: Who was this person? Could s/he be associated with the building of the wall? Or were the wall and the burial later and intrusive into an otherwise early context? Or had the burial, passageway and structure all been occupied first during the Early Formative occupation and then reoccupied in a later Formative time, or even in the RDP? Could we isolate where the Early Formative material was coming from? Whew, what a surprise! As we reached 40–50 cm bs, large surface-combed and black/red/ white painted Santamariana sherds appeared associated with the burial, along with a slightly deeper Aguada (Late Formative) sherd, clearly a mixed fill rather than a true depositional stratigraphy. But below these, where soil only remained in pockets of the bedrock, we found a few polished and incised grey and buff Early Formative sherds. The burial now seemed a later intrusion into an originally Early Formative context, with much mixing of levels, but there was one more surprise for us here: a well-formed elongated pit dug obliquely into the bedrock beneath an overhanging bedrock lip, and from this pit, positioned roughly directly under where the burial had been, we extracted several large stone tools, a stemmed obsidian projectile point, a round mano, several large ceramic sherds, some bone and a slate knife, all diagnostically early. At first we tried to relate the pit to the burial, thinking that the intrusive burial had taken advantage of a convenient chamber-like pit in the earlier house floor to deposit the dead . . . but the rock overhang “ceiling” made this improbable, and the relation between the lower pit and the intrusive burial was evidently more complicated. Some resolution came as we opened more of the area inside the structural walls: shallow deposits here proved consistently mixed with only a slight tendency for early materials to occur lower down. We were also learning from the house excavations that we were calling Sector I; in contrast to this mixed fill, the Sector I house excavations showed more clearly stratigraphic deposits, enabling us to extrapolate patterns: at least some Sector II houses were reoccupied, their floors sloped toward the centers of the structures, dish-like, and deposits were quite shallow near the walls where we had started. But the relationship of the Sector II passageway and its heavy Early Formative fill to the rest of the excavation area was not resolved. It was both messy and frustrating as workmen and students had to learn to trowel patiently, to look for subtle soil variations, and to recognize pottery types and architectural variations that none of us had ever seen before. With more field seasons behind me now, I am convinced that the “passageway” was a Formative-style entranceway where, instead of offering a simple opening in a wall, the wall on one side of the doorway is made to overlap in front of the other side of the doorway to create a 69
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“double wall” following the curved contour of the structure. Had we dug further here, we would understand more about which parts of the early architecture were modified and which left untouched, and maybe even understand why walls more than a meter thick would be erected here at a relatively small settlement. But recognizing the discomforting messiness of mixed occupations, we abandoned this area and never resolved its cultural and architectural sequences.
16 Andean ways
Inadvertent human remains During our first (1994) field season at Yutopian Jorge Chaile and I were working together in Unit 201 when we realized we were uncovering an unexpected human burial, and frankly I was horrified. This was the last thing I wanted to find, and I was especially uncomfortable with Jorge right beside me. I hated the idea of digging up other people’s ancestors, and my interests were truly in households, not burials. I shuddered and put down my trowel. “Whoa, Jorge. Let’s stop right here.” I laid out our options: We could simply cover up what we’d uncovered and relocate our excavations to another area. OR if Jorge preferred we could carefully remove the bones however he recommended and rebury them at another location— on site or elsewhere—with an appropriate ceremony. OR, and this seemed unwise to me, we could continue to excavate and treat the bones like any other archaeological evidence. I wanted Jorge to make this decision, and I tried to make it clear that I was not at all invested in this test excavation, that it was merely part of having a good look at different parts of the site. Jorge surprised me. He insisted we collect the bones, put them in a box and continue digging, no problem. “Are you sure, Jorge??? It really doesn’t matter to me!” I repeated several times in my most sincere Spanish. No, he insisted, it was fine to dig up the bones because, he explained, this was not a Christian, this was (merely) a pagan! Clearly the product of a missionary education, Jorge played it cool, surely saying 70
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“double wall” following the curved contour of the structure. Had we dug further here, we would understand more about which parts of the early architecture were modified and which left untouched, and maybe even understand why walls more than a meter thick would be erected here at a relatively small settlement. But recognizing the discomforting messiness of mixed occupations, we abandoned this area and never resolved its cultural and architectural sequences.
16 Andean ways
Inadvertent human remains During our first (1994) field season at Yutopian Jorge Chaile and I were working together in Unit 201 when we realized we were uncovering an unexpected human burial, and frankly I was horrified. This was the last thing I wanted to find, and I was especially uncomfortable with Jorge right beside me. I hated the idea of digging up other people’s ancestors, and my interests were truly in households, not burials. I shuddered and put down my trowel. “Whoa, Jorge. Let’s stop right here.” I laid out our options: We could simply cover up what we’d uncovered and relocate our excavations to another area. OR if Jorge preferred we could carefully remove the bones however he recommended and rebury them at another location— on site or elsewhere—with an appropriate ceremony. OR, and this seemed unwise to me, we could continue to excavate and treat the bones like any other archaeological evidence. I wanted Jorge to make this decision, and I tried to make it clear that I was not at all invested in this test excavation, that it was merely part of having a good look at different parts of the site. Jorge surprised me. He insisted we collect the bones, put them in a box and continue digging, no problem. “Are you sure, Jorge??? It really doesn’t matter to me!” I repeated several times in my most sincere Spanish. No, he insisted, it was fine to dig up the bones because, he explained, this was not a Christian, this was (merely) a pagan! Clearly the product of a missionary education, Jorge played it cool, surely saying 70
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what he thought I wanted to hear and not yet a good enough friend to negotiate a new plan. But the next morning as we started work, Jorge asked me if I’d heard whistling during the night. Both he and Ramona had heard it for long stretches all night, passing down the valley from north to south, passing close to Yutopian and lingering near our encampment. This had nothing to do with “pagans”; in many Andean accounts whistling is associated with the dead who are moving near us (e.g., Allen 1988:60; Walter 2006:178). Obviously Jorge was altogether less sure than he’d first let on that the skeletal remains were neutralized by their pre-Christian associations. It was the only time in the many years I subsequently worked with Jorge that he talked of having heard whistling. At the end of this stint of fieldwork, the boxed bones were moved to the archaeology lab in Catamarca. Later, as we learned more about the site, we recognized they represented a later intrusive burial, and I’m afraid we’ve never had them identified or studied further.
17 Episode
Opening Estructura Uno Given the results of the ceramic classification from the test pits, we were encouraged to return to PP 18 with its perfectly framed conana grinding stone, counting on the fact that since it lay at the northern end of the site, it would be Early Formative (Fig. 27). (In fact, from here on we mostly worked in the northern part of the site.) We extended PP 18 aggressively by digging three side-by-side 2 × 2 m test units to surround it and we took our time; Jorge, Álvaro and Federico—plus Ramona who had been washing ceramics—had all gone off to round up cows for vaccination (see Bit 20). Our idea was to expose the entire northern third of this partially buried structure, combining the new 2 × 2 m units with PP 18. Based on PP 18, we could expect the occupation floor— or an occupation floor—to correspond to the depth at which the conana lay, around 95 cm bs. But more recent floors could also be discovered above this 71
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Inadvertent human remains
what he thought I wanted to hear and not yet a good enough friend to negotiate a new plan. But the next morning as we started work, Jorge asked me if I’d heard whistling during the night. Both he and Ramona had heard it for long stretches all night, passing down the valley from north to south, passing close to Yutopian and lingering near our encampment. This had nothing to do with “pagans”; in many Andean accounts whistling is associated with the dead who are moving near us (e.g., Allen 1988:60; Walter 2006:178). Obviously Jorge was altogether less sure than he’d first let on that the skeletal remains were neutralized by their pre-Christian associations. It was the only time in the many years I subsequently worked with Jorge that he talked of having heard whistling. At the end of this stint of fieldwork, the boxed bones were moved to the archaeology lab in Catamarca. Later, as we learned more about the site, we recognized they represented a later intrusive burial, and I’m afraid we’ve never had them identified or studied further.
17 Episode
Opening Estructura Uno Given the results of the ceramic classification from the test pits, we were encouraged to return to PP 18 with its perfectly framed conana grinding stone, counting on the fact that since it lay at the northern end of the site, it would be Early Formative (Fig. 27). (In fact, from here on we mostly worked in the northern part of the site.) We extended PP 18 aggressively by digging three side-by-side 2 × 2 m test units to surround it and we took our time; Jorge, Álvaro and Federico—plus Ramona who had been washing ceramics—had all gone off to round up cows for vaccination (see Bit 20). Our idea was to expose the entire northern third of this partially buried structure, combining the new 2 × 2 m units with PP 18. Based on PP 18, we could expect the occupation floor— or an occupation floor—to correspond to the depth at which the conana lay, around 95 cm bs. But more recent floors could also be discovered above this 71
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Figure 27. Map of the northern sector of Yutopian (called Sector III during the test pit phase) showing Núcleo 1 (Estructuras 1, 2 and 3) and Núcleo 2 (Estructuras 4 and 5).
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Opening Estructura Uno
Figure 28. Opening Units 300, 301 and 302 in Estructura 1.
one, floors that would have been easy to miss in the 1 × 1 m pozo and which would show up more readily in the larger exposed block. Digging in pairs, a student with a lugareño (local workman) in each 2 × 2 m unit, the crew began by removing the upper 25 cm of fill by shovel shaving and thereafter troweling in 10-cm arbitrary levels (Fig. 28). From the beginning, we found no late (RDP) ceramics or any indicators that were not consistent with an Early Formative occupation, even within the upper strata of fill. As we gradually uncovered the stone wall defining the north side of the structure, it struck me that different construction patterns were evident in different places along this wall. At first I worried that the wall at lower levels was not continuous, that this wasn’t an enclosure at all but just disassociated wall segments, since both the curvature of the wall and the pattern of stone constructions varied from unit to unit. As we went deeper, the continuity of the wall was apparent, but we have never understood why the north and northeastern arcs of the wall were built in a formal pattern of alternating large and small stones (Fig. 29), while the same curvature and stoneworking pattern are not continued throughout the enclosing structural wall. The depositional variation we encountered proved to be typical of the entire structure: The first 50–60 cm contained little cultural material, and what did appear was fragmented and eroded. From 60 to 90 cm, 73
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EPISODE
Figure 29. Construction pattern of northern wall of Estructura 1. Note the bottom of PP 18 still visible in the floor.
the cultural material increased but lacked structural associations and contained no complete tools or artifacts. Between 90 and 110 cm, however, we encountered a wealth of evidence for an occupation floor. As used here, “occupation floor” combines the idea of a “living floor”—a level surface on which humans carried out activities at a given time—with the notion of an “occupation,” referring to a period of time in which a given people occupied an area or a house. Since the floor in Estructura 1 varies in depth between 90 and 110 cm, and not all of this variation is accounted for by the floor sloping inward toward the center (saucer-style), it remains true that we recovered artifacts from slightly different depths within a shallow “floor” of activity. Multiple lines of evidence for the occupation floor showed up in these initial three units of Estructura 1 (Fig. 30): • In addition to the horizontal conana identified in PP 18, we encountered three more grinding stones in the same quadrant of the house, two inclined on their sides and the third one laid flat as the first had been. Although these were all clustered in the northeast quadrant of the floor, their depths varied in relation to their distance from the center of the structure, the lowest ones being closest to the center; 74
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• Whereas upper levels contained only sherds, flakes and bone fragments, the occupation floor yielded many whole tools and artifacts; • A whole unbroken bowl had been inverted and inclined against the wall (Bit 19); • We identified smoothed or flat consolidations of burnt clay adhering to the base of the north and northwestern portions of the wall, apparently the remains of a plastered floor; and • The occupation floor at 90–110 cm (including the whole ceramic vessels and whole bone artifacts) does not appear to have been as disturbed as it would have been had subsequent living floors been occupied above it. Not only was there an occupation floor, but it included a rich material inventory at this level and it was minimally disturbed (that is, it had excellent integrity of deposition), promising great interpretive opportunities. We left the depth of these excavation units at the level of the occupation floor (rather than going all the way down to bedrock) and designated this structure Estructura 1 and the cluster of structures within which it was standing as Núcleo 1 (or Patio Group 1).
Figure 30. Grinding stone and fractured black bowl (Figure 32) positioned on the occupation floor of Estructura 1, Units 300 and 301 at 110 cm. Note pieces of the plaster floor adhering to structure walls.
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EPISODE
Knowledge-Production Facts • The first three units of Estructura 1 were gridded out, excavated and photographed in five working days by three lugareños, two co-directors and three Argentinean students. • Seventy-eight bags of ceramic, lithic and bone material were collected from an area that measured approximately 9 m2 (without PP 18). • Sixty-five sheets of paper, including field journals, excavation unit forms, feature forms and catalog information resulted from this work. • Twenty-seven black-and-white photographs and 24 slides were taken during this work episode.
18 Raw data
Inventory of artifact counts and special finds from Units 300, 301 and 302 The volume of recovered artifacts from the first three excavated units (2 × 2 m) of what came to be known as Estructura 1 is given in Table 2a. Because our square units were imposed on a round structure, the units were actually different sizes (Unit 301 being the largest); because the floor of the structure was saucer-shaped, the depth of 301, the center unit, was also deeper than the others. Note that each excavated level is 10 cm deep.
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EPISODE
Knowledge-Production Facts • The first three units of Estructura 1 were gridded out, excavated and photographed in five working days by three lugareños, two co-directors and three Argentinean students. • Seventy-eight bags of ceramic, lithic and bone material were collected from an area that measured approximately 9 m2 (without PP 18). • Sixty-five sheets of paper, including field journals, excavation unit forms, feature forms and catalog information resulted from this work. • Twenty-seven black-and-white photographs and 24 slides were taken during this work episode.
18 Raw data
Inventory of artifact counts and special finds from Units 300, 301 and 302 The volume of recovered artifacts from the first three excavated units (2 × 2 m) of what came to be known as Estructura 1 is given in Table 2a. Because our square units were imposed on a round structure, the units were actually different sizes (Unit 301 being the largest); because the floor of the structure was saucer-shaped, the depth of 301, the center unit, was also deeper than the others. Note that each excavated level is 10 cm deep.
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20
179S × 34W
19
183S × 22W
on first terrace, 30 cm south end badly preserved 52 cm architectural area
361
53
15
51
2
10
Table 2a. Inventory of general artifact counts from Estructura 1, Units 300, 301 and 302
Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Level 4 Level 5 Level 6 Level 7 Level 8 Level 9 Pits Total
UNIT 300 Ceramics 103 36 46 68 67 78 60 46
UNIT 301 Stone 35 29 24 35 46 44 39 17
UNIT 302 Bone 9 19 29 26 59 70 63 23
504
329
320
Ceramics 171 57 100 111 103 140 114 83 76 20
Stone 61 23 55 61 49 72 80 49 46 32
Bone 42 22 83 91 75 126 143 98 121 60
Ceramics 158 81 92 92 64 116 106 105 104 31
Stone 74 25 51 36 39 100 75 57 52 24
Bone 26 15 20 73 99 236 129 176 122 60
975
528
861
949
533
956
Depth bd 0–50 50–60 60–70 70–80 80–90 90–100 100–110 110–120 120–130
Note : Overall artifact densities are highest in the central unit (301) and at the levels just above the occupation floor, in Levels 6 and 7. The floor lies in Levels 7 and 8. Note the pit contents in Units 301 and 302.
Table 2b. Inventory of special finds from Estructura 1, Units 300, 301 and 302 (with special find numbers 1–10 relating to finds from the first 20 test pits, and special find numbers 11–20 Table 2b.toInventory specialI finds from Estructura 1, Units 300, 301 and 302 (with sperelating finds fromofSectors and II) cial find numbers 1–10 relating to finds from the first 20 test pits, and special find numbers 11–20 to finds fromDepth Sectors I Material and II) Special relating Provenience Description Figure No. Find No. Special 21 Find No. 11 21 12 11 13 12 14 13 15 14 18 15 27 18 16 27 28 916 28 9
Provenience 301 301 301 302 301 302 302 300 302 302 300 300 302 300 300 301 300 300 30118 (301) PP 300 PP 18 (301)
1Depth 3 41 43 54 54 75 75 77 87 87 8 8
Material ceramic obsidian ceramic bone obsidian ceramic bone ??metal ceramic ??metal ??metal ceramic ??metal ceramic ceramic ceramic ceramic ceramic ceramic ceramic ceramic ceramic
25 17 19
301 302 302
8 8 8
ceramic slate ceramic
20 22 23 26 24
302 301 302 301 301
8 9 9 9 10
stone basalt bone stone shell
Description drilled pendant projectile point drilled pendant tubular bead (?) projectile point Condorhuasi sherd tubularmaterial bead (?)(scoria) bubbly Condorhuasi sherd bubbly material (scoria) bubbly material (scoria) polished black bowl bubbly material (scoria) disk polished black bowl burnt clay mass disk disk burnt clay mass Condorhuasi sherd disk with no. 57) (mends Condorhuasi sherd (mends with no. 57) Condorhuasi sherd flat, circular adornment grey incised sherd (anthropomorhic) cylindrical mortar projectile point metapodial “spatula” malachite chunk eggshell frag. (suri)
(if illustrated) Figure No. (if illustrated)
Fig. 32 Fig. 32
Fig. 49 Fig. 31
Note : Units 300, 301 and 302 each measured roughly 2 × 2 m, excavated to bedrock. The greatest density of finds is from Level 7 and below, pertaining to the occupation floor.
Table 3. Inventory of special finds from Estructura 2 gero pages new3.indd 77
Special Find
Unit
Depth
Material
Description
Illustration
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RAW DATA
Figure 31. Bone tool (“spatula”) made from a camelid metapodial, possibly a weaving implement, from Estructura 1, Unit 302 (Special Find 23).
Early in the project we adopted the practice of separating unique or rare objects from the generally bagged ceramic, bone and stone artifacts to help later in photographing and preparing objects for further analysis; each special find received a unique number in the excavation catalog. We tried to be consistent in what we designated a “special find” but didn’t always succeed. Condorhuasi sherds, ground stone tools and projectile points were especially vulnerable to sometimes—and sometimes not—being treated as “special.” An unsurpassed number of special finds were identified from the first three excavated units, including a large bone tool (Fig. 31).
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Emotional moments
19 Narrative
Emotional moments Working on the first excavations units of Estructura 1 was a continuous adrenalin rush. There was so much that was new to all of us as we came together for the first time on the project, working as a team in a single location toward a common goal. We were still learning each other’s names for things, exchanging conventions for handling new situations, establishing organizational procedures on the spot. There were new soils, new pottery types, unfamiliar stratigraphy, different degrees and kinds of training, especially when we included the three lugareños who knew the soils better than any of us. It was intense . . . and fun. As we worked down through the strata we became more proficient as a team . . . and the finds came at us faster and faster. At 85 cm bs we noticed something completely new again. “What is it, Jorge? ¿Que tienes allá? Dime ¿está de piedra o cerámica? ¿Pero que pienses puede ser? Well, what does it seem like to you???” We always kept an eye on where Jorge was excavating because he often found exciting material, digging quickly but carefully. Now we were all huddled around his excavation unit in the northwest corner of Estructura 1 because he had announced he’d found something near the wall. Jorge seldom drew attention to himself unless he judged he had a very interesting thing to see; only a few minutes ago we had watched him uncover a second grinding stone in Estructura 1, less than a meter from the edge of PP 18 where the first grinding stone had been recovered, and now there was something else. Whatever it was, it was pushed right up against the structure wall, and it looked black or dark grey. I handed him a brush to work with, to replace his trowel, and he tried brushing the dirt away but it was packed solidly around the object and wouldn’t easily brush away. He went back to his trowel and worked carefully; the faster he cleared the dirt away, the more we crowded around. It’s ceramic, he told us, and broken; you can see the crack running across the surface here. But it looked very fine, very smooth, very highly polished . . . and quite large. As we watched, we cracked dumb jokes because we were nervous, excited: “Maybe it’s Álvaro’s lunch pail.” “It’s no fair, Jorge finds 79
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NARRATIVE
Figure 32. Polished black bowl from Estructura 1, Unit 300, with pinched rim suggesting animal heads on opposing sides (special find 18, see Table 2b).
all the good stuff. . . .” “I think Jorge plants stuff in his unit so he can find it in front of everyone!” Then Jorge announced that it was a pot, turned upside down and leaned against the wall, complete but cracked in two (Fig. 32). Slowly he worked the dirt away from the sides, brushing and troweling, and finally he picked up the two large pieces, fitting them together with the rim upwards as it would be used. He handed it to me. I was overwhelmed to receive it. Everyone was peering around and over my shoulders, and I held this beautiful bowl carefully so that the two pieces fit back together. It was very delicate, maybe 28 cm (11") across at the rim, with gently in-curving side walls and two little pinched animal faces on opposite sides of the rim. I was laughing and at the same time deeply moved, my heart pulled with the sheer emotion of having this 1700-year-old bowl in my hands, knowing that the occupation floor was undisturbed, that we were in touch, through this bowl, with its inhabitants, that the archaeology would be wonderful, and this bowl was so beautiful. I wanted everyone to see it; I wanted to shout out loud that we’ve got a whole vessel right on the floor where it should be (although of course as a professional this is just one more piece of “data”). I felt so very happy, grinning, almost dancing. I relinquished it for others to see, repeating over and over “Please be careful, be very careful with it,” and I kept watching it as it moved into the hands of others around me.
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The rodeo
20 Andean ways
The rodeo The word was out, although we (foreigners, archaeologists) couldn’t understand how that could be in a world without phones, email or Twitter. (Of course this isn’t really a problem as neighbors and relatives visit constantly by horseback or on foot; Don Beto drives his pickup to and from Santa María; the children bring word back from school. In fact news travels efficiently and quickly among dispersed farmsteads.) The veterinarian, we found out, was coming through the Valle del Cajón at the behest of the newly elected mayor of Santa María. And despite the lack of roads, he was coming to Yutopian; he would walk and ride in, to vaccinate the cattle. We hadn’t seen a cow since we’d been working at Yutopian, and while it’s true that archaeologists keep their eyes on the ground, these cows were truly invisible, ranging free in the hills around us. Jorge, his uncles and Ramona each owned several head to make up a herd of perhaps 20, all of which would eventually be sold for beef in Santa María. We had no idea; the Chailes in Yutopian never ate beef because it was too valuable a commodity, and our splendid Yutopian feasts always featured goat meat. Now, however, Álvaro, Federico, Jorge and Ramona had to locate and round up the cows and bring them down from the hills with the help of only one mare and a pair of yappy dogs, Washingtón and Pluma. We could be of no help at this altitude and at such a strenuous all-day activity, one that started before dawn and ended well after sunset, even wearing our heavy-duty Redwing work boots (while the lugareños wore rubber-tire sandals, even in the snow). How they managed this most daunting task is still a mystery, but the roundup was the only occasion when any of the Chailes mentioned, afterward, being tired. The next day, before any sun found its way into our adobe abode, there were loud unfamiliar wake-up sounds unlike the usual roosters. These were big, painful groaning cries of large animals with big lungs: cows in the corral right outside our window, adults separated from calves, and all mooing, lowing and bellowing to each other across their stone wall divides, the females wanting to be milked and the calves wanting breakfast. Ourselves, we wanted desperately to sleep another half hour. 81
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But there was much to see when we arose: Jorge and the others had put on leather chaps over their homespun pants or patched jeans and carried long loops of homemade sisal rope to accompany the veterinarian out to the “corrals.” (These were also the walled gardens which, if it hadn’t been winter, would have had corn growing in them.) One by one, each animal had to be lassoed and thrown down so the vet could inject her. To our amazement, each of our archaeological crew members/farmers was also a highly skilled cowhand who accomplished the roping, tackling and throwing of cows efficiently and with elegance, Ramona no less so than her uncles and brother. A cow would be singled out after a brief discussion— each animal individually identifiable to all participants—and its owner would go about bringing it down. Meanwhile, the veterinarian loaded and reloaded his huge needle, wended his way between the lowing animals, and plunged medicine into whichever animal was struggling on the ground, held by one or more of the Chailes (Fig. 33). By late afternoon, with the bright mountain sun slanting low and the first chill of evening in the air, the veterinarian and the archaeologists were all invited to a celebratory feast that Jorge and Ramona had prepared: roast goat and potatoes, fresh beans and a beautiful drink made from fresh Yutopian peaches. Jorge, the consummate host, had flowers on the long tables laid out for such feasting occasions, and we contributed some wine. To the distress of our sleep patterns, the cows remained in their “corral” for another week, milked by Ramona and Jorge, so there was fresh warm milk those mornings, and rounds of homemade cheese— pressed and aged between flat round rocks—available in the months to come. Alongside the archaeology, we were learning many Andean lessons during this first field season about gender complementarity, corporate ownership Figure 33. Ramona and Jorge vaccinating and community responsibility, cows. invisible capital assets, and the 82
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The rodeo
many functions of flat round rocks. We were reminded that people didn’t eat the same foods— or their favorite foods—all year long, and that feasts were important conclusions to collaborative work.
21 Argument
Excavation forms Throughout excavations and analysis at Yutopian we used only slightly modified versions of the same few data-recording forms: one set of forms for recording in the field and monitoring the materials collected by the project, and another in the laboratory for general analysis. A certain self-consciousness underlay my design of these forms because I was already interested in knowledge production, already thinking about categorical observations. Standardized forms are surely a key locus for a broad suite of social practices that mask human agency in producing knowledge and assist in advancing the idea of a value-neutral science. I wasn’t eager to perpetuate either this notion or this practice. Standardized excavation forms are used in most archaeological projects to ensure that a minimum amount of specified information is recorded for each excavation level or observational unit, as crew members are instructed what to observe and what to ignore—that is, what will “count” as data. Forms introduce students to data categories and jog the memory of the experienced digger; they prioritize observations and facilitate inter- and intra-site comparisons of data. Forms streamline unorganized individual observations into categories useful for project purposes; forms promise continuity in the content of knowledge. Yet none of the recorded information ever appears in any recognizable form in a final site report. Keeping in mind that excavation forms vary considerably from project to project, I reproduce here the basic unit/level form used at Yutopian; it is designed to record information from each 10 cm level of a 2 × 2 m excavation unit, and about 9 or 10 such forms—plus notes, stratigraphic profiles and perhaps special feature maps—would be used for 83
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many functions of flat round rocks. We were reminded that people didn’t eat the same foods— or their favorite foods—all year long, and that feasts were important conclusions to collaborative work.
21 Argument
Excavation forms Throughout excavations and analysis at Yutopian we used only slightly modified versions of the same few data-recording forms: one set of forms for recording in the field and monitoring the materials collected by the project, and another in the laboratory for general analysis. A certain self-consciousness underlay my design of these forms because I was already interested in knowledge production, already thinking about categorical observations. Standardized forms are surely a key locus for a broad suite of social practices that mask human agency in producing knowledge and assist in advancing the idea of a value-neutral science. I wasn’t eager to perpetuate either this notion or this practice. Standardized excavation forms are used in most archaeological projects to ensure that a minimum amount of specified information is recorded for each excavation level or observational unit, as crew members are instructed what to observe and what to ignore—that is, what will “count” as data. Forms introduce students to data categories and jog the memory of the experienced digger; they prioritize observations and facilitate inter- and intra-site comparisons of data. Forms streamline unorganized individual observations into categories useful for project purposes; forms promise continuity in the content of knowledge. Yet none of the recorded information ever appears in any recognizable form in a final site report. Keeping in mind that excavation forms vary considerably from project to project, I reproduce here the basic unit/level form used at Yutopian; it is designed to record information from each 10 cm level of a 2 × 2 m excavation unit, and about 9 or 10 such forms—plus notes, stratigraphic profiles and perhaps special feature maps—would be used for 83
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ARGUMENT
each unit in Estructura 1. Forms are collected in a big loose-leaf binder by structure and excavation unit. Our unit/level form requires a map to be drawn every time a 10 cm level is finished, with depths of finds and features (including individual stones) marked and mapped. Although the key is not reproduced on the form, crew members learn to use different symbols to plot bone (❏), ceramic (m) and lithics (s), and to measure in, using tapes and plumb 84
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Excavation forms
bobs, all finds over 2 cm and all special finds. On the other hand, we generally “guestimate” map locations of smaller redundant finds. The form also inventories what was taken away from the unit level: the number of bags of lithics, ceramics and bone collected; whether soil and/ or carbon samples were taken (and from where); whether special finds were designated; and what visual recordings were made. Our form also requires a description of the soil and soil changes, usually in simple verbal descriptions since there was much homogeneity of soil across the site. Finally, the brief overall description of the unit level and what was noted there abbreviates the more extensive notes each excavator makes, so that a particular unit/level form can be recalled and selected more easily. The Yutopian forms encouraged a rather open-ended format as opposed to projects that require excavators to note which side of an artifact faces upward in the ground, the compass orientation of artifacts and/or the dip from the horizontal plane at which an artifact lies. We also required little artifact classification in the field, whereas other forms ask crew members to recognize and specify distinct artifact classes (not simply raw material) for mapping in the field. Forms are kept simple, not only because crew members are also keeping field journals, but also because of the enormous variability of finds we encounter, in contrast for instance to forms used on Paleo-Indian sites (Gero n.d.) where the diversity of finds is much reduced, the overall occupations less dense, and single artifacts carry greater evidential weight. Additionally, we balanced note taking against how much we could excavate in a season, made more complicated by the scheduling of North American and Argentinean academic calendars and by the climatic conditions in a temperate upland landscape. Thus the forms we design and press into service to record and preserve our observations in a rigorous and comparative format nevertheless cannot be considered innocent, unproblematic accounts of what was “found.” Rather, these instruments directly reflect the sites we work at and are responsive to a wide range of conditioning factors; they do not simply record what we see but also anticipate or forecast what we will encounter. Filling out forms, assigning artifact identities, and quantifying the locations of finds and features “make data” out of potentially conflicting and ambiguous meanings (Holtorf 2002). Problematic interpretations are denied; we record neither the discussions that precede assignments to an artifact class nor the discussions that accompany demarcations of feature boundaries. Once entered on the forms, the social practices of “doing science” are already masked in favor of final “formal” accounts that emphasize certainty. 85
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ARGUMENT
Forms also make no provision for contextualizing interpretations in time or space. For instance, the same unit/level form is used for the upper levels of excavation units when we frequently know little or nothing about a local context, and then again for lower levels, where successively more information is fed into our interpretations. The progressive knowledge contexts in which we work are stripped away (except for the indexing date) as data are “form-alized.” Similarly, the order in which units or test pits are excavated, or the particular season we happen to be working in, or the point at which some interpretive conclusion is reached and circulated to crew members—all these factors constitute an ever-changing knowledge context that affects meanings assigned on our forms . . . yet all meanings and encodings on forms are accepted as stable and invariant for any and all moments—and any and all contexts—in which the recording was done. Our completed unit/level sheets produce a decontextualized and finalized set of observations sheared from their production matrix as our knowledge takes form. Because formal records obscure the settings in which the recorded observations were situated, standardized field form information is very hard to read by others not involved in the project. To read old files unambiguously, one must apply a knowledge of the site, the period, the region, the director, the crew, the author of the forms, the organization of the project and its procedures, and the purposes for which the forms were maintained (after Garfinkle 1967). That is, field forms create data that are largely internal to the scope of the project while at the same time contradictorily displaying the generalized features of decontextualized facts. Reading field documentation, instead of revealing what was contained in an excavation unit, presupposes that knowledge for a correct reading. We could go further. Once all recording sheets are collected in a set of notebooks on a shelf, this virtually becomes the site, and the site can only be acted upon and witnessed as the series of excavation recording forms plus some visuals. The artifacts now “belong to” discrete excavation levels within which homogeneity prevails and between which distinctions are maintained. Henceforth, all interpretations of past lifeways will be marked with the characteristics of the forms used to “form” them. Three more things to note about the central position of forms in archaeology: First, unit/level forms set the pace for and produce behavior, coordinating and alternating actions of digging, observing, negotiating fact boundaries and inscribing. Excavators dig to fill out the forms, while the forms coordinate the timing and sequencing of the various activities and instruments and personnel who interact around a given excavation unit. (“Fetch the photographer.” “I’m going to get a bucket to take a float sample.” “We need more forms!”) 86
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Second, the use of forms constitutes a system for direct, empirical witnessing, a personalized pledge of what was encountered and verified in the field, which is the mark of Western science (Shapin and Schaffer 1985). In archaeology, the empirical claims of science to a universal, observable objectivity are especially critical since the context is destroyed through excavation. However compromised the future use of the records may be, the formal records stand as a documented, signed testimony to “what once was” in terms of the context that produced and defined them. Finally, the practice of using standardized archaeological records demarcates and formalizes interaction across the social and economic boundaries of the excavation hierarchy. On one side, the (gendered male) project director and supervisors participate in an academic reward system based on prestige and gain authority from the authorship of their work. On the other side, the (ungendered) student or professional digger, regardless of the centrality of their work, excavates for money or for academic requirements; they are not identified in the knowledge production nor do they gain authority by their efforts (Edgeworth 1991:51). Thus the completing of the project forms reiterates status and enables the handing over of information to entitled authorities, and affirms and permits—in bodily practice as well as in logical structure—the project hierarchy to operate. Information-bearing forms become a commodity that now belongs to the project administrators and stands timelessly for knowledge.
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22 Narrative
Coming and going After completing the northern three units of Estructura 1 in late March, the people “from away” dispersed to their cities—Buenos Aires, La Plata, and San Fernando de Catamarca—to resume academic routines as students and professors. While it’s always sad to leave the field, it was also good to have time to mull over what we’d done and learned, and to consider how to proceed. I brought our excavated materials to the Escuela de Arqueología at the Universidad Nacional de Catamarca and over the next five weeks, with assistance from Catamarca students, conducted analysis, noted trends, photographed finds and, where possible, reconstructed vessels (Fig. 34). The second part of the 1994 field season unfolded in the last days of May, when Dr. Stephen Loring of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (my husband) joined me in Catamarca. We traveled together to Santa María where I could present him to Rubén Quiroga, the director of the regional museum; Don Beto, who would again drive us to the Cajón; and most importantly the Chailes and Yutopian. Stephen was a great hit with the Chaile men although he spoke virtually no Spanish. We had brought beer with us, and out came the old WinFigure 34. Reconstructing large olla from Estrucchester 30.06 that Fedtura 1 in the archaeology lab of the Escuela de Arqueología, Universidad Nacional de Catamarca. erico had had for years 90
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(with Stephen promising to send or bring ammo next time) and stories of shooting pumas in the hills and Stephen contributing snake stories from the days of doing archaeology in Arkansas. Suddenly Yutopian became a male-centered place (although I don’t believe the two female project directors had ever noticed any earlier matrocentricity) (Fig. 35). But Stephen’s appearance and participation in the project had a greater significance: it stabilized my womanhood, which had certainly not been easily understood in the two earlier visits. This is not because Andean women aren’t strong and Figure 35. Male bonding at Yutopian (Stephen Lorcapable but because they ing and Federico Chaile). work complementarily with their male counterparts toward shared goals. Neither Cristina nor I had heretofore produced partners, creating a strange category of city women who operated independently and outside accepted gender ideologies. Now my gender identity fell into intelligible human arrangements (however strange that I was designated a jefa or boss of this undertaking), and the Yutopian men were eager to cement this understanding by hearing more about guns and snakes from Stephen. An aside: later, when Stephen joined the 1996 field season at Yutopian, Jorge confided to me his fascination that Stephen helped me and even took suggestions/instructions from me. (Stephen and I had worked on each other’s archaeology projects for years and had gradually—sometimes painfully—learned to alternate leadership roles.) Jorge told me (not Stephen) that our arrangement was an “inspiration” to him, that he now saw how differently things could be done, and how important it was to see that men could assist their women. I didn’t fully 91
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understand these comments until 1998 when we arrived to find Jorge had married Santo, Don Roque Pachao’s oldest daughter, who occupied several important social and church positions. But that was yet to come. In May 1994 we were also joined by Catherine Heyne and her assistant Liliana from Salta, on loan to us with a total station from Terence D’Altroy’s archaeological project, ready to produce a topographic map of Yutopian. (Cristina was teaching in the city and not available for fieldwork.) While the mapping proceeded independently, the rest of us returned to excavation. Cristina and I had agreed earlier that we wanted to focus further work in the northern (Formative) sector of the site, completing the remaining two-thirds of the structure we had started (Estructura 1) and then excavating the adjacent structures (Núcleo 1, or Patio Group 1). Although the remainder of Estructura 1 awaited us, I decided we might benefit by beginning with a smaller complete structure that lay just 2 m south of Estructura 1, its partially exposed walls indicating that it was part of the same patio group. The two structures would have shared what was still a poorly defined common patio with yet a third unexcavated structure even farther south. Having two structures opened would give us an excellent opportunity to compare two “rooms” within the same patio group and to be able to extrapolate more about the rest of the site, plus I wanted to save the terrific potential of the rest of Estructura 1 for a more practiced team.
23 Episode
Expectations and excavations in Estructura Dos The May 1994 field season began with tying the small Estructura 2 into the baseline grid and then superimposing four 2 × 2 m excavation units over the structure. Since our units covered a larger area (16 m2) than the structure itself, part of each square fell outside the walls of the structure and left us with somewhat unevenly sized units to dig inside the struc92
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understand these comments until 1998 when we arrived to find Jorge had married Santo, Don Roque Pachao’s oldest daughter, who occupied several important social and church positions. But that was yet to come. In May 1994 we were also joined by Catherine Heyne and her assistant Liliana from Salta, on loan to us with a total station from Terence D’Altroy’s archaeological project, ready to produce a topographic map of Yutopian. (Cristina was teaching in the city and not available for fieldwork.) While the mapping proceeded independently, the rest of us returned to excavation. Cristina and I had agreed earlier that we wanted to focus further work in the northern (Formative) sector of the site, completing the remaining two-thirds of the structure we had started (Estructura 1) and then excavating the adjacent structures (Núcleo 1, or Patio Group 1). Although the remainder of Estructura 1 awaited us, I decided we might benefit by beginning with a smaller complete structure that lay just 2 m south of Estructura 1, its partially exposed walls indicating that it was part of the same patio group. The two structures would have shared what was still a poorly defined common patio with yet a third unexcavated structure even farther south. Having two structures opened would give us an excellent opportunity to compare two “rooms” within the same patio group and to be able to extrapolate more about the rest of the site, plus I wanted to save the terrific potential of the rest of Estructura 1 for a more practiced team.
23 Episode
Expectations and excavations in Estructura Dos The May 1994 field season began with tying the small Estructura 2 into the baseline grid and then superimposing four 2 × 2 m excavation units over the structure. Since our units covered a larger area (16 m2) than the structure itself, part of each square fell outside the walls of the structure and left us with somewhat unevenly sized units to dig inside the struc92
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Expectations and excavations in Estructura Dos Figure 36. Estructura 2 at 70 cm, view to the north, with entranceway on the right. Note segment of tumbled wall.
ture walls. The southeast unit of Estructura 2, in addition to containing the structure’s wall, contained an arc of the nearby north wall of Estructura 3, the third structure of this núcleo or patio group. The modern surface of Estructura 2 presented a pronounced slope from northeast to southwest (70 cm difference), but it was hard to imagine that the inhabitants had lived on such an intense gradient. Based on the stratigraphy of our test pits and our first units in Estructura 1 (and our thoughts about living on a slope; see Bit 53) we defined our top level of Estructura 2 as a deep cut that would begin to level the excavation surface across all the units, taking it down 50 cm from the highest point on the northeast side of the structure but leaving the modern surface in the southwest still 20 cm below this level. We then removed 20 cm in our next level to reach a point where the surfaces of all units were the same depth below the datum/high point, and all future levels would be 10 cm thick. Soils in the uppermost level were hard-packed and required effort to dig; because of the sloping surface and no clear depositional strata, we measured depths of individual artifacts with extra care. The shape and integrity of the “room” were still dubious. By the time we had leveled the excavation surface to 50 cm we could see large loose cobbles lying inside and along the north wall (only in hindsight could we assign these as wall fall, corresponding to a breach in the north wall [Fig. 36]). In the northwest, the angles of stones suggested two abutting walls rather than one continuous wall. The wall in the southeast was messy and puzzling; we could not yet determine whether we were seeing one wall with many fallen rocks beside it or two closely placed walls, one defining Estructura 2 and the other defining a portion of the adjacent structure. Or did Estructura 2 have a double 93
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wall (in one segment of the structure!?)? As we mapped loose stones we worried we were defining walls by selectively heaving and leaving them, but we plotted the lowest depths of each one to check our levels. Clearly this structure was not built with the intact well-formed walls we had observed in the north part of Estructura 1; at 50 cm depth it seemed the “structure” could have been a simply constructed wall of only one or two stone courses built directly on the bedrock, and we wondered if we would see any walls at all below this depth. Early Formative ceramics appeared consistently in these upper levels (with just one Late Formative Aguada sherd outside the structure’s wall on the southeast), but a small stemless triangular obsidian projectile point characteristic of the later Regional Development period (RDP) also appeared in the uppermost stratum, the only late find in the patio group so far. There were other finds: a characteristic Early Formative slate knife, a small flat piece of (undatable) copper and a strange bubbly metallic-looking substance that we later came to recognize as escoria (“scoria” in English) (Bits 28 and 31). As we dug farther the wall did continue to go down, although it was shallow in places and had “bottomed out” by 69 cm in the southwest. Below the wall the bedrock had been excavated by Yutopian’s inhabitants to lower the house floor, but no structural wall separated the living space from the bedrock itself. This was certainly a shabby version of the elegant patterned walls we had seen in the opening of Estructura 1 (Fig. 37). We gradually revealed more of the doorway on the east side of the structure where two large rectangular tabular stones had been set on edge lengthwise to block the entrance to a height of 40 cm. Although this would have kept animals, rain and dust from entering the structure—and kept children and other animals (cuyes [guinea pigs]?) from leaving—people would have had to step high over this obstacle. This deflector feature proved to have no parallel in Estructura 1 nor in any structures we subsequently excavated. Although most of the ceramics from Estructura 2 were Early Formative (including Candelaria, Ciénaga, Condorhuasi and Vaquerías styles), we were surprised (and displeased) to find a few decidedly late sherds with characteristic surface combing in the upper levels at 60 cm and again at 70 cm, and even more disturbingly, a few red-on-black (RDP) wares at 90 cm below surface. Such vertical displacements could easily result from rodent burrows (and we noted many), but there may have been greater disturbances to depositional levels since matching sherds from the same vessel were sometimes found in different levels at depth differences of 20–25 cm, sometimes lying a meter or more apart (see Bit 86). 94
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Expectations and excavations in Estructura Dos
Figure 37. Map of Estructura 2 after excavation.
In addition to displacements, most of the artifacts in Estructura 2 were broken (in contrast to the many whole or reconstructable artifacts in Units 300, 301 and 302 of Estructura 1). Recognizable classes of durable artifacts were represented only by fragments: there were many broken conanas (and many small manos), one (of the two) drilled ceramic spindle whorls was in pieces, and the snuff tablet and the stone laminating tool were all fragments. Only the smallest artifacts were recovered intact, and these were almost surely parts of larger (broken) composite tools: tiny triangular pointed flakes with denticulate edges that must have been hafted into bone or antler or wooden hafts to serve as saws 95
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Figure 38. Small points from Estructura 2, Unit 310, of quartz, chert and obsidian. The center point is a unifacial tool that we called a “denticulated triangle.”
or graters (Bit 84) (Fig. 38). There were no entire conanas. While the fractured material is not unusual for fill deposits, we also never confidently identified a living floor. There were food remains (llama bones and quirquincho [armadillo] scales) throughout. On the other hand, we did note a vertical pattern of isolated cobbles or conana fragments consistently appearing in the center of the structure in every level below the top fill (Fig. 36). These seem to have been sequential wedges for a central vertical roof timber that was kept upright through the in-filling of the structure (and despite the mixing of depositional levels). There were also two levels of some interest. In the western portion of the structure at 84–85 cm below ground surface we came down on a large distribution of burnt earth and burnt daub pieces that must have come from the roof, given the plant-impressed patterns of reeds tied with rope (probably of llama hair). On the eastern side of the structure the burnt daub was not as evident but large rocks filled the floor, perhaps related to the roof collapse. Unfortunately we found suspicious late sherds below this level of roof fall as well as above it, although only a short rodent burrow could account for the late material appearing so deep. Early Formative diagnostic ceramics, including Condorhuasi sherds—shoulders and rims—also occurred both above and below the roof fall, especially on the west. The second surface of interest in Estructura 2 was the bedrock floor itself, conforming to the dish shape we had observed in Sector I (and would see again when we opened more of Estructura 1) (Fig. 39). At 100 cm depth, a cluster of 11 cobbles measuring 30–40 cm was revealed in the center northern portion of the structure lying directly on bedrock near the perimeter and just above bedrock toward the center. When these were removed, we could see that bedrock reached 117 cm in the center of the structure, and that several pits had been excavated farther 96
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into the bedrock. On or just above the bedrock surface we recovered several unbroken artifacts: a ceramic spinning whorl, two small polished bone awls, a sharpened rodent tooth that had been used as an incising tool, and a single flat drilled turquoise bead (Fig. 118). Other unique finds from the bedrock floor included a broken snuff tablet (Fig. 133) and several associated sherds of a large cooking vessel that had broken in front of the entranceway with a small fragment of long bone evidently inside. We found three pieces of the same handsomely ground and polished sub-rectangular black stone, 8 cm long and 6 cm across, seemingly a laminating tool for producing thin sheets of hammered metal (although the pieces were recovered from two different excavation units and at different levels near the floor of the structure). These lowest finds seemed to preserve some association with their original depositional/ use contexts and, in Estructura 2, would have to do as a living floor— or as close as we would get. The two largest pits in the bedrock floor of Estructura 2 were regularly formed and extended an additional 30 cm below the bedrock surface, but they were hardly alike. The pit we labeled “A” was exaggeratedly round, and in it a 40-cm-tall slab of rock had been deposited vertically; it held dense quantities of mixed broken cultural material, while “B” was filled with ash without cultural material. The original functions of these two features were clearly different, one presumably a hearth and the
Figure 39. Estructura 2 at bedrock, looking east toward the entranceway and its still unexcavated passageway. 97
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other perhaps for dry storage, holding potatoes or corn, but of course these functions would have changed over time. We considered Pit C an erosional feature in the bedrock, less deep and less regular but containing carbon and a single obsidian flake. Our last undertaking at Estructura 2 was to remove the pair of tabular deflector stones from in front of the entrance, revealing, for a final surprise, an ashy lens and llama bones beneath them (Bit 43).
24 Los hermanos At 70 cm below ground surface in the northwest area of Estructura 2, in the lowest excavation level, we uncovered (my notes say): “two lovely mano grinding/pounding stones beautifully polished, lying near the bedrock wall side by side” (Fig. 40). Federico immediately dubbed them “los hermanos” (the brothers), and we called them by this name many times thereafter. Something about these paired stones caught and held our imaginations, although they were not elaborated, not made of exotic stone, not even particularly unique. It was probably the context of Estructura 2—with its sadly broken inventory, its disorder and widely flung Figure 40. Los hermanos (laminating stones) in situ.
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other perhaps for dry storage, holding potatoes or corn, but of course these functions would have changed over time. We considered Pit C an erosional feature in the bedrock, less deep and less regular but containing carbon and a single obsidian flake. Our last undertaking at Estructura 2 was to remove the pair of tabular deflector stones from in front of the entrance, revealing, for a final surprise, an ashy lens and llama bones beneath them (Bit 43).
24 Los hermanos At 70 cm below ground surface in the northwest area of Estructura 2, in the lowest excavation level, we uncovered (my notes say): “two lovely mano grinding/pounding stones beautifully polished, lying near the bedrock wall side by side” (Fig. 40). Federico immediately dubbed them “los hermanos” (the brothers), and we called them by this name many times thereafter. Something about these paired stones caught and held our imaginations, although they were not elaborated, not made of exotic stone, not even particularly unique. It was probably the context of Estructura 2—with its sadly broken inventory, its disorder and widely flung Figure 40. Los hermanos (laminating stones) in situ.
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Los hermanos
Table 2b. Inventory of special finds from Estructura 1, Unitson 300, 301pair andof 302matched (with specontents—that bestowed special significance this cial findfinds, numbers 1–10 relating to finds from the first 20 test pits, and special findand numbers lying together for hundreds and hundreds of years, unbroken 11–20 relating to finds from Sectors I and II) seemingly placed with deliberation. They looked alike, maybe made by
the same hands, perhaps owned and used by the same individual.
Special Provenience Depth Material Description Figure No. Every excavation has these special finds, whether or not they make it Find No. (if illustrated) into the “Special Finds” catalog where they would be set apart for visi21 301 1 ceramic drilled pendant tors to301 see and for the to record. 11 3 site photographer obsidian projectile pointThey are named and referred to often, a datum in their own way for our common experiences 12 302 4 bone tubular bead (?) working on the project and for the meanings we bestow on our work. I 13 302 4 ceramic Condorhuasi sherd 14 300 them fondly. 5 ??metal bubbly material (scoria) remember 15 302 5 ??metal bubbly material (scoria) 18 300 7 ceramic polished black bowl Fig. 32 27 300 7 ceramic disk 16 301 7 ceramic burnt clay mass 28 300 8 ceramic disk 9 PP 18 (301) 8 ceramic Condorhuasi sherd (mends with no. 57) 25 301 8 ceramic Condorhuasi sherd 17 302 8 slate flat, circular adornment 19 302 8 ceramic grey incised sherd (anthropomorhic) 20 302 8 stone cylindrical mortar Fig. 49 22 301 9 basalt projectile point 23 302 9 bone metapodial “spatula” Fig. 31 26 301 9 stone malachite chunk 24 10 Early Formative shell eggshell frag. (suri) Condorhuasi) Many 301 sherds of exotic ceramics (especially
25
Raw data
Inventory of special finds from Estructura Dos
appeared in the upper levels of Estructura 2, suggesting that these are
Note : Units 300, 301 and 302 each measured roughly 2 × 2 m, excavated to bedrock. The greatest density of fill levels or have substantial mixing, although these may finds is from Level 7 and below, undergone pertaining to the occupation floor.
be over-represented here because we still considered them rare at this phase of our work.
Table 3. Inventory of special finds from Estructura 2 Special Find No. 34 35 a,b,c
Unit
Depth
Material
Description
310–313 310–313
0–50 cm 0–50 cm
copper quartz, obsidian, slate
39a, b 38 43 37a, b
313 311 313 311
ceramic bone ceramic ceramic
40 36 41 42a, b
313 312 310 310
49 cm,70 cm 57 cm 58 cm 58 cm 71 cm screen 70 cm 70–80 cm 70–80 cm
small flattened sheet 2 small projectile points, round polished piece, grooved Condorhuasi sherds llama cranium ladle Aguada sherd Condorhuasi sherds
310 310 312 99 310
80–90 cm 80–90 cm 90–100 cm 90–100 cm
daub quartz ceramic bone
44 45 47 new3.indd gero pages 49
obsidian ceramic obsidian ceramic
projectile point Condorhuasi sherd projectile point Condorhuasi, Candelaria sherds plant impressions visible projectile point Condorhuasi sherd awl made on distal end
Illustration No. 38
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Los hermanos
Table 2b. Inventory of special finds from Estructura 1, Unitson 300, 301pair andof 302matched (with specontents—that bestowed special significance this cial findfinds, numbers 1–10 relating to finds from the first 20 test pits, and special findand numbers lying together for hundreds and hundreds of years, unbroken 11–20 relating to finds from Sectors I and II) seemingly placed with deliberation. They looked alike, maybe made by
the same hands, perhaps owned and used by the same individual.
Special Provenience Depth Material Description Figure No. Every excavation has these special finds, whether or not they make it Find No. (if illustrated) into the “Special Finds” catalog where they would be set apart for visi21 301 1 ceramic drilled pendant tors to301 see and for the to record. 11 3 site photographer obsidian projectile pointThey are named and referred to often, a datum in their own way for our common experiences 12 302 4 bone tubular bead (?) working on the project and for the meanings we bestow on our work. I 13 302 4 ceramic Condorhuasi sherd 14 300 them fondly. 5 ??metal bubbly material (scoria) remember 15 302 5 ??metal bubbly material (scoria) 18 300 7 ceramic polished black bowl Fig. 32 27 300 7 ceramic disk 16 301 7 ceramic burnt clay mass 28 300 8 ceramic disk 9 PP 18 (301) 8 ceramic Condorhuasi sherd (mends with no. 57) 25 301 8 ceramic Condorhuasi sherd 17 302 8 slate flat, circular adornment 19 302 8 ceramic grey incised sherd (anthropomorhic) 20 302 8 stone cylindrical mortar Fig. 49 22 301 9 basalt projectile point 23 302 9 bone metapodial “spatula” Fig. 31 26 301 9 stone malachite chunk 24 10 Early Formative shell eggshell frag. (suri) Condorhuasi) Many 301 sherds of exotic ceramics (especially
25
Raw data
Inventory of special finds from Estructura Dos
appeared in the upper levels of Estructura 2, suggesting that these are
Note : Units 300, 301 and 302 each measured roughly 2 × 2 m, excavated to bedrock. The greatest density of fill levels or have substantial mixing, although these may finds is from Level 7 and below, undergone pertaining to the occupation floor.
be over-represented here because we still considered them rare at this phase of our work.
Table 3. Inventory of special finds from Estructura 2 Special Find No. 34 35 a,b,c
Unit
Depth
Material
Description
310–313 310–313
0–50 cm 0–50 cm
copper quartz, obsidian, slate
39a, b 38 43 37a, b
313 311 313 311
ceramic bone ceramic ceramic
40 36 41 42a, b
313 312 310 310
49 cm,70 cm 57 cm 58 cm 58 cm 71 cm screen 70 cm 70–80 cm 70–80 cm
small flattened sheet 2 small projectile points, round polished piece, grooved Condorhuasi sherds llama cranium ladle Aguada sherd Condorhuasi sherds
310 310 312 99 310
80–90 cm 80–90 cm 90–100 cm 90–100 cm
daub quartz ceramic bone
44 45 47 new3.indd gero pages 49
obsidian ceramic obsidian ceramic
projectile point Condorhuasi sherd projectile point Condorhuasi, Candelaria sherds plant impressions visible projectile point Condorhuasi sherd awl made on distal end
Illustration No. 38
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Table 3. Inventory of special finds from Estructura 2
23 302 9 bone metapodial “spatula” Fig. 31 26 301 9 stone malachite chunk Special Find Unit Depth Material Description Illustration No. No. 24 301 10 shell eggshell frag. (suri) 34 310–313 0–50 cm copper small flattened sheet Note : Units 300,310–313 301 and 302 each roughlyobsidian, 2 × 2 m, excavated to bedrock. The greatest 35 a,b,c 0–50 cmmeasured quartz, 2 small projectile points, 38 density of finds is from Level 7 and below, pertaining toslate the occupation floor. round polished piece, raw data grooved 39a, b 313 49 cm,70 cm ceramic Condorhuasi sherds 38 311 57 cm bone llama cranium ladle 66 43 3. Inventory 313 of special 58 cm finds fromceramic Table Estructura 2 Aguada sherd Table 37a, b 311 3. Continued 58 cm ceramic Condorhuasi sherds 71 cm Special Find Unit Depth Material Description Illustration 40 313 screen obsidian projectile point No. No. 36 312 70 cmcm ceramic Condorhuasi sherd 34 310–313 0–50 copper small flattened sheet 41 a,b,c 310 70–80cm cm obsidianobsidian, 2projectile point points, 35 310–313 0–50 quartz, small projectile 38 slate round polishedCandelaria piece, 42a, b 310 70–80 cm ceramic Condorhuasi, grooved sherds 39a, 313 49 cm,70 ceramic Condorhuasi sherdsvisible 44 b 310 80–90 cm cm daub plant impressions 38 311 57 cm cm bone llama cranium 66 45 310 80–90 quartz projectile pointladle 43 313 58 cm cm ceramic Aguada sherdsherd 47 312 90–100 Condorhuasi 37a, 311 58 cm cm ceramic Condorhuasi 49 b 310 90–100 bone awl made on sherds distal end 71 cm cm 50a 311 90–100 stone pieces of polished 40 313 screen obsidian projectile laminatingpoint hammer 36 312 70 ceramic Condorhuasi 46 313 99 cm spindle whorlsherd 115 41 310 70–80 obsidian projectile 48 100 cmcm turquoise round, flatpoint perforated bead 114 42a, 310 70–80 ceramic Condorhuasi, Candelaria 52 b 311 106 cmcm stone broken snuff tablet (in130 sherds cised, polished) 44 310 80–90 cmcm daub plant impressions visible 53 311 100–110 bone polished tool 45 310 80–90 cm quartz projectile point 50b 313 100–110 cm stone pieces of polished laminating hammer 47 312 90–100 cm ceramic Condorhuasi sherd 51 313 110 cm cm ceramic largemade rim sherd— 49 310 90–100 bone awl on distal end Condorhuasi(?) 50a 311 90–100 cm stone pieces of polished laminating hammer 46 313 99 cm ceramic spindle whorl 115 48 310 100 cm turquoise round, flat perforated bead 114 52 311 106 cm stone broken snuff tablet (in130 cised, polished) 53 311 100–110 cm bone polished tool 50b 313 100–110 cm stone pieces of polished laminating hammer 51 313 110 cm ceramic large rim sherd— Condorhuasi(?)
26
Narrative
Why was Estructura Dos disappointing? Estructura 2 disappointed us, especially after the exhilaration of excavating the first part of Estructura 1 (and even more so after completing Estructura 1). We found no clearly defined, clearly abandoned occupation floor and, apart perhaps from los hermanos, no areas where specific activities could be envisioned or significances assigned. Even the sizeable quantity and diversity of artifacts lacked internal structure and in the end carried little narrative meaning. How could we tell the story of 100
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Table 3. Inventory of special finds from Estructura 2
23 302 9 bone metapodial “spatula” Fig. 31 26 301 9 stone malachite chunk Special Find Unit Depth Material Description Illustration No. No. 24 301 10 shell eggshell frag. (suri) 34 310–313 0–50 cm copper small flattened sheet Note : Units 300,310–313 301 and 302 each roughlyobsidian, 2 × 2 m, excavated to bedrock. The greatest 35 a,b,c 0–50 cmmeasured quartz, 2 small projectile points, 38 density of finds is from Level 7 and below, pertaining toslate the occupation floor. round polished piece, raw data grooved 39a, b 313 49 cm,70 cm ceramic Condorhuasi sherds 38 311 57 cm bone llama cranium ladle 66 43 3. Inventory 313 of special 58 cm finds fromceramic Table Estructura 2 Aguada sherd Table 37a, b 311 3. Continued 58 cm ceramic Condorhuasi sherds 71 cm Special Find Unit Depth Material Description Illustration 40 313 screen obsidian projectile point No. No. 36 312 70 cmcm ceramic Condorhuasi sherd 34 310–313 0–50 copper small flattened sheet 41 a,b,c 310 70–80cm cm obsidianobsidian, 2projectile point points, 35 310–313 0–50 quartz, small projectile 38 slate round polishedCandelaria piece, 42a, b 310 70–80 cm ceramic Condorhuasi, grooved sherds 39a, 313 49 cm,70 ceramic Condorhuasi sherdsvisible 44 b 310 80–90 cm cm daub plant impressions 38 311 57 cm cm bone llama cranium 66 45 310 80–90 quartz projectile pointladle 43 313 58 cm cm ceramic Aguada sherdsherd 47 312 90–100 Condorhuasi 37a, 311 58 cm cm ceramic Condorhuasi 49 b 310 90–100 bone awl made on sherds distal end 71 cm cm 50a 311 90–100 stone pieces of polished 40 313 screen obsidian projectile laminatingpoint hammer 36 312 70 ceramic Condorhuasi 46 313 99 cm spindle whorlsherd 115 41 310 70–80 obsidian projectile 48 100 cmcm turquoise round, flatpoint perforated bead 114 42a, 310 70–80 ceramic Condorhuasi, Candelaria 52 b 311 106 cmcm stone broken snuff tablet (in130 sherds cised, polished) 44 310 80–90 cmcm daub plant impressions visible 53 311 100–110 bone polished tool 45 310 80–90 cm quartz projectile point 50b 313 100–110 cm stone pieces of polished laminating hammer 47 312 90–100 cm ceramic Condorhuasi sherd 51 313 110 cm cm ceramic largemade rim sherd— 49 310 90–100 bone awl on distal end Condorhuasi(?) 50a 311 90–100 cm stone pieces of polished laminating hammer 46 313 99 cm ceramic spindle whorl 115 48 310 100 cm turquoise round, flat perforated bead 114 52 311 106 cm stone broken snuff tablet (in130 cised, polished) 53 311 100–110 cm bone polished tool 50b 313 100–110 cm stone pieces of polished laminating hammer 51 313 110 cm ceramic large rim sherd— Condorhuasi(?)
26
Narrative
Why was Estructura Dos disappointing? Estructura 2 disappointed us, especially after the exhilaration of excavating the first part of Estructura 1 (and even more so after completing Estructura 1). We found no clearly defined, clearly abandoned occupation floor and, apart perhaps from los hermanos, no areas where specific activities could be envisioned or significances assigned. Even the sizeable quantity and diversity of artifacts lacked internal structure and in the end carried little narrative meaning. How could we tell the story of 100
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Estructura 2? At best it recorded multiple episodes of Formative use and reuse and witnessed a passing-by of later peoples; it was also a location where rocks and fill materials had been tossed or had fallen, a dump perhaps at times. Its walls had been dismantled and/or reconstructed, and only glimpses of its original occupation level remained for us to contemplate, but this too lacked integrity in the sense of preserved associations. The small size of this structure compared with the other two in Núcleo 1 suggests it may always have had a different function/s from the full range of activities represented in Estructura 1, for instance, but we found ourselves unable to define these or know how they evolved and changed over time: a special production workshop at one point? Temporary or long-term storage? An extension of living space? A place for visitors or for the sick? Who knows what temporary needs might have evolved and then disappeared here, leaving a place to be filled up with garbage. We see how fluidly space is used and reused today in Jorge and other people’s small rooms, how definitive specialized functions are rarely assigned permanently, and how inhabitants change quarters and use rooms differently over time. We have to accept that there was no single “original” use for Estructura 2, and not even for the more photogenic Estructura 1 for that matter, but then we have learned to have a high tolerance for messy data and few hard conclusions. Still, who wouldn’t be a little let down by such raggedy disheveled evidence? But there is another story here as well: we come to realize that many of our strong emotional responses in archaeological research have lessons to tell. Many are clues to what the discipline desires from its practitioners, what we have been taught to find and interpret, the defining and structuring of outcomes by conventions of our discipline. We have learned how to “read” certain arrangements of evidence, activity areas and house floors, Formative vessel shapes and whole morteros that lie on horizontal surfaces. We have a vocabulary and a set of preconstructed assumptions that we can attach to some classes and arrangements of materials, and it is no wonder that we define our successes in archaeology in terms of our ability to produce— or reproduce—similar intelligible knowledge. So when we confront disturbed and mixed fills, we are disappointed, of course. We have no “match” here for the phenomenological structures that are well defined, understood and valued by our colleagues. No one likes “fill.” In a parallel universe, however, this could be different; there could be much to be learned from Estructura 2, on many levels and at different scales, with its profuse and diverse and contained material inventory. Even without the clear depositional strata that we require in order to apply our training to “the archaeological record,” or precisely because the 101
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clear depositional strata are missing, we could learn other things, things I am perhaps too brainwashed and “well trained” to enumerate. Could ethnoarchaeological observations reveal when and why abandoned structures are used for successive purposes? (Does seasonal storage precede accumulations of unwanted items which then give way to dumping of garbage?) Can we better observe how rodent burrows carry cultural material downward, or posit and test other forms of depositional disturbances? Might systematic observation of artifact damage tell us more about when people designate different sorts of artifacts as unsalvageable? I am ill-prepared to conduct such studies and instead replicate knowledge structures as I have been taught to see and know them, and thus participate readily in my disciplinary culture. In our agreed-upon terms of interpretation, within agreed-upon boundaries of evidence, we can better discuss what was “found” than how it got there. Cristina, Stephen and I—as well as our earnest gutsy student crews—are products of the disciplinary culture that trained and continues to train us. It is no wonder that we were disappointed in Estructura 2, lacking those features we know how to deal with. But I hope that someday the lessons to be learned from contexts such as Estructura 2 will be clearer to students of the past, not necessarily through new hightechnology instrumentation, but with more sophisticated and flexible knowledge structures that are introduced to us as part of our epistemological toolkits.
27 Backstory
Why live in a semi-subterranean house? Estructura 2 afforded us our first opportunity to peer into a semisubterranean house and consider living partially underground. A few years later Josh Fletcher (2001) turned seriously to this question of semisubterranean or “pit” houses and found that variations of this architectural form were used worldwide in contexts where the overall climate is dry and temperatures fluctuate widely, including the North American Southwest (Gilman 1987). Pithouses (completely underground) or 102
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clear depositional strata are missing, we could learn other things, things I am perhaps too brainwashed and “well trained” to enumerate. Could ethnoarchaeological observations reveal when and why abandoned structures are used for successive purposes? (Does seasonal storage precede accumulations of unwanted items which then give way to dumping of garbage?) Can we better observe how rodent burrows carry cultural material downward, or posit and test other forms of depositional disturbances? Might systematic observation of artifact damage tell us more about when people designate different sorts of artifacts as unsalvageable? I am ill-prepared to conduct such studies and instead replicate knowledge structures as I have been taught to see and know them, and thus participate readily in my disciplinary culture. In our agreed-upon terms of interpretation, within agreed-upon boundaries of evidence, we can better discuss what was “found” than how it got there. Cristina, Stephen and I—as well as our earnest gutsy student crews—are products of the disciplinary culture that trained and continues to train us. It is no wonder that we were disappointed in Estructura 2, lacking those features we know how to deal with. But I hope that someday the lessons to be learned from contexts such as Estructura 2 will be clearer to students of the past, not necessarily through new hightechnology instrumentation, but with more sophisticated and flexible knowledge structures that are introduced to us as part of our epistemological toolkits.
27 Backstory
Why live in a semi-subterranean house? Estructura 2 afforded us our first opportunity to peer into a semisubterranean house and consider living partially underground. A few years later Josh Fletcher (2001) turned seriously to this question of semisubterranean or “pit” houses and found that variations of this architectural form were used worldwide in contexts where the overall climate is dry and temperatures fluctuate widely, including the North American Southwest (Gilman 1987). Pithouses (completely underground) or 102
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Why live in a semi-subterranean house?
semi-subterranean pithouses (partially underground) are living structures whose floors are built lower than the existing ground level. Their design takes advantage of the insulating properties of the ground: “Earth does not react as fast, or as severely, to temperature change as air does” (Edelhart 1982, cited in Fletcher 2001:10). Pithouses are thermally stable and not only stay cooler in summer and warmer in winter, but maintain a more constant temperature through the daily fluctuations characteristic of the high Andes. They are also effective at resisting the tremendous winds that blow through parts of Northwest Argentina in autumn (May–June). On the other hand, semi-subterranean houses suffer from problems of interior condensation and high humidity, a feature that makes them more effective in dry climates than moist ones. Lining the interior of the pit with stone walls may ameliorate this problem somewhat because the stone lining allows moisture to seep between the stones of the wall and beneath it, leaving the interior stone surfaces free of the worst moisture (Fletcher 2001:10). Semi-subterranean houses also suffer the difficulty of future house expansion. If additional soil is removed from the outer perimeter of an existing structure, the basic integrity of the entire structure is threatened: roofs and adjacent walls must all be disassembled in the course of creating more interior space. It is more likely that an additional room (structure) would be created and tied into the original one by a common doorway than trying to expand an existing structure. This might explain the existence of patio groupings in some regions as solutions to—and representations of—the developmental growth cycle of households: semi-subterranean structures are dug in close association with one another as the equivalent to an above-ground house being enlarged by adding more rooms. All the semi-subterranean structures at Yutopian followed the same basic construction strategy: they were begun by digging a roughly circular or sub-rectangular concavity into the granitic/dioritic bedrock to an approximate depth of just over 1 m and then erecting stone walls around the inside perimeter of this pit by using wall trenches for stability. As we will see in well-preserved structures like Estructura 1 and Estructura 4, the below-ground stone walls are not continued very high above the modern ground surface, suggesting that the upper walls consisted of another, now invisible material, such as adobe mud bricks, which is still the method of house construction at Yutopian today (Figs. 41 and 42). The houses that Jorge and others build, while neither semisubterranean nor circular, are constructed from a stone wall foundation set in wall trenches that stand about a meter above ground surface. The adobe bricks in the upper courses of modern house walls are made from 103
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Figure 41. Jorge’s freshly made adobe bricks.
Figure 42. Contemporary house in La Quebrada showing stone foundation walls and adobe upper courses.
local soils mixed with hay and water, slopped into square wooden frames where they dry out until they can be removed, and then baked further in the sun until used. We watched Jorge construct our outhouse this way, from start to finish. If the original occupants of Yutopian didn’t stack frame-formed, sun-dried adobe bricks to form the upper wall courses (as Jorge does), they might have used hand-formed sun-dried bricks, or they could have 104
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stacked layers of wet mud, also known as banco or “puddled adobe” construction (Fletcher 2001:11–12). Still another technique might have involved inserting vertical sticks between the upper courses of the stone walls, and then “puddling” wet mud over the stick armature to make “wattle and daub” walls. We have recovered a lot of cane-impressed clay or daub, but this more likely came from roof construction. Today roofing timbers are unavailable at 3200 masl, but this was not necessarily true when Yutopian was first occupied. The specific arrangements of horizontal and lateral wood beams in the superstructures of the Formative houses at Yutopian are lost to us now, but at least some of Yutopian’s houses may have incorporated a sturdy central vertical post (e.g., a planed tree trunk) to the height of the adobe walls or slightly higher to support crossbeams or radial beams extending out to the top of the adobe walls as a roof support. On these would have rested tightly woven bundles of twigs and branches packed with mud to constitute the roof, ultimately to be covered, perhaps, with grass thatch. The interior vertical post would be set into a pit in the bedrock— or perhaps in the earthen living floor—and packed with smaller stones for greater stability (Fig. 126). Leinaweaver (2009:778) reminds us that roofing marks a particular stage in the life cycle of a house; the roof, whether of a new house or a remodeling effort, happens last and thus requires an intensive celebration, a communal meal, and the participation of neighbors and kin. How did the first household associated with Estructura 2 assemble its timbers and access its roof-raising kin? We know little of this, although roofing is generally seasonal work that goes on as the dry season starts to give way to the period of planting, and roofing celebrations thus bridge individual household efforts to the cooperation of communities (Gose 1991). Did the people of Estructura 2 raise their roofs with celebrations? Although semi-subterranean pithouses are labor intensive to build, they don’t require a large labor force, nor is the amassing of building materials difficult. All the required work can be done by a small number of people working over time; only the cutting, transporting and erecting of the roof posts and beams require teams of two or three coordinated persons for a short period of time.
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EPISODE
28 Episode
Excavating Estructura Uno After completing excavations in Estructura 2, we had four remaining field days to return to Estructura 1 and were eager to get back to the Formative occupation floor on the north side of the structure. We would now excavate another block of three contiguous 2 × 2 m units (303, 304 and 305) across the structure. (With more time, we would have laid out two more excavation units to see the distribution of artifacts across all the remaining floor space at one time.) As we dug, we still could not discern stratified depositional levels in the leached soils, nor could we detect vertical patterning in the fill as we removed the upper soil levels. There were occasional finds of interest, such as pebbles of raw malachite or copper, and pieces of plantimpressed burnt daub (Fig. 43), again part of a collapsed roofing structure. But these did not cluster at specific depths below ground surface. Figure 43. Plantimpressed daub from Estructura 1, Unit 303 (Special Find 56).
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Figure 44. Calendaria vessel in situ in Estructura 1, Unit 303 (Special Find 64). See Fig. 49 for reconstucted vessel.
Sometimes we found material that should have occurred only at the lowest levels (Condorhuasi or other early sherds), and at 78 cm depth we recovered goat excrement where it shouldn’t have been (because goats were introduced to the Andes by the Europeans); the rodent burrows that often ran through our excavation units again provide an explanation for such anomalies. As in Units 300–302, associations of large sherds and interesting tools began to appear as we came down on the occupation floor (Fig. 44). In the excavation level 80–90 cm below surface, we detected a firehardened patch of reddened earth on the west side of the structure and figured we had located the hearth area, although this was slightly above the depth of the occupation floor identified in our first excavation units. (Instead, this must have been an occasionally used cooking area since the hearth was yet to come.) Just below, at 90–100 cm, large amounts of the frothy, bubbly metallic material that we knew from Estructura 2 began to appear in large quantities, especially in the central unit (Fig. 45), together with a copper nugget. This unfamiliar material had also been noted above the reddened patch of soil but at the time we didn’t associate it with the burnt areas that still lay below. From 90 to 100 cm it increased in density and even more so in the levels below 100 cm, continuing down to bedrock. (This mysterious material was later identified 109
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Figure 45. Escoria from Estructura 1, Unit 304 (Special Find 66).
as scoria [escoria in Spanish], a glassy froth of silica-bearing soil heated to such a high temperature that it boils [Bit 31].) At the time we didn’t make a connection between the bubbly, frothy escoria and extreme heat, but in hindsight it was hardly surprising that in the midst of all the escoria lay the formal hearth of Estructura 1. In fact we were quite surprised to find the hearth—any hearth— since we were now considerably lower than the depth of the occupation floor we had identified earlier in the first excavated units. At 90 cm (the depth at which the floor had appeared along the north wall) we had only uncovered the tops of four rounded stones, and it was only at 107 cm that we hit the hardened raised clay segments that defined the outline of the hearth, thinking we were striking ceramic sherds. The bottom of the clay-lined hearth lay at 113 cm, more than 20 cm lower than the occupation floor at the perimeter of the structure. Under the hearth, the bedrock was burnt as were the soils and bedrock to the west beneath the area of reddened earth. On the east side of the structure (Unit 305) at 90 cm the “doorway” now emerged: a well-defined cut in the bedrock presented a narrow step from outside down into the structure, set between two impressively tall dressed stones. (We still had no idea about the external passageway part of the entryway . . . no idea really that there was another part to the entryway . . . and we wouldn’t know this until we excavated in the patio outside Estructura 1 four years later.) Meanwhile, it was our last day of excavation, and we were down to bedrock almost everywhere in Units 303, 304 and 305, with carbon and 110
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scoria widespread and significant finds still appearing throughout the morning. Stephen and Jorge argued that we still had time to take out the last remaining 2 × 2 m unit of Estructura 1, Unit 306, including the two small unexcavated areas on either side of it, to reach the walls all around and complete the structure. (Some crew could stay on this excavation even the next morning while others were packing and loading to leave.) I was eventually convinced that we really did want the data from the whole house before we left, so we went to work . . . like crazy. In the end, Unit 306 produced no architectural or artifactual surprises, and overall there were fewer finds than in other areas of the structure. But it did show us a glorious pit, one of several that were revealed to have been excavated into Estructura 1’s bedrock floor once it had been fully cleared. Most of these were distributed in the central and eastern parts of the structure; they took various forms and were almost surely in use at different times (Figs. 46 and 47). One large pit (L) extended nearly half a meter below the bedrock floor (167 cm below ground surface) in the northern sector of the house. Underneath unremarkable fill, it contained fragments of unusual zoo-
Figure 46. Estructura 1 at bedrock, view east toward the entranceway flanked by upright stones. Deep pit in Unit 306 extends under the structure wall, visible on the right (south) side of the structure. 111
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logical specimens: suri (ostrich) eggshell, marine shell, fish ribs and other bird bones, none of which occurred in pits elsewhere on the site, much less combined in this way. We wondered if significance had been attached to the symbolic union of land, flight and water creatures. Another area had been dug out against the east wall of the structure (later covered with a pile of stones on the house floor), reaching a depth of 155 cm. This “pit” actually consisted of several overlapping smaller pits and was full of ash, burnt bone, charcoal and fired clay— clearly used for firing or cooking. Pit J was smaller and shallower, only 25 cm below the floor, while Pit K nearby had the large and deep dimensions of Pit L (but without the strange faunal assemblage) and contained more broken material (garbage?) including a basalt projectile-point tip and a rounded grinding stone. But the most interesting pit was the one uncovered in Unit 306 on our last day of excavations in 1994. Placed right up against the southern wall of the structure, it was dug in two levels: from the bedrock surface, half of the pit had been dug 33 cm into the bedrock floor while the farther half of the pit, extending partially under the wall, reached 62 cm below the floor. It was full of whole stones and broken ground stone tools (mortero fragments, small mano stones, polished rocks and a stone “plummet”) plus other cultural remains: carbonized utilitarian pottery, large portions of a broken polished black vessel, a bone “spatula” and a rare ceramic spindle whorl. Finally, to complete the diversity of pits, two small holes excavated 35 cm into the bedrock in the center of the structure show where upright roof-supporting timbers must have been set.
29 Descriptive data
A tour of the occupation floor of Estructura Uno We can now take a tour around the minimally disturbed occupation floor of Estructura 1. Some of what we will see was only found in later field 112
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logical specimens: suri (ostrich) eggshell, marine shell, fish ribs and other bird bones, none of which occurred in pits elsewhere on the site, much less combined in this way. We wondered if significance had been attached to the symbolic union of land, flight and water creatures. Another area had been dug out against the east wall of the structure (later covered with a pile of stones on the house floor), reaching a depth of 155 cm. This “pit” actually consisted of several overlapping smaller pits and was full of ash, burnt bone, charcoal and fired clay— clearly used for firing or cooking. Pit J was smaller and shallower, only 25 cm below the floor, while Pit K nearby had the large and deep dimensions of Pit L (but without the strange faunal assemblage) and contained more broken material (garbage?) including a basalt projectile-point tip and a rounded grinding stone. But the most interesting pit was the one uncovered in Unit 306 on our last day of excavations in 1994. Placed right up against the southern wall of the structure, it was dug in two levels: from the bedrock surface, half of the pit had been dug 33 cm into the bedrock floor while the farther half of the pit, extending partially under the wall, reached 62 cm below the floor. It was full of whole stones and broken ground stone tools (mortero fragments, small mano stones, polished rocks and a stone “plummet”) plus other cultural remains: carbonized utilitarian pottery, large portions of a broken polished black vessel, a bone “spatula” and a rare ceramic spindle whorl. Finally, to complete the diversity of pits, two small holes excavated 35 cm into the bedrock in the center of the structure show where upright roof-supporting timbers must have been set.
29 Descriptive data
A tour of the occupation floor of Estructura Uno We can now take a tour around the minimally disturbed occupation floor of Estructura 1. Some of what we will see was only found in later field 112
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A tour of the occupation floor of Estructura Uno
Figure 47. Map of Estructura 1 occupation floor.
seasons, but let’s look at it all while we’re here now. The floor map (Fig. 47) and the inventory of special finds (Bit 30) reiterate the tour information in different modes; without noting every individual sherd or stone flake or bone fragment, I can start by pointing out the general pattern: larger pieces of all materials occurred at the margins of the structure where they were better preserved from footfalls and general activities in the central part of the floor. Estructura 1 is entered on the east from the open patio area by step113
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DESCRIPTIVE DATA
Figure 48. Cylindrical mortero from Estructura 1 occupation floor, Unit 302 (Special Find 20).
ping over a low threshold curbing stone and moving through a narrow 2-m-long passageway. A full size conana lies facedown in this passageway and has to be trod on unless perhaps it is only placed here when its inhabitants are not at home. We pass into the round structure through an impressive but narrow doorway defined by two 150-cm-tall dressed stone blocks. The floor is 6 m in diameter and gently saucer shaped, sloping downward toward the center of the structure. This means that the exterior fieldstone walls extend 90 cm below the ground surface to where they meet the floor, but the depth is another 20 cm below surface to the center of the floor. Along the northern portion of the exterior wall, construction follows a pattern observed elsewhere at Yutopian: the lowest course of stones alternates large dressed boulders with smaller in-filling cobbles (Fig. 29). On the floor an array of domestic evidence is loosely organized into activity areas: in the northwest area of the structure, the four large and differently shaped sub-rectangular conanas are clustered: the one from PP 18 with its mano still positioned in its concave grinding surface, and another of equal size set up on end against the wall. A fist-sized polishing stone (alisador or mano) lies between the inclined conana and the structural wall; it has satisfyingly smoothed flat surfaces for (or from?) 114
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A tour of the occupation floor of Estructura Uno
grinding. The intact thin-walled, polished grey bowl is tipped up against the structure wall nearby. The ashy patches on the floor are poorly defined, from transient fires. To the north and east of the conanas are scattered several well-preserved bone implements including a modified llama-skull ladle with its circumference lip smoothly filed, two bone awls or weaving implements, and a llama tibia “spatula” (Fig. 31). A unique tall polished cylindrical stone beaker stands out which, upon further inspection, proves to be a stone mortero whose interior grinding surface is a conical concavity (Fig. 48). Some objects we don’t understand, or we don’t understand their spatial association, such as a polished and perforated slate disk lying near the bone tools, a pendant perhaps or a loom weight. Condorhuasi and polished/incised buff-colored sherds lie on this floor as well. In the west-central area, an extensive distribution of large sherds, some recovered in an upright position, proved, when reconstructed, to constitute two whole globular pots with lateral handles and restricted necks—liquid containers—in two different vessel styles. The simpler one has only an appliqué strip of clay with diagonal incisions around the base of the neck, while the more elaborate pot is an anthropomorphic (Candelaria) face jar with incised and punctated designs to represent a face with tear lines extending below the eyes (Fig. 49). The radiatFigure 49. Reconstructed Candelaria vessel from Estructura 1. Drawing by Thomas Scalise.
115
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Figure 50. Carbonized bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) recovered from Estructura 1, Unit 304, near the hearth.
ing breakage pattern on the reconstructed Candelaria vessel suggests that the pot lay on its “back” when something hard fell on or struck its “belly,” implying further that it was whole when the structure was abandoned. Among the sherds lies a casually made headless, four-legged ceramic figurine, almost surely a llama, with elongated body and long neck. With care, we also observe several carbonized beans and largerthan-usual obsidian flakes in this area. The area just east of the center of the structure is dominated by a carefully prepared circular raised clay hearth with three stones firmly fixed within it to support a receptacle, and a fourth stone fallen across it. Associated with the hearth are bits of heavily burnt bone and carbonized beans, corn kernels and chenopodia (Fig. 50). Various tools lie at a slightly greater distance from the hearth, including a 5-cm piece of prepared llama cranium with its edges smoothed (as though to shape or scrape ceramics, or as a small dipper), a fragment of a ceramic tube, a broken slate knife and two flake tools used on their lateral edges. Finally, our tour arrives at the south/southeastern area of the structure where the assemblage is less structured. We are back near the pair 116
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of upright, straight-sided portal stones, uncannily narrow, and at the base of the southern stone sits a markedly different kind of mortero: smaller and rounder than the conanas clustered in the northeast area, this is a shallow thick-walled stone bowl with its mano leaning against its side. Here we also find large sherds of a second polished black bowl with animal faces on the rim, but these represent only half the vessel when reconstructed back at the lab. There is another bone spatula made from a camelid long bone, broken projectile points of obsidian and chert, armadillo platelets and a large piece of a Condorhuasi jar. Finally we note a small (6 cm) ovate polished and pecked hammer stone and a single grey-green lapis lazuli drilled bead (with others to come, but we can hardly know that now). The occupation floor of Estructura 1 was a marvel to recover with its rich inventory and preserved spatial arrangements. But even an “intact” house floor must be interpreted with care because placement does not always reflect intent; if an ethno-archaeologist were to enter my house today with even my perishable and fragile possessions fully displayed, they still might suppose (erroneously!) that having newspapers under the kitchen table was a deliberate and stable feature of my existence, and that the dog dish served a purpose under the radiator! Things do not stay put throughout a single day, much less a life, and we must be wary in assessing the several hundred years of the use-life of the patio group structures.
30 Raw data
Inventory of special and general finds from Estructura Uno, Units 303–306 In the second part of the 1994 season we completed excavations in Estructura 1. The special finds from each excavation unit, roughly 2 × 2 m, are summarized here to complement the data of Bit 18. Exact depths were recorded where possible. The greatest density of special finds was in Level 9, between 90 and 100 cm below ground surface, 117
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A tour of the occupation floor of Estructura Uno
of upright, straight-sided portal stones, uncannily narrow, and at the base of the southern stone sits a markedly different kind of mortero: smaller and rounder than the conanas clustered in the northeast area, this is a shallow thick-walled stone bowl with its mano leaning against its side. Here we also find large sherds of a second polished black bowl with animal faces on the rim, but these represent only half the vessel when reconstructed back at the lab. There is another bone spatula made from a camelid long bone, broken projectile points of obsidian and chert, armadillo platelets and a large piece of a Condorhuasi jar. Finally we note a small (6 cm) ovate polished and pecked hammer stone and a single grey-green lapis lazuli drilled bead (with others to come, but we can hardly know that now). The occupation floor of Estructura 1 was a marvel to recover with its rich inventory and preserved spatial arrangements. But even an “intact” house floor must be interpreted with care because placement does not always reflect intent; if an ethno-archaeologist were to enter my house today with even my perishable and fragile possessions fully displayed, they still might suppose (erroneously!) that having newspapers under the kitchen table was a deliberate and stable feature of my existence, and that the dog dish served a purpose under the radiator! Things do not stay put throughout a single day, much less a life, and we must be wary in assessing the several hundred years of the use-life of the patio group structures.
30 Raw data
Inventory of special and general finds from Estructura Uno, Units 303–306 In the second part of the 1994 season we completed excavations in Estructura 1. The special finds from each excavation unit, roughly 2 × 2 m, are summarized here to complement the data of Bit 18. Exact depths were recorded where possible. The greatest density of special finds was in Level 9, between 90 and 100 cm below ground surface, 117
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RAW DATA
Table 4a. Inventory of special finds from Estructura 1, Units 303, 304, 305 and 306 Special Find No. 54 55 56 57
Unit
Material
Description
303 304 303 303
Depth (cm bd) 20–30 45 52 70–80
stone stone daub ceramic
58a 58b 59
305
80
303
83
ceramic stone stone
60 61 62 63
303 305 305 305
90 82 86 90
ceramic ceramic bone stone
64 65 66 67 68 69 70
303
90–92
ceramic
304 304 305 303 304
90–100 95 104 99 102
scoria ceramic copper ceramic bone
71a 71b 72 73 74 75 76 77
303 304 304 304 306 306 306 306
100–110 100–120 117 121 87 95 98 pit
plant material stone ceramic bone ceramic ceramic stone
drill polished oval piece of malachite plant impressions Condorhuasi sherd (mends with SF 9) Condorhuasi jar fragment of large obsidian flake tool small basalt projectile point, nipple base llama/animal figurine (headless) 82 Condorhuasi sherds (2) carved, polished, drilled 2 projectile points, obsidian and chert Candelaria neck-faced pot, 49 fractured, almost complete 45 large fragments of appliqué pot nugget face appliqué fragment of polished llama cranium ladle carbonized beans 50
78
306 306
pit pit (107)
ceramic stone
projectile point tip tube, pipe fragment (?) metapodial “spatula” large sherds from same vessel polished black sherd for rejoin tubular bead, grey/green lapis lazuli spindle whorl 2 large ground stones—hoes? anvils?
Figure No. (if illustrated
111 113
118
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Inventory from Estructura Uno, Units 303–306
Table 4b. Inventory of general finds from Estructura 1, all units Unit 300 Ceramic 68 67 78 60 46
Stone 35 46 44 39 17
Bone 26 59 70 63 23
Level 4 5 6 7 8 9
Unit 301 Ceramic 111 103 140 114 83 76
Stone 61 49 72 80 49 46
Bone 91 75 126 143 98 121
Level 4 5 6 7 8 9
Unit 302 Ceramic 92 64 116 106 105 104
Stone 36 39 100 75 57 52
Bone 73 99 236 129 176 122
Level 4 5 6 7 8 9
Unit 303 Ceramic 105 90 77 6
Stone 46 33 27 7
Bone 41 33 66 —
Level 4 5 6 7 8 9
Unit 304 Ceramic 106 153 132 92 4
Stone 61 84 82 74 47
Bone 58 94 149 92 79
Level 4 5 6 7 8 9
Unit 305 Ceramic 100 ?? 2 ? ? ?
Stone 50 59 96 56 31
Bone 43 132 220 116 86
Level 4 5 6 7 8 9
Unit 306 Ceramic ? ? 91 86
Stone 39 43 41 20
Bone ? ? ? ?
Level 4 5 6 7 8 9
Note : Shaded levels indicate the occupation floor.
Note : Shaded levels indicate the occupation floor.
Table 5a. New female and male PhDs focused on paleoethno Females Males
1950–60 1 3
1960–70 1 2
1970–80 2 3
1980–90 2 6
Table 5b. Female and male contributors to edited volumes o research Author of chapter is male Author of chapter is female
Volume has a male editor/s 6 3
119
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Volu 2 13
RAW DATA
while in the northern set of units (Units 300–302), special finds were disproportionately represented in Level 7. This is because the bedrock floor of the structure is saucer-shaped—lower in the center—so that the occupation floor falls at lower excavation levels in the central excavation units. Overall artifact counts by level from Estructura 1 follow a different pattern. The occupation floor contains fewer general artifacts (although it had more special finds), probably because it was swept and kept clean. Instead, the levels above the floor have higher artifact densities as the abandoned house was allowed to fill in and garbage accumulated. The preceding tables show general artifact counts for each level across the entire house, including the counts reported earlier for Units 300 –302. The uppermost three levels have been omitted because they represent late fill and mixing. Also, counts from pits in the bedrock floor are not given here.
31 Major ambiguity
Metallurgy in the house? Our first interpretation of activities in Estructura 1 focused on the hearth and the evidence there for two very distinct “domestic” activities. The well-delineated clay-lined hearth clearly served a function for cooking food, surrounded as it was by carbonized food remains. And the clustered grinding stones in the northwest section of the house floor refer to a late stage of food preparation, also probably intended for the hearth. After all, the hearth represented the only formal hearth feature in any of the structures in the Núcleo 1 patio group. We also argued (Gero and Scattolin 1995, 2002; Scattolin and Gero 1994) that the Estructura 1 hearth was the locus of metallurgical production, most likely of copper or arsenic bronze objects that were circulating during this period in the region (Fig. 1). Insofar as no locus of production for Formative metal artifacts has yet been identified, we argued for a household production site here at Yutopian. Chief among the lines of evidence are (1) the scoria—vitrified silica from heated soil— concen120
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RAW DATA
while in the northern set of units (Units 300–302), special finds were disproportionately represented in Level 7. This is because the bedrock floor of the structure is saucer-shaped—lower in the center—so that the occupation floor falls at lower excavation levels in the central excavation units. Overall artifact counts by level from Estructura 1 follow a different pattern. The occupation floor contains fewer general artifacts (although it had more special finds), probably because it was swept and kept clean. Instead, the levels above the floor have higher artifact densities as the abandoned house was allowed to fill in and garbage accumulated. The preceding tables show general artifact counts for each level across the entire house, including the counts reported earlier for Units 300 –302. The uppermost three levels have been omitted because they represent late fill and mixing. Also, counts from pits in the bedrock floor are not given here.
31 Major ambiguity
Metallurgy in the house? Our first interpretation of activities in Estructura 1 focused on the hearth and the evidence there for two very distinct “domestic” activities. The well-delineated clay-lined hearth clearly served a function for cooking food, surrounded as it was by carbonized food remains. And the clustered grinding stones in the northwest section of the house floor refer to a late stage of food preparation, also probably intended for the hearth. After all, the hearth represented the only formal hearth feature in any of the structures in the Núcleo 1 patio group. We also argued (Gero and Scattolin 1995, 2002; Scattolin and Gero 1994) that the Estructura 1 hearth was the locus of metallurgical production, most likely of copper or arsenic bronze objects that were circulating during this period in the region (Fig. 1). Insofar as no locus of production for Formative metal artifacts has yet been identified, we argued for a household production site here at Yutopian. Chief among the lines of evidence are (1) the scoria—vitrified silica from heated soil— concen120
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trated on and around the hearth; (2) the finds of malachite and copper nuggets on the living floor and in conjunction with the hearth; (3) the pulled copper wire and the fragment of a ceramic tube (blow pipe?) on the living floor; (4) the unusual form of the hearth; and (5) the existence of the Yutopian ridgetop settlement itself. Let us examine these lines of evidence more closely. (1) The scoria from Estructura 1 was identified at the Smithsonian’s Conservation Analytical Laboratory using x-ray fluorescence to show copper silicate adhering in it. Reheating the scoria to successively higher temperatures until it “melted” revealed that vitrification had taken place at 1000o Celsius (1800o Fahrenheit) (Vandiver and Gero n.d.). This temperature is significantly above the heat of a normal cooking fire, and in fact is usually not reached even when a house burns to the ground. Yet a significant amount of the copper-bearing scoria was localized around and above the hearth, indicating that the localized fire would have had to have been artificially augmented by blowing at its center, with bellows or blow pipes, since it could not otherwise have reached such high temperatures. (2) Although we had no actual stockpile of collected raw copper ore or metal slag cached in or near the house, small samples of raw copper silicates embedded in an impure quartz-containing parent rock (Vandiver and Gero n.d.) were identified in association with the hearth levels. There were also scattered pieces of raw material (malachite) in the structure that rarely occurred elsewhere. (We noted only two other isolated malachite pieces, one in the screen near bedrock in Estructura 3, and one from Estructura 4 near bedrock in the northwest corner of the structure.) (3) Worked pieces of copper or copper alloys—two 6 cm lengths of hammered copper alloy from the surface of the site, and a small thin folded piece of copper alloy from the Núcleo 1 patio—attest to Yutopian residents’ access to metal goods. From the neighboring Estructura 2 came two fragmented polished stone laminating hammers. In addition, the piece of tubular ceramic, although fragmentary, suggests a blow pipe; its straightness and its narrow diameter certainly preclude its being part of a vessel or figurine. (4) The raised clay form of Estructura 1’s hearth was made with unusual care for routine cooking of daily meals. In Estructura 1 and in other structures, we encountered evidence of burning (reddened soils, carbon, ash) in restricted areas that suggested cooking fires with no raised clay enhancement, sometimes apparently used for long periods of time, thus begging the question why this hearth was so much more substantially made. Its supportive rocks are more firmly placed than needed merely to support a cooking pot over the fire. 121
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(5) Yutopian appeared unambiguously different from other Early Formative sites in the region for its size, location, density of residential groups and length of occupation. These themes will be developed later; here, it is important to note that unique features set Yutopian apart and mark it as a likely site of production of ideologically significant material items . . . like copper and bronze. However: While the arguments above seemed compelling, and although we have no other explanation for the quantity of localized scoria around the hearth in Estructura 1, I still had nagging doubts; the (published) interpretation (Gero and Scattolin 2002) had problems, and it was also conveniently self-advancing in ways that declaring “the earliest,” “the first,” “the most complete” or “the finest” always are (Wobst and Keene 1983). New evidence was appearing as we continued to dig at Yutopian, and even afterward new light was shed on this problem from other excavations in the region and from other publications on metallurgy. My first doubts centered on: (1) the illogical scenario that people would intentionally build such hot fires in the middle of their living area; (2) our identification of pipe fragments during ceramic analysis that were classic Early Formative smoking pipes; and (3) the presence of a second, similarly shaped hearth in Structure 4 that had no scoria but did have two pieces of pulled copper wire nearby. Let’s look at these counter-arguments more closely: (1) Intentionally heating a fire indoors to the temperatures suggested by Vandiver’s analysis is illogical and ethnographically unknown. Accounts of smelting procedures in all societies, whether of copper or iron, invariably locate metallurgical activities outside, away from houses, often deliberately in high, windy locations that take advantage of local air currents to reduce the human effort needed to keep the fire hot. (2) Our argument for copper smelting was developed before our ceramic analysis had been undertaken, and before we suspected that we had local examples of the classic ceramic pipes known for the Early Formative. In fact, it was several years before we identified our odd ceramic tubular joins as the footed pipe-rests featured on Early Formative pipes (see Fig. 132). Now knowing that we have smoking pipes at Yutopian weakens the interpretation of the narrow-diameter ceramic “blow pipe” (without any joins) as related to metal processing. It may well be a reduced section of a more common smoking pipe. (3) When we later excavated Estructura 4 and its similar betterpreserved hearth (Bit 55), we found it associated neither with scoria nor with ceramic tubes, and in fact we assigned it a rather different function from the Estructura 1 hearth. But is it logical that the two clay-lined hearths would have had different functions? It would seem that the argument for metallurgical production based on the extraordinary care 122
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in the construction of a unique hearth in Estructura 1 is called into question by this later find. And things got even more confusing after we left Yutopian. On the one hand Scattolin went on to investigate another comparable Early Formative village in the Cajón, making Yutopian less unique, while on the other hand, publications appeared that supported intermittent smallscale metal production in domestic contexts (Angiorama 2005). My own bet would be that people at Yutopian were heating raw copper and hammering it, and/or annealing it, to fashion artifacts, but that smelting was going on elsewhere, despite the fact that escoria is usually associated with smelting.
32 Argument
How the gendered household works In a gendered interpretation of household activities, the four clustered conanas in the northwest area of Estructura 1 would be associated with the work of women, even if the conanas differ in size, area of grinding surface, degree of use and deliberate placement in the structure, and despite the fact that “women” represents an even broader, more inclusive category than conanas. Also evident is that this area is related to food preparation, most likely the grinding of corn, which is profusely represented in the botanical remains from Yutopian, and specifically from this area of the house (Meldem 1995; Rossen 1998). Insofar as all the conanas are concentrated on the same occupation floor, it seems apparent that they were in use “simultaneously” in the archaeological sense of this word. These are confident interpretations, given the worldwide association between women and the grinding of grains (Hastorf 1991), and given the interpretive conventions that govern temporal and spatial associations among artifacts. More unusual, however, is the communal mode of food production, where several women apparently worked together on preparing food, perhaps to feed several households or one extended household. The alternative explanation—that the clustered grinding stones represent 123
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in the construction of a unique hearth in Estructura 1 is called into question by this later find. And things got even more confusing after we left Yutopian. On the one hand Scattolin went on to investigate another comparable Early Formative village in the Cajón, making Yutopian less unique, while on the other hand, publications appeared that supported intermittent smallscale metal production in domestic contexts (Angiorama 2005). My own bet would be that people at Yutopian were heating raw copper and hammering it, and/or annealing it, to fashion artifacts, but that smelting was going on elsewhere, despite the fact that escoria is usually associated with smelting.
32 Argument
How the gendered household works In a gendered interpretation of household activities, the four clustered conanas in the northwest area of Estructura 1 would be associated with the work of women, even if the conanas differ in size, area of grinding surface, degree of use and deliberate placement in the structure, and despite the fact that “women” represents an even broader, more inclusive category than conanas. Also evident is that this area is related to food preparation, most likely the grinding of corn, which is profusely represented in the botanical remains from Yutopian, and specifically from this area of the house (Meldem 1995; Rossen 1998). Insofar as all the conanas are concentrated on the same occupation floor, it seems apparent that they were in use “simultaneously” in the archaeological sense of this word. These are confident interpretations, given the worldwide association between women and the grinding of grains (Hastorf 1991), and given the interpretive conventions that govern temporal and spatial associations among artifacts. More unusual, however, is the communal mode of food production, where several women apparently worked together on preparing food, perhaps to feed several households or one extended household. The alternative explanation—that the clustered grinding stones represent 123
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ARGUMENT
“specialized” preparation of food, with a single woman grinding different foods on each of the different conanas but all intended for a single smaller consumption unit—seems unlikely given the overarching similarities among the four conanas and that special conanas are sometimes preferred for specific applications. But even after we assign this work to a group of women, it is difficult to go beyond speculation about the relations among them; we know that within traditionally recognized (binary) gender categories, much diversity exists and many “kinds” of women can grind grains. Weismantel’s (1989) ethnography of the domestic cycle in Ecuadorian households illustrates young married daughters and/or daughters-in-law sharing hearths and grinding stones with their mothers or mothers-in-law for several years, even when they sleep and perform other tasks separately from the older generation. The interplay of generational differentiation, power, positioning and status among women of a single extended household may be represented here, although such relational matters are hardly frozen in a single moment or captured timelessly on a snapshot floor. Rather, we can envision shifting relations among the women who worked here, rivals on some days, confidantes on others, relatives perhaps who lived in adjoining households and worked together (Bit 33). But there is another larger scale at which gender organizes—and is organized by—household production activities. In the next few paragraphs I would like to develop my notions of two contrastive kinds of gendered labor that take place in the household. We can recognize how gendered people of different ages and ranks are segregated, dichotomized and “specialized” (made special) by specific activities (such as corn grinding), and how, at the same time, gendered individuals of different ages and ranks are integrated by activities that crosscut gendered categories. Using this framework we not only get closer to understanding the gendered domestic arrangements at Yutopian, but get closer to understanding what gender “is” and how it functions. Let us first consider how the work at Yutopian measures up to concepts of “specialization.” Interestingly, in associating women with corn grinding, we could argue that women really do specialize in this domestic work, that women “specialists” undertake the task of preparing grains for household food consumption. Classic definitions of specialization preclude this understanding of “specialist” by positing a categorical opposition between “domestic” labor and “specialist” labor. Household food production (“domestic” labor) is never “specialized,” however many hours per day it requires, however spatially segregated it might be, and however delimited the production personnel might be (composed, for example, solely of older, married individuals of a single gender). Researchers who work on “specialized production” are quite 124
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clear on this point. For instance, Costin (1991:4) writes: “. . . division of labor by sex and age within the household is basic to all human societies and must be excluded from the definition of specialization.” Even more emphatically, Clark and Parry (1990:297) tell us: “Craft specialization is production of alienable, durable goods for nondependent consumption (emphasis mine). . . . We consider production specialized only if the consumers are not members of the producer’s household; if the consumers and producers are members of the same household, production is not considered specialized.” Thus the notion of “craft specialization,” derived and defined for examining stratified societies, dismisses household divisions of labor as irrelevant and relegates such labor to ongoing background work that varies only in uninteresting ways. The household itself—taken for granted as persistent, stable and static—becomes a “black box” (Weismantel 1989:55) in the socio-economic landscape of specialized labor. By posing “domestic” production in binary opposition to “specialized” production, the two kinds of productive systems become noncomparable. But in fact, if we take Costin’s (1991:4) widely cited definition of specialization and merely omit the “extra-household” requirement, we find a perfectly fine description of food provisioning by (some) women to the rest of the resident group: “Specialization is a differentiated, regularized, permanent and perhaps institutionalized production system in which producers depend on . . . exchange relationships at least in part for their livelihood, and consumers depend on them for acquisition of goods they do not produce themselves.” Food-preparing labor IS differentiated, regularized, permanent and institutionalized; producers make their livelihoods doing it (quite literally!), and consumers depend on this system to acquire goods they themselves do not produce. Opposing a “sexual division of labor” to “specialized” labor is achieved entirely and merely by (arbitrarily) closing the unit of analysis at or above the level of the household, effectively precluding full-time “women food-preparers” from being specialists. What is missed here is that the social dynamics of dependency and exchange, and the fulfilling of specific and regularized labor tasks by prescribed personnel, are strongly parallel in both intra-household and extra-household production relationships. The grinding of corn at Yutopian, a task most likely carried out by individual adult women (who may have worked together), segregates the workforce by space, age and gender: it distinguishes, marks and fixes interdependent “difference” within households and thus creates and sustains intergenerational and intergender dependencies within households. Thus if we focus on the cultural consequences of different systems of production instead of the scale at which they take place, then Yutopian’s women corn grinders are 125
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ARGUMENT
specialized in their labor; we could also say their labor as corn grinders specializes them. Now we turn to a second kind of household labor that also consolidates intra-household interdependency and cohesion. I call this kind of work “integrative labor”: the cooperative participation of different individuals across age and sex lines toward a common productive outcome. Integrative labor implies that complex nonlinear tasks are often required and performed by different “kinds” of people to accomplish shared outcomes. We could use the example of pottery production, which was certainly undertaken by Early Formative households at Yutopian. Pottery production wouldn’t be undertaken by a single individual carrying out all the necessary steps from quarrying the raw clay, preparing tempering materials, cleaning and preparing clay (wedging), constructing basic forms, preparing ancillary parts such as handles and spouts, surface treating the exterior of the pot when it is leather hard, collecting firewood and preparing a firing area, stacking and minding the kiln during the firing, and the later slipping or painting of the exterior in the postfiring stages of production. Too often, we work with a single-producer model in our minds when we ask “Who made this pot?” The obvious answer is that the nature of the many tasks involved in pottery production (or metallurgical work, or weaving, or house building or aspects of food production) makes it logical to suppose that the labor of different age and sex groups was involved and combined. Such undertakings blend “difference” within productive households, linking people within a household across lines of age and sex difference to produce a working group that is congruent with the household. Thus when we examine gendered arrangements at the household level at Yutopian, we find that production can be broadly outlined to operate on (at least) two very distinct dynamic principles. On the one hand, household labor is segregated or divided by gender (i.e., a division of labor) to create separate, marked and specialized workforces that are interdependent for some vital needs. On the other hand, household labor is integrated by gender and other social variables for other undertakings, to bind personnel into a larger operating body vis-à-vis other, similar coordinated household units. Both forms of productive organization, a “division of gendered labor” and an “integration of gendered labor,” share a single primary social product at the household level: the creation of mutual ties and obligations along crosscutting axes of social integration. These distinct and interdependent processes are obscured or obliterated by defining away domestic labor as nonspecialized. But at Yutopian we observe that both systems of production act together to 126
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How the gendered household works
intensify household cohesion, importantly along different crosscutting axes of age and gender and kin.
33 Andean ways
Buy the cage and get the chicken The landholding men of the Cajón Valley whom we have befriended are bachelors and they live alone: the brothers Federico and Álvaro, for instance, and Jorge who was a bachelor until well into his forties. On the other hand, the Cajón women we know also own land but have married men who join them on their property. (“You buy the cage and you get the chicken!” one husband said, jokingly.) This is true of Jorge’s sister Celia, whose husband Nicolas Aroas is from outside the valley, and Federico and Álvaro’s sisters Rosa, Elsa and Margarita, whose husbands live on their respective properties in the Cajón. It is also true of the people we know who are a few homesteads farther from Yutopian, for instance in the community of La Quebrada, 8 km to the south. There Julia Vargas has imported her husband Marcos Chayle from Belén, while her brother Roberto Vargas, the exception, lives next door with his wife Sra. Trinidad Llampa de Vargas who is from Agua Amarillo, a few kilometers away in the Cajón. The next homestead upriver from Yutopian is where Sr. Santo Menelaos Gutierrez lives with his wife Dora who was born in the Cajón, although Menelaos’s family is from “away” (Laguna Blanca). Dora’s sister and her foreign husband live in an adjoining house. The notable exception is the Pachao family who were our gracious hosts during my first survey in 1993. I actually don’t know whether Don Roque or his wife was born at Ovejería, but their son José married Ana Gutierrez from La Quebrada and has stayed on at Ovejería, while Don Roque’s daughter Santo married Jorge Chaile and moved to Yutopian. Of course the demography of the Valle del Cajón has been plummeting over the decade that we’ve been visiting (and earlier as well), so the families we know are a skewed subset of the earlier and larger population, people who have stayed where they were born. I haven’t studied 127
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intensify household cohesion, importantly along different crosscutting axes of age and gender and kin.
33 Andean ways
Buy the cage and get the chicken The landholding men of the Cajón Valley whom we have befriended are bachelors and they live alone: the brothers Federico and Álvaro, for instance, and Jorge who was a bachelor until well into his forties. On the other hand, the Cajón women we know also own land but have married men who join them on their property. (“You buy the cage and you get the chicken!” one husband said, jokingly.) This is true of Jorge’s sister Celia, whose husband Nicolas Aroas is from outside the valley, and Federico and Álvaro’s sisters Rosa, Elsa and Margarita, whose husbands live on their respective properties in the Cajón. It is also true of the people we know who are a few homesteads farther from Yutopian, for instance in the community of La Quebrada, 8 km to the south. There Julia Vargas has imported her husband Marcos Chayle from Belén, while her brother Roberto Vargas, the exception, lives next door with his wife Sra. Trinidad Llampa de Vargas who is from Agua Amarillo, a few kilometers away in the Cajón. The next homestead upriver from Yutopian is where Sr. Santo Menelaos Gutierrez lives with his wife Dora who was born in the Cajón, although Menelaos’s family is from “away” (Laguna Blanca). Dora’s sister and her foreign husband live in an adjoining house. The notable exception is the Pachao family who were our gracious hosts during my first survey in 1993. I actually don’t know whether Don Roque or his wife was born at Ovejería, but their son José married Ana Gutierrez from La Quebrada and has stayed on at Ovejería, while Don Roque’s daughter Santo married Jorge Chaile and moved to Yutopian. Of course the demography of the Valle del Cajón has been plummeting over the decade that we’ve been visiting (and earlier as well), so the families we know are a skewed subset of the earlier and larger population, people who have stayed where they were born. I haven’t studied 127
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the wider demographics of who has stayed and who left other than the broad platitudes that seem to fit: younger people go to Santa María, the old people stay, people with resources to invest will leave. Men commute and their wives keep the land producing. Perhaps more men have gone, leaving properties to women in the family who then import husbands. But the people we know in the valley tell us again and again that they have chosen to stay, that they have traveled and seen many places, the men have served in the army, sometimes abroad, and everyone goes often to Santa María and farther for different kinds of occasions. They could live in the city, they insist; they have relatives in many places, but they want to stay in the valley. They are not lost and forgotten (and they use that phrase: “No somos olvidados”), but rather they are adamant that they want what the valley offers: serenity, security, their animals, fresh food, independence, their hold on their roots. The residential patterns we note today, then, are not continuous with and don’t represent times past, for all the remoteness of the area and the “traditional” ways of life. Patterns change in the country as well as in towns, and today’s settlement pattern most likely bears little resemblance to even the recent past, much less the distant past. Nevertheless the present situation is one arrangement that would produce clusters of conanas! Matrilocality will have sisters living near sisters, mothers near daughters. Of course, women working together can be an outcome of other residence patterns as well.
34 Episode
Analysis in the field After the 1994 field season—and after each field season thereafter— our excavated materials were transported to Santa María where we immediately established a “laboratory” wherever we could wrangle one. One year we used an empty restaurant property that the city allowed us to occupy for a month; other years we used the municipal campground outbuildings or other empty city spaces where we could erect a few simple tables, spread out boxes and bags, and have access to running water. 128
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the wider demographics of who has stayed and who left other than the broad platitudes that seem to fit: younger people go to Santa María, the old people stay, people with resources to invest will leave. Men commute and their wives keep the land producing. Perhaps more men have gone, leaving properties to women in the family who then import husbands. But the people we know in the valley tell us again and again that they have chosen to stay, that they have traveled and seen many places, the men have served in the army, sometimes abroad, and everyone goes often to Santa María and farther for different kinds of occasions. They could live in the city, they insist; they have relatives in many places, but they want to stay in the valley. They are not lost and forgotten (and they use that phrase: “No somos olvidados”), but rather they are adamant that they want what the valley offers: serenity, security, their animals, fresh food, independence, their hold on their roots. The residential patterns we note today, then, are not continuous with and don’t represent times past, for all the remoteness of the area and the “traditional” ways of life. Patterns change in the country as well as in towns, and today’s settlement pattern most likely bears little resemblance to even the recent past, much less the distant past. Nevertheless the present situation is one arrangement that would produce clusters of conanas! Matrilocality will have sisters living near sisters, mothers near daughters. Of course, women working together can be an outcome of other residence patterns as well.
34 Episode
Analysis in the field After the 1994 field season—and after each field season thereafter— our excavated materials were transported to Santa María where we immediately established a “laboratory” wherever we could wrangle one. One year we used an empty restaurant property that the city allowed us to occupy for a month; other years we used the municipal campground outbuildings or other empty city spaces where we could erect a few simple tables, spread out boxes and bags, and have access to running water. 128
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Analysis in the field
While the excavations were still fresh in our minds, we reviewed and checked the catalog of recovered materials and excavation field notes, washed delicate objects, reconstructed or mended fractured objects, and photographed special finds and other objects of interest. All stone, bone and ceramic finds were counted by excavation unit and level, and assigned to general size, style and raw material categories. Each team member would then work on a short research project to answer a specific (low-technology) question about that season’s work: comparing fill levels with occupation floors, observing trends in materials from different structures, observing changes from early to later levels or conducting more intensive study within a delimited range of materials. At the end of our analysis time, all materials were repacked and inventoried for storage in specially commissioned wooden crates with large, painted identifying labels. As we proceeded with this period of analysis following each field season, I started to notice how unusual this was among archaeology projects. Most researchers spend as much time in the field as possible while weather conditions and grant monies allow, leaving analysis for another time and place and grant. In her solo-directed projects, Cristina would take excavated materials to her museum in Buenos Aires and analyze them there over the next months or even years, and my colleagues who work in North America do the same. Today, researchers who come from abroad are generally not allowed to remove excavated materials from the host country (although that was not true for much of the twentieth century), but then materials are generally stored after fieldwork and researchers return later for a separate period of analysis. But Cristina and I retained the practice of analysis “in the field” because it works so well. Small clerical (but critical) mistakes are easily corrected before the crew disperses, much information is shared and commonly interpreted by people who were “there,” field notes are clarified and expanded upon while the experiences are still fresh. When it was necessary to reclassify an object (a bone in the ceramics bag!) or re-decide whether to call something a special find or regroup a newly recognized type of find, it was logistically easy at this stage. We could question one another about the assumptions and understandings that underlay how notes and materials were arranged and left. Most importantly, we gained a general overview as well as much nitty-gritty baseline information about the season’s work to guide us in planning future excavations and knowing where to focus further analysis. When we devoted the 1999 “field” season to analysis, it was helped enormously by having previously looked at the several years’ worth of earlier materials. But there is one more reason to conduct analysis in immediate association with excavations. Students too easily believe that excavation is 129
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an activity unto itself, that you’re done when you have the “stuff.” In fact, excavation is no more than basic data collection with little importance until it is analyzed in context. Archaeological collections too often sit unanalyzed or under-analyzed in museum storage areas, and we all need to practice maximizing the amount of information we can gain from excavated materials. After all, this may be all we have in future.
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35 Narrative
Arrivals, decisions, decisions! March, 1996: We begin a new field season funded by a Wenner-Gren Foundation Collaborative Research Award. Don Beto drives us into El Cajón as far as the dirt road goes (to La Arroyo) and we unload food and gear, roping our biggest loads—trunks and screens, solar panels and a huge boat battery— onto donkeys and horses (Fig. 51), carrying what we can, in several loads, across the stream and over the hill 2 km to Yutopian. This year the crew consists of students from the Universidad Nacional de La Plata (Cecelia Fraga, Leticia Martinez and Ramón Quinteros) and from the University of South Carolina (Rachel Campo, Josh Fletcher and Paul Lewis), plus a North American paleobotanist/phytolith expert, Robert Thompson from Minnesota, and Cristina and me. I have brought my own students this year partly because I hope to have our evening meals at, or closer to, 7:00 p.m. instead of the preferred Argentinean middle-class dining hour of 10:30 p.m.! Jorge, Álvaro and Federico greet us heartily, assured now that there will be work for two months at a higher rate of pay than any other job open to them in the area. There are gifts and clothes for our friends and many exclamations of how much Ramona’s children have grown. After the 1994 work on Estructuras 1 and 2, I could see even more clearly that what we ultimately know about the past is a product of the decisions we make, consciously and unconsciously. All knowledge is contingent, I insisted to Cristina who, while not disagreeing, didn’t seem convinced the idea was earth-shaking. Still, she humored my request to try to record our decision making in the field. This was an apt time to start because many decisions were about to be made. The idea would be to reason our next steps out loud, including what we saw as the longterm implications of our decisions. Cristina considered our next steps and proximate goals in terms of Early Formative pottery. We should compare ceramic inventories of different levels in different structures to contrast occupations. I, having less firm control over the regional ceramics, was more focused on spatial arrangements of artifacts and architectural patterning. Anyway, there was considerable overlap in how we contemplated our next moves. 132
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Arrivals, decisions, decisions!
Figure 51. Donkey in La Arroyo loaded with field equipment for Yutopian.
Clearly, opening up the last remaining structure of Núcleo 1 (Estructura 3) was a seductive next step; we would gain a necessary understanding of the complete patio group, and we knew the material would be Early Formative. But we also recognized competing project goals at this point: (1) to locate and at least partially excavate a second patio group that could be compared to Núcleo 1; (2) to ascertain the extent of the Early Formative occupation at the site; and (3) to understand the overall site structure, particularly whether all visible walls and wall segments ultimately comprised parts of residential patio groups like Núcleo 1, or whether there were different kinds and arrangements of structures in other areas of the site, either because they were constructed later and conformed to a different settlement pattern or because they were intended for other functions. The Núcleo 1 patio group itself had no visible parallels anywhere on the site based on surface indicators. We discussed which research direction to follow for several days. 133
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While we were deliberating, we put the crew to work digging more test pits in order to (a) look for other patio groups (PP 21), (b) get an off-site reading of “seed rain” (PP 22), and (c) check our assumption that the patio of Núcleo 1 was maintained as a clean area with little debris (PP 23). Ultimately, and slightly frustrated by talking over decisions instead of making them, we decided to return to the middle of the Yutopian ridgetop and the Sector I structure we had partially opened in 1994 around PP 6 (Bit 15). Although we knew it contained a late occupation overlying the Early Formative materials, we had less volume to excavate there, making it easier to expose this structure fully and ascertain whether it was part of a larger, preserved patio group that we could compare with Núcleo 1. In my mind too was the idea of saving Estructura 3, a reliable floor, for the second part of the season when energy might be flagging. Before we closed the 1996 season, we had dug the Sector I house, calling it Estructura Once (Structure 11, in order to leave “empty numbers” for adjacent or intervening structures), as well as the final structure of Núcleo 1, Estructura 3. We had opened a new Estructura 4 at the far north end of the site. Clearly, we got over the decision making process that had immobilized us (mostly me) for the first few days. But what implications are we to draw from those decisions? Is the point simply that if we had dug in other parts of the site we would have produced different information? I reread my notes and see again our determination, our constancy, to stay within the scholarly conventions of studying Early Formative in the region generally and at Yutopian specifically. We were intent on gaining new information, but what we would learn was prescribed by the terms and meanings of what we already knew. Having recovered a patio group, we framed our next steps in those terms: Were patio groups the basic building blocks of the settlement? Could we compare patio groups? Were there early structures other than patio groups, perhaps open plazas or walled gardens and corrals? Anything we could learn was directly linked to what we already knew, so that “new” information could only be apprehended in narrowly focused and delimited forms. The lens on prehistory is fixed by our conceptual framework, our terminology, our conventions of practice, as they have been taught to us and as they are undertaken by our colleagues, our students and our younger selves. And when we make decisions in the field or in our analyses about how to proceed and where to focus, we do so in these restricted and conventionalized terms. It surely gives new meaning to the notion of “learning” anything “new” at all.
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Andean ethnobotany and flotation at Yutopian
36 Backstory
Andean ethnobotany and flotation at Yutopian Before the 1996 field season we had collected soil samples and carried out our own wet-screening procedures as best we could. But now with a resident botanical specialist with us, we determined to collect ancient plant remains more systematically. In fact, paleoethnobotany, the recovery and study of ancient plant remains, is deeply rooted in the development of Andean prehistory; the first publication of Andean paleoethnobotanical (PEB) research in North America appeared in 1934 and like most of the early studies was undertaken by an archaeologist working with a botanist to identify and classify ancient plant species. A slow stream of five or six publications on Andean paleoethnobotanical research appeared in North America over the next several decades until an explosion of PEB work in the 1990s, begging the question: What had happened? One interpretation suggests that as the gender of research changed, it was women who began contributing to ethnobotanical studies in large numbers. The first Andean plant-oriented archaeology article by a woman appeared in 1952 and the first book in 1962. After that, increasingly high proportions of books were authored by women, first as single authors, then co-authoring with men and more recently co-authoring with other women. More than half the journal articles about Andean paleoethnobotany were published by women in the 1980s and 1990s, and more than five times as many women as men published PEB articles between 2000 and 2003. Even when women constituted a small minority in archaeology, their contributions in paleoethnobotany represented an impressive force (Cook and Gero 2012). Another significant factor was certainly the first conference held on Andean paleoethnobotany in 1985, followed in 1988 by the publication of the first edited volume on the subject, Current Paleoethnobotany, edited by Christine Hastorf and Virginia Popper. This sequence marks precisely how modern academic specializations come into being: there is a conference, the papers of the conference are augmented by selected 135
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100 50 43 92 74 92 74 ?? 2 59 132 4 47 79 85 ? 96 220 96 ? 56 116 7 Unit ? 305 31 86 8 BACKSTORY Ceramic Stone Bone Level 9 100 50 43 4 additional papers, Unit ?? 2 306 59 132 and5 a classic volume emerges to define a new area of study.96 After the late 1980s, Stone Bone ?Ceramic 220 6Level instead of going off to learn botany in botany departments, archaeologists began receiving botanical training within ? 39 ? ? 56 116 74 anthropology departments, and archaeology increasingly splintered ? 43 ? 5 ? 31 86 8 into subdisciplines with a focus on specific areas of material culture or 91 41 ? 96 cultural behavior: lithic specialists, ceramicists, cultural ecologists and 86 20 ? 7 paleoethnobotanists. Unit 306 8 ByStone the 1990s, Ceramic BonePhDs Level 9 in paleoethnobotany more than doubled in number compared to the ? 39 ? 4previous decade, with women outstripping men despite their smaller the discipline. Note : Shaded levels indicate thenumbers ? 43 ? 5occupationinfloor. 91 41 ? 6 Table 5a. New female and male PhDs focused on paleoethnobotanical research 86 20 ? 7 8 1950–60 1960–70 1970–80 1980–90 1990–2000 2000–2010 9 Females 1 1 2 2 11 5 Males 3 2 3 6 7 7 Note : Shaded levels indicate the occupation floor.
Table 5a. 5b. Female and and malemale contributors to edited volumes on paleoethnobotanical A lastfemale observation onPhDs the admittedly sample of edited North Table New focused on small paleoethnobotanical research research American paleoethnobotanical volumes about the Andes (and only counting volumes1960–70 edited by 1970–80 a single gender): that men2000–2010 tend 1950–60 1980–90we find 1990–2000 Volume has editor/s Volume has a female to contribute chapters to male-edited while write for Females 1 1 2 a male volumes, 2 11women 5 editor/s Author of chapter is male 6 2 female-edited volumes. Males 3 2 3 6 7 7 Author of chapter is female
3
13
Table 5b. Female and male contributors to edited volumes on paleoethnobotanical research Author of chapter is male Author of chapter is female
Volume has a male editor/s 6 3
Volume has a female editor/s 2 13
What does all this tell us and what does it have to do with Yutopian? Paleoethnobotany, like other areas of research, has a sex life and a social life, following but also creating personalized spheres of scholarship. I was influenced (and mentored) by Christine Hastorf and her pioneering work in paleoethnobotany, and the Yutopian project adopted a flotation program to recover macrobotanical material (seeds and plant parts) under her tutelage. In the arid highland environment, with the entire water supply coming from a single 45-cm-wide ancient irrigation canal (Bit 78), we had to experiment and innovate, trying different hardware systems and different means of introducing water to the soil samples to encourage carbonized and desiccated fragments to float. Initially Jorge diverted a slow-running subcanal to conduct water into 136
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Andean ethnobotany and flotation at Yutopian
the field where we wanted to work, creating a pool at the end where barrels could be filled for flotation. This delivered the needed water to where we wanted it, but it also required Bob Thompson’s constant filling and emptying of individual buckets and barrels to provide a clean barrel of water for each soil sample. Also our dirt samples could only be mechanically loosened with sticks to release their botanical contents. Each sample was then skimmed to create a separate light and heavy fraction for separate analysis. When Jack Rossen arrived in 1998, he arranged a simple small-scale, gravity-fed system using a plastic planter box, a 2 liter Sprite bottle with the bottom cut off, and nylon paint strainers (Fig. 52). The constant slow-running water washed the samples and released carbonized bits to float to the surface and then over the lowest edge of the box, to be caught in the fine nylon mesh of the strainer. For each separate sample, we changed the nylon strainer with its carbon load and marked its provenience, just as we saved each heavy fraction from the plastic box to later identify any small artifacts contained therein. Across the site, we floated 9 liter soil samples (approximately one bucket) from every excavated level of every excavation unit to get a background distribution of plant use, to which we added intensive sampling
Figure 52. Improvised flotation system used at Yutopian. Soil samples are deposited on mesh-covered shelf and washed with gently flowing water until carbon bits float over the edge into the paint strainer (light fraction). What remains in the mesh is collected as the heavy fraction. 137
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of charcoal-laden soils and features of special interest. Later, Jack Rossen analyzed the light fractions and was able to provide invaluable information about diet and agriculture at Yutopian (Bits 79 and 80).
37 Episode
Excavating Estructura Tres As explained above, we actually excavated Estructura 11 before working on Estructura 3, but I introduce Estructura 3 first, in violation of my “knowledge is contingent” rule, in order to keep the descriptions of all the structures of the same patio group (Núcleo 1) together. Estructura 3 lay adjacent to and immediately south of Estructura 2; it was the third and last structure of the Núcleo 1 patio group. While digging Estructura 2, we had already decided that its southern wall and the northern wall of Estructura 3 were integrated, although it wasn’t clear yet which structure was earlier. From the surface, the overall shape of Estructura 3 was difficult to determine because the walls were not visible in places, but by the time we leveled the excavated surface at a 40 cm depth, we could see that it appeared more rectangular than the other two structures, with rounded “corners” (Fig. 53). Three large conana fragments had been built into the structural walls, suggesting reuse of well-known Early Formative housewares, and Cristina confirmed that rectangular residences were built somewhat later in the Formative period. The doorway here was not prominent as it had been in the other two structures although we recognized that it must have been situated along the eastern or northeastern walls to connect into the common patio. There were no late (RDP) ceramics associated with this structure, nor did any appear throughout these excavations. Cristina gridded out seven 2 × 2 m excavation units to cover the area enclosed by this structure, but because a square grid was superimposed on a quasi-circular structure, none of the units actually measured 2 × 2 m, nor were any two excavation units the exact same size or shape. In one unit the previously excavated 1 × 1 m Poza de Prueba 14 reduced 138
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of charcoal-laden soils and features of special interest. Later, Jack Rossen analyzed the light fractions and was able to provide invaluable information about diet and agriculture at Yutopian (Bits 79 and 80).
37 Episode
Excavating Estructura Tres As explained above, we actually excavated Estructura 11 before working on Estructura 3, but I introduce Estructura 3 first, in violation of my “knowledge is contingent” rule, in order to keep the descriptions of all the structures of the same patio group (Núcleo 1) together. Estructura 3 lay adjacent to and immediately south of Estructura 2; it was the third and last structure of the Núcleo 1 patio group. While digging Estructura 2, we had already decided that its southern wall and the northern wall of Estructura 3 were integrated, although it wasn’t clear yet which structure was earlier. From the surface, the overall shape of Estructura 3 was difficult to determine because the walls were not visible in places, but by the time we leveled the excavated surface at a 40 cm depth, we could see that it appeared more rectangular than the other two structures, with rounded “corners” (Fig. 53). Three large conana fragments had been built into the structural walls, suggesting reuse of well-known Early Formative housewares, and Cristina confirmed that rectangular residences were built somewhat later in the Formative period. The doorway here was not prominent as it had been in the other two structures although we recognized that it must have been situated along the eastern or northeastern walls to connect into the common patio. There were no late (RDP) ceramics associated with this structure, nor did any appear throughout these excavations. Cristina gridded out seven 2 × 2 m excavation units to cover the area enclosed by this structure, but because a square grid was superimposed on a quasi-circular structure, none of the units actually measured 2 × 2 m, nor were any two excavation units the exact same size or shape. In one unit the previously excavated 1 × 1 m Poza de Prueba 14 reduced 138
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Excavating Estructura Tres
Figure 53. Estructura 3 at 90 cm. Bottom of PP 14 is just visible in the center of the structure.
the area by a quarter, while other units were compromised by their intersections with the external structure wall. We placed one additional unit outside the wall on the southwest side to investigate whether there was a rubble-filled double wall there or simply a lot of tumbled wall stones. Because the ground sloped down and away from the structure on this side, it was also possible that the stones lying outside the wall served as a retention wall against erosion. (By the end of excavating Estructura 3 we understood better why there was an apparent double wall in that part of the perimeter.) We again undertook excavation in 10-cm arbitrary levels, screening all dirt through ⅛" mesh shaker screens. Because we now knew much more about depositional sequences and local materials at the site, and because this structure showed little post-depositional disturbance, we could work quickly and still encounter cultural material in the “right” order: Guachipa Polychrome (later Formative) ceramics in the upper levels and below them the familiar earlier Formative materials: the polished grey and black wares, thin-walled red-slipped wares, incised sherds. This was not the deliberate fill of basketloads of mixed earth matrix being thrown into an empty structure to fill it and reoccupy it, but rather the gradual in-filling that occurred from intermittent uses for 139
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different functions, interspersing episodes of trash accumulation and, perhaps, temporary occupations. As we got within 5 cm of the sloping, uneven bedrock at a depth of 85 cm, we could detect an increase in cultural material. All the diagnostic pieces were now Early Formative, and we encountered the first patterned, in situ artifact distributions. In the southern edge of the structure, with bedrock already appearing along the wall (although not in the
Figure 54. Map of Estructura 3 at bedrock. 140
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Excavating Estructura Tres
center of the structure), we noted a 1-m2 area where significant quantities of sheet mica had been worked, including 10-cm-long cut slabs that had been deposited vertically. We have no finished artifacts of mica preserved at Yutopian and are left wondering what was produced here on the original house floor. This wasn’t the only activity area on the early floor of Estructura 3. In the west/northwest area of the structure was a llama long bone that had been whittled into a spatula, and directly on the bedrock surface against the wall appeared an assemblage of large camelid bones including two long bones, a lower mandible, a neck bone, a 4-cm molar, a large vertebrae 8 cm in diameter and several long bone fragments; most likely these were the butchered remains of edible camelid body parts. This assemblage, together with a large processing flake tool and a semipolished quartz cobble, continued under the walls of the structure. Here was clear evidence that the structure had been remodeled, reduced in size over time, with new walls inside the original perimeter of the earlier structure. The double structure walls on the southeast perimeter now made sense to us. At this same early occupation level, the large, curved stone rims of what had to be ground stone conanas first appeared, still embedded in the remaining soil toward the center of the structure. As we continued troweling here and in the two activity areas, one by one and at slightly different depths, three large horizontally positioned conanas emerged and we had further confirmation of being on an actual occupation floor (Figs. 54 and 55). Each of the conanas was different: One was similar to the large ovoid conanas recovered in the northeast corner of Estructura 1, with a shallow
Figure 55. Section across Estructura 3 occupation floor. 141
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oval concavity. A second one was unique to Yutopian: made on a block instead of a slab of stone, it was ground down deep and broad to leave a trough (Bit 94). The third conana seemed to have been worked on so long and so hard that it had a large hole worn through its grinding surface; we referred to it as expended (or as “the toilet seat”) and noticed that it partially covered a most unusual pair of pits (Bit 39).
T
38 Raw data
Inventory of special finds from Estructura Tres Table 6. Inventory of special finds from Estructura 3 Special Find No. 164 131 132 133 134 5 136 138
Unit
Depth
Material
Description
322 322 321 321 321 PP 14 322 321
0–40 cm 40–50 cm 40–50 cm 40–50 cm 40–50 cm 40–50 cm 50–60 cm 50–60 cm
ceramic obsidian lithic lithic lithic ceramic chert ceramic
137 139 140 141 142
320 322 325 324 323
60–70 cm 60–70 cm 60–70 cm 60–70 cm 70–80 cm
ceramic turquoise lithic lithic lithic
165
323
70–80 cm
ceramic
143 144
322 324
70–80 cm 70–80 cm
turquoise mica
145 146 147
142 321
wall fall 90–100 cm 90–100 cm
ceramic lithic bone
90–100 cm 151 cm
lithic ceramic
Condorhuasi sherd projectile point projectile point projectile point polished stone ornament? Aguada rim sherd projectile point painted Guachipa Polychrome sherd 2 fragments of Aguada bowl drilled bead 118 projectile point projectile point fragment of circular spindle whorl? Aguada sherd with incised circles drilled bead 118 large cut pieces (also 80–90 cm) incised face on circular disc polished cylinder—ornament worked (pointed) camelid bone (“spatula”) bead (?), unknown stone puma figurine with incised 58 circles
172 149
320 320 322 320 & 322 (Pit 1)
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Figure No. (if illustrated)
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EPISODE
oval concavity. A second one was unique to Yutopian: made on a block instead of a slab of stone, it was ground down deep and broad to leave a trough (Bit 94). The third conana seemed to have been worked on so long and so hard that it had a large hole worn through its grinding surface; we referred to it as expended (or as “the toilet seat”) and noticed that it partially covered a most unusual pair of pits (Bit 39).
T
38 Raw data
Inventory of special finds from Estructura Tres Table 6. Inventory of special finds from Estructura 3 Special Find No. 164 131 132 133 134 5 136 138
Unit
Depth
Material
Description
322 322 321 321 321 PP 14 322 321
0–40 cm 40–50 cm 40–50 cm 40–50 cm 40–50 cm 40–50 cm 50–60 cm 50–60 cm
ceramic obsidian lithic lithic lithic ceramic chert ceramic
137 139 140 141 142
320 322 325 324 323
60–70 cm 60–70 cm 60–70 cm 60–70 cm 70–80 cm
ceramic turquoise lithic lithic lithic
165
323
70–80 cm
ceramic
143 144
322 324
70–80 cm 70–80 cm
turquoise mica
145 146 147
142 321
wall fall 90–100 cm 90–100 cm
ceramic lithic bone
90–100 cm 151 cm
lithic ceramic
Condorhuasi sherd projectile point projectile point projectile point polished stone ornament? Aguada rim sherd projectile point painted Guachipa Polychrome sherd 2 fragments of Aguada bowl drilled bead 118 projectile point projectile point fragment of circular spindle whorl? Aguada sherd with incised circles drilled bead 118 large cut pieces (also 80–90 cm) incised face on circular disc polished cylinder—ornament worked (pointed) camelid bone (“spatula”) bead (?), unknown stone puma figurine with incised 58 circles
172 149
320 320 322 320 & 322 (Pit 1)
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Figure No. (if illustrated)
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134 5 136 138
321 PP 14 322 321
40–50 cm 40–50 cm 50–60 cm 50–60 cm
lithic ceramic chert ceramic
polished stone ornament? Aguada rim sherd projectile point painted Guachipa Polychrome sherd 137 320 60–70 cm ceramic 2 fragments of Aguada bowl Estructura Tres 139 Inventory 322 of special 60–70finds cm from turquoise drilled bead 118 140 325 60–70 cm lithic projectile point 141 324 60–70 cm lithic projectile point 142 323 70–80 cm lithic fragment of circular spindle Table 6. Inventory of special finds from Estructurawhorl? 3 165 323 70–80 cm ceramic Aguada sherd with incised circles Special Unit Depth Material Description Figure No. (if Find illustrated) 143 No. 322 70–80 cm turquoise drilled bead 118 164 322 0–40 cm ceramic Condorhuasi sherd 144 324 70–80 cm mica large cut pieces (also 80–90 cm)point 131 322 40–50 cm obsidian projectile 145 321 wall fallcm ceramic incised face on circular disc 132 321 40–50 lithic projectile point 146 320 90–100 cm lithic polished 133 321 40–50 cm lithic projectilecylinder—ornament point 147 320 90–100 cm bone worked camelid bone 134 321 40–50 cm lithic polished(pointed) stone ornament? (“spatula”) 5 PP 14 40–50 cm ceramic Aguada rim sherd 172 322 90–100 cm lithic bead (?), unknown stone 136 322 50–60 cm chert projectile point 149 320 & 322 151 cm ceramic puma figurine with incised 58 138 321 50–60 cm ceramic painted Guachipa Polychrome (Pit 1) circles sherd 166 320 ceramic Candelaria 57 137 320 & 322 60–70 cm ceramic 2 fragmentssherd of Aguada bowl (Pit 1) 139 322 60–70 cm turquoise drilled bead 118 167 320 & 322 ceramic Condorhuasi sherds (2 57 140 325 60–70 cm lithic projectile point (Pit 1) fragments) 141 324 60–70 cm lithic projectile point 168 320 & 322 ceramic Candelaria sherd 57 142 323 70–80 cm lithic fragment of circular spindle (Pit 1) whorl? 170 320 & 322 bone polished pointed tool 57 165 323 1) 70–80 cm ceramic Aguada sherd with incised (Pit circles 143 322 70–80 cm turquoise drilled bead 118 144 324 70–80 cm mica large cut pieces (also 80–90 cm) Interestingly, a high concentration of projectile points appeared in the 145 321 wall fall ceramic incised face on circular disc upper levels of this structure (above 70 cm) but none appear in the lower 146 320 90–100 cm lithic polished cylinder—ornament levels, between90–100 70 and 100 cm depths. The only bone implements come 147 320 cm bone worked (pointed) camelid bone from the central Pit 1 and the lowest occupation (“spatula”) level. 172 322 90–100 cm lithic bead (?), unknown stone 149 320 & 322 151 cm ceramic puma figurine with incised 58 (Pit 1) circles 166 320 & 322 ceramic Candelaria sherd 57 (Pit 1) 167 320 & 322 ceramic Condorhuasi sherds (2 57 (Pit 1) fragments) 168 320 & 322 ceramic Candelaria sherd 57 (Pit 1) 170 320 & 322 bone polished pointed tool 57 (Pit 1)
39
Narrative
The peculiar pits of Estructura Tres As the last chapter to every structure, we always found pits dug into the bedrock: more or less regular, more or less voluminous, more or less centrally placed, more or less formal in their execution. But two pit fea143
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134 5 136 138
321 PP 14 322 321
40–50 cm 40–50 cm 50–60 cm 50–60 cm
lithic ceramic chert ceramic
polished stone ornament? Aguada rim sherd projectile point painted Guachipa Polychrome sherd 137 320 60–70 cm ceramic 2 fragments of Aguada bowl Estructura Tres 139 Inventory 322 of special 60–70finds cm from turquoise drilled bead 118 140 325 60–70 cm lithic projectile point 141 324 60–70 cm lithic projectile point 142 323 70–80 cm lithic fragment of circular spindle Table 6. Inventory of special finds from Estructurawhorl? 3 165 323 70–80 cm ceramic Aguada sherd with incised circles Special Unit Depth Material Description Figure No. (if Find illustrated) 143 No. 322 70–80 cm turquoise drilled bead 118 164 322 0–40 cm ceramic Condorhuasi sherd 144 324 70–80 cm mica large cut pieces (also 80–90 cm)point 131 322 40–50 cm obsidian projectile 145 321 wall fallcm ceramic incised face on circular disc 132 321 40–50 lithic projectile point 146 320 90–100 cm lithic polished 133 321 40–50 cm lithic projectilecylinder—ornament point 147 320 90–100 cm bone worked camelid bone 134 321 40–50 cm lithic polished(pointed) stone ornament? (“spatula”) 5 PP 14 40–50 cm ceramic Aguada rim sherd 172 322 90–100 cm lithic bead (?), unknown stone 136 322 50–60 cm chert projectile point 149 320 & 322 151 cm ceramic puma figurine with incised 58 138 321 50–60 cm ceramic painted Guachipa Polychrome (Pit 1) circles sherd 166 320 ceramic Candelaria 57 137 320 & 322 60–70 cm ceramic 2 fragmentssherd of Aguada bowl (Pit 1) 139 322 60–70 cm turquoise drilled bead 118 167 320 & 322 ceramic Condorhuasi sherds (2 57 140 325 60–70 cm lithic projectile point (Pit 1) fragments) 141 324 60–70 cm lithic projectile point 168 320 & 322 ceramic Candelaria sherd 57 142 323 70–80 cm lithic fragment of circular spindle (Pit 1) whorl? 170 320 & 322 bone polished pointed tool 57 165 323 1) 70–80 cm ceramic Aguada sherd with incised (Pit circles 143 322 70–80 cm turquoise drilled bead 118 144 324 70–80 cm mica large cut pieces (also 80–90 cm) Interestingly, a high concentration of projectile points appeared in the 145 321 wall fall ceramic incised face on circular disc upper levels of this structure (above 70 cm) but none appear in the lower 146 320 90–100 cm lithic polished cylinder—ornament levels, between90–100 70 and 100 cm depths. The only bone implements come 147 320 cm bone worked (pointed) camelid bone from the central Pit 1 and the lowest occupation (“spatula”) level. 172 322 90–100 cm lithic bead (?), unknown stone 149 320 & 322 151 cm ceramic puma figurine with incised 58 (Pit 1) circles 166 320 & 322 ceramic Candelaria sherd 57 (Pit 1) 167 320 & 322 ceramic Condorhuasi sherds (2 57 (Pit 1) fragments) 168 320 & 322 ceramic Candelaria sherd 57 (Pit 1) 170 320 & 322 bone polished pointed tool 57 (Pit 1)
39
Narrative
The peculiar pits of Estructura Tres As the last chapter to every structure, we always found pits dug into the bedrock: more or less regular, more or less voluminous, more or less centrally placed, more or less formal in their execution. But two pit fea143
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Figure 56. Estructura 3 at bedrock. The deep central pit extended 106 cm below the bedrock floor.
tures in Estructura 3 were so distinctive they merit special discussion. Both were first recognized when we reached bedrock at 95 cm below ground surface and both were partially covered by a single “expended” conana that we had identified at 85 cm (Fig. 56). The pit in the center of the structure was huge with an irregular opening approximately 100 cm × 75 cm; it extended an impressive 106 cm below the bedrock floor to a total depth of 187 cm, almost 2 m below the ground surface. Its ragged rim had perhaps been crumbled from inhabitants stepping too close to the edge or from repeatedly depositing and retrieving things from it. The pit walls were straight until near the bottom where they widened out to form a gentle bell shape with a slightly concave floor (Fig. 57). Any of us could easily have curled up and slept in there, it was so big. The pit contents were also curious. Artifacts were not stratified as they would have been if they had gradually accumulated as fill. Rather we found a homogeneous Early Formative deposit with an overrepresentation of decorated and diagnostic fine ceramic wares (Fig. 58): a Condorhuasi sherd near the top and another at the very bottom, several parts of a polished black bowl that had been repaired, a curious collection of decorated rim elements and large reconstructable pieces of a Candelaria face neck jar with appliqué punctate designs. We also 144
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Figure 57. Paul standing in Estructura 3 central pit. Note the tops of the double pit feature on the right.
Figure 58. Partial contents of large pit, Estructura 3 (left to right): (top) basalt sidestruck flake tool and two Candelaria appliqué punctate rim sherds; (bottom) polished black ceramic sherd with drilled repair hole, puma figurine and two red-and-white painted Condorhuasi sherds.
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recovered a highly polished white quartz stone and one of the only finished figurines: a squarish feline with a circle-and-dot design impressed into it (Fig. 59). (No Condorhuasi sherds, Candelaria sherds or figurines were found elsewhere in this structure except very near the surface.) In addition to the decorative items were four large andesite scraping tools, calcined and fresh animal bone (including ribs), long bones and teeth of llama, one partially destroyed human molar, substantial numbers of flakes and smaller sherds and mica flakes. Much of the recovered material had been burned or charred and charcoal samples were taken from various depths. Between this large pit and the exterior northwest structure wall, also partially obscured by the expended conana, was what first appeared to be a pair of smaller pits separated from the large pit by a narrow bedrock shelf (Fig. 60); however the paired pits were quite strange. One was extremely round and regular and cut vertically with straight walls and an unvarying 24 cm diameter to a depth of 141 cm (60 cm into the bedrock). The other similar-sized pit 12 cm to the northeast was less regular and had been angled to join the vertical shaft of the first straightsided pit below the bedrock floor about halfway down the shaft, leaving a shelf of bedrock between the two openings. This unusual feature also contained cultural material: near the top of the north-slanting pit was a broken slate tablet associated with snuff taking, sitting vertically against the pit edge. The vertical-sided pit contained, in addition to assorted small bone fragments, armadillo scales, flakes and broken sherds, a llama scapula, an eroded sherd tool probably used in making ceramic pots, and, most interestingly, near the bottom a polished blackware bowl rim with drilled repair holes exactly like the one recovered from the big central pit described above. We speculated about the function of both pit features. How did the inhabitants live with the large pit in the center of the floor? It could have been maintained open, covered by skins or by planks, but it would certainly have caused people to walk around it every time they crossed this interior space. In other Yutopian structures, large pits were always placed near walls, at the edges of the living spaces, and were plausibly interpreted as storage pits; they did not contain such an array of decorated ceramics or a figurine. Did this pit have a different function? Could the “big pit” have once contained a human burial, with its human tooth and the disproportionate high-status fineries, along with ample evidence of charring and burning and fire-cracked rock? Certainly, placing “Grandma” under the living floor is one means of establishing property rights, associating the ancestors with material possessions of current owners and bestowing a familial history on the space (see Adams and King [eds.] 2011, especially Joyce 2011:41). Of course the evidence is 146
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Figure 59. Puma figurine from Estructura 3, deep central pit.
Figure 60. Double pit during excavation, Estructura 3.
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too partial and the tradition not well established locally. But like a tongue seeking a sore, my thoughts keep coming back to this possibility: what’s the molar doing in there? We were even more intrigued by the set of joined pits whose form is unfamiliar. In the southwestern United States, pit ovens in this form are reported (Roberts 1932:44), but such features are three times larger than the one in Estructura 3 and are always used outdoors. More likely this was also a kind of storage pit, with an unusual way to remove or add contents through the diagonal opening, or it was designed to anchor a thick, vertical, weight-bearing beam, made fast by the insertion of a diagonal wedged second pole. The “expended” conana partially covering it may have served as a cleverly engineered timber support for this vertical beam.
40 Andean ways
Honoring Pachamama First thing in the morning on the day after we finished Estructura 3, Álvaro, Federico and Jorge appeared on-site with bundles under their arms. Speaking softly, almost shyly, they said they would take a moment to make an offering to Pachamama to mark the closing of excavations in that area. Thinking back to the long and busy 1994 field season and working closely with these same men, I had never known them to include any ritual offerings, at either the beginning or the end of any digging events. But now, recently, I had noticed at the close of each workday that Federico (the oldest) had been making an X or a cross with his trowel on a brushed clean dirt surface of whatever excavation unit he was working on, the last thing he did before leaving for the night. I had asked him about it but he was not forthcoming about its meaning, and Jorge had intervened, saying something about it being for good luck. What were we to think? Anthropologists who work in the Andes are familiar with the “superstitions” or “folk tales” surrounding archaeological sites and other value-saturated places connected with the past (Allen 148
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too partial and the tradition not well established locally. But like a tongue seeking a sore, my thoughts keep coming back to this possibility: what’s the molar doing in there? We were even more intrigued by the set of joined pits whose form is unfamiliar. In the southwestern United States, pit ovens in this form are reported (Roberts 1932:44), but such features are three times larger than the one in Estructura 3 and are always used outdoors. More likely this was also a kind of storage pit, with an unusual way to remove or add contents through the diagonal opening, or it was designed to anchor a thick, vertical, weight-bearing beam, made fast by the insertion of a diagonal wedged second pole. The “expended” conana partially covering it may have served as a cleverly engineered timber support for this vertical beam.
40 Andean ways
Honoring Pachamama First thing in the morning on the day after we finished Estructura 3, Álvaro, Federico and Jorge appeared on-site with bundles under their arms. Speaking softly, almost shyly, they said they would take a moment to make an offering to Pachamama to mark the closing of excavations in that area. Thinking back to the long and busy 1994 field season and working closely with these same men, I had never known them to include any ritual offerings, at either the beginning or the end of any digging events. But now, recently, I had noticed at the close of each workday that Federico (the oldest) had been making an X or a cross with his trowel on a brushed clean dirt surface of whatever excavation unit he was working on, the last thing he did before leaving for the night. I had asked him about it but he was not forthcoming about its meaning, and Jorge had intervened, saying something about it being for good luck. What were we to think? Anthropologists who work in the Andes are familiar with the “superstitions” or “folk tales” surrounding archaeological sites and other value-saturated places connected with the past (Allen 148
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1988:56). Mal aire (bad air) or antimonio escapes from a newly opened cave or tomb and will cause illness, paralysis and total desiccation, a belief recorded as far back as the sixteenth century (Walter 2006:184). Many archaeologists scoff and shake their heads at these amusing tales, dismissing them as naïve and fear-laden responses to dealing with ancient things. Pachamama ceremonies are another familiar component of Andean ethnographies: these are intimate rituals undertaken at different scales of social life, often performed in the fields before planting. The essence of some substance that holds great meaning is blown, spilled, sprinkled or burned as an offering to the spirit of the Earth, to ensure that she whom we might call Mother Earth will be generous at harvest time. A large literature explores the meanings of the Pachamama practices, tying them in to a complex of other deeply held Andean notions and practices of reciprocity, animism, household solidarity, ancestor or mummy reverence, mining and animal as well as human sacrifice (after Sillar 2004:156). But the Pachamama rituals are specifically deemed important in regard to agriculture, where the animate female Earth spirit (Pachamama) is propitiated and honored because she is about to be cracked open (plowed) in order to receive seed—and thus violated. She could become angry and withhold vegetative bounty, so she is both bribed and mollified with a small feast, partly symbolic and partly nutritious. Now this was to happen at Yutopian. I suppose that in previous moments appropriate for a Pachamama ceremony, Federico and his brother and nephew had been too timid or self-conscious to perform their practices in front of us, the bureaucratically sanctified outsiders who measured and classified in other systems of meaning. Our friends were never seen in ponchos or knitted hats with ear flaps, and their coca chewing was all but invisible to us, discreetly done around the other side of a big rock. But now we had excavated too much and were readying to plunder the earth in yet another area, and I suppose the discomfort, the sacrilege, had been going on too long to postpone any more. That first Pachamama ceremony was held by the excavation edge of Estructura 3 (Fig. 61). From under sweaters and jackets, unfolded from pieces of cloth and extracted from plastic bags, came half a bottle of alcohol, a small bottle of beer, a plastic bag of coca leaves, a few cigarettes and a cloth chubby with harina cocida (toasted corn meal). Once we got the gist of it, we contributed a handful of aspirins and a few wrapped hard candies which Álvaro discreetly unwrapped before depositing. The men took off their hats and in rotation stepped to the edge of the excavated structure, bent or stooped over the excavated space and gently dropped in a portion of each of the offered items: a few leaves, a good splash of alcohol and a glug or two of beer, a generous handful of harina cocida. 149
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Figure 61. Estructura 3 Pachamama offering organized by Jorge, Álvaro and Federico after excavating pit features of Estructura 3.
The cigarettes were twisted until the tobacco came out of the wrapping paper and fell into Estructura 3. In went a few aspirins, and it was agreed that Pachamama would enjoy the candy as well. We waited and watched for a flash of fervor, some deeply felt sentiment; we expected a performative chant or a sacred gesture, but this was an altogether matter-of-fact affair that we have witnessed many times since, with ever-more confidence that nothing is left out on our behalf. There were some quiet jokes about how much Pachamama likes to drink and how they could help her by finishing off the bottles. While any one person did the offering, the others talked quietly or laughed softly with no sense of silence being requisite or even preferred. This had the markings of a strictly observed but altogether straightforward economic transaction where by carrying out our end of the bargain and being generous in our offerings, we could now reasonably expect Pachamama to honor her end, to not take offense at our ripping her open and to yield up to us good encuentros that would further our studies. We nevertheless came away from the moment stilled by the various meanings we each had vested in the witnessed negotiation. After we were gently shown what to do that first time, we began and ended each excavation season at Yutopian with a Pachamama offering. Now we knew enough to provide the ingredients except for the toasted corn meal, which we were teased about being too clumsy to be able to provide. Jorge would go ahead of us and dig a small pit at the base of some large stone he identified near where we planned to work, carefully guarding the little backdirt pile for refilling. We now all participated in turn, always offering the same basic items but sometimes adding tea or chocolate or chewing gum without offense. When we had all contrib150
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Honoring Pachamama Figure 62. Jorge’s Pachamama altar near his house, adorned with white quartz and festooned with flowers and wool.
uted and the pit held more than just a symbolic amount of our gifts, Jorge replaced the backdirt and cast about for a few choice stones, nicely rounded ones or brightly white quartz pieces, which he laid on top of the disturbed earth. We all felt better for doing it, probably for wildly different reasons. We were also introduced to Jorge’s private Pachamama “altar” about 30 m from his house on the lowest slope of the Yutopian ridge (Fig. 62). At its center is a large naturally upright boulder, and next to the boulder grows a particularly big bush (well watered with alcohol, perhaps) which is festooned with ribbons and hanks of wool, some in natural colors, some brightly dyed. Other things also hang from or are stuck into the bush such as feathers, bird beaks and bones, pieces of mirror. Quite a few white quartz stones are placed and heaped around the base of the central boulder and a few on top, and the dirt here is clearly disturbed and lacks the low thorny and scrubby underbrush that elsewhere characterizes the ground surface. Jorge tells us that he makes his primary Pachamama offering on Easter Sunday each year and then at other times as the situation requires.
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EPISODE
41 Episode
Exploring Núcleo Uno’s shared patio Estructuras 1, 2 and 3 shared a common central patio, together creating a patio group (in Spanish, a núcleo). The patio itself was an unroofed walled area approximately 12 m in diameter (Fig. 63), offering a flexible-use space for staging combinations of activities day to day, season by season. Álvaro confessed to having removed and reused patio wall stones for constructing his own house and field features, but the original roughly circular or oval form remains. Presumably there was once some sort of marked entranceway, no longer extant. The patio offered entranceways into each of the structures associated with it; there was no other way into the structures, thus clearly identifying people and property that “belonged” or had certain rights here, and also keeping some animals in and others out. We excavated 12 m2, or slightly less than one-eighth of the estimated total area of the patio, beginning with two (possibly three) curious circular stone arrangements near Estructura 1, each approximately 1 m in diameter, and both quite casual in appearance. The first “circle” incorporated the south wall of Estructura 1 and the north wall of Estructura 2, fitted between them with a few more stones placed around and piled several courses high, to make a messy enclosed circle 75 cm in diameter. Two conjunctions of coarse matching sherds, various lithics and a burnt clay brick were part of the fill in the first level of soft earth, and lithic core and mano were recovered in the lower level. But excavation was only able to reach 20 cm below the patio surface before hitting bedrock, indicating that this was not a substantial feature. The humped shape of the bedrock in the center of the circle contributed to our interpretation of a support system for a now-missing, hefty vertical timber wedged in place with stones and cultural fill. Perhaps the broken coarse ceramics held stored goods here; similar circular features are interpreted as storage areas at contemporaneous sites in the Tafí del Valle (Salazar et al. 2011:20). The second stone “circle” inside the patio walls lay 50 cm east of Estructura 1 and just north of its entranceway, but it proved to have no depth at all and virtually no cultural material. In 1996 we had placed a single 1 × 1 m test pit in the central por154
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Figure 63. Map of excavation units in patio of Núcleo 1.
tion of the patio (Pozo de Prueba 23), and it showed us a remarkably clean area, seemingly for its entire occupation history. Either the central patio area wasn’t used for the everyday production and consumption of domestic products or, if it was, debris was not allowed to accumulate on what must have been a regularly swept surface. But along the well-preserved northern wall of the patio our excavation units revealed a different story. A huge variety of artifacts was found here: decorated sherds (including a Late Formative Aguada piece), a ceramic pot strap handle, a partially drilled ceramic disk and an unusual polished obsidian “teardrop,” in addition to the familiar scatter of undecorated sherds and lithic remains. Some recovered artifacts were clearly activity-related: a broken ceramic spindle whorl showed up here (one of few recovered at Yutopian [Bit 87]), as did a modified bone implement that we called a “spatula” but local scholars related to weaving.1 We also noted a singular well-defined lithic reduction area where 545 lithic flakes and tools, almost all of exotic stone (obsidian and chalcedony), occurred within a restricted 60 cm2 patch. Compared to the 155
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EPISODE
intensely used residential floors which averaged 1.7 ceramics to each lithic flake, here lithics occurred 2.5 times more often than ceramics. The variation in flake size and the presence of cortex suggest that people here were undertaking the complete reduction sequence—from cobbles to preforms and blanks—as well as resharpening and modifying existent tools. Within the dense lithic scatter were two camelid teeth and a handful of armadillo platelets, tempting us to speculate that the butchering of animals could be related to the modification of stone tools. More likely we need to remember not to expect single-use activity areas over the course of hundreds of years of occupation. Of course the preparation of animals for consumption and the production or modification of stone tools share a tendency to be undertaken out of doors. It is also possible that some of this concentration of finds close to the north patio wall is due to people having swept the patio and deposited remains along the walls. But we located two patio postholes 27 cm apart and 50 cm from the north patio wall, packed with fist-sized cobbles, to suggest a small ramada (or a portion of a larger ramada) that had been anchored to the north patio wall to increase shade and shelter, and it is probable that much of the patio perimeter was similarly shaded, as has been reconstructed for many other patios (such as at Cardonal [Scattolin et al. 2009a]) and as Jorge’s own patio architecture has been built and rebuilt. In the end it seems unlikely the patio was ever “empty” while Núcleo 1 was occupied, although at the end of the 1996 field season we had believed it probably was. It now seems clear that informal arrangements of different activities would have been evident throughout the occupaFigure 64. Jorge and Santo’s “patio” and hearth. Here the arrangement of productive activities changes constantly.
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tion: lines holding drying meat, blankets spread out with seed or drying potatoes, people involved with weaving, mending, food preparation and implement production. Jorge’s patio is full of activity that constantly changes, as do the useful implements and artifacts that are employed: small fires smoking a particular snack, sacks of seeds or potatoes, balls of yarn, his spinning machine, horse blankets and tack, agricultural implements, projects in process, pieces of things that could come in handy sometime—all this and more lies about and is taken up as needed (Fig. 64). It is also impressive how quickly activities are organized here, how fluid the space, to serve the many functions of his patio. In a moment, a table or a bench is moved from inside to outside and a meal is taken, but just as quickly the furniture is pushed aside and the patio is full of women sorting seed potatoes or clothes. Ramadas are put up in a few hours and projects move underneath them for shade, but in the winter these come down to allow stronger sun to heat the area for working. Jorge cooks inside or outside, often under a ramada, just as at Yutopian there are formal cooking installations inside (in Estructura 1) but also areas of carbonization and charcoal on the patio. Note 1. A recently published illustration of a traditional Bolivian weaving implement was kindly pointed out to me by Dr. Sophie Desrosiers as bearing a resemblance to the “spatulas” from Yutopian. Desrosiers mentions that the tool was probably used for a weft-faced weaving such as a tapestry. See Fig. 9.9 in Rivera Casanovas 2014, 250.
42 The square feature in the round patio In 1998 we excavated one remarkable feature in the patio of Núcleo 1 only because Stephen Loring noticed the faintest surface indication of a squarish arrangement of rocks halfway across the patio and 5 m east of the entranceway into Estructura 1. The lugareños were extremely 157
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tion: lines holding drying meat, blankets spread out with seed or drying potatoes, people involved with weaving, mending, food preparation and implement production. Jorge’s patio is full of activity that constantly changes, as do the useful implements and artifacts that are employed: small fires smoking a particular snack, sacks of seeds or potatoes, balls of yarn, his spinning machine, horse blankets and tack, agricultural implements, projects in process, pieces of things that could come in handy sometime—all this and more lies about and is taken up as needed (Fig. 64). It is also impressive how quickly activities are organized here, how fluid the space, to serve the many functions of his patio. In a moment, a table or a bench is moved from inside to outside and a meal is taken, but just as quickly the furniture is pushed aside and the patio is full of women sorting seed potatoes or clothes. Ramadas are put up in a few hours and projects move underneath them for shade, but in the winter these come down to allow stronger sun to heat the area for working. Jorge cooks inside or outside, often under a ramada, just as at Yutopian there are formal cooking installations inside (in Estructura 1) but also areas of carbonization and charcoal on the patio. Note 1. A recently published illustration of a traditional Bolivian weaving implement was kindly pointed out to me by Dr. Sophie Desrosiers as bearing a resemblance to the “spatulas” from Yutopian. Desrosiers mentions that the tool was probably used for a weft-faced weaving such as a tapestry. See Fig. 9.9 in Rivera Casanovas 2014, 250.
42 The square feature in the round patio In 1998 we excavated one remarkable feature in the patio of Núcleo 1 only because Stephen Loring noticed the faintest surface indication of a squarish arrangement of rocks halfway across the patio and 5 m east of the entranceway into Estructura 1. The lugareños were extremely 157
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nervous about finding a tomb, suggesting we have another Pachamama ceremony, but Cristina insisted that “if we excavate, we have to excavate.” The stand-alone feature was unique: five flat slabs of rock each between 40 and 60 cm had been set into a shallow pit, one positioned vertically and the other four with their bases angled in toward the middle where a round flat stone sat directly on bedrock. Smaller flat rocks were fitted between the larger slabs, all inclined toward the central round stone. While we worked there, the square vertical “headstone” cast a shadow on the round flat center stone. None of us had ever seen anything like this before. Someone commented that it looked like a flower; others thought of a solar oven, but there was no evidence of burning and no finds below the ground surface nor beneath any of the stones. Only on the surface around the feature was there exotic lithic debitage, and one charred whole bean (poroto) was recovered from between the stones. The most notable ceramics consisted of three large elaborate sherds, two of them
Figure 65. Square feature of unknown function, Núcleo 1 patio, Unit 357. The feature was laid out on sterile soils. 158
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The square feature in the round patio
Figure 66. Large Aguada sherd from square feature, Núcleo 1 patio, Unit 357.
incised Aguada pieces (Late Formative) (Fig. 66) that could be refitted, and the other a brightly painted Vaquerías (Early Formative) sherd. Most surprisingly, both the Aguada and the Vaquerías sherds could be joined with sherds recovered from Estructuras 1 and 2. This feature seems to have been introduced into the patio somewhat later than the original occupation of the defining structures since its form is unfamiliar and the associated pottery includes a later style. Was this an area for drying crops? Covered with a textile, its basin shape could hold many kinds of fruits or seeds or vegetables, with the sun effectively heating these stones while the shade prevented scorching. We could also wildly imagine sun dials, Pachamama altars, even a baby cradle set in the middle of busily working residents, but none of these is particularly convincing, all very under-determined.
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DESCRIPTIVE DATA
43 Descriptive data
The entranceways of Núcleo Uno Estructuras 1, 2 and 3 could each only be entered from the common central patio, but for years we had little idea of what the entranceways looked like or whether they were alike. We had focused excavations on the interior spaces of the structures and had treated what lay outside largely as irrelevant. The semi-subterranean structures had been excavated roughly a meter into the bedrock while the shared patio area was left at ground level, so we expected a simple ramp or steps down into the houses. We were hardly prepared for the elegance and elaboration of the passage entranceways as we began excavating the patio. Estructura 1. The “possible entranceway” into Estructura 1 was noted even before excavation began as a narrow break in the structure’s mostly buried walls. Working inside Estructura 1, we had observed the dressed portal stones defining the doorway and the especially dense concentration of finds inside the doorway, but the passage entranceway leading up to this doorway was revealed only in conjunction with studying the patio. The passage entranceway of Estructura 1 was constructed of two parallel stone walls 60 cm apart that extended 210 cm from the patio to the structure doorway, anchored to the structure at the two upright portal stones. The impressive southern wall of the passageway had been constructed of aligned dressed rock faces while the northern wall consisted of tall uncut boulders. At the end of the passageway farthest from the structure, a 70 cm stone slab had been set deep into the patio bedrock at right angles to the passageway so that its thin edge formed a substantial threshold 8 cm above the patio surface and marked a clear boundary between the patio and the passageway (Fig. 67). Finally, two well-defined postholes 55 cm apart had been dug into the patio bedrock another 50 cm beyond this threshold, suggesting some kind of ramada roofing that extended from the passageway farther into the patio; the entranceway passage may itself have been roofed with thatch. Then things got really interesting. In the shallow patio soils immediately in front of the threshold stone, an entire llama mandible had been deposited, and below the threshold stone a deep pit had been dug into 160
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The entranceways of Núcleo Uno Figure 67. Excavations in the patio of Núcleo 1, Unit 352, revealed a conana deposited in the passage entranceway leading into Estructura 1. Note also the lateral threshold stone marking the beginning of the passageway beneath which a burnt bone offering had been placed.
the bedrock, ultimately to a depth lower than the occupation floor itself. Lined and capped with a layer of yellow clay, the pit held blackened lumps of burnt bone and fragmented camelid teeth within a black soil matrix; parts of another mandible were barely discernible and crumbled at the trowel’s edge. The sealed threshold pit had no further finds but clearly referred to a burnt offering at the boundary of the entrance into the structure, offered up before the threshold stone was placed. Just inside the passage entranceway a large shallow or partially formed grinding stone (conana) had been placed with the grinding surface up, and a second broken, well-worn conana tucked up against it; beneath these was a level of stepped paving stones leading into Estructura 1. And there was 161
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DESCRIPTIVE DATA
Figure 68. Llama cranium smoothed around the edges to serve as a ladle, recovered from Estructura 2, Unit 311, in the passageway entrance.
more: we found polishing and grinding stones, decorated Vaquerías and (lower down) Condorhuasi sherds, and a perfect slate knife between the paving stones of the entranceway. Was it just a coincidence that so many important artifacts lay strewn in the entrance passageway? Did people leave tools in the entranceway that they wanted to find quickly if they returned to the structure? Or was this entranceway assemblage symbolically important, laden with meanings about houses? Estructura 2. Unlike Estructura 1, part of Estructura 2’s passage entranceway fell within the excavation units of the structure itself and had been dug together with the adjacent interior spaces. But working in the patio years later showed that the entranceway extended 180 cm east into the patio from the structure walls, most of it excavated into the bedrock to form a parallel-walled passage. The north side was formed by an unmodified, vertically cut bedrock face with stones aligned along the top of the cut; the south wall consisted of a loosely constructed stone wall that threatened to fall in on us as we worked! The doorway itself was marked by two large vertical boulders, 80 cm and 83 cm tall, standing on the bedrock floor. Within the first level of entranceway “fill” we began to find llama bones: an intact long bone first, then a filed-edge llama cranium ladle or spoon with the nose bone serving as a handle, much like the one from Estructura 1 (Fig. 68). Other finds included several Vaquerías and Ciénaga sherds, but the llama bits kept appearing: several teeth a bit lower and, even lower, more teeth and a llama astragalus (talus or heel bone). Nearby, still in the entranceway at 92 cm below the ground surface, Álvaro found large fragments of a fractured olla or cooking pot, broken in situ with fragments of camelid long bones positioned on top and across several of the large sherds, evidently once having lain inside the olla. 162
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The entranceways of Núcleo Uno
What really struck us was the similarity between artifacts deposited in the entranceways of Estructuras 1 and 2. In Estructura 2, a thin ash lens runs beside and under the slab baffle across the doorway of the structure, again suggesting an episode of dedicatory burning . . . and with it, another conjunction of llama bones. Inside Estructura 2 but very close to the doorway were two halves of a broken conana, and another broken conana had been placed on end against the structure doorframe. This again repeats the llama-bone-in-the-entranceway theme of Estructura 1. Sherds of Condorhuasi and Ciénaga ceramics were clustered near and in the entranceway of Estructura 2, just as they had been in Estructura 1. Estructura 3. Quite possibly the entranceway into the original Estructura 3 was also formal and well defined, but our excavations of the remodeled structure revealed a considerably less impressive entrance. Located on the northeast side of the structure, a ramped descent from the patio level to the structure’s bedrock floor is unmarked by walls, paving stones, threshold stones or special artifact deposits. There was only the ramp and a break in the continuity of the exterior structure wall, without notable finds. Nevertheless, the conanas and llama bones recovered from the other two entranceways are intriguing and invite us to be alert to see if this pattern continues elsewhere at Yutopian (Bit 77).
44 Narrative
The life history of Núcleo Uno Núcleo 1 was inhabited as early as 1800 years ago (Bit 72), but not all parts of the compound are that old. Several lines of evidence suggested to us that Estructuras 1 and 2 were the original, earliest structures of this group, built either by the same individuals or at least with direct continuity between generations of builders. In this scenario, Estructura 3 was added later but overlapped in time with the occupation of the first two structures. Both artifactual and architectural data seemed to support this view. 163
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The entranceways of Núcleo Uno
What really struck us was the similarity between artifacts deposited in the entranceways of Estructuras 1 and 2. In Estructura 2, a thin ash lens runs beside and under the slab baffle across the doorway of the structure, again suggesting an episode of dedicatory burning . . . and with it, another conjunction of llama bones. Inside Estructura 2 but very close to the doorway were two halves of a broken conana, and another broken conana had been placed on end against the structure doorframe. This again repeats the llama-bone-in-the-entranceway theme of Estructura 1. Sherds of Condorhuasi and Ciénaga ceramics were clustered near and in the entranceway of Estructura 2, just as they had been in Estructura 1. Estructura 3. Quite possibly the entranceway into the original Estructura 3 was also formal and well defined, but our excavations of the remodeled structure revealed a considerably less impressive entrance. Located on the northeast side of the structure, a ramped descent from the patio level to the structure’s bedrock floor is unmarked by walls, paving stones, threshold stones or special artifact deposits. There was only the ramp and a break in the continuity of the exterior structure wall, without notable finds. Nevertheless, the conanas and llama bones recovered from the other two entranceways are intriguing and invite us to be alert to see if this pattern continues elsewhere at Yutopian (Bit 77).
44 Narrative
The life history of Núcleo Uno Núcleo 1 was inhabited as early as 1800 years ago (Bit 72), but not all parts of the compound are that old. Several lines of evidence suggested to us that Estructuras 1 and 2 were the original, earliest structures of this group, built either by the same individuals or at least with direct continuity between generations of builders. In this scenario, Estructura 3 was added later but overlapped in time with the occupation of the first two structures. Both artifactual and architectural data seemed to support this view. 163
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NARRATIVE
For instance we noted quite similar material inventories in the lowest occupation levels of Estructuras 1 and 2, including Early Formative ceramics like Condorhuasi and polished black and grey ceramics, distinctive bone ladles fashioned from cut llama crania, polished turquoise beads and objects pertaining to metallurgical production (scoria and raw malachite from Estructura 1, and scoria and laminating hammers from Estructura 2). In contrast, the material inventory from the occupation floor of Estructura 3 generally lacked these materials (except for polished grey and black ceramics which enjoy a longer temporal popularity); there are no Condorhuasi sherds or similar metal-working tools or implements. Moreover the upper levels of Estructura 3 yielded much greater quantities of the later Formative ceramics including incised, geometric Ciénaga and Aguada/Ciénaga ceramics. Only the discrete contents of the deep bell-shaped pit in the center of Estructura 3 yielded the earliest materials like those found on the floors of Estructuras 1 and 2. Similarly, the architectural forms are revealing: the overall round ground plan of semi-subterranean Estructura 1 and (more or less) Estructura 2 contrasts with the sub-rectangular house form of Estructura 3. The parallel-walled entranceways of Estructuras 1 and 2, each around 2 m in length and excavated into bedrock like the house foundations themselves, are absent in Estructura 3. Instead, Estructura 3 uses a ramp-style entranceway into the house. Moreover, the walls of Estructura 3 contained three broken conanas as part of the building material, suggesting that the (later) builders already had expended cultural materials at their disposal. A doorway made between Estructuras 2 and 3 argues that at some point these structures were occupied at the same time, but thereafter the doorway between 2 and 3 was blocked off, which is when we believed that Estructura 2 was abandoned, perhaps used for storage, and then, evidently, allowed to accumulate garbage, broken implements, and fractured conanas. While we were excavating, we believed Estructura 3 was the newest house because it looked different and contained more late material. But after more analysis I began to change my mind, thinking that the original building and occupation of Estructura 3 was actually contemporary with, or even earlier than, Estructuras 1 and 2, and that Estructura 3 was simply more exaggeratedly cleaned out, modified and rebuilt at some time later in the Formative. The cultural materials from the central pit in Estructura 3 correspond closely to the Early Formative ceramics of the Estructuras 1 and 2 occupation floors, including the highly diagnostic painted sherds of two separate Condorhuasi vessels, a small decorated puma figurine, bits of malachite and, most strikingly, large reconstructable portions of a Candelaria face neck storage vessel identical to the whole vessel from Estructura 1. (In fact I was later justified in this revi164
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The life history of Núcleo Uno
sion when the earliest 14C date from Núcleo 1 came from the large central pit in Estructura 3.) Substantial rebuilding is certainly evident in Estructura 3; its form is rectangular rather than round, and it lacks the well-built structural features of the other two houses. More importantly, Estructura 3 consistently showed areas around the house periphery where cultural deposits extended under existing walls, demonstrating that the walls we see today were erected after the deposition of some of the (earlier) cultural material. Quite likely, the earlier (rounder) walls were taken down to use the stones elsewhere, resulting in a less formal and less substantial house—and at the same time the Early Formative materials from the original occupation were displaced in the renovations (except for those in the pit). The doorway connecting E3 with E2 was most likely blocked up as part of the later renovations, suggesting this was undertaken when the function of different structures was fundamentally redefined. But if Estructura 3 was the most dramatically renovated of the houses, there were also modifications to the walls and interior spaces of Estructura 2 (and less visibly to Estructura 1), hardly surprising given their occupation histories of several hundred years. Estructura 2 also had broken conanas incorporated in its upper walls, and the abrupt angles in the upper wall courses suggest realignments or repairs in existing walls. Roof falls are recorded in cane-impressed daub, and at one point the well-defined entranceway was blocked. Constant small repairs and shifts in how and where jobs were undertaken all produced continual changes in how the structures were positioned and used, although we can’t recover exactly which renovations and modifications were contemporaneous. Quite apart from architectural histories, there may be another reason to believe that Estructura 3 is the earliest of the three buildings, related to its uniquely large central pit with so many distinctive items. If this pit represents a human burial (true, we did not recover human remains from this pit, but we did find a great deal of burnt bone and several tooth fragments), then this placing of an ancestor under the living floor appears to announce the establishment of a land-controlling lineage for at least this group of structures. The other two structures were probably roughly contemporaneous with the original Estructura 3, especially Estructura 2 with its connecting doorway. Estructura 1, the most regularly shaped and formally constructed of the group (and the least modified), also sits somewhat apart from the other structures at the higher north end of the patio, and it may have been the last construction, evolving into the most formal and ritually focused of the group with its unique “big stone / small stone” wall construction and its formal hearth. 165
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NARRATIVE
Of course the patterns revealed in our twentieth-century excavations reflect only the latest remodeling efforts as they stood at the time of Yutopian’s abandonment. By then Estructura 2, severed from Estructura 3, served merely to collect garbage and unorganized fill (and perhaps stored goods), while Estructura 3 was occupied casually as a domestic habitat. What is notable is that Estructura 1 remained in use throughout the restructuring episodes of Estructuras 2 and 3, and appears to have become the structure of highest prestige. I wish we had dug it last, when we knew more.
45 Cooking the data
Changing patterns of lithic consumption in Núcleo Uno: Chalcedony and obsidian We can also bring other types of analysis to bear on the chronology of occupations since change should be apparent in many material expressions. We focused on the distribution of lithic material frequencies to observe changes in consumption patterns over time in different structures. Here, I want to present time-transgressive changes in the consumption of two kinds of lithic material, chalcedony and obsidian (see also Bit 84). In all the Yutopian structures and during all occupations, the use of local stone, especially quartz and basalt, predominates, followed in much lesser amounts by obsidian, rhyolitic tuff, slate (used mostly for the characteristic Formative knife), quartzite and small quantities of chert. A distinctive banded grey and white chalcedony also shows up in considerable densities in the upper levels of both Estructuras 1 and 2, but there is a sharp cutoff in the use of this material below 90 cm, and then no further chalcedony is found down to bedrock at 120 cm (Table 7a). The chalcedony, then, was not in use on the original occupation floors of Estructuras 1 and 2 but appears only later in the upper fill and re-occupation levels. In Estructura 3, however, chalcedony is recovered in heavier con166
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NARRATIVE
Of course the patterns revealed in our twentieth-century excavations reflect only the latest remodeling efforts as they stood at the time of Yutopian’s abandonment. By then Estructura 2, severed from Estructura 3, served merely to collect garbage and unorganized fill (and perhaps stored goods), while Estructura 3 was occupied casually as a domestic habitat. What is notable is that Estructura 1 remained in use throughout the restructuring episodes of Estructuras 2 and 3, and appears to have become the structure of highest prestige. I wish we had dug it last, when we knew more.
45 Cooking the data
Changing patterns of lithic consumption in Núcleo Uno: Chalcedony and obsidian We can also bring other types of analysis to bear on the chronology of occupations since change should be apparent in many material expressions. We focused on the distribution of lithic material frequencies to observe changes in consumption patterns over time in different structures. Here, I want to present time-transgressive changes in the consumption of two kinds of lithic material, chalcedony and obsidian (see also Bit 84). In all the Yutopian structures and during all occupations, the use of local stone, especially quartz and basalt, predominates, followed in much lesser amounts by obsidian, rhyolitic tuff, slate (used mostly for the characteristic Formative knife), quartzite and small quantities of chert. A distinctive banded grey and white chalcedony also shows up in considerable densities in the upper levels of both Estructuras 1 and 2, but there is a sharp cutoff in the use of this material below 90 cm, and then no further chalcedony is found down to bedrock at 120 cm (Table 7a). The chalcedony, then, was not in use on the original occupation floors of Estructuras 1 and 2 but appears only later in the upper fill and re-occupation levels. In Estructura 3, however, chalcedony is recovered in heavier con166
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Changing patterns of lithic consumption in Núcleo Uno
centrations in all occupation levels down to 120 cm. If we accept that the remodeled Estructura 3 eradicated all the material from the earliest floors, then the chalcedony pattern from Estructura 3 confirms that chalcedony came into use later in the occupational history of Yutopian— sometime after the initial occupation of Structures 1 and 2—but that this material was already well in use by the time the remodeled living floor was occupied in Estructura 3. Table Table 7a. 7a. Distribution Distribution of of chalcedony chalcedony within within Núcleo Núcleo 11 Depth Depth Below Below Datum Datum (cm) (cm) 0–10 0–10 10– 10– 20– 20– 30– 30– 20 30 40 20 30 40 Est. — — — — Est. 11 — — — — Est. — — — — Est. 22 — — — — Est. 3 — — — 75 Est. 3 — — — 75 Patio 68 56 29 22 Patio 68 56 29
40– 40– 50 50 29 29 62 62 41 41
50– 50– 60 60 77 14 14 35 35
60– 60– 70 70 33 55 65 65
70– 70– 80 80 22 77 43 43
80– 80– 90 90 66 11 19 19
9090100 100
100– 100– 110 110
11 66
22
110– 110– 120– 120– 120 120 130 130
Note : Note : In In Estructuras Estructuras 11 and and 2, 2, chalcedony chalcedony isis scarce scarce below below 50 50 cm cm depth, depth, while while in in Estructura Estructura 3, 3, chalcedony chalcedony appears appears at at all all occupation occupation levels. levels.
Table Table 7b. 7b. Distribution Distribution of of obsidian obsidian within within Núcleo Núcleo 1, 1, showing showing proportions proportions of of Ona Ona obsidian obsidian to to Cueros de Purulla obsidian It also suggests that the episode/s of intensive lithic reduction on the Cueros de Purulla obsidian
patio of Núcleo 1 occurred after the initial occupations of Estructuras 1 0–10 10– 20– 20– 30– 30– 40– 40– 50– 50– 60– 60– 70– 70– 80– 80– 90– 90– 100– 100– 110– 110– 120– 120– and0–10 2. 10– 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 130 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 Another chronological interpretation of the three structures in 130 Est. — — — 8/ 19/ 12/ 16/ 6/ 3/ Est. 11 Núcleo — 1— — — — to 19/ 19/ after 8/ Patricia 19/ Escola 12/ 15/ 15/ 20/ 20/ 16/ 6/ 3/ was suggested us looked at our obsidian 25 15 12 77 13 16 13 55 66 25 15 12 13 16 13 and—confirmed that — we had material from two different sources: (1) a Est. — — — 47/ 7/ 2/ 1/ Est. 22 — — — — — 47/ 19/ 19/ 9/ 9/ 7/ 2/ 1/ transparent, sometimes banded14 or smoky-banded or even black obsid5 2 2 2 1 14 5 2 2 2 1 with — a—classic that74/ originated Est. — 34/ 21/ 57/ 30/ 17/ 2/ Est. 33 ian— — — vitreous 34/ surface 21/ 38/ 38/ 74/ 57/ from 30/ the 17/ Ona 2/ quarries 55 66 (2)11 15 10 88 00 opaque, 185 km northwest of99Yutopian and 11a dramatically 15 10 different Patio 8/ 10/ 11/ obsidian (at first confused with a very finePatio grey-to-black, 8/ 10/ matte-textured 11/ 66 77 44chert) that was identified as Cueros de Purulla obsidian grained sugary and sourced somewhat closerPurulla to Yutopian,arearound 155 km to the northNote : Note : In In Estructuras Estructuras 11 and and 2, 2, both both Ona Ona and and Purulla obsidian obsidian are used used throughout throughout the the occupation, occupation, while while in in west (Escola 1999, 2007; Yacobaccio et al. 2002; Yacobaccio et al. 2004). Estructura 3, Ona obsidian is represented in much higher frequencies. Estructura 3, Ona obsidian is represented in much higher frequencies. Given that all the obsidian used at Yutopian came uniquely from these two sources (at least where we excavated) and that they are visually distinctive, we tallied the ratio of Ona-to-Purulla obsidian for each occupation level of each structure. The results closely paralleled the results from the chalcedony analysis: for Estructuras 1 and 2, the ratio is about 1:1 in the lowest levels, the occupation zone, but the upper (later) levels show a marked preference for Ona obsidian, averaging as high as 4:1. This suggests a later shift to preferring (or being able to obtain) Ona 167
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Table Table 7a. 7a. Distribution Distribution of of chalcedony chalcedony within within Núcleo Núcleo 11
COOKING THE DATA Depth Below Datum (cm) Depth Below Datum (cm) 0–10 20– 30– 50– 60– 90100– 110– obsidian, or, alternatively, a loss de Purulla. 0–10 10– 10– 20– 30– 40– 40– 50–of connections 60– 70– 70– 80– 80–to Cueros 90100– 110– 120– 120– 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 is130 130 Meanwhile, in Estructura 3 the marked preference for Ona obsidian Est. — — — — 29 7 3 2 6 Est. 11 evident — — — — 29 7 3 2 6 through all occupation levels, reaching as high as 12:1 in the Est. — — — — 62 14 5 7 Est. 22 upper — — — — 62 5 7 levels. Thus, as with the14 chalcedony, we11 felt 11confident that the Est. 33 — — — 75 41 35 65 43 19 6 2 Est. — — — 75 41 35 65 43 19 6 2 was timepattern of relying more heavily on Ona quarried obsidian Patio 68 56 29 Patio 68 56 29 22
dependent and somewhat later than Purulla obsidian, and thus the occupation1of the chalcedony remodeledscarce Estructura503cm could bewhile datedEstructura later thanchalcedony the Note : Note : In In Estructuras Estructuras 1 and and 2, 2, chalcedony is is scarce below below 50 cm depth, depth, while in in Estructura 3, 3, chalcedony associated Estructuras 1 and 2. appears at all occupation levels. appears at all occupation levels. Table Table 7b. 7b. Distribution Distribution of of obsidian obsidian within within Núcleo Núcleo 1, 1, showing showing proportions proportions of of Ona Ona obsidian obsidian to to Cueros de Purulla obsidian Cueros de Purulla obsidian 0–10 0–10 Est. Est. 11
— —
10– 10– 20 20 — —
20– 20– 30 30 — —
30– 30– 40 40 — —
Est. Est. 22
— —
— —
— —
— —
40– 40– 50 50 19/ 19/ 25 25 — —
Est. Est. 33
— —
— —
— —
Patio Patio
8/ 8/ 66
10/ 10/ 77
11/ 11/ 44
34/ 34/ 99
21/ 21/ 55
50– 50– 60 60 8/ 8/ 15 15 47/ 47/ 14 14 38/ 38/ 66
60– 60– 70 70 19/ 19/ 12 12 19/ 19/ 5 5 74/ 74/ 11 11
70– 70– 80 80 12/ 12/ 7 7 9/ 9/ 2 2 57/ 57/ 15 15
80– 80– 90 90 15/ 15/ 13 13 7/ 7/ 2 2 30/ 30/ 10 10
90– 90– 100 100 20/ 20/ 16 16 2/ 2/ 2 2 17/ 17/ 8 8
100– 100– 110 110 16/ 16/ 13 13 1/ 1/ 1 1 2/ 2/ 0 0
110– 110– 120 120 6/ 6/ 5 5
120– 120– 130 130 3/ 3/ 6 6
Note : Note : In In Estructuras Estructuras 11 and and 2, 2, both both Ona Ona and and Purulla Purulla obsidian obsidian are are used used throughout throughout the the occupation, occupation, while while in in Estructura Estructura 3, 3, Ona Ona obsidian obsidian is is represented represented in in much much higher higher frequencies. frequencies.
The inspection of the lithics, then, can play an important role in getting the chronology right. Not only does lithic raw material offer another tool for chronological sequencing, refining the 14C dates and filling in the gaps where we have no dates, but it also points to the danger of relying unconditionally on unrefined machine-counts. “Context, context, context,” as Walter Taylor always said.
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How unique is Núcleo Uno at Yutopian?
46 Narrative
How unique is Núcleo Uno at Yutopian? We really wanted to find other patio groups at Yutopian, but when we had completed Núcleo 1 excavations (and even later, as we finished up at the site), no others were preserved. It was significant that Núcleo 1 had been constructed at the high northern end of the Yutopian ridgetop, apparently the highest residential area enjoying the most commanding views of the site and the valley below. The prominent location of Núcleo 1 and its well-constructed walls also suggest that it is somehow unique at Yutopian, although other patio groups may have existed at lower elevations, destroyed by later occupations. Its prominence, in turn, may help explain why Núcleo 1 was not subsequently reoccupied, and why its Early Formative occupation floors were left with whole pots and an intact hearth while many other early areas of the site underwent reuse, remodeling and destruction. The picture became more complicated after the next field season when we recognized and then excavated the stand-alone Estructura 4, the only structure higher on the ridge than Núcleo 1, along with nearby partial wall fragments (Bit 65). But even if another patio group, now no longer recognizable, had once existed, Núcleo 1 was still the only intact patio group we were able to recover. Why had it been allowed to stand for centuries while other Early Formative residential structures and architectural groupings had been dismantled or reconfigured, modernized and put to other uses? The topographic dominance of this patio group together with its unique architectural formality (passage entranceways, dressed stone walls, elegant hearth) could be understood to imply a corresponding social uniqueness within the Early Formative settlement: whoever resided/occupied/utilized this carefully constructed and situated compound might themselves have been of unique social importance. Furthermore, the importance attached to this núcleo and its inhabitants extended into subsequent periods when much of the Yutopian landscape was reoccupied and remodeled, yet the abandoned Núcleo 1 was not revised or demolished. In fact, while Santamariana and other late 169
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NARRATIVE
Figure 69. Formative patio groups from Tafí del Valle, similar to Yutopian’s Núcleo 1 (after Berberián 1989: Figures 1 and 2).
period ceramics covered the surface of much of the rest of the site, virtually none were recovered here. So many questions arise. Archaeologists who have excavated similar patio groups generally identify the rooms surrounding the central patios as “residential structures occupied by an extended family” (Berberián and Nielsen 1989:28) (see Fig. 69). I too consider Núcleo 1 as having been occupied by a form of extended family, and maybe even one with trans-generational coherence and some kind of social recognition; something special seems rep170
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How unique is Núcleo Uno at Yutopian?
resented here. But let’s agree about this: we would need to know a great deal more about the community at Yutopian, and have given much more thought to what an “elite” status or a position of inherited leadership might have consisted of, before we assign a simple label to the occupants of Núcleo 1. We simply don’t know what forms of social authority were recognized and permitted in the Early Formative, or whether anyone was permitted to hold special rights or significant privileges over the lives or well-being of others. There must have been many nuanced forms of differentiated social statuses in the Early Formative, many ways by which social differentiation was derived, be it from favorable property rights, or a talent for socio-political leadership, or a special relationship with the sacred world that brought benefits to the community. But here’s a conjecture we could entertain: from time to time, the unique family grouping of Núcleo 1 may have provisioned the Yutopian community with festive meals or beverages prepared in the formal structure at the formal hearth of Estructura 1, putting the several simultaneous conanas to use grinding ingredients. Feasts sponsored by prestigious village members take place in many contemporary small-scale societies, sometimes invoked to please deities or ensure continued wellbeing, often interpreted as a means of equalizing wealth. The remains of such feasts feature regularly at early archaeological sites, but usually in association with more developed hierarchies (Bray 2003; Dietler and Hayden 2001). This scenario must remain entirely conjectural.
47 Backstory
How unique is Núcleo Uno in the world? Núcleo 1 conforms to a well-documented Early Formative settlement type in Northwest Argentina best known from the area 75 km east of the Yutopian, Tafí del Valle, where it has been described as “Structure Type 3” (see Fig. 69): Compound Circular Units. These consist of one or more large circular enclosures (patios) to whose walls are attached one or more small or 171
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How unique is Núcleo Uno at Yutopian?
resented here. But let’s agree about this: we would need to know a great deal more about the community at Yutopian, and have given much more thought to what an “elite” status or a position of inherited leadership might have consisted of, before we assign a simple label to the occupants of Núcleo 1. We simply don’t know what forms of social authority were recognized and permitted in the Early Formative, or whether anyone was permitted to hold special rights or significant privileges over the lives or well-being of others. There must have been many nuanced forms of differentiated social statuses in the Early Formative, many ways by which social differentiation was derived, be it from favorable property rights, or a talent for socio-political leadership, or a special relationship with the sacred world that brought benefits to the community. But here’s a conjecture we could entertain: from time to time, the unique family grouping of Núcleo 1 may have provisioned the Yutopian community with festive meals or beverages prepared in the formal structure at the formal hearth of Estructura 1, putting the several simultaneous conanas to use grinding ingredients. Feasts sponsored by prestigious village members take place in many contemporary small-scale societies, sometimes invoked to please deities or ensure continued wellbeing, often interpreted as a means of equalizing wealth. The remains of such feasts feature regularly at early archaeological sites, but usually in association with more developed hierarchies (Bray 2003; Dietler and Hayden 2001). This scenario must remain entirely conjectural.
47 Backstory
How unique is Núcleo Uno in the world? Núcleo 1 conforms to a well-documented Early Formative settlement type in Northwest Argentina best known from the area 75 km east of the Yutopian, Tafí del Valle, where it has been described as “Structure Type 3” (see Fig. 69): Compound Circular Units. These consist of one or more large circular enclosures (patios) to whose walls are attached one or more small or 171
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BACKSTORY
medium-sized circular enclosures. (Berberián and Nielsen 1989:28) [translation mine]
In Tafí del Valle, the “compound circular units” (or patio groups, or núcleos) are built above-ground (in contrast to Yutopian’s semisubterranean houses) and contain from two to seven circular rooms surrounding a central circular patio. As at Yutopian, the single entranceway into each structure is accessible only from the common patio, keeping outsiders from entering except by passing through the common space. Sometimes núcleos are agglomerated into bubbly complexes of differentsized adjoining enclosures, reflecting the highly organic development of these residences, but there are also solitary enclosures interspersed between patio groups. We found these same núcleos nearby at Cardonal (Bits 88–97), and variants of them occur elsewhere in Northwest Argentina, sometimes as a cluster of small agglutinated rooms with large corral-sized (or field-sized) enclosures attached around the exterior of the clustered residences. Outside Northwest Argentina there are other possible parallels: Kevin Vaughn (2005:92) investigated domestic structures in the Nasca region of southern Peru and identified three circular patio groups mixed in with 13 isolated round house structures at the site of Marcaya. Further afield, in many parts of Africa residential compounds might count as similar, as they often contain round house structures scattered around a common walled patio, although construction materials and dimensions are quite different (and of course none of these other related examples are semi-subterranean). But finding exact architectural matches or establishing a worldwide typology of settlement types is hardly the point here. Rather, what we can emphasize is that, again and again, multiple one-room structures are built to cluster around—and define—a shared common open area. This pattern was adopted by early agricultural societies worldwide, at different scales with different numbers and sizes and degrees of uniformity in individual room structures. Room structures may be round or square, semi-subterranean or aboveground, built of stone, mud, peat, wattleand-daub, or wood; the common space may or may not be walled; parts of the common space may be roofed or not. The English nomenclature for these arrangements is very messy; they may be called hut clusters, courtyard clusters (Pauketat 2000), courtyard groups or patio groups, or residential compounds. A sufficiently large number of single-room structures encircling a central open space is sometimes called a village, as in the Fort Ancient “Sun Watch Village” in Ohio (Means 2012). Especially in its smaller range, the patio group (or courtyard group,
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How unique is Núcleo Uno in the world?
or núcleo) suggests an obvious fundamental unit of analysis, reflecting, and indeed organizing, the social structure of Formative society (Berberián and Nielsen 1989; Hastorf et al. 1989; Nash 2009; Scattolin et al. 2009a, 2009b). This flexible multistructure arrangement accommodates residences plus structures for other household functions: storage, food preparation and cooking, small livestock enclosures, workshops, shrines, sometimes burials. The number and spacing of structures can undergo change rapidly (Haviland 1988) as the number of people may expand or contract. In many regards this functional argument also helps organize the archaeologist’s spatial and artifact data. There seems little to probe here; patio groups represent a fundamental stable feature in early agricultural domestic life. But apart from our ability to recognize (that is, classify) residential arrangements as patio groups, little is self-evident about this scale of analysis and how it “works.” Like the “family” or the “household,” there is nothing a priori “natural” or “given” about the people or activities that occupy a patio group. Nor, we must suppose, are they necessarily stable . . . or similar. We can assume some degree of relation among occupants, but not that a single nuclear family lived and conducted its subsistence activities in each structure; often structures serve specialized functions (e.g., as storage rooms or “kitchens”) for the entire group of co-residents. It’s not apparent when, how, how much, or if all the coresidents of a patio group share work. It will be difficult to understand trans-generational rules of ownership or occupancy. We would certainly want to know the degree to which the patio group was economically self-sufficient; were the producers in one patio group the same people who consumed the goods they produced? Or, conversely, did goods cross the boundaries between patio groups? Are there hierarchies of age or status among occupants of different houses? In what ways were goods and inhabitants confined by the architecture of patio groups, and how/when did they circulate independent of these architectural confines? At Yutopian we can’t answer most of these questions (most archaeological reports don’t even raise them). Even if we had huge quantities of excellent archaeological data (e.g., more excavated patio groups at Yutopian and elsewhere; more preserved house floors), and even when we analyze the evidence carefully and thoughtfully, satisfactory answers may elude us. Sites like Yutopian are often occupied over long periods of time (Yutopian, at least intermittently, for more than a thousand years), and we usually can’t distinguish what evidence belongs with which occupation episode, or which features were used simultaneously. Most importantly, people live actively, constructing and reconstruct173
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BACKSTORY
ing their spaces and their possessions as they undertake changing roles and activities: sleeping, eating, storing, producing and repairing of household items, keeping warm and cooling off, caring for children and animals, chatting. There is fluidity and, yes, ambiguity for the archaeologist, although generations of people worldwide have lived in patio groups.
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EPISODE
48 Episode
The call of Estructura Once The completion of Núcleo 1 might have ended an elegant self-contained project had we known from the outset what we knew at the end. But, in fact, we were working simultaneously on Núcleo 1 and Estructura 11, and it was Estructura 11, far away from the north (Núcleo 1) end of the site, that exemplified our learning process and explains why we sometimes found ourselves working far from the best-preserved Formative floors (Fig. 70). The excavation of Estructura 11 was undertaken intermittently in three phases. During our first field season digging test pits, Pozo de Prueba 6 had been placed within the well-defined symmetrical walls of an enclosure built up against, or even into, the upper terrace walls
Figure 70. Estructura 11 upper floor with a bedrock footing for a roof timber in the center of the structure. Arrow points north. The entrance into the structure passes over the large threshold stone in the lower right. 176
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The call of Estructura Once
on the easternmost side of the ridgetop. The test pit had yielded clearly stratified diagnostic remains with late diagnostic pieces overlying an Early Formative component. Later that first season we returned to the structure to expand PP 6 to a 2 × 2 m excavation block (Bit 15). This early phase of excavation demonstrated that a substantial Early Formative occupation existed in the east-central portion of the site. To understand the extent and variation in the Early Formative occupation at Yutopian, we would have to examine some of its manifestations away from the undisturbed floors of the northern Núcleo 1, and this would be a good location (Bit 35). Even as we maintained our focus on the Early Formative, perhaps status differences would be evident in the distinct material inventories at different Early Formative locations on the site, or different diets would be shown to have been followed in different parts of the site. In 1996 we returned yet again to work here, designating the tested structure “Once” (eleven, in Spanish), which we would now excavate completely. Neither the surface nor our earlier test pit excavations revealed any adjacent wall fragments or enclosures that could integrate Estructura 11 into a núcleo or patio group, but we would soon know. We surveyed the structure into the baseline, mapped the surface and imposed a 2 m grid over the round structure, yielding six excavation units that were approximately 2 m2 each. We created a level surface as our top level, then shaved levels 2–7 with shovels down to 55 cm below ground surface, partly to move more quickly but also because we had a lot of information from earlier work here: we knew the upper levels were composed of mixed and broken fill (a broken conana and broken mano had been noted at 50 cm in PP 6) and the fill soils had been temporally mixed such that early incised and Condorhuasi pottery lay next to Santamariana sherds. Below 55 cm we began excavating in 5 cm levels, preparing to identify as closely as possible the stratigraphic point where early and late occupations could be distinguished. To our great satisfaction—and certainly because we were looking so intently for it—portions of a partially preserved consolidated clay floor began to show up at 60–65 cm depth in the north part of the structure, at 62 cm depth in the southeast and at 65–67 cm in the center of the structure (Fletcher 2001). This was just what we hoped for: not only a conceptual separation of late and early finds, but a physical manifestation of it. Although the overall artifact density was lower on this floor, there were dramatic groups of large associated sherds (pot-bursts) from large late vessels here also, and the base of a large bowl rested directly on the floor in the southern area of the structure (Fig. 71). Since the inhabitants of the structure at this level had lived on top of earlier materials, a scatter of the earlier materials is mixed with the later diagnostic ceramics. 177
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EPISODE
Figure 71. Map of the late (upper) floor of Estructura 11.
We hadn’t seen these late ceramics anywhere in Núcleo 1, and I didn’t fancy them very much: large, grotty, thick-walled vessels with combed surfaces and tightly restricted bases, rather impractical with so much weight carried in the upper portion of the vessel body. “HispanoIndígena,” declared Cristina, made locally during the colonial period, in the sixteenth or early seventeenth century (Fig. 72). Small painted open bowls also appeared, some round-bottomed and some flaring 178
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Figure 72. Regional Development period pottery recovered from the upper floor of Estructura 11.
Figure 73. Map of Formative floor of Estructura 11.
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EPISODE
straight-sided from a small base to a large opening and a globular pot with excurvate neck with incised and punctated triangular zones that Cristina knew as Caspinchango. The upper occupation floor also revealed larger stone tools—scrapers and used flakes—as well as quantities of camelid bone, some unmodified but one long bone and one scapula that were obviously functioning as tools, plus mandibles and teeth. The pinky-nail-sized plates of quirquincho (armadillo) shell were recoverable by the lugareños, but it took us city folks a long time to be able to spot these tiny transparent bits. We never located a formally prepared hearth, but there were heavily burnt areas of the floor, some with ash lenses and always with much burnt bone. I admit we badly wanted to find an intact Early Formative level neatly defined below the intrusive settlers who had reoccupied the house, but there was no such luck. We noted again the exaggerated decrease in surface area as we approached the saucer-shaped bottom of Estructura 11 (Fig. 73). As we dug, the late pieces disappeared and more Early Formative diagnostic pieces emerged, but we never found a clear Early Formative floor. It was also evident in the lower levels that artifacts extended into the soils beneath the bottom of the exterior walls of the structure (as they had in Estructura 3), again clearly a case of structural remodeling. Lying in the pockets of the uneven bedrock were several clay concentra-
Figure 74. Post molds in clay footing on top of bedrock, associated with the Estructura 11 Formative entranceway. 180
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tions including two well-defined, compacted circular areas indicating clay packing around upright timbers (Fig. 74). Finally, an architectural feature unique to Estructura 11 took us by surprise when we excavated to bedrock at the bottom of the “teacup.” In the center of the structure on the upper (late) occupation floor, we had found a large conana and had noted that it had a particularly deep, bowl-like concavity (Fig. 70). But as we dug further, we had not been able to find the bottom of this ever-thicker conana. Finally, having dug through the floor and through the earlier and earlier levels of the house, when we hit bedrock everywhere, the supposed conana proved to be a concave oval “table” of bedrock 75 × 60 cm in size that was left elevated 35 cm above the remainder of the bedrock surface: a central footing for an upright post, surely part of the roof support. In hindsight, of course, this crumbly dioritic rock could never have served as a conana; all the other conanas had been made of granite.
49 Andean ways
Eating quirquincho (armadillo) At Yutopian, we regularly recovered tiny armadillo carapace plates, both in Núcleo 1 and in the center of the site in Estructura 11; we faithfully registered them in notebooks and on excavation forms, mapping them in place rather than collecting them from the screens. The fact that inhabitants of both the early and late occupations had regularly consumed armadillo meat was one more thing we could say about life at Yutopian. Meanwhile, the men working with us emphasized that quirquincho, the local name for this small armadillo, was not merely subsistence food but a favored meat because you could catch it easily and cook it anywhere, right in its shell—not to mention that it was delicious. They would pat their stomachs for emphasis and sigh happily at the idea of a good quirquincho roast, while we avoided comment, not wanting to be rude but also not necessarily warming to the idea. This went on for all the years we worked at Yutopian, but we never actually saw a quirquin181
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The call of Estructura Once
tions including two well-defined, compacted circular areas indicating clay packing around upright timbers (Fig. 74). Finally, an architectural feature unique to Estructura 11 took us by surprise when we excavated to bedrock at the bottom of the “teacup.” In the center of the structure on the upper (late) occupation floor, we had found a large conana and had noted that it had a particularly deep, bowl-like concavity (Fig. 70). But as we dug further, we had not been able to find the bottom of this ever-thicker conana. Finally, having dug through the floor and through the earlier and earlier levels of the house, when we hit bedrock everywhere, the supposed conana proved to be a concave oval “table” of bedrock 75 × 60 cm in size that was left elevated 35 cm above the remainder of the bedrock surface: a central footing for an upright post, surely part of the roof support. In hindsight, of course, this crumbly dioritic rock could never have served as a conana; all the other conanas had been made of granite.
49 Andean ways
Eating quirquincho (armadillo) At Yutopian, we regularly recovered tiny armadillo carapace plates, both in Núcleo 1 and in the center of the site in Estructura 11; we faithfully registered them in notebooks and on excavation forms, mapping them in place rather than collecting them from the screens. The fact that inhabitants of both the early and late occupations had regularly consumed armadillo meat was one more thing we could say about life at Yutopian. Meanwhile, the men working with us emphasized that quirquincho, the local name for this small armadillo, was not merely subsistence food but a favored meat because you could catch it easily and cook it anywhere, right in its shell—not to mention that it was delicious. They would pat their stomachs for emphasis and sigh happily at the idea of a good quirquincho roast, while we avoided comment, not wanting to be rude but also not necessarily warming to the idea. This went on for all the years we worked at Yutopian, but we never actually saw a quirquin181
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ANDEAN WAYS
cho, dead or alive, except for the old dried-up specimen that was crudely mounted in one of the restaurants we ate in, in Santa María. After not working at Yutopian for five years, we returned to the Valle del Cajón in 2004 to test another site and we worked and socialized with our old friends. One evening Álvaro arrived at the schoolhouse in La Quebrada with an amorphous newspaper bundle and a huge grin. He would prepare quirquincho for us. Álvaro’s Recipe for Quirquincho 1 fresh, cleanly killed armadillo onions, carrots and potatoes, parboiled fresh herbs as available salt, pepper to taste With a deft movement of the knife around the inside of the carapace, sever the meat from the shell, remove it and dice it into bite-sized pieces (note that the head and feet should remain attached to the carapace). Mix the meat with the slightly cooked onions, carrots and potatoes and stuff the mixture back into the shell which is laid out on its back. Cover the mixture with the animal’s stomach plate and place the entire animal in a big pot, carapace down, to boil for 45 minutes.
You may prefer not to remove the top from the pot during cooking since the sight is a bit startling: the little ancient head tucks down onto its belly, its beady eyes stare softly nowhere and the small claws curve inward like a baby sleeping. None of the food that the archaeologists usually eat looks like this. All the nonvegetarians on the project were game to try Álvaro’s gift food. But Álvaro is a bachelor and may lack finesse in his cooking; no one asked for a second helping and we had plenty of leftovers for the next archaeologists to find.
182
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Diagnostic ceramics by level from Estructura Once
50 Raw data
Diagnostic ceramics by level from Estructura Once Ceramics diagnostic of the Regional Development period and HispanoIndígena contact period (e.g., coarse combed wares, Santamariana bicolor and black/red wares [see Fig. 72]) show high counts in the levels above the occupation floor (Level 12), but drop off dramatically below Level 12. Plain polished grey and black ceramics were used throughout the chronological sequence at Yutopian. Note too that there is more mixing of earlier pottery types (incised wares and Condorhuasi pottery) into the upper levels than later pottery types into the lower levels. Significantly, there is no Candelaria pottery in the lower Formative levels of Table Table 8. 8. Diagnostic Diagnostic ceramics ceramics by by level level from from Estructura Estructura 11 11 Diagnostic Diagnostic Late Late Styles Styles (Regional (Regional Development, Development, Hispano-Indígena) Hispano-Indígena) Combed SantaBlack/ Combed SantaBlack/ red red mariana mariana Levels 66 20 Levels 1–4 1–4 84 84 66 20 5–6 84 35 11 5–6 84 35 11 77 47 15 44 47 15 88 18 13 44 18 13 99 47 12 22 47 12 10 18 8 11 10 18 8 11 62 12 55 11 62 12 12 7 11 12 7 13 1 -13 1 14 1 1 -14 1 1 15 1 1 11 15 1 1 16 -16 17 -17 Diagnostic Late Used in Early Diagnostic Late Used in Early Note : marks the level. Styles (Regional All Formative Note : Level Level 12 12 marks the upper upper occupation occupation Styles (Regional All Periods Periods level. Formative Development, Styles Development, Styles HispanoHispanoIndígena) Indígena) Combed Sta Combed Sta maria maria Black/red Black/red Levels 1–4 84 66 20 Levels 1–4 84 66 20 5–6 84 35 11 5–6 84 35 11 gero pages 183 77 new3.indd47 15 44 47 15 8 18 13 4
Used Used in in All All Periods Periods
Early Early Formative Formative Styles Styles
Polished Polished
Incised Incised
105 105 41 41 16 16 18 18 21 21 25 25 99 17 17 44 33 22 22 11
33 11 11 22 11 11 ----11 11 --
CondorCondorhuasi huasi 33 12 12 55 33 22 44 11 11 11 22 22 11 11
Candelaria Candelaria --------------
183 Polished Polished 105 105 41 41 16 16 18
Incised Incised 33 11 11 2
Condor. Condor. 33 12 12 55 3
Candelaria Candelaria --8/20/15 --
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RAW DATA
Estructura 11, although Candelaria jars figure prominently on the occupation floor of Estructura 1 and in the central pit of Estructura 3—and will show up again in Estructura 4.
51 Descriptive data
Remodeling and repositioning the doorways Estructura 11 was not only reoccupied; it was remodeled (Fletcher 2001:48ff.). Such structural change to the form of a house usually represents new requirements of reorganizing households over the generations, where the size and/or the functional needs of the residential group are different over time. Most likely there are also stylistic motives, to conform to social norms of how a house should look or “be,” which also change over time. At Yutopian, there was probably a lapse between occupations, and the architectural changes appear to have been introduced after a period of vacancy; when new inhabitants moved in, they decided to remake the house more to their needs and liking. But the pithouse form is relatively inflexible once dug in the ground to specific dimensions (Fletcher 2001:15–16). The nature of the pit form does not lend itself easily to expansion or to repositioning of exterior walls (which may partially explain why people have abandoned living in them), although openings in the walls (doors, windows, ventilation) may be added, subtracted, enlarged, shrunk or moved. The interior space can be manipulated by adding partitioning walls or by changing the floor elevations in different spaces to set areas apart. Much of the following discussion comes from Fletcher’s (2001) analysis of such changes in Estructura 11. The clearest evidence of remodeling in Estructura 11 is the (unusual) appearance of two entrances in the same structure. One entrance is on the west side, facing onto the rest of the ridgetop and the Yutopian settlement, with a classic Early Formative parallel-walled entranceway. The second, later entrance, less immediately visible, is in the south of the 184
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RAW DATA
Estructura 11, although Candelaria jars figure prominently on the occupation floor of Estructura 1 and in the central pit of Estructura 3—and will show up again in Estructura 4.
51 Descriptive data
Remodeling and repositioning the doorways Estructura 11 was not only reoccupied; it was remodeled (Fletcher 2001:48ff.). Such structural change to the form of a house usually represents new requirements of reorganizing households over the generations, where the size and/or the functional needs of the residential group are different over time. Most likely there are also stylistic motives, to conform to social norms of how a house should look or “be,” which also change over time. At Yutopian, there was probably a lapse between occupations, and the architectural changes appear to have been introduced after a period of vacancy; when new inhabitants moved in, they decided to remake the house more to their needs and liking. But the pithouse form is relatively inflexible once dug in the ground to specific dimensions (Fletcher 2001:15–16). The nature of the pit form does not lend itself easily to expansion or to repositioning of exterior walls (which may partially explain why people have abandoned living in them), although openings in the walls (doors, windows, ventilation) may be added, subtracted, enlarged, shrunk or moved. The interior space can be manipulated by adding partitioning walls or by changing the floor elevations in different spaces to set areas apart. Much of the following discussion comes from Fletcher’s (2001) analysis of such changes in Estructura 11. The clearest evidence of remodeling in Estructura 11 is the (unusual) appearance of two entrances in the same structure. One entrance is on the west side, facing onto the rest of the ridgetop and the Yutopian settlement, with a classic Early Formative parallel-walled entranceway. The second, later entrance, less immediately visible, is in the south of the 184
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Remodeling and repositioning the doorways
structure, linked architecturally into the eastern terraces of the ridgetop. The prominent western entranceway begins slightly more than a meter from the wall of the structure and contains many fallen stones, in the middle of which is a large flat stone slab or threshold stone that we first uncovered at 40 cm below ground surface; it was supported by lower cobbles that lay directly on bedrock, which was only 68 cm deep on this side of the structure. Thus one suggestion is that the west entrance of Estructura 11 was ramp-like, with a suggestion of stone steps now loosely fallen. Ceramics lying directly on these stones were clearly diagnostic Formative sherds. The later, southern entrance is distinguished by a massive flat threshold stone which, when fully exposed, measured 55 × 118 cm in its maximum dimensions. This was not bedrock but a polished granitic stone like those used everywhere in wall construction at Yutopian. It extended under the exterior structure walls, mostly inside but also partly outside the structure; we uncovered it at 35 cm below the surface, and it too rested directly on bedrock, approximately 42 cm thick. This stone had probably been in place before Estructura 11 was built, and then the walls were erected over it, or possibly it was originally placed vertically as an entranceway-marking stone, and after it fell the walls were built over it. Lying on top of this enormous flat stone are two roughly parallel lines of smaller cobbles, defining a more limited passageway over the threshold stone into the structure. How do we know which entrance was earlier? It appears that the destruction of the west entrance was deliberate, while the south entrance remains well defined. Also, the 42 cm height from the lower occupation level to the threshold stone is a daunting step to take with each entry, although this height was significantly less after early fill had accumulated on the floor; the height from the later occupation’s prepared clay floor was a more reasonable 30 cm. Shifting the location of doorways was only one modification made to Estructura 11, although a dramatic one. At least one temporary wall or partition also seems to have been introduced during the later occupation of the structure, suggested by a single visible course of stones deliberately laid out across the floor, starting at the southern entrance threshold stone and running toward the center of the floor, ending at the bedrock pedestal. The depth of these stones corresponds to the later prepared clay floor, making the later association clear. We are left to wonder whether this was a low partition, perhaps a windbreak near the entranceway; whether it was built up with adobes to full wall height; or whether it served as a bench or “shelving.” The final modification we noted is perhaps the most curious: in its later occupation, Estructura 11 was made smaller and more rectangu185
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DESCRIPTIVE DATA
lar, somewhat like Estructura 3. Fletcher (2001) details the architectural replacement of the original external wall on the west side of the structure with a new flimsier and shallower wall that lay inside the original wall and left the collapsed early entranceway ramp/stairs now outside the structure. Lying approximately 1 m in from the original wall, this modification reduced the living area from 19.6 m2 to 12.6 m2. Today, when houses have become ever larger and the trend is always toward enclosing more space, it seems strange to shrink a house in reoccupying it. But this was probably a simpler solution than reconstructing the collapsed entranceway if it had suffered erosional damage from wash coming downslope from the west. Backfilling the void between old and new walls would stabilize the new wall and restore the thermal capacities of a semi-subterranean pithouse (Fletcher 2001:74). The newly constructed wall was also straighter than the original wall and effectively squared off the western portion of the house, making what was once a circular structure now sub-rectangular. It might be energyefficient to build the shortest possible wall here, but the situation may also be more complicated: the trend from Formative to Regional Development period is steadily toward more rectangular house forms, and it looks as though something like “preference” may be suggested as well.
52 Narrative
What did we learn from Estructura Once? Although we sometimes felt that investigations at Estructura 11 took us away from our main interests in the northern sector of Yutopian and its integrated Early Formative occupations, we had to recognize that Estructura 11 taught us a lot. Some of what we learned was strictly empirical, but working with Jorge always forced us to remember we were excavating people’s lives . . . • Very early Formative occupations at Yutopian were not located in the 186
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DESCRIPTIVE DATA
lar, somewhat like Estructura 3. Fletcher (2001) details the architectural replacement of the original external wall on the west side of the structure with a new flimsier and shallower wall that lay inside the original wall and left the collapsed early entranceway ramp/stairs now outside the structure. Lying approximately 1 m in from the original wall, this modification reduced the living area from 19.6 m2 to 12.6 m2. Today, when houses have become ever larger and the trend is always toward enclosing more space, it seems strange to shrink a house in reoccupying it. But this was probably a simpler solution than reconstructing the collapsed entranceway if it had suffered erosional damage from wash coming downslope from the west. Backfilling the void between old and new walls would stabilize the new wall and restore the thermal capacities of a semi-subterranean pithouse (Fletcher 2001:74). The newly constructed wall was also straighter than the original wall and effectively squared off the western portion of the house, making what was once a circular structure now sub-rectangular. It might be energyefficient to build the shortest possible wall here, but the situation may also be more complicated: the trend from Formative to Regional Development period is steadily toward more rectangular house forms, and it looks as though something like “preference” may be suggested as well.
52 Narrative
What did we learn from Estructura Once? Although we sometimes felt that investigations at Estructura 11 took us away from our main interests in the northern sector of Yutopian and its integrated Early Formative occupations, we had to recognize that Estructura 11 taught us a lot. Some of what we learned was strictly empirical, but working with Jorge always forced us to remember we were excavating people’s lives . . . • Very early Formative occupations at Yutopian were not located in the 186
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What did we learn from Estructura Once?
northern part of the ridgetop near Núcleo 1 but apparently occurred over the length of the ridge. Although 14C dates were not yet available for some time, Estructura 11’s lower (Formative) occupation ultimately proved to be the earliest credible 14C date at Yutopian. Feeling modern and adventuresome, farming families moved onto the ridge partly because water was available and could be channeled to their homes. But they also found it pleasurable to have neighbors close at hand, dispersed along the ridgetop. • There was a decisive gap between the Early Formative occupation and the later occupation in Estructura 11, pointing to a period when the structure was most likely unoccupied and not maintained. This was evident not only from the lack of intermediate (Late Formative) ceramics, but also from the substantial amount of fill and significant architectural modifications to the original structure. People who never knew one another lived in this structure, occupying it over the centuries. They all shared a mixed farming economy and concerns over water, weather and crops . . . but the social landscapes around them were quite different. Even the occupations of the different floors of the house were experienced differently: earlier people had a lower floor (more steps!) and were tucked more deeply into the earth when they were at home, while the late folks just stepped slightly down onto their floor. • Preservation and integrity of Early Formative finds were severely compromised by the reoccupation of Estructura 11 and presumably in other reoccupied structures as well. We recovered no hearths or conanas in conjunction with the Formative residential activities and fewer in situ artifacts or ethnobotanical remains. Thus we felt we would not necessarily gain a great deal of additional knowledge about the Early Formative occupation by continuing to excavate other reoccupied structures. The later people who lived here obscured the lives of the long-ago (ancient!) residents, rebuilding walls and churning up old floors to be replaced with new hard-packed, consolidated surfaces. Was there any interest in who the remote earlier inhabitants had been and what belongings they had had? • Despite our careful examination of the surface and subsurface area around the structure, we could locate no direct evidence that Early Formative Estructura 11 had been integrated into a larger complex of contemporaneous structures as in the Núcleo 1 patio group. While the entranceway to the abandoned western doorway seems to parallel the entranceways into Estructuras 1 and 2, this could not be confirmed by other architectural arrangements. 187
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NARRATIVE
In this simple, self-contained structure, when children “married” and the extended family got larger, the younger generation eventually had to build or find another house to live in. • The abandonment of the western entrance into Estructura 11 in favor of the southern entrance may signify a new orientation of the residents to the rest of the site and to other late period households. Rather than facing toward the central portion of the site, the late entrance had residents entering into and leaving the structure directly from the terrace below them. Fletcher (2001:75) also suggests a defensive function for this new orientation, since a person standing in the threshold doorway is afforded an extensive view of the fields and valley below. People in the early house looked out their door to see other houses and the rest of the Yutopian settlement, but later people living here would have stood in their (new) doorway and looked onto the terraces and perhaps crops down below, or onto additional habitations below the ridgetop. • We also learned how intensively Yutopian was occupied during the early colonial Hispano-Indígena period, and we learned the characteristics of Hispano-Indígena pottery as represented at this site. The predominance of postfire painting of pottery is itself a late phenomenon. Later on, people crowded onto the ridgetop, reusing ancient abandoned houses and making Yutopian a densely settled place. The pottery made now was generally larger, thicker-walled and coarser, painted after it was made.
53 Puzzle
What about the saucer-shaped house floors? Sometimes you just don’t know how to think. As long as we worked at Yutopian, I rejected the idea of people living on sloping floors. Each time we began excavations inside the walls of a structure where the 188
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NARRATIVE
In this simple, self-contained structure, when children “married” and the extended family got larger, the younger generation eventually had to build or find another house to live in. • The abandonment of the western entrance into Estructura 11 in favor of the southern entrance may signify a new orientation of the residents to the rest of the site and to other late period households. Rather than facing toward the central portion of the site, the late entrance had residents entering into and leaving the structure directly from the terrace below them. Fletcher (2001:75) also suggests a defensive function for this new orientation, since a person standing in the threshold doorway is afforded an extensive view of the fields and valley below. People in the early house looked out their door to see other houses and the rest of the Yutopian settlement, but later people living here would have stood in their (new) doorway and looked onto the terraces and perhaps crops down below, or onto additional habitations below the ridgetop. • We also learned how intensively Yutopian was occupied during the early colonial Hispano-Indígena period, and we learned the characteristics of Hispano-Indígena pottery as represented at this site. The predominance of postfire painting of pottery is itself a late phenomenon. Later on, people crowded onto the ridgetop, reusing ancient abandoned houses and making Yutopian a densely settled place. The pottery made now was generally larger, thicker-walled and coarser, painted after it was made.
53 Puzzle
What about the saucer-shaped house floors? Sometimes you just don’t know how to think. As long as we worked at Yutopian, I rejected the idea of people living on sloping floors. Each time we began excavations inside the walls of a structure where the 188
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What about the saucer-shaped house floors?
ground surface was strongly inclined, I assumed this was due to some kind of post-occupation deposition. I would even say, “People don’t live on slopes!” and we would start by leveling the first stratum (knowing this was “fill” in a semi-subterranean house), and thereafter we would maintain the same depth below the datum point across the excavation unit as we worked on each level. Without visible stratigraphy, digging in arbitrary levels, we maintained flat excavation units. No slopes. Even when we got right down onto bedrock, and it was clear that the bedrock was lower in the middle than around the perimeter of the structure (e.g., sloping toward the center), I came to think of this as either a stylistic oddity of Yutopian (without greater significance) or perhaps the result of occupying a structure over time, where the central portion became deeper than the perimeter because of greater foot traffic. Our lowest excavation levels were restricted to the centers of structures before we began to excavate the contents of pits that had been dug into the bedrock. It was only after completing all our fieldwork and even quite late in the process of thinking and writing about Yutopian that I suddenly could bring myself to believe that people might actually have wanted to live on inclines! So fixed has my level-floor thinking been that I simply could not conceive of slopes being a preference. How would things stay put? How would people not fall? How did they sleep on slopes, for goodness sake? Now I am embarrassed to have resisted this idea for so long, and worried that I’ve dug the houses at Yutopian in an irresponsible and ineffective manner. Of course people can manage on a sloping floor if that’s what they are used to! Without constructed furniture (tables, chairs, counters), the objects in use every day— even water containers—are simply designed differently, for use on non-horizontal surfaces; they can easily “sit” in shallow depressions on a gently sloping earthen floor. It is only our furniture that assumes a flat floor, and only a flat floor will accommodate our furniture, which in turn produces flat tables and counters and desks, and “things” that will slide if they are NOT on flat surfaces (and very fixed ideas about how humans must live!). As an anthropologist I should have recognized this bundle of deepseated, interrelated cultural accommodations to living on and among flat surfaces. If I were barefoot and assumed a squatting position for reasonable periods of time, it would actually be easier if my toes pointed down a little bit and my heels were on slightly higher ground. Many tasks might be simplified by situating the work at a slightly higher or lower elevation than the body, and pillowless sleeping probably favors the head being positioned at the “high” end of the selected sloping sleeping site. Moreover, a range of temperatures is preserved this way, with the house temperature kept closer to the outside temperature higher up 189
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around the perimeter of the structure and more constant temperatures maintained at the lowest central point. Why did I not see these options before? How deeply conditioned we are by our contexts, to make “sloping floors” so unthinkable.
54 Episode
Pozos de Prueba 12 and 12a There was one other significant source of Formative data at some remove from the northern (Núcleo 1) patio group, and that was Pozo de Prueba 12, an informative test pit opened in 1994 in the west-central region of the site (64S 20W). The test pit was initially dug to investigate the southwest-facing agricultural terraces where there were fragments of low stone and earthen retaining walls. We hadn’t expected much here but needed to check out the pattern of land use, including agricultural areas. Unexpectedly, at 35 cm below the surface, Hugo and Álvaro had revealed the edge of a clearly defined pit dug into the bedrock in the southwest half of the unit, filled with charcoal, charred rib bones, a corncob fragment and rounded mano grinding stones. Samples of Formative ceramics had come from depths of 60 and 70 cm in the southwest corner, and the bottom of the pit had been left unexcavated below a ring of stones outlining a lower pit level. Large olla sherds were still stuck in the south and west walls of the unit (Fig. 75). Early in the 1996 field season we extended PP 12 an adjacent 1 m2 on the south (PP 12A) to see if we could better understand the Formative ceramics/charcoal relationship. Maybe the charcoal would let us assign a date to specific associated styles of pottery, and hopefully we would augment our sample of charred plant remains (which we did). Below a shallow soil level with late coarse combed ceramics, most of the extension square revealed more of the Formative hearth/pit first revealed in 1994, bottoming out with startlingly blackened carbonized soils and charcoal. A rough line of irregular cobbles ran across the middle of the heavily burnt square as though tumbled from a now invisible enclosure wall. Several more manos were improbably present, as well 190
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around the perimeter of the structure and more constant temperatures maintained at the lowest central point. Why did I not see these options before? How deeply conditioned we are by our contexts, to make “sloping floors” so unthinkable.
54 Episode
Pozos de Prueba 12 and 12a There was one other significant source of Formative data at some remove from the northern (Núcleo 1) patio group, and that was Pozo de Prueba 12, an informative test pit opened in 1994 in the west-central region of the site (64S 20W). The test pit was initially dug to investigate the southwest-facing agricultural terraces where there were fragments of low stone and earthen retaining walls. We hadn’t expected much here but needed to check out the pattern of land use, including agricultural areas. Unexpectedly, at 35 cm below the surface, Hugo and Álvaro had revealed the edge of a clearly defined pit dug into the bedrock in the southwest half of the unit, filled with charcoal, charred rib bones, a corncob fragment and rounded mano grinding stones. Samples of Formative ceramics had come from depths of 60 and 70 cm in the southwest corner, and the bottom of the pit had been left unexcavated below a ring of stones outlining a lower pit level. Large olla sherds were still stuck in the south and west walls of the unit (Fig. 75). Early in the 1996 field season we extended PP 12 an adjacent 1 m2 on the south (PP 12A) to see if we could better understand the Formative ceramics/charcoal relationship. Maybe the charcoal would let us assign a date to specific associated styles of pottery, and hopefully we would augment our sample of charred plant remains (which we did). Below a shallow soil level with late coarse combed ceramics, most of the extension square revealed more of the Formative hearth/pit first revealed in 1994, bottoming out with startlingly blackened carbonized soils and charcoal. A rough line of irregular cobbles ran across the middle of the heavily burnt square as though tumbled from a now invisible enclosure wall. Several more manos were improbably present, as well 190
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Pozos de Prueba 12 and 12a
Figure 75. PP 12 showing edge of charcoal-laden pit which yielded significant botanical samples. Trowel points north. This pit was later extended (PP 12A) another m2.
Table 9. Seed remains from PP 12A (1996) and other contexts
Level 2 (not Formative) no seed remains from this level! Level 5 Level 6 Level 7 Totals for PP 12A Totals for PP 12 Totals for 1996, all locations
# Corn (Zea mays) # Corn Cupules Kernels
Chenopodium Cactaceae (unidentified sp.) (Echinopsis?)
7* 226* 54 287 287 321
11 231 57 299 299 311
6 40 46 46 123
“Type 1” Seed
8 0 0 65
8 8 21
Note : Jack Rossen noted that these counts are artificially low because they include fused masses of kernels.
Table 10. Special finds from Estructura 4
bone fragments and parts of Description a llama mandible;Figure largeNo.fragments Special as Unit Depth Material (if Stratumof Find No.at least two coarse cooking pots lay at the bottom of illustrated) the hearth pit at a 152 0–50 cm bd lithic projectile point— Upper fill 60332 cm depth. fragmented Pozo de Prueba 12A provided us with a remarkable sample of botani236 50–60 cm lithic cal333 remains, more than half thebead total of recovered seeds in the 1996 153 332 50–80 cm botanical chañar rind 80 169 331 50–80 cm lithic polished galina? 191 fragment—mirror? 241 333 ceramic tube fragment (pipe?) 242 334 ceramic tube fragment (pipe?) 154 332 ceramic crude llama figurine 82 204 333 ceramic broken spindle whorl 119 gero pages new3.indd 191 206 333 ceramic grey incised jar sherd 81
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EPISODE
season (including those from Estructuras 3, 4 and 11, all levels). The remarkable concentration of corn from Level 6, the darkest level of PP 12A, represents a whopping 83 percent of the corn recovered in the 1996 field season (and 74 percent of the chenopodia) and includes large agglutinated masses of fused corn kernels. (The 1994 plant remains show the same intense corn and corn “lump” concentrations from PP 12.) Wood weights from the lower levels are also disproportionately high compared to all other areas of Yutopian. On the other hand, no cactus seeds appeared here although they are fairly common elsewhere. Although PP 12/12A offers only a partial peek at its larger context, there is little here to suggest a domestic area (virtually no lithic tools, no recognizable enclosure walls, no floors). Rather, the intense activity recorded here at the edge of the ridgetop site relates to corn cooking and processing, perhaps for the preparation of chicha, the ever popular corn beer, at an Early Formative date (135 CE).
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55 Episode
Opening up Estructura Cuatro (1996) It was late in the 1996 field season as the bedrock pits in Estructuras 3 and 11 were being excavated and maps and profiles were being drawn. The project might have closed down right then and there with a little extra time for analysis. But instead Stephen Loring quietly started work with Cristina and Don Álvaro on another small well-constructed enclo-
Figure 76. Estructura 4 upper occupation level, looking southwest. Note boulders used in construction of south wall and the adjacent remodeled southwest corner. 194
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Figure 77. Map of upper occupation level, Estructura 4.
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EPISODE
sure some 6 m north and 80 cm higher than Estructura 1 (Fig. 76). The several curved wall segments were not uniformly visible on the surface, but we hoped to find a second núcleo consisting of at least two structures and a shared open patio, to provide a comparison with Núcleo 1. We called the new enclosure Estructura 4 and designated an adjacent partial curved wall Estructura 5, both to be parts of Núcleo 2 (Bit 65). As it turned out, the excavations of Estructura 4 took place over two field seasons, with the lower levels and the whole western side not finished until 1998. The size of the elliptical Estructura 4 was surface-mapped as 3.5 × 4 m. Stephen began by opening the northern end of the structure, defining a first semicircular unit (330) 2.5 m east-west across the structure and 75 cm to the top of the curve at the north end of the structure (Fig. 77). After removing loose brown, loamy soils of fill down to 60 cm, the excavators encountered areas of intensely black charcoal-bearing soils, blacker than anything we’d seen on the site (except perhaps in PP 12/12A). At 85 cm they found large sherds of a vessel identical to the Candelaria face neck jars from Estructuras 1 and 3, with punctate eyebrows and tear lines. A large concentration of bones, including large bird bones and llama teeth, also lay at this level and continued underneath the external wall of the structure on the east side of the unit; the east wall had to have been remodeled and rebuilt to cover a previous living surface. Happily, there were no late finds here, consistent with the rest of the northern sector of the site, but the unusual stratigraphy, with its charcoal-drenched soils, was unlike any of the previously opened structures. Was this another occupation floor? Although the field season was drawing to a close, we calculated that time would permit one more excavation unit. Stephen placed a 2 × 2 m square (Unit 331) adjacent to the south side of the first (semicircular) unit along the east side of the structure wall and began taking it down to the same depth as the first unit. But hopes for rapid progress were interrupted when an irregular cluster of stones began to appear at the southern end of the unit where Jorge was working. At first, the rest of us were minding our own business in different parts of the site, and Jorge wasn’t saying much about his stones. But if we happened to pass Estructura 4 in our work, we found ourselves gathering, and not leaving, to watch Jorge. For one thing, the east wall of the structure where Jorge worked showed an odd pattern in the wall stones: the stone courses of rounded building cobbles were uneven, and three thin stone slabs had been inserted between them and stuck out from the wall as steps. On the floor of the unit amidst the pile of disorganized loose stones, three prominent rounded stones stood out in a formally 196
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Opening up Estructura Cuatro (1996)
arranged equilateral triangle. Between and near the base of the stones we glimpsed the hard surface of baked clay and heard the ringing sound of the trowel striking a hard porous material like a large unpolished sherd, but it was the wrong shape. Quickly, deftly, Jorge worked around the edges of the hardness to reveal a segment of curved raised clay that suggested a constructed feature, perhaps like the hearth in Estructura 1. Whatever it was, a large part of it disappeared into the southern profile of the unit together with the stone pile, inaccessible to further inspection. A rapid decision was called for: would time permit the laying out and excavating of a third unit in this structure, to fully reveal the intriguing feature? It isn’t necessary to recapture here the lively discussion that ensued; suffice it to say that another adjacent 1 × 2 m unit (332) was opened even further south along the structure’s east wall to now incorporate the entire eastern half of the structure. The upper fill levels were again excavated rapidly to reach the depth of the previous units. By the end of another day Jorge was back working on the stone-pile feature down at the same 90 cm depth, removing the collapsed stones and revealing a perfectly preserved, complex-shaped, clay-lined hearth. We had expected some kind of central feature from the evidence of charring and cooking, but we never anticipated its formal elegance. This was a dramatic way to end the 1996 field season!
56 Narrative in two modalities
The tri-lobate hearth The uncovering of the hearth in Estructura 4 had all of us, bosses and bossed alike, transfixed for several hours on four square meters of dirt 90 cm below our feet. At this depth we could see that where the bases of the three prominent, equilaterally placed stones were set into the ground, a smoothed raised band of clay coiled elegantly around them . . . but its complex shape took some time to resolve. As Jorge revealed segments of the raised clay band looping this way and that, we slowly 197
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Opening up Estructura Cuatro (1996)
arranged equilateral triangle. Between and near the base of the stones we glimpsed the hard surface of baked clay and heard the ringing sound of the trowel striking a hard porous material like a large unpolished sherd, but it was the wrong shape. Quickly, deftly, Jorge worked around the edges of the hardness to reveal a segment of curved raised clay that suggested a constructed feature, perhaps like the hearth in Estructura 1. Whatever it was, a large part of it disappeared into the southern profile of the unit together with the stone pile, inaccessible to further inspection. A rapid decision was called for: would time permit the laying out and excavating of a third unit in this structure, to fully reveal the intriguing feature? It isn’t necessary to recapture here the lively discussion that ensued; suffice it to say that another adjacent 1 × 2 m unit (332) was opened even further south along the structure’s east wall to now incorporate the entire eastern half of the structure. The upper fill levels were again excavated rapidly to reach the depth of the previous units. By the end of another day Jorge was back working on the stone-pile feature down at the same 90 cm depth, removing the collapsed stones and revealing a perfectly preserved, complex-shaped, clay-lined hearth. We had expected some kind of central feature from the evidence of charring and cooking, but we never anticipated its formal elegance. This was a dramatic way to end the 1996 field season!
56 Narrative in two modalities
The tri-lobate hearth The uncovering of the hearth in Estructura 4 had all of us, bosses and bossed alike, transfixed for several hours on four square meters of dirt 90 cm below our feet. At this depth we could see that where the bases of the three prominent, equilaterally placed stones were set into the ground, a smoothed raised band of clay coiled elegantly around them . . . but its complex shape took some time to resolve. As Jorge revealed segments of the raised clay band looping this way and that, we slowly 197
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NARRATIVE IN TWO MODALITIES
Figure 78. Estructura 4 tri-lobate upper hearth. Arrow points to large Río Diablo sherd.
began to see it, to “get it.” Between any two of the three stones, the clay band defined a generous loop, or lobe, and the stones stood at the junctures where the lobes met. There were three clay lobes and three supporting stones, with one additional short clay bar running straight between the northeast and southeast stones. Aesthetically, this was one beautiful hearth (Fig. 78). Some of the excitement was captured on video during the last part of the hearth excavation, as observations and interpretations tumbled out, all mixed together. Here I had not been able to contain myself any longer and had jumped into the pit and taken over Jorge’s trowel, continuing the excavation myself. Rachel Campo grabbed the camera and interviewed me as I worked: “Here’s Joan, excavating the hearth, the heart-shaped hearth”: I’m missing part of it here, it seems to come in here, and it seems to come in over here, but it’s not . . . well, this is the same clay, I don’t know if it’s showing up [on the camera] or not but it’s yellow here . . . Really, it’s the weirdest thing. I’m on the edge of it now, I see little bits of it showing up . . . I think each stone marks a place where the clay turns in! . . . It’s a threeleafed clover! . . . Stephen thinks this [largest of the three standing rocks] rock has been 198
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The tri-lobate hearth
deliberately dented in so that something could be put on it and warmed from below . . . It could be. This is really nice—this may be a completely new form of hearth . . . Certainly isn’t like anything I’ve seen before in my life! Is this a special cooking building? Well, it looks like we have a definite difference of traditions, of tasks, because there are no grinding stones in this building, and we’ve already excavated about three quarters of it. We would put our grinding stones in the kitchen, but the fact that grinding stones are all out on the patio or somewhere else shows a very different way of conceptualizing space and task, and food preparation is not isolated— rather heating things is isolated—things that involve fire are isolated. We may be getting at mindsets and categories of activities, the way people group activities, which appear very different from our ways of grouping activities where we put all the activities that go with food preparation in the same place . . . [Rachel Campo (1997) would then write her MA thesis on just this topic.] But how this odd feature works is beyond me, really. Maybe it’s not food preparation at all. We’ve hardly been overwhelmed with corn, I mean we haven’t really found any macro corn at all in this structure, a bean, yes, and then substantial amounts of chañar, and we don’t have chañar from anywhere else . . . Chañar is a sort of plum, a small fruit from a tree . . . And we’ve found copper wire here [Fig. 79]!
The excitement is palpable as the information unfolds.
Figure 79. Copper wires from Estructura 4. 199
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But when we worked our results into publication form (Gero and Scattolin n.d.), we stripped away the emotions and engagement. Here is how we wrote it up: . . . The hardened [living] floor is characterized by dark carbonized stains and soot-covered stones, and even more dramatically by a centrally placed, tri-lobate raised clay hearth. This feature has three upright rounded stones placed at the intersections of the “lobes” to support a vessel above the fire; one of the clay “lobes” is slightly smaller than the other two and is separated from them by a clay bar, as seen in the illustration. The maximum dimension of the feature is 77 cm across. Unlike the clean hearth of Structure 1, considerable wood charcoal remained in this hearth together with two distinctive calcified shell and bone buttons and a variety of food remains including corn kernels, cactus fruit seeds, and the carbonized rinds of the chañar fruit (used to make a fermented drink and/or a pudding) . . .
We are still no closer to understanding why the hearth was given this form; we know of no parallels, archaeological or ethnographic. The poorly preserved hearth in Estructura 1 excavated two years before had not been announced by— or associated with—heavy carbon staining nor, to the best of our knowledge, was it shaped into lobes. Rather, it was accompanied by handfuls of scoria which we didn’t find at the Estructura 4 hearth. Both raised clay hearths had associated malachite (only a single piece near Estructura 4), Candelaria modeled face neck jars and llama figurines. It seems unlikely that the hearth in Estructura 4 was used for metallurgical production; in fact, it underwent much less destructive activity than the Estructura 1 hearth. Both raised clay hearths had associated food remains: a single poroto bean was found at the perimeter of the Estructura 1 hearth, while the better-preserved Estructura 4 hearth contained more varied and dense food remains, described above. The final data recovery from the hearth came on the last day of our last field season in 1998 when we were cleaning up for final photographs. Álvaro was brushing down the Estructura 4 hearth with a fine brush, and it was his eagle eyes that spotted the ancient fingerprints left in the clay of the hearth, prints that he was proud to show us closely matched his own.
Facts of the Hearth • Depth of the interior of the hearth = 84 cm bs • Depth of floor on which the hearth lay = 90 cm bs • Raised clay band defining the hearth = 5 cm thick
200
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The tri-lobate hearth
• Maximum horizontal dimension of the hearth = 77 cm • Minimal diameter of a cooking pot that could be supported by the upright stones = 44 cm • Recovered from inside hearth: one polished shell bead and one bone bead or button
57 Descriptive data
The hearth occupation level in Estructura Cuatro Finding the tri-lobate hearth was central to our 1996 field season, just as the hearth was central to the upper occupation floor of Estructura 4. But was the hearth central to the purpose of Estructura 4, the defining feature of a specialized kitchen or cooking structure? Or did it represent only one (or a few) of many functions that the occupants— or users— of the structure undertook here? Smaller than either Estructura 1 or 3 in Núcleo 1, was this a fully functional “house”??? To shed light here we now review the occupation level associated with the hearth of Estructura 4. This was an exciting stratigraphic level to follow out as the heavily blackened soils that characterized the stratum above the hearth gave way to the brown loamy soils in the hearth zone. Most notably, in and around the hearth were the plentiful remains of the chañar fruit (Fig. 80), not only pieces of the hard pits and charred rinds but actual parts of the desiccated fruit. If some kind of specialized function is implied in this occupation level, it would have to do with the preparation of this fruit because the quantities of chañar remains are impressive; only the ubiquitous corn cupules and kernels are represented in higher numbers. (Meanwhile, carbonized masses of agglutinated corn kernels occur below the level of the hearth—but only here in Estructura 4.) Cactus fruit, chenopodia and other seeds, plus an entire carbonized poroto bean were also recovered in this level. 201
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The tri-lobate hearth
• Maximum horizontal dimension of the hearth = 77 cm • Minimal diameter of a cooking pot that could be supported by the upright stones = 44 cm • Recovered from inside hearth: one polished shell bead and one bone bead or button
57 Descriptive data
The hearth occupation level in Estructura Cuatro Finding the tri-lobate hearth was central to our 1996 field season, just as the hearth was central to the upper occupation floor of Estructura 4. But was the hearth central to the purpose of Estructura 4, the defining feature of a specialized kitchen or cooking structure? Or did it represent only one (or a few) of many functions that the occupants— or users— of the structure undertook here? Smaller than either Estructura 1 or 3 in Núcleo 1, was this a fully functional “house”??? To shed light here we now review the occupation level associated with the hearth of Estructura 4. This was an exciting stratigraphic level to follow out as the heavily blackened soils that characterized the stratum above the hearth gave way to the brown loamy soils in the hearth zone. Most notably, in and around the hearth were the plentiful remains of the chañar fruit (Fig. 80), not only pieces of the hard pits and charred rinds but actual parts of the desiccated fruit. If some kind of specialized function is implied in this occupation level, it would have to do with the preparation of this fruit because the quantities of chañar remains are impressive; only the ubiquitous corn cupules and kernels are represented in higher numbers. (Meanwhile, carbonized masses of agglutinated corn kernels occur below the level of the hearth—but only here in Estructura 4.) Cactus fruit, chenopodia and other seeds, plus an entire carbonized poroto bean were also recovered in this level. 201
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Figure 80. Chañar from Estructura 4 hearth (right) compared with modern chañar. Photograph by Jack Rossen.
Figure 81. Río Diablo vessel from Estructura 4 (left) and similar vessel collected from the Valle del Cajón, now in the Museum of World Culture, Göteborg, Sweden. Photograph by Terence Schwetz.
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The hearth occupation level in Estructura Cuatro
There were also dense animal bones from the level of the hearth: llama (including an articulated foot bone) and vizcacha (a rabbit), but none of the otherwise prevalent quirquincho scales. One 60 cm stretch along the east wall of Estructura 4 has a dark carbon-laden soil deposit 2–3 cm thick containing particularly dense bone fragments and sherds to suggest a discrete episode of sweeping out the floor. Not surprisingly, pottery is everywhere. Several large incised and punctated sherds from a single wide-necked globular vessel were leaning against the southwest side of the hearth; reconstructed it stands 20 cm tall and 14 cm across at its widest point, of polished grey/black paste, identified by Cristina as Río Diablo (cf. Berberián and Massidda 1975: lám. IX C, p. 47) (Fig. 81). Uncharred, it may have been used to serve or partake of a cooked beverage. (We would find the rest of this vessel in 1998 on the west side of Estructura 4.) No other pottery vessels were directly associated with the hearth, and indeed most other material was recovered from the northern end of the structure. Scattered across the level in the north, for instance, was a virtually complete Candelaria face neck jar very similar to the Candelaria vessels from Estructura 1 and from the pit in Estructura 3. At least five different open bowls— coarsely made and polished grey—and three thick-walled, unpolished ollas between 22 and 33 cm in diameter are also represented among the sherds, all coming from vessels near the north wall of the structure rather than near the hearth itself (see Fig. 110). In general, the fineware vessels are not carbonized and occur in more restricted jar forms rather than as open bowls, representing not cooking but serving vessels; in general too the pottery here is larger, less eroded and less fragmented than elsewhere. Plotting the distribution of different sherd types shows that three other thin-walled, polished and incised pitchers were closer to the hearth than the jars and bowls (Campo 1997:86), putting the server-person with the pitchers closer to the fire, and the consumers with drinking bowls at a greater distance. (Of course we don’t believe that the various vessels were never moved after they were used and remained in these positions for hundreds of years.) From the northern end of this level came other important finds: an 8 cm length of pulled copper wire and two casually made ceramic llama figurines (Fig. 82). Half a dozen pieces of burnt daub here indicate roof collapse, and a bone awl chewed by rodents was also recovered toward the northern end of the structure. Finally, a semilunar ground slate knife emerged here as well. Several commonly found artifacts did not appear in this occupation level of Estructura 4: most significantly there were no grinding stones anywhere in the structure, and the two recovered stemmed projectile 203
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DESCRIPTIVE DATA
Figure 82. Llama figurines from Estructura 4.
Figure 83. Section across Estructura 4 upper occupation floor.
points were from above and below the occupation level. The last finds from this level came as bedrock was already appearing in the northern end of the structure. Two tubular lapis lazuli beads were found along the wall perimeter in the northwest corner of the structure, which was particularly interesting since we had also found a lapis lazuli bead in the other structure with a clay-ringed hearth, Estructura 1. 204
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The hearth occupation level in Estructura Cuatro
This, then, was where we would have to leave our excavations in 1996, with the western third of the structure and the exposure of bedrock pits awaiting our return. Already we could piece together many intriguing similarities between Estructuras 1 and 4, with their clay-ringed hearths and Candelaria vessels, the lapis lazuli beads and llama figurines (Fig. 83). If these common artifacts were all somehow associated with ritual preparation and/or consumption of the corn or chañar ceremonial beverage, then we might find continued support in this level for the specialized ceremonial function of Estructura 4. Then again, there were also the many distinct tools of this level. Many questions would have to be left unanswered because time had simply run out (but see Bit 60).
58 Narrative
Last-day fervor in Estructura Cuatro We had arranged to leave the field on April 12 (1996), and early that morning the team of able-bodied workers was already carrying gear and excavated archaeological materials to La Arroyo for transport into Santa María. The rest of us were still on-site, finishing maps and profiles, backfilling test pits, trying to be sure we hadn’t forgotten anything. Cristina and I stood hands on hips in Estructura 4, puzzling about the sherds that had shown up below the hearth, since we had been assuming the hearth lay directly on bedrock as it had in Estructura 1. We agreed it would be most helpful to know how deep below the hearth the bedrock lay, to plan the next field season more accurately and to go home with as much information as possible. We probed with trowels along the east wall, and since the soil was loose we believed we had hit a series of pits or a trench along that wall . . . or some modification of the bedrock that allowed the hearth to sit high in the center of the structure while there was greater depth along the east wall. We designated areas along the wall as Pit A and Pit B to preserve pit integrity (if that was what we were finding), recovering dense numbers of finds from each: a red jasper–stemmed projectile 205
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The hearth occupation level in Estructura Cuatro
This, then, was where we would have to leave our excavations in 1996, with the western third of the structure and the exposure of bedrock pits awaiting our return. Already we could piece together many intriguing similarities between Estructuras 1 and 4, with their clay-ringed hearths and Candelaria vessels, the lapis lazuli beads and llama figurines (Fig. 83). If these common artifacts were all somehow associated with ritual preparation and/or consumption of the corn or chañar ceremonial beverage, then we might find continued support in this level for the specialized ceremonial function of Estructura 4. Then again, there were also the many distinct tools of this level. Many questions would have to be left unanswered because time had simply run out (but see Bit 60).
58 Narrative
Last-day fervor in Estructura Cuatro We had arranged to leave the field on April 12 (1996), and early that morning the team of able-bodied workers was already carrying gear and excavated archaeological materials to La Arroyo for transport into Santa María. The rest of us were still on-site, finishing maps and profiles, backfilling test pits, trying to be sure we hadn’t forgotten anything. Cristina and I stood hands on hips in Estructura 4, puzzling about the sherds that had shown up below the hearth, since we had been assuming the hearth lay directly on bedrock as it had in Estructura 1. We agreed it would be most helpful to know how deep below the hearth the bedrock lay, to plan the next field season more accurately and to go home with as much information as possible. We probed with trowels along the east wall, and since the soil was loose we believed we had hit a series of pits or a trench along that wall . . . or some modification of the bedrock that allowed the hearth to sit high in the center of the structure while there was greater depth along the east wall. We designated areas along the wall as Pit A and Pit B to preserve pit integrity (if that was what we were finding), recovering dense numbers of finds from each: a red jasper–stemmed projectile 205
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NARRATIVE
Figure 84. Large sherds from a vessel with undulating incised appliqué strip.
point (the first from this structure), polishing stones that might have been used for metallurgy, large sherds with an undulating, incised appliqué strip (Fig. 84), a second (headless) crude clay llama figurine and large camelid bones, including neck vertebrae. The impromptu work was intense, with finds appearing at an alarming rate and our records improvised, without the benefit of laid-out excavation units, in a desperate hurried effort to locate the bedrock floor. But instead we found more loose earth and always more artifacts. After a quick lunch, Pit C, farther north on the east wall, yielded a section of a fine incurvate rim. But loose soils continued between these pits, and we began to think of the area as a trench, wishing at the same time that we had left the hearth zone intact. Just as we felt we really had to pack it in and leave, Ramón exposed a large charcoal surface in Pit B at 108 cm below ground surface, perhaps a log, together with sizable sherds corresponding to the zigzag appliqué sherds from Pit A. We were delighted; at least we would have a secure 14 C date for this zone below the hearth. But with further excavation this proved to be not a log but rather the smooth charcoal-stained clay lining of a second, earlier hearth lying between 108 and 114 cm below ground surface, some 25 cm below the tri-lobate hearth and clearly abandoned before the tri-lobate hearth had been constructed and put into use (see Fig. 86). 206
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Last day fervor in Estructura Cuatro
The existence of a lower floor amazed us; we had not expected it since the “upper” floor, with its carefully prepared hearth, had only Formative finds associated with it. On the last day of work in the second field season our understanding of the site was radically altered as we were forced once again to accept “the Formative” not as a moment in time but as a long archaeological period that could include abandonment, reconstruction and re-occupation— or simply refurbishment. Although most of the abundant diagnostics, polished grey and black Formative ceramics, could not be seriated to identify earlier and later moments at Yutopian, the two distinct floors of Estructura 4 offered many clues as to the Formative sequence at Yutopian, adding to the fervor of leaving the site. And we still hadn’t reached bedrock.
59 Socio-politics
Good-byes Leaving Yutopian at the end of every field season was painful. Of course there were the worries that we didn’t have enough data or we didn’t have the right data. There was also the nuisance of backfilling the site, packing camp, then transporting all the gear and material to La Arroyo where the truck could reach us. It was poignant to leave the windy ridgetop where vistas were wide and life was simple and focused. And it was painful to part with our friends from Yutopian, for whom our departures most likely held different meanings. It began with reckoning each worker’s final pay plus a bonus, and since these were also our friends, and friends with one another, this was delicate. There was also the dividing up of things that we wanted to leave with our friends: tapes and trowels, headlamps, batteries, extra food, mementos; sometimes someone had to clarify, awkwardly, that a long-term loan was not a gift. When we left in 1996, Jorge asked for an ownership title for the solar panels (which were now his) so the state could not claim them and take them away (Bit 70). What else did these partings mean? The students were generally thrilled to be heading back to town and chatted cheerfully about choco207
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Last day fervor in Estructura Cuatro
The existence of a lower floor amazed us; we had not expected it since the “upper” floor, with its carefully prepared hearth, had only Formative finds associated with it. On the last day of work in the second field season our understanding of the site was radically altered as we were forced once again to accept “the Formative” not as a moment in time but as a long archaeological period that could include abandonment, reconstruction and re-occupation— or simply refurbishment. Although most of the abundant diagnostics, polished grey and black Formative ceramics, could not be seriated to identify earlier and later moments at Yutopian, the two distinct floors of Estructura 4 offered many clues as to the Formative sequence at Yutopian, adding to the fervor of leaving the site. And we still hadn’t reached bedrock.
59 Socio-politics
Good-byes Leaving Yutopian at the end of every field season was painful. Of course there were the worries that we didn’t have enough data or we didn’t have the right data. There was also the nuisance of backfilling the site, packing camp, then transporting all the gear and material to La Arroyo where the truck could reach us. It was poignant to leave the windy ridgetop where vistas were wide and life was simple and focused. And it was painful to part with our friends from Yutopian, for whom our departures most likely held different meanings. It began with reckoning each worker’s final pay plus a bonus, and since these were also our friends, and friends with one another, this was delicate. There was also the dividing up of things that we wanted to leave with our friends: tapes and trowels, headlamps, batteries, extra food, mementos; sometimes someone had to clarify, awkwardly, that a long-term loan was not a gift. When we left in 1996, Jorge asked for an ownership title for the solar panels (which were now his) so the state could not claim them and take them away (Bit 70). What else did these partings mean? The students were generally thrilled to be heading back to town and chatted cheerfully about choco207
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SOCIO-POLITICS
late bars and hamburgers, showers and clean clothes. Cristina looked forward to a real bed and to media lunas for breakfast, although she was also sensitive to what we’d accomplished and what we would have to leave for another time. But I never knew for sure whether I’d be able to return, and these moments for me were more complicated. For one thing, I don’t much mind dirt and prefer working outside to inside, so moving back to town didn’t hold so much pleasure for me. I always felt after that first shower and some salad, there was much more to miss in town than in the country. But these situations were messy for another reason too; they forefronted the power and wealth differences between our lives and those of the people of Yutopian. During the field project, we worked together solving problems and sharing surprises, partially obscuring the power discrepancies that underpinned the project. In many areas we depended on the lugareños for comfort and information, emphasizing a mutual interdependence. But at the time of good-byes, the power differentials became exaggerated, as “we” left and “they” stayed. Negotiations of sentiment across status were awkward, mixing genuine feelings and earnest expressions of friendship with employee/employer courtesies and hallmarks of the marketplace: Were the gifts we left behind “enough”? Were they balanced? Were our friends sad to lose our companionship or sad to lose an income that would not be had again for at least a year, if ever? Why was it important to us that we wanted to be more than employers and gift givers? The Andean courtesies, expressed by offering more and more help carrying and toting, only reinforced the status differences that I so
Figure 85. Yutopian crew on the last day of the 1996 field season. 208
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Good-byes
much wanted to disappear at this poignant transition. The American joviality embarrassed me, good-byes with laughter and slaps on the back that were so culturally specific. Here there could be no reciprocity and I couldn’t say, “Oh do come visit us sometime, please . . .” because we had options and access to resources that the people of Yutopian do not have. I could give presents and bonuses, but these too only emphasized the power differences. Would someone at Yutopian want to use our old boots if we left them behind? Would it be an insult to offer a shirt with a small rip? Jorge also gave gifts, for me and often for others, to take away with us. These were wonderful handsome homemade things: a handwoven scarf, a small ceramic cooking pot, a pair of knitted socks. Sometimes there was also food: dried apricots or apples grown in his own fields, wild honey he collected in a jar, homemade cheese, salt crystals he had traded for from the high puna. Federico also gave presents: Stephen once received a mountain lion claw, and Jessica got a tiny homemade cactus-wood box. Álvaro gave differently: he worked hardest carrying project gear and again and again gave out his address to each of us. Most touchingly, we were always sent off with a grand feast of roasted goat meat and plenty of potatoes, fresh apricot juice (beer if I provided it), bunches of freshly picked flowers on the table and music on the hand-cranked radio. All of this, every year, was bittersweet.
60 Episode
Estructura Cuatro excavations in 1998: The lower occupation Cristina took charge of excavating the remaining portions of Estructura 4 when we returned to Yutopian in 1998; this included the unexcavated western third of the structure from surface to bedrock, and on the east side, where we had excavated in 1996, the lower occupation level below the hearth. The first surprise when the western walls were cleared and the new excavation units laid out was that the structure became more 209
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Good-byes
much wanted to disappear at this poignant transition. The American joviality embarrassed me, good-byes with laughter and slaps on the back that were so culturally specific. Here there could be no reciprocity and I couldn’t say, “Oh do come visit us sometime, please . . .” because we had options and access to resources that the people of Yutopian do not have. I could give presents and bonuses, but these too only emphasized the power differences. Would someone at Yutopian want to use our old boots if we left them behind? Would it be an insult to offer a shirt with a small rip? Jorge also gave gifts, for me and often for others, to take away with us. These were wonderful handsome homemade things: a handwoven scarf, a small ceramic cooking pot, a pair of knitted socks. Sometimes there was also food: dried apricots or apples grown in his own fields, wild honey he collected in a jar, homemade cheese, salt crystals he had traded for from the high puna. Federico also gave presents: Stephen once received a mountain lion claw, and Jessica got a tiny homemade cactus-wood box. Álvaro gave differently: he worked hardest carrying project gear and again and again gave out his address to each of us. Most touchingly, we were always sent off with a grand feast of roasted goat meat and plenty of potatoes, fresh apricot juice (beer if I provided it), bunches of freshly picked flowers on the table and music on the hand-cranked radio. All of this, every year, was bittersweet.
60 Episode
Estructura Cuatro excavations in 1998: The lower occupation Cristina took charge of excavating the remaining portions of Estructura 4 when we returned to Yutopian in 1998; this included the unexcavated western third of the structure from surface to bedrock, and on the east side, where we had excavated in 1996, the lower occupation level below the hearth. The first surprise when the western walls were cleared and the new excavation units laid out was that the structure became more 209
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EPISODE
rectangular or sub-rectangular than we had been able to make out in 1996, with the lower hearth revealed so late last season lying close to the east wall (Figs. 76 and 86). It was also quickly seen that excavations in the north part of the structure were already close to bedrock and showed three very dramatic upright, dressed boulders that defined the south end of the structure (compared to Estructura 1, where the most formal wall configuration was in the northern segment) (Fig. 86). The floor, in fact, was rapidly constricting all along the eastern wall (another saucer-shaped floor sloping toward the center of the structure), also demonstrating something of a slanting floor from the high east side to the lower west side. Almost immediately, close to the surface on the western side, a second piece of copper wire was found just outside the structure’s wall where ultimately, to our surprise, soil depths continued to go down as deep as inside the structure (more remodeling to make a structure smaller). Inside, another blue-green bead was recovered near the bedrock floor at the north end of the structure. On the west side of Estructura 4, as Cristina and her crew started to remove the fill levels, a new feature appeared in the structure’s wall: an apparent pair of niches built into the upper courses of the west wall only 35 cm below the surface. The two square niches were constructed
Figure 86. Superimposed hearths of Estructura 4. The upper tri-lobate hearth has been left pedestaled above the earlier floor; the remains of the fired clay basin of the lower hearth are indicated by the white arrow, which points north. 210
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Estructura Cuatro excavations in 1998
65 cm apart and each measured roughly 50 × 50 cm; one had been filled in with a large round boulder (see Fig. 76). As Cristina continued, she revealed that the two wall “niches” were separated by a single, partially dressed stone oblong, and in fact if we removed this oblong stone, the “niches” disappeared and a unique wall segment was revealed, made up of dressed stone oblongs set horizontally next to one another and in a very different building pattern from any other segment of the structure’s walls. The “niches” were merely by-products of placing a new stone in the center of this wall segment but not quite filling the space at either end of it, and without the additionally placed stone, one could step nicely from the ground surface down onto the wall. Further below, another dressed oblong stone had been placed at the foot of the carefully constructed western wall segment to create a comfortable step onto the floor of the structure (again, see Fig. 76). (Much to my surprise, Cristina and I were subsequently to disagree about the function of this unique wall arrangement [Bit 64].) As Cristina removed more fill on the west side, she encountered more or less the same depositional sequence as on the east but without the areas of extreme blackening that had been visible against the east wall at 85 cm below ground surface. A second difference was that more tubular lapis lazuli beads now appeared on the west, but higher than the hearth occupation level, although on the east side of the structure we had found these beads only below the hearth. Still, the upper fill levels on the west side of Estructura 4 contained the same typical fragmentary remains until a depth of 70–80 cm, where large fragments of pottery began to appear and the soils became “very black, black.” In the occupation level itself, fragments of the same vessels appeared as in the levels above and around 90 cm below ground surface, the soils again were brown. Below 90 cm (the hearth occupation level), the entire structure could be excavated as a continuous block and proved very interesting. The lower (earlier) occupation floor lay 30 cm below the tri-lobate hearth. Its carbonized, clay-lined hearth was represented by a simple, smooth hardened concavity, heavily burnt but without standing stones or a raised clay band around its perimeter. It was positioned not directly below the tri-lobate hearth but offset to the northeast and closer to the eastern structure wall. At this level the shallow soils were again heavily stained and carbonized. Most intriguing was an east-west line of rocks, a wall foundation dividing the interior structural space into two “rooms” at this lower level (Fig. 87); nothing comparable had been visible on the upper floor, although this reminded us of Estructura 11’s lower occupation. It also surprised us that no decorated ceramics appeared on this lower floor of Estructura 4, nor was there the same dense concentration of chañar 211
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EPISODE
T
Figure 87. Lower floor of Estructura 4 at the time of abandonment, with a single course of stones dividing the room and several smashed pots.
rinds. Instead, corn and agglutinated masses of carbonized corn kernels plus a few chenopodia seeds dominated the plant assemblages. The faunal remains here differed from every other level at Yutopian in having more small mammals than camelids (Izeta 2007b:475). The irregular shallow pits excavated into the bedrock around the interior perimeter of Estructura 4 were nothing like the large bell-shaped storage pits that we found in Estructuras 1 and 3, instead resembling wall trenches. Six whole reconstructable cooking pots, large and small, lay smashed in clusters (Fig. 87)—some consisting of as many as 27 matching fragments—across the lowest levels of the structure, apparently a dramatic and intentional closing down of the lower occupation level. Change was happening as the concentrated preparation of corn and corn beer, possibly in these same plain cooking pots, at a simple hearth in the lower level was about to be replaced with the preparation and presentation of chañar drinks in more elaborate vessels from a fancy hearth in the upper level. There were no whole grinding stones recovered from either occupation level in this structure.
212
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Inventory of special finds from Estructura Cuatro
61 Raw data
Inventory of special finds from Estructura Cuatro Table 10. Inventory of special finds from Estructura 4 Special Find No. 152
Unit
Depth
Material
Description
332
0–50 cm
lithic
236 153 169
333 332 331
50–60 cm 50–80 cm 50–80 cm
lithic botanical lithic
241 242 154 204 206 247
333 334 332 333 333 331
ceramic ceramic ceramic ceramic ceramic ceramic
148
331
botanical
208
333
ceramic
209 210
333 333
ceramic ceramic
240 150 151
333 331 331
ceramic metal bone
156
332
lithic
157
331 inside hearth 331 inside hearth 333 330
bone?
projectile point— fragmented bead chañar rind polished galina? fragment—mirror? tube fragment (pipe?) tube fragment (pipe?) crude llama figurine broken spindle whorl grey incised jar sherd vessel neck sherd w/ white slip fruit rind and carbonized bean Candelaria face jar sherd grey incised jar sherd Candelaria face jar sherd tube fragment (pipe?) copper wire camelid metapodial bone polished stone pendant burnt stemmed button or bead
158
214 155
159 331/332 218 333 161 332 gero pages 160 new3.indd 331213
botanical
chañar rind
bone lithic
polished bone tool cylindrical lapis lazuli bead polishing stone/mano basalt knife crude llama figurine projectile point— jasper
lithic lithic ceramic lithic
Figure No. (if illustrated)
Stratum Upper fill
80
82 119 81
108
Upper occupation level
81 108
79
117
Lower213 occupation level
82 8/20/15 9:11 AM
210
333
ceramic
240 150 151
333 331 331
ceramic metal bone
156
332
lithic
157
Candelaria face jar 108 sherd tube fragment (pipe?) copper wire 79 camelid metapodial bone polished stone pendant burnt stemmed button or bead
331 bone? inside Table 10. Inventory of special finds from Estructura 4 hearth Table 10. Continued 158 331 botanical chañar rind Special Unit Depth Material Description inside Find No. hearth 152 332 0–50 cm lithic projectile point— 214 333 bone polished bone tool fragmented 155 330 lithic cylindrical lapis lazuli 236 333 50–60 cm lithic bead 153 332 botanical chañar rindstone/mano 159 331/332 50–80 cm lithic polishing 169 331 50–80 cm lithic polished galina? 218 333 basalt knife fragment—mirror? 161 332 ceramic crude llama figurine 241 333 ceramic tube fragment (pipe?) 160 331 lithic projectile point— 242 334 ceramic tube jasperfragment (pipe?) 154 332 ceramic crude llama figurine 220 331 lithic 7 cylindrical lapis lazuli beads 204 333 ceramic broken spindle whorl 221 331 lithic knifeincised jar sherd 206 333 ceramic grey 222 332 large jar with undulat247 331 ceramic vessel neck sherd w/ ing appliqué white slip strip 223 334 lithic malachite bead 148 331 botanical fruit rind and fragment bean carbonized 248 333 ceramic bottle neckface sherd 208 Candelaria jar sherd from small 249 331/333 ceramic asymmetrical potsherd 209 333 ceramic grey incised jar 250 333/334 ceramic sherd from face largejar pot 210 333 Candelaria sherd 225 334 bone “spatula” 240 333 ceramic tube fragment 229 331 lithic polished basalt(pipe?) tool fragment 150 331 metal copper wire 237 331 2 triangular basalt 151 bone camelid metapodial raederas bone 1 side-struck 156 332 lithic polished stonebasalt flake pendant tooth stemmed fragment button and 157 331 bone? burnt bone fragments inside or bead hearth red ochre 158 331 botanical chañar 3 whiterind quartz pieces inside hearth 5 obsidian projectile 214 333 bone polished points bone tool 4 basalt side-struck 155 330 lithic cylindrical lapis lazuli flakes bead 3 basalt unifacial 159 331/332 lithic polishing stone/mano flakes knife 218 333 lithic basalt 3 basalt microflakes 161 332 ceramic crude llama figurine 1 ceramic point— disk 160 331 lithic projectile 1 polished black jasper bottle rim 220 331 lithic 7ceramic cylindrical lapis 2 chunks of green clay lazuli beads 2 coarse undecorated 221 331 lithic knife micaceous sherds 222 332 ceramic large jar with undulating appliqué strip 223 lithic malachite bead 214334 fragment 248 333 ceramic bottle neck sherd 249 12. Comparative 331/333 ceramic sherd structures from small Table characteristics of Yutopian asymmetrical pot ceramic from large Est. 1 Est. 2 Est. 3sherd Patio Est.pot 4 gero pages250 new3.indd 333/334 214 Upper 225 334 bone “spatula”
RAW DATA
Figure No. (if illustrated)
Stratum Upper fill Lower occupation level
117 80
82
82 117 119 113 81 84
108
Upper occupation level
81 108 31 79
Cache pit (upper deposit)
Cache pit (lower deposit)
117
Lower occupation level
82
117 113 84
Est. 4 Lower 31
Est. 5
Est. 11
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The cache pit
62 Descriptive data
The cache pit When the whole Estructura 4 lower occupation floor had been exposed, with only some cleaning and checking for possible pit features left to do, Federico began removing a group of four closely placed, rounded cobbles sitting on the bedrock just north of the tri-lobate hearth. But removing just the first stone already revealed something startling, and we were all called over to peer into a steep-sided, bowl-like pit with a higher, smoothly curved rim on the north side and a lower, irregular rim on the south (Fig. 88). Inside, two flat stones stood vertically against the north and west sides of the pit with a third irregular stone between them, and among and below the stones a cache of implements began to appear. “¡Mirelo! ¡Como hacemos hoy día!” (“Look! Just as we do it today!”) exclaimed Jorge with glee. On top was a broken obsidian point, and three others were tucked together behind one of the vertical stones, each one quite different. Then out came the rest: below Figure 88. Federico next to the cache pit in the lower an irregular fallen rock lay large ceramic pieces floor of Estructura 4. Arrow points north. 215
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DESCRIPTIVE DATA
Figure 89. Contents of Estructura 4 cache pit (clockwise from top): projectile points and side-struck flakes, quartz pieces, bone tools and fragments, ceramic sherds and disc, pieces of green clay, shattered rock and triangular raederas (scrapers).
and more stone tools, including a set of side-struck flakes and a polished camelid ilium (pelvic bone) (Fig. 89).
Facts about the cache pit and its contents Pit dimensions: • size of cache pit = 37 cm × 27 cm • depth of lip below ground surface = 105 cm • depth from lip to bottom of pit = 33 cm Contents of pit: • five obsidian projectile points • five basalt knives produced on short, wide flakes • three unifacially flaked stone triangles • two camelid long bone tools, pointed • one well-polished llama ilium (pelvic bone) • two neonatal camelid vertebrae • one small milk quartz core 216
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The cache pit
• • • •
one round polished black sherd one fragment of a thick ceramic handle one small piece of red ochre miscellaneous small bone and stone fragments
This is quite a diverse collection: stone knives and projectile points, bone tools pointy and rounded, ceramic handles and rims and a polished disk, bits of minerals and crystal. Perhaps there had also been perishable materials. Yet despite the diversity, the cache contained carefully matched sets: three unifacial triangular stone tools (mixed with ochre), five look-alike flake knives, five obsidian points. Was the cache accumulative, adding contents at intervals (e.g., placing the three obsidian points behind the upright flat stone as a last insertion)? The ease of access by merely moving one stone suggests this possibility. Do the smaller diameter and very regular curvature of the pit’s rim on the higher, north side (compared to the irregular lower, south rim) suggest that the pit started small and symmetrical and was later enlarged, less carefully and maybe more than once, on the south? Yet the camelid bones and polished ceramics relate more closely to what we recovered from the upper occupation zone; could the cache have been created deep in the structure in order to dedicate the remodeled upper floor and hearth? And was the cache gendered, with many tools associated with butchering? Or was it gender-balanced with weaving and ceramic production implements also included? Interestingly, none of the beads from this structure had been placed in the cache. We should also note how dissimilar the five projectile points are, although taken from the same sealed(?) context; many lithics taxonomists would be tempted to assign them to different styles and maybe different time periods. True, they are all made of the same Ona obsidian (with color variations) and four of them are stemmed (and the fifth broken), but the stems vary from broad/square-ended to tapered/pointed (almost Ayampitin). Some, but not all, of the considerable size differences may be due to reworking or resharpening the points, but then these projectile points are from very different stages of use. What made this cache so thrilling? Was it the sheer concentration of material or the assortment of very different kinds of materials deliberately bundled together? The intentionality of placement, offering a view of ancient minds at work? Or the drama of opening a pit that had not seen daylight for at least 1500 years? We were deeply moved, almost reverential about finding the cache, but we were also intellectually fascinated and discussion erupted. 217
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DESCRIPTIVE DATA
At first we posited that the cache represented a curated set of implements, a toolkit that shared a functional association not obvious to us, or, more likely, a group of generally useful items stored together in a special pit, perhaps wrapped in cloth that no longer existed. (As Jorge put it excitedly, “Un depósito de herramientas [tools] como hacemos hoy!”) Alternative explanations are less utilitarian: this was an ancient Pachamama offering, a dedicatory cache of utensils intended for a different kind of work, intended to please, appease or repay a spirit of the house. The red ochre and white quartz piece seemed especially significant as they are still used today in symbolic offerings (Bit 40). Given the possible function of Estructura 4 as something other than a common residence, this unique cache deep in the lowest floor of the building argues for such an interpretation. Bermann and Castillo (1995) offer a less dichotomous interpretation derived from caches recovered beneath domestic house floors at Wankarani, Formative Bolivia. These, they argue, may have been a set of stored implements for performing specific rituals, thus combining the idea of “working tools” with ritual purposes. A similar function might pertain to this cache, given the ease of accessing the cache by moving merely a single stone. But I suspect that the cache was established later, when the upper floor was dedicated (Bit 67) and that these tools, once buried, were never seen again.
63 Andean ways
Chañar drinks The soils of the upper floor of Estructura 4 were blackened and thick, not with charcoal but with greasy soot. The walls of the structure were also soot-darkened and charcoal adhered everywhere; you could almost smell the pots boiling in this small chamber. And everywhere too were remains of chañar fruit: charred rinds, pits and burnt pieces of fruit. Chañar (Geoffroea decorticans) is a native bush or tree that grows throughout the southern Andes. Gnarled and spiny, it is essential as firewood and windbreaks, made into furniture or tools or any wood 218
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DESCRIPTIVE DATA
At first we posited that the cache represented a curated set of implements, a toolkit that shared a functional association not obvious to us, or, more likely, a group of generally useful items stored together in a special pit, perhaps wrapped in cloth that no longer existed. (As Jorge put it excitedly, “Un depósito de herramientas [tools] como hacemos hoy!”) Alternative explanations are less utilitarian: this was an ancient Pachamama offering, a dedicatory cache of utensils intended for a different kind of work, intended to please, appease or repay a spirit of the house. The red ochre and white quartz piece seemed especially significant as they are still used today in symbolic offerings (Bit 40). Given the possible function of Estructura 4 as something other than a common residence, this unique cache deep in the lowest floor of the building argues for such an interpretation. Bermann and Castillo (1995) offer a less dichotomous interpretation derived from caches recovered beneath domestic house floors at Wankarani, Formative Bolivia. These, they argue, may have been a set of stored implements for performing specific rituals, thus combining the idea of “working tools” with ritual purposes. A similar function might pertain to this cache, given the ease of accessing the cache by moving merely a single stone. But I suspect that the cache was established later, when the upper floor was dedicated (Bit 67) and that these tools, once buried, were never seen again.
63 Andean ways
Chañar drinks The soils of the upper floor of Estructura 4 were blackened and thick, not with charcoal but with greasy soot. The walls of the structure were also soot-darkened and charcoal adhered everywhere; you could almost smell the pots boiling in this small chamber. And everywhere too were remains of chañar fruit: charred rinds, pits and burnt pieces of fruit. Chañar (Geoffroea decorticans) is a native bush or tree that grows throughout the southern Andes. Gnarled and spiny, it is essential as firewood and windbreaks, made into furniture or tools or any wood 218
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Chañar drinks
product, and cherished for its fleshy sweet fruit by humans and animals alike. From the soot-drenched Estructura 4 we recovered 59 chañar samples (with the highest density at 100 cm below ground surface) and had no doubt that a chief purpose of this kitchen area, at some point in its occupation, was to process chañar. A variety of foods can be produced from the fruit: a sweet beverage, a thick syrup, an alcoholic beer (chicha) and a jello-like pudding (mazamorra). (The mushed fruit is sometimes eaten with fish fat but probably not at Yutopian, where fish are scarce.) Chañar syrup is sometimes used as a cough medicine. Given the quantities of rinds recovered from Estructura 4 (almost entirely in the upper level), it seems most likely that a widely consumed product was made here, perhaps chañar beer, or chicha, especially since the Río Diablo incised pitcher, perfect for serving liquids, was found immediately beside the charcoal-filled hearth. Recipes to make chañar chicha involve pulverizing the fruit, boiling it slowly over a low fire, allowing it to sit several days while the sugars ferment, and finally separating off the liquid from the fruit residues. This basic formula for processing chicha is used with many starchy and sweet crops, and chicha is consumed regularly by many households, as well as for social occasions of all sorts. Of course other food remains were also recovered from the upperlevel Estructura 4 hearth, and it would violate our most basic understandings to assign a single use to this structure for all time. Doubtless it functioned in different ways at different times and was used for many things, including the processing of a lot of chañar. But it still leaves us wondering about the kinds of occasions that demanded large quantities of chicha. From ethnographic observations, we know that chicha marks groups going off to war, occasions of group labor (house building, terrace construction, irrigation installation and maintenance, etc.), as well as births and funerals and other social gatherings and ceremonies. What kind of feasting occasions took place on the Yutopian landscape?
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64 Narrative
Where was Estructura Cuatro’s entranceway? After excavating Estructura 4, we still didn’t know how people entered and left the structure . . . or at least we hadn’t found a passage entranceway like those in Núcleo 1. The blocked stairway on the west side of the building (Bit 60), if that’s what it was, had been put out of use in any case, so what did people use in the later phase of occupation? We had noted three informal but very deliberate stepping stones built into the structure’s east wall (Bit 55); these were shallow stone slabs inserted into the wall, 20 cm above one another (Fig. 90). But the doorway itself was defined only by a 45 cm gap in the uppermost wall course above the steps, undistinguished by portal stones or walls. Then, as a small crew began work in the patio outside the structure (Bit 65), the buried passage entranceway of Estructura 4 began to appear, obscured until now by fill and tumbled rocks. (Most improbably, a com-
Figure 90. Entranceway steps on east wall of Estructura 4 leading into Estructura 5. 222
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Where was Estructura Cuatro’s entranceway?
plete conana and mano lay above this and to one side.) The excavated passageway was defined by a stone wall on the north and a vertical cut into bedrock on the south, with a bedrock “floor” between them extending from the structure’s doorway 125 cm to the east; the two halves of a broken conana lay inverted within its upper levels (Figs. 91, 92). There
Figure 91. Partially excavated entranceway of Estructura 4 showing Unit 341 (excavated to 50 cm) and Unit 342 (excavated to 90 cm). An inverted broken conana is in situ. Arrow points north.
Figure 92. Broken entranceway conana, Estructura 4. This grinding stone is unique at Yutopian for its deep trough shape but conforms to the many cutanas from the site of Cardonal (see Bit 94 and Figure 129). 223
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was little material in the passageway itself, but at 81–85 cm depth and just outside the end of the entranceway on the north side was a carefully placed pile of camelid (llama?) bones: two complete leg bones, a rib and a kneecap, with two more indistinct camelid bone fragments beneath those, all covered horizontally by an undamaged camelid scapula. This well-constructed bone pile sat in a pit of dark stained earth directly on the bedrock with bits of charcoal and burnt bone around them, together with a piece of red ochre. Although it was shorter, the passage entranceway of Estructura 4 was every bit as formal as those observed in Estructuras 1 and 2 (see Bit 77), and this was clearly the entranceway that people had used when the upper occupation level and hearth were in use; it allowed plenty of room to step onto the floor without walking into the hearth, and like the hearth it had remained intact without further remodeling. On the other hand, this newly discovered passage entranceway was incompatible with the use of the earlier buried hearth which lay only 10 cm inside the east wall and was positioned directly at the bottom of the entrance stairs; early people would have had to step directly into the hearth! How had people entered Estructura 4 during the earlier occupation when the lower hearth was in use? It was only after leaving the field that I wondered more about this. It seemed probable that the earlier entranceway must have been on the west side of the structure, and I recalled the differentiated segment of the west wall with dressed stones laid out horizontally and niches set into the upper courses . . . where we had made no connection with entranceways. But now, staring at the photographs, it suddenly seemed clear: the west wall showed a complicated architectural feature that includes a meter-wide staircase: the first step into the structure was actually the upper course of the structure wall, and from there two more steps descend to the freestanding dressed stone placed carefully in front of the wall at its base (Figs. 76 and 93). Four levels down: ground surface, wall, dressed stone block, and floor of structure. This wide staircase was set back slightly from the interior wall like an alcove, with a right angle at each end of the wall to mark the “stair.” Subsequently a large dressed, rectangular stone, probably taken from elsewhere, had been placed horizontally to block the “wall stair,” creating more of a vertical wall and making the staircase dysfunctional. As with Estructuras 3 and 11, the later residents of Estructura 4 refashioned the position and character of the building’s entranceways. In fact, this seemed so obvious that I was puzzled when Cristina flatly rejected my argument. None of my reasoning or my reference to the empirical data was convincing to her for this early/late shift in how the structure was entered, first on the west and then on the east. I suppose she dis224
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Figure 93. Segment of Estructura 4 west wall, showing a possible set of steps into the structure later blocked by the horizontal placement of a dressed stone block. Other features of this complex remodeling are also puzzling.
trusted positing an entrance that did not come in from the patio, which this one would not have done. Plus the “staircase” I argued for was a complex architectural arrangement not found in the other structures. But that wasn’t said, and I found it amusing that the co-directors who had worked together for eight years, who had been on-site together and working on the same set of structures, would see seemingly straightforward architectural reconstructions in such different lights. Then I sat with the data and reviewed it some more, and my subsequent interpretation of events surrounding Estructura 4’s doorways (see Bit 67) vindicates Cristina and her hesitancy to accept a simple shift in entrances from the west to the east. It now seems apparent that what was once a larger Estructura 4 must have been remodeled and reduced in size by moving the east wall in toward the center of the structure, and with it the new (upper) hearth was also rebuilt closer toward the new center of the structure (and not placed directly over the old hearth). In this case, there is no need to look for a different early entrance into the structure. Yes, as the east wall now stands, the passageway entrance accommodates the later occupants but leaves early occupants stepping into their poorly placed hearth. And yes, there is an odd arrangement of stones and stairs in the west wall of the structure; we don’t understand 225
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these well. But once we established that the east wall had been rebuilt to make the structure smaller, then clearly the early entrance, perhaps eradicated or maybe an earlier form of the passageway, must also have been on the east side and further away from where the early hearth still sits. And everyone’s feet are unscathed.
65 Episode
Searching for Cinco and Núcleo Dos After excavating Estructura 4, we really wanted to find the rest of Núcleo 2—that is to say, a second patio group that integrated Estructura 4 with at least one other structure or perhaps with an enclosed patio. We still thought of the núcleo as the basic residential unit and wanted a comparison with Núcleo 1 for size, numbers of rooms, room functions, material distributions and so on. The open area adjacent and east of Estructura 4 measured about 9 × 12 m and together with Estructura 4 was roughly the same size as Núcleo 1. With a certain amount of wishful thinking we called this area “the patio of Núcleo 2” or “Estructura 5” (Figs. 94, 95). But while several wall segments clearly curved away from the east and southeast walls of Estructura 4, these did not completely enclose or surround a space, either at the scale of an individual structure or at a larger scale to define a patio. Opposite Estructura 4, on the eastern perimeter of “the patio,” a few large boulders created an incomplete and confusing curved line that could have been built into or up against, and by connecting the stones in the mind’s eye, it was possible to envision a large enclosure. We hoped that portions of walls were partially buried and that additional enclosures could be located and brought to light. In total, we excavated 27 m2, or just one-fourth of the Núcleo 2 area. We focused our search first on Estructura 5. On the surface a double row of stones followed the east wall of Estructura 4; we had seen this in other parts of the site, where a structure would run a double wall for a length of one side, and here it was again. We already had some clues about what we might find from Pozo de Prueba 13 in 1994; the test pit had struck slanted bedrock at 30 cm, but its west side (the side closest 226
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these well. But once we established that the east wall had been rebuilt to make the structure smaller, then clearly the early entrance, perhaps eradicated or maybe an earlier form of the passageway, must also have been on the east side and further away from where the early hearth still sits. And everyone’s feet are unscathed.
65 Episode
Searching for Cinco and Núcleo Dos After excavating Estructura 4, we really wanted to find the rest of Núcleo 2—that is to say, a second patio group that integrated Estructura 4 with at least one other structure or perhaps with an enclosed patio. We still thought of the núcleo as the basic residential unit and wanted a comparison with Núcleo 1 for size, numbers of rooms, room functions, material distributions and so on. The open area adjacent and east of Estructura 4 measured about 9 × 12 m and together with Estructura 4 was roughly the same size as Núcleo 1. With a certain amount of wishful thinking we called this area “the patio of Núcleo 2” or “Estructura 5” (Figs. 94, 95). But while several wall segments clearly curved away from the east and southeast walls of Estructura 4, these did not completely enclose or surround a space, either at the scale of an individual structure or at a larger scale to define a patio. Opposite Estructura 4, on the eastern perimeter of “the patio,” a few large boulders created an incomplete and confusing curved line that could have been built into or up against, and by connecting the stones in the mind’s eye, it was possible to envision a large enclosure. We hoped that portions of walls were partially buried and that additional enclosures could be located and brought to light. In total, we excavated 27 m2, or just one-fourth of the Núcleo 2 area. We focused our search first on Estructura 5. On the surface a double row of stones followed the east wall of Estructura 4; we had seen this in other parts of the site, where a structure would run a double wall for a length of one side, and here it was again. We already had some clues about what we might find from Pozo de Prueba 13 in 1994; the test pit had struck slanted bedrock at 30 cm, but its west side (the side closest 226
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Figure 94. Map of Núcleo 2 showing Estructura 4 and the much-sought-after Estructura 5.
Figure 95. Relationship of Estructura 4 (right) and Estructura 5 (left) before the passageway entrance between them had been excavated.
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to Estructura 4) was going deeper than our test area had allowed us to follow. As we worked now, the “double wall” of Estructura 4 proved not to have substantial depth below the surface-visible stones, reaching only 20–30 cm below ground surface. Below this we found first one pit and then another overlapping pit where we had expected to encounter bedrock (37 cm), but the pits continued much deeper, containing food remains and broken pottery, lithic debitage and a lot of charcoal. Even closer to Estructura 4 the pits became larger, more complex and unbounded, and we were forced to think of this now as a deep trench that followed the east wall of Estructura 4, reaching 70 and 80 cm depths in places. None of this was what we expected from a “patio,” but at the same time 70 cm was too shallow to be a separate house (the soughtafter Estructura 5), although the saucer-shaped floors showed less depth at their perimeters. Immediately adjacent to the eastern entranceway into Estructura 4, depths of Estructura 5 reached as deep as the bedrock floor of Estructura 4, around 90 cm. In the confusion of undulating bedrock depths and possible pits or trenches just outside Estructura 4 we hardly expected to find indications of stable occupancy. So as Federico and I were working outside the south entranceway stones of Estructura 4, we were unprepared to find a large intact conana with its mano still in its trough-like stone concavity, a small stone wedged under one corner to level it and broken pieces of two other mano stones nearby. At 55 cm, this was considerably higher than Formative living floors and much higher than the Estructura 4 floor with its tri-lobate hearth. Yet by its side were two polished punctate sherds that corresponded to the same Río Diablo jar as the one inside Estructura 4 next to the hearth. These inside-outside working surfaces must have been contemporaneous, sharing parts of the same pot and also sharing the plentiful chañar fruit that abounded both inside and outside. Apparently the higher conana-bearing surface was a remnant or a re-creation of a new patio, consolidated on top of excavated and refilled earth. The conanas of Núcleo 1 had all been located inside structures, and no conanas were recovered from its patio . . . but here in Núcleo 2 no conanas had been found in Estructura 4, while an apparently related conana lay just outside the structure on the higher (patio?) surface. Away from the external east wall of Estructura 4, other parts of the Núcleo 2 patio showed shallow soil above bedrock (~35 cm), similar to the patio of Núcleo 1. We only located one significant pit isolated in almost the dead center of the open space. It had been shaped to leave a lip of bedrock around its upper perimeter and was further defined by a line of stones around the west side of the opening. Like the other pits, it was full of garbage (large amounts of carbon, quirquincho plates 228
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Figure 96. Pit between Units 346 and 349 in Estructura 5.
and large camelid bone fragments); it also contained polished Formative ceramics and a Formative obsidian projectile point, all covered with an inverted broken conana on top. Its original function, obscured by the fill and garbage, was revealed below the garbage when four large stones were found lodged at the bottom (Fig. 96), similar perhaps to the pot-holding stones in the hearths of Estructuras 1 and 4 but with no carbon at this depth. At some point, the lip-ringed pit in the center of the Núcleo 2 area apparently served as a support for a sturdy central vertical post, a roof support most likely (see Bit 91 for a parallel feature at Cardonal). The envisioned perimeter of Núcleo 2 was equally puzzling. On the far (east) side against the loosely aligned boulders, gaps in the wall alignment were accounted for by clearly toppled stones; a solid wall segment had once stood there. A shallow scatter of broken artifacts littered the surface inside this wall down to 20–30 cm, and a still-descending pit under the horizontal toppled stone yielded bone fragments from a 46 cm depth, making us think perhaps it was a structure excavated into the bedrock. But ultimately there were no significant concentrations of finds or bedrock excavations (for house structures) here. In the end, neither Estructura 5 nor Núcleo 2 ever materialized in any clear fashion, and we couldn’t define continuous walls or enclosures for any additional patio group structures (or for the patio), although struc229
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Figure 97. Excavations in Units 345 and 348 revealed a broad pit excavated below a pair of upright portal stones that once defined a doorway into Estructura 5.
tural parts were there. Importantly, a prominent doorway once stood in the southeast segment of the inconclusive perimeter wall, and it could have defined the entrance onto a patio (Fig. 97); it was marked by a pair of large portal stones (one fallen) at the end of a long curved intact wall segment that tied continuously back to Estructura 4. But no wall continued on the other side of the doorway—just a few isolated surface stones— and the doorway didn’t lead in or out of any recognizable structure, nor did it help to define the patio enclosure. Where we might have envisioned the portal as the last remnant of an original enclosure, we found instead that the portal had been constructed later, erected over pit fill that yielded one of the earliest 14C dates in the northern sector of the site. We had to concede defeat; there was no recognizable Estructura 5 or Núcleo 2. But even though we found no additional structures—and whether or not this had once been a patio—the lesson we took from this area was this: the Early Formative at Yutopian represents significant time, lasting several centuries and allowing for many architectural modifications and much rebuilding (without indications that the area was reoccupied or used after the Early Formative). Pits were dug into preexisting pits, portals erected over pits, stones removed and toppled from continuous walls, the toppled ones then used as Pachamama sites and for new enclosures, all still in the Early Formative. These chang230
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ing arrangements must have corresponded to social changes as well, with changing population size and structure, customs and politics. The search for Estructura 5 reminds us that the remarkable preservation and stability of Núcleo 1 and Estructura 4 in the northern sector of Yutopian are themselves anomalies in having withstood change—stopped in time. Instead of being taken as the standard of Early Formative life, the unchanged parts of the site should be treated suspiciously and raise questions: Why were they maintained so carefully? Why were they never reoccupied? But whatever the story, we weren’t pleased to find the more representative and characteristic story of transpiring Formative time, the puzzling area we called Estructura 5.
66 3 basalt unifacial flakes 3 basalt microflakes 1 ceramic disk 1 polished black ceramic bottle rim 2 chunks of green clay 2 coarse undecorated micaceous sherds
Raw data
Inventory of special finds from Estructura Cinco Table 11. Inventory of special finds from Estructura 5 Special Find No. 203 215 251 205 202 216 207 234 219 232 217 246 245
Unit
Level
Material
Description
342 343 343 348 343 341 342 349 341 341 348 344 342
10–20 cm 10–20 cm 10–20 cm 20–30 cm 30–40 cm 30–40 cm 40–50 cm 48 cm 60–70 cm 60–70 cm 70–80 cm 70–80 cm 80–90 cm
lithic ceramic ceramic ceramic ceramic lithic ceramic lithic bone lithic lithic ceramic ceramic
projectile point—basalt spoon fragment clay tube fragment (pipe?) Condorhuasi rim sherd grey incised sherd projectile point—obsidian grey incised jar sherd projectile point—obsidian modified scapula tool polished pendant projectile point—obsidian (abraded) clay tube fragment (pipe?) clay tube fragment (pipe?)
231
Table 12. Comparative characteristics of Yutopian structures Est. 1 Hearth gero pages new3.indd 231 (clay lined)
1
Est. 2
Est. 3
Patio
Est. 4 Upper 1
Est. 4 Lower 1
Est. 5
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ing arrangements must have corresponded to social changes as well, with changing population size and structure, customs and politics. The search for Estructura 5 reminds us that the remarkable preservation and stability of Núcleo 1 and Estructura 4 in the northern sector of Yutopian are themselves anomalies in having withstood change—stopped in time. Instead of being taken as the standard of Early Formative life, the unchanged parts of the site should be treated suspiciously and raise questions: Why were they maintained so carefully? Why were they never reoccupied? But whatever the story, we weren’t pleased to find the more representative and characteristic story of transpiring Formative time, the puzzling area we called Estructura 5.
66 3 basalt unifacial flakes 3 basalt microflakes 1 ceramic disk 1 polished black ceramic bottle rim 2 chunks of green clay 2 coarse undecorated micaceous sherds
Raw data
Inventory of special finds from Estructura Cinco Table 11. Inventory of special finds from Estructura 5 Special Find No. 203 215 251 205 202 216 207 234 219 232 217 246 245
Unit
Level
Material
Description
342 343 343 348 343 341 342 349 341 341 348 344 342
10–20 cm 10–20 cm 10–20 cm 20–30 cm 30–40 cm 30–40 cm 40–50 cm 48 cm 60–70 cm 60–70 cm 70–80 cm 70–80 cm 80–90 cm
lithic ceramic ceramic ceramic ceramic lithic ceramic lithic bone lithic lithic ceramic ceramic
projectile point—basalt spoon fragment clay tube fragment (pipe?) Condorhuasi rim sherd grey incised sherd projectile point—obsidian grey incised jar sherd projectile point—obsidian modified scapula tool polished pendant projectile point—obsidian (abraded) clay tube fragment (pipe?) clay tube fragment (pipe?)
231
Table 12. Comparative characteristics of Yutopian structures Est. 1 Hearth gero pages new3.indd 231 (clay lined)
1
Est. 2
Est. 3
Patio
Est. 4 Upper 1
Est. 4 Lower 1
Est. 5
Est. 11 8/20/15 9:11 AM
raw data
The three clay tube fragments (possibly pieces of pipes) came from three adjacent excavation units clustered around the outside southeast corner of Estructura 4. Inside Estructura 4, the only recovered tube fragments were from the western side of the structure. The four projectile points were more widely distributed.
67 Narrative
Radical remodeling in Núcleo Dos Taking what we learned from excavating Estructura 4, and adding what emerged from trying (but failing) to incorporate Estructura 4 into a larger patio group, we recognize significant change in the spatial and architectural arrangements in this northernmost part of the site. I divide the changes into two phases, relying on 14C dates (see Bit 72) to complement the archaeological observations. Phase 1. The area we investigated as Estructura 5 presents the earliest use of the northernmost area of the site, with a 14C date of 1820 + 100 BP taken from the southwest segment of the perimeter wall below the formal portal, and another date approximately 100 years later, 1730 + 90 BP, from the fill of the central, timber-supporting pit of Estructura 5. Both dates are from pits that were in use well before Estructura 4 was occupied, but we have little idea of the contexts of these pits at the time. Phase 2. The second suite of tightly clustered 14C dates falls about one hundred years later. These dates are too close to be reliably sequenced; they all refer either to the Estructura 4 upper and lower hearths (1640 + 60 BP, 1630 + 60 BP, and 1610 + 60 BP), or to the area immediately outside (east of ) Estructura 4 where the bedrock had also been deeply excavated (1600 + 80 BP and 1670 + 90 BP). What is fascinating here is the rapid change surrounding Estructura 4 just at the end of the Formative occupation of Yutopian. On the ground the sequence might have looked like this: The stand-alone Estructura 4 was excavated as a semi-subterranean structure after the associated Estructura 5 area, with its portaled entrance232
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raw data
The three clay tube fragments (possibly pieces of pipes) came from three adjacent excavation units clustered around the outside southeast corner of Estructura 4. Inside Estructura 4, the only recovered tube fragments were from the western side of the structure. The four projectile points were more widely distributed.
67 Narrative
Radical remodeling in Núcleo Dos Taking what we learned from excavating Estructura 4, and adding what emerged from trying (but failing) to incorporate Estructura 4 into a larger patio group, we recognize significant change in the spatial and architectural arrangements in this northernmost part of the site. I divide the changes into two phases, relying on 14C dates (see Bit 72) to complement the archaeological observations. Phase 1. The area we investigated as Estructura 5 presents the earliest use of the northernmost area of the site, with a 14C date of 1820 + 100 BP taken from the southwest segment of the perimeter wall below the formal portal, and another date approximately 100 years later, 1730 + 90 BP, from the fill of the central, timber-supporting pit of Estructura 5. Both dates are from pits that were in use well before Estructura 4 was occupied, but we have little idea of the contexts of these pits at the time. Phase 2. The second suite of tightly clustered 14C dates falls about one hundred years later. These dates are too close to be reliably sequenced; they all refer either to the Estructura 4 upper and lower hearths (1640 + 60 BP, 1630 + 60 BP, and 1610 + 60 BP), or to the area immediately outside (east of ) Estructura 4 where the bedrock had also been deeply excavated (1600 + 80 BP and 1670 + 90 BP). What is fascinating here is the rapid change surrounding Estructura 4 just at the end of the Formative occupation of Yutopian. On the ground the sequence might have looked like this: The stand-alone Estructura 4 was excavated as a semi-subterranean structure after the associated Estructura 5 area, with its portaled entrance232
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way, had already been in use for at least 200 years. At first it was a larger structure than what we observe today because the bedrock east of (outside) the east wall of Estructura 4 had been dug nearly to the same depth as the structure itself and was full of dense artifact and plant remains, animal bone and remains of ephemeral fires—indeed the same fill as occurred inside the structure and extended under the east wall. Clearly Estructura 4 had once been larger and had included, as part of the saucershaped floor and interior space, the additional area of excavated bedrock and dense artifact fill that now lay outside the structure. Apparently, even then it was a solitary structure with a passage entranceway into what we imagine as a patio. Only a short time later Estructura 4 was reduced in size so that its hearth was no longer in the middle of the floor but now lay very close to the east wall. Six large cooking pots were smashed on the reduced floor (they do not extend under the new east wall), surely with pomp and ceremony of some sort. It seems likely that the cache pit was introduced at this point also since it is centrally positioned in the new (smaller) footprint of the structure, although it might have been part of the larger original structure. Then a new floor was laid down on top of the earlier one, and a new hearth was installed in the middle of the new upper floor. Fancy ceramics of different Formative styles started to be used in the structure in conjunction with the new hearth, and eight lapis lazuli beads were introduced into the building at some point, probably when the structure was its present, smaller size since no beads were recovered from the deep levels of the original, larger structure. The shape of the later, smaller remodeled structure was more square than round, and the new (straighter) wall on the east was stabilized by packing fill around the outside to the level of the ground surface. Earlier pits disappeared under this introduced fill soil, and a new patio surface was established on top of the fill, where a grinding stone was placed above the old entranceway. Interior steps were incorporated into the remodeled east wall. In the southwest of the structure, the original rounded shape of the exterior wall was brought in sharply to a right angle as part of the incorporation of horizontal oblongs into the west wall, where previously only rounded field cobbles had been used. This maneuver left another patch of once-interior space now outside the structure’s walls, resulting in the surface fill here including important finds like the piece of copper wire and bits of ceramic tube. Meanwhile, what was going on in the Estructura 5 area? Had it already lost its continuous walls and stranded the portal in a state of dysfunction, perhaps using some of these stones in the Estructura 4 modifications? Or was the portal and a patio wall only erected now in honor of 233
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the modernization of Estructura 4 (and leaving the subsequent robbing of the patio wall to a later period of site reoccupation)? I honestly don’t know how to answer this. But it seems certain that these intense Estructura 4 developments at the end of the Formative occupation of Yutopian are important, not because they produced a particularly noteworthy building, but because much effort was expended and then expended again to produce them. What was so important to get right? What effect or function had to be created now, that hadn’t been necessary before? What community outcome, or whose reputation, was at stake? I doubt these remodeling decisions were made by a single individual who forced everyone else to undertake the labor, but how was labor recruited for these efforts? Why did the project appeal to the interests of the community? We confront alternative scenarios as to how the Estructura 4 occupants (or brewer/s or ritual manager/s) defined and promoted her/his/ their new roles . . . or which interest groups promoted it and why . . . and which social forces might have resisted and opposed its installation. Let me rough out two nonexclusive scenarios: 1. We can speculate, based on the similarities between Estructuras 1 and 4, that the prominent household that occupied the Núcleo 1 structures changed residences, pushed further north (and up) the ridgetop into greater prominence, and put themselves in charge of wider ritual events, carrying forward many of the same ritual elements and practices. Alternatively, a household that had previously occupied the elusive Estructura 5 now intensified (and erased) their earlier activities, offering competing/augmenting rituals that promised to bring greater communal benefit all around. 2. More likely, the remodeling activity around Estructura 4 and Estructura 5 was not tied to the decisions or actions of a single household but emerged out of community growth and/or restructuring, maybe even in relation to the wider population of the Valle del Cajón. This might assume that the north plaza patio was restructured at this time using the stones from Estructura 5 for rebuilding, and underscoring greater participation in community events and rituals. Many scenarios are possible, each requiring negotiating actions to be undertaken with pre-existing habitual practices. And this brings us back to the intoxicating beverages and ritual provisioning, explored further in Bit 68.
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Estructura Cuatro—Ritual and quotidian
68 Argument
Estructura Cuatro: Ritual and quotidian We struggled for a long time with the functions and meanings of Estructura 4 as it was last occupied at Yutopian. It is undoubtedly an unusual structure, the highest on the Yutopian ridgetop, higher than Núcleo 1, and the last building on the site as you move north before reaching the open plaza at the north end (ultimately the highest elevation). It is smaller than other residential structures and was never one of a cluster of structures around a patio (a proper núcleo) although it may have been attached to a patio at some point in its life. It had been rebuilt at least twice in the Formative (unlike Estructura 11, which was remodeled and reoccupied only several centuries after the Formative, and unlike the Núcleo 1 structures, which were never formally rebuilt). It is tempting to argue that Estructura 4 (and here I mean the latest, upper occupation) served a predominantly nonutilitarian function, dedicated to the culinary production and serving of a special beverage with ceremonial meanings and ritual character. Certainly the formal architecture of the south wall—together with the decorated serving vessels, the formal and elaborate tri-lobate hearth, the dense remains of maize and chañar (both ingredients for intoxicating beverages) and the dedicatory cache—point to a special function for this specially located building. This exciting and altogether plausible interpretation then characterizes Yutopian as an unusual—almost unique—Formative village with evidence of nonresidential architectural components related to ritual feasting, which makes further sense insofar as the Formative community of Yutopian itself appeared (for a time) to be unusual in the Calchaquí Valley in its size and the nucleation of its structures, the intensity and diversity of its decorative pottery styles and lithic assemblages, and its remove from the primary agricultural lands on which it depended. To identify a ritual (nondomestic) structure at Yutopian would also serve the socio-political economy of research very conveniently. It would put our Yutopian project at the center of new interpretations of Formative ceremonialism and would raise Yutopian’s fundamental importance for understanding Formative developments. We could be famous! But without belying the significance of what was “discovered” at 235
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Yutopian—namely that Estructura 4 appears poised to have hosted ritual/ceremonial activities—I’m uncomfortable opposing “ritual/ ceremonial” to “quotidian/domestic” when we explain the function/s of Early Formative structures (Salazar et al. 2011). It is precisely because the Early Formative generally lacks a category of public or ceremonial buildings—because such structures aren’t known—that we should expect interhousehold “ritual” practices would be staged in houses and emerge out of domestic routines. Some rituals might take place around events that define and redefine social membership in the community— births, deaths, coming of age to undertake specific new roles—while others might celebrate the completion of work necessary to community well-being. Some rituals mark seasonal changes and usher in— or close down—the agricultural cycle. Sometimes nonhuman powers are invoked: thunder or fire or celestial bodies. The specific beliefs and exact occasions are hard for us to know, but rituals with sacred meanings can take place in many kinds of settings, and at Yutopian they clearly tie back to households. At these moments the space and the place, people and objects, food and drink together produce a nondomestic “sacred” moment (Salazar et al. 2011:22). We have already recognized ritualized events in Yutopian domestic structures, including the caching of implements and the pot smashing in Estructura 4. We have confronted a mix of “utilitarian” and “ideological” artifacts in other rooms, with votive ceramic llama figurines appearing together with scraping tools, and a hearth identified both with copper production and with poroto cooking beans. Less material-focused examples of “ideology” come to us from ethnographies of small-scale societies: incantations and libations, rituals attending house construction or the production of sacred objects (Dean and Kojan 2001:124). Sometimes these concern only the household residents while at other times the household ritual or ceremony might involve a wider audience. From the ceramic and organic contents of Estructura 4 we believe that ritual beverages were being prepared and served to a population larger than the number of people who “lived in” or had property rights attached to the specific structure, just as we suppose that drinks were prepared for a wider “public” in Estructura 1 at one time. Communal participation in a common festivity is a collective performance that consolidates the communal identity; the collective of community takes its meanings from such supra-household performances. Note that these performances are centered on domestic actions: brewing and drinking of specified beverages, as is regularly undertaken in the home but now is conducted by, or for, the wider community: the community has become an eating-together family. It is by collective action that people come to see themselves as related, united by action rather than blood. 236
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Estructura Cuatro—Ritual and quotidian
Yet this does not mean that other household functions in Estructura 4 had to cease. It is entirely possible that sometimes community drinks were prepared here, while at other times the structure functioned as a purely domestic setting.
69 Narrative
A lab for all reasons In late June of 1999, Cristina and I and our students found our way to Santa María for a new Yutopian season, except this year we would not go to the site. Cristina brought her student specialists from La Plata: Andrés for the bones (see Bit 82) and Fabiana (see Bit 83) for ceramics. Jessica and Alana arrived from the United States with less experience but much dedication. Mabel (Elsa) Mamani joined the project from Salta to help out and learn about lithics. We were generously offered a home on a hill above Santa María in the municipal campground, where we also set up a “lab,” mostly outdoors on picnic tables. It was time for an intensive, systematic analysis of material from Yutopian based on our accumulated knowledge and questions. After each field season we had spent a few weeks in Santa María, cataloging and studying the season’s finds and putting the collections in order, but we needed a larger overview. The materials from the first part of the 1994 field season, including from the test pits and the northern excavation units of Estructura 1, had been stored in the provincial capital of Catamarca and were now brought to Santa María to join the rest of our collection, unifying the Estructura 1 assemblage and combining test pit finds with the other material from the same locations. New, small special finds were recognized and recovered from general bags of excavated artifacts, and artifact groupings were photographed. Classification criteria and sorting standards were made uniform where these had previously varied somewhat year to year. Most significantly, we prioritized what we could and would study and what, regretfully, would be put back in storage, under-analyzed. Every bag from every year was placed by material and site location 237
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Estructura Cuatro—Ritual and quotidian
Yet this does not mean that other household functions in Estructura 4 had to cease. It is entirely possible that sometimes community drinks were prepared here, while at other times the structure functioned as a purely domestic setting.
69 Narrative
A lab for all reasons In late June of 1999, Cristina and I and our students found our way to Santa María for a new Yutopian season, except this year we would not go to the site. Cristina brought her student specialists from La Plata: Andrés for the bones (see Bit 82) and Fabiana (see Bit 83) for ceramics. Jessica and Alana arrived from the United States with less experience but much dedication. Mabel (Elsa) Mamani joined the project from Salta to help out and learn about lithics. We were generously offered a home on a hill above Santa María in the municipal campground, where we also set up a “lab,” mostly outdoors on picnic tables. It was time for an intensive, systematic analysis of material from Yutopian based on our accumulated knowledge and questions. After each field season we had spent a few weeks in Santa María, cataloging and studying the season’s finds and putting the collections in order, but we needed a larger overview. The materials from the first part of the 1994 field season, including from the test pits and the northern excavation units of Estructura 1, had been stored in the provincial capital of Catamarca and were now brought to Santa María to join the rest of our collection, unifying the Estructura 1 assemblage and combining test pit finds with the other material from the same locations. New, small special finds were recognized and recovered from general bags of excavated artifacts, and artifact groupings were photographed. Classification criteria and sorting standards were made uniform where these had previously varied somewhat year to year. Most significantly, we prioritized what we could and would study and what, regretfully, would be put back in storage, under-analyzed. Every bag from every year was placed by material and site location 237
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around a large room: bones with bones, stones with stones. Andrés and Fabiana worked systematically through the ceramics and bones, drawing profiles and measuring, classifying. The others worked on lithics, sorting them by raw materials and then by size categories, separating tools from flakes. Here is where we first saw that chalcedony and obsidian had exclusive distributions by patio groups; here is where we learned what kinds of ceramic vessels were distributed on which floors. Now we found cross-mends where pieces of the same ceramic vessels could be united, sometimes even when they had been recovered from different structures (Bit 86). We drew the projectile points and slate knives from across the site on huge charts by depth and structure to get an overview of the distributions of different styles (Figs. 112 and 114), and we reconstructed vessels from fragmented sherds. The results of our 1999 analysis season are integrated into our understandings of the site at various points, so I am spared writing them out here. Suffice it to say that although we accomplished a lot, there were many other studies of the excavated material that we could have undertaken had time and expertise, and facilities and funding, been sufficient. For instance, we could have systematically sampled residues from inside ceramic vessels, sourced the clays and raw stone from quarries in the region, undertaken use-wear analysis on stone tool edges, analyzed changes in cooking pot dimensions over time and in different use contexts, plotted the use of different ceramic vessel types by levels in each house, and so on. In the end, six weeks wasn’t enough. We inventoried and repacked all the bags in their sturdy wooden crates and stored them “permanently” in the museum storehouse. I don’t believe they have been touched since. There is a larger issue here. Our research project has done well publishing its results, but the collections are still understudied and sit inert on museum floors and shelves, like thousands of such collections stashed in museums and warehouses around the world. This problem is especially acute when guest researchers (like me) don’t provide for the curation of their collections, leaving them poorly organized in deteriorating containers, steadily losing information. But the crisis of curation exists everywhere, and I have argued (Gero 1985) that maybe we should dig less and spend more time studying the artifacts, which bears repeating here.
238
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Yutopian in the community
70 Socio-politics
Yutopian in the community After several field seasons, and after offering scholarly talks at Argentinean and North American conferences, we (or I) were forced to confront an uncomfortable reality about our project. The Chailes, owners of the Yutopian land, participated in all our field and lab operations, and we shared details about Yutopian on a daily basis as we ate and slept in the same house (their house). But while we lived fully in the tiny community of Yutopian for months over a span of years, sharing drinking water from irrigation ditches and risking mal de chagas1 from vinchucas insects in the adobe walls, our project was not carried out as a “community archaeology project.” In fact, community archaeology was still foreign to Andean research (Chávez 2008) and I, frankly, was unprepared to initiate it. Our project was academically driven, designed and conducted by university professors and researchers, and devoid, for the most part, of community input. To varying degrees, community archaeology projects grow directly out of community interests (Colwell-Chanthaphonh and Ferguson 2008; Loring 2000; Peck, Siegfried and Oetelaar 2003) and proceed in such a way that the production and consumption of knowledge remain local. We had arrived unannounced and unknown out of nowhere, and it would have seemed insincere and improbable to propose an archaeological partnership with our hosts for this new undertaking. From the start we were good colonialists. When we arrived, there was no electricity anywhere in the Valle del Cajón, so we cooked, ate and read by oil lamps and candles, and used headlamps for getting around in the dark. But as the project grew we needed to computerize the finds register and field catalog (Fig. 98), and we wanted to video our work, which meant recharging batteries. So in 1996 we brought in, by mule, two solar panels (donated by South Carolina Electric and Gas) and a big boat battery, and we installed them on Jorge’s sunny roof, running wires inside in the new adobe building and outside to his older building to provide current for both structures; the reliably sunny days gave us power every night. Later we brought in solar reflector ovens which, 239
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Figure 98. Solar power arrived in 1996 and provided light and computer juice for Joan and Rachel.
although they heated slowly, required no firewood for cooking. They roasted our dinners while we dug as long as the roosters were kept away, and our hosts were happy to own them later. We never initiated deep discussions about community perceptions of history and heritage, the value put upon the site and on old things generally, although we regularly consulted with lugareños about functions and arrangements of artifacts and features. We opened each field season with a little party for everyone within horse-riding distance, explaining our goals and displaying our finds. How much we contributed to a local appreciation or understanding of Yutopian’s history for the families who lived within sight of the ruins remains conjectural (for us). But over the years we recognized an increased obligation to share the goals and results of our project more widely, not because the valley 240
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Yutopian in the community
population “owned” this past as a timeless Indian people (in fact, we knew many local people whose parents had come from distant places), and not because the prehistory of “Indians” belongs exclusively to Indians. Rather, our obligations arose because we had been traipsing through people’s backyards for years, imposing on their local expertise and sometimes on their food stores, and not explaining our actions sufficiently. We also felt obligations to the regional seat of power, Santa María, where bureaucratic authority linked our work to the province and ultimately to Buenos Aires, and where the greatest curiosity about “what lay over the hills” might reside. We thought of helping the underfunded regional museum, and after giving public talks there, we came up with a classically colonial idea of producing postcards for them. Back in the United States I selected three archaeological photographs: one showing a Santamariana funerary urn from the museum, one of an especially whimsical Condorhuasi animal pot from the Berlin Museum of Völkerkunde, and finally a pleasing vista of the local archaeological site of Cerro Pintado. For not much money these images were transformed into postcards with Spanish descriptions and a line associating them with the Museo Provincial Arqueológico “Eric Boman.” I brought 3000 postcards down with me in 1998, a gift to the museum to sell at full profit while raising awareness of the rich archaeological heritage of the region. But good intentions were compromised by the quality of the printing company I fell in with, plus I underestimated the problem of illustrating a German-owned Condorhuasi vessel on a postcard for an Argentinean museum, where the director worried visitors might expect to see that specific pot in his museum. (I should have seen that one coming, but it was such a pleasing image!) The postcards were a limited success; I bet you can still buy them at the museum. We had other ideas as well. Among us in 1998 was Lauren Ebin, a talented yanqui who agreed to mount an exhibit on Yutopian in the Santa María archaeology museum. After the field season when we were back in Santa María analyzing artifacts, Lauren brought out her exhibit “kit,” selected artifacts from our collections, and created several story lines for a small exhibit in the main room of the museum: “¿Cómo reconocemos un sitio Formativo?” (How do we recognize a Formative site?), “¿Cómo era la vida contidiana?” (What was daily life like?), and “¿Quiénes vivieron en Yutopian?” (Who lived at Yutopian?). Thus one display case outlined Yutopian’s chronology based on artifacts, another addressed cooking and food processing, and the third showed all the pots and figurines with faces on them. A descriptive wall panel offered further information about now and then, us and them. The exhibit was 241
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celebrated with a crowded inauguration on June 22, 1998. School principals, church officials and several high school classes from Santa María attended, flowery speeches were made, festive food was served and the project was forefronted. (Although we were unable to get the Yutopian Chailes to attend the inauguration, we later heard that Jorge Chaile had come into Santa María and visited the museum, identifying himself to the director as the person in several of the photos.) Cristina and I and different crew members also gave talks in the local schools, and Jodi Barnes, at the request of a teacher, developed a packet of curriculum materials about archaeology, prehistory and Yutopian for the primary school in La Quebrada. On our last day in the field we held an open house with refreshments and all the season’s collections on display. It seems unlikely these efforts compensate the burdens (and pleasures?) we imposed on our Argentinean colleagues in exchange for the privilege and joy of unraveling their prehistory, even for the deep satisfaction of their friendships and companionability. Today I would go further. I would explore more self-consciously how archaeology can provide meaning and history to local people so that knowledge doesn’t disappear from the local landscape into books like this one. I would try to make our work at Yutopian relevant to the emerging Indigenous movement, where control over heritage can empower people’s self-image and contribute meaningfully to their lives. I would also insist that if I take an archaeological field school from my university to Northwest Argentina (as I did), and my university profits from this (as it did), the field school would be obliged (a) to train some Argentinean students free of charge and (b) to share profits with a local Argentinean institution. Note 1. Named for the insects that reside in adobe house walls, the disease of chagas is widespread in the region and causes long-term problems with heart and liver function.
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71
4 basalt side-struck flakes 3 basalt unifacial flakes 3 basalt microflakes 1 ceramic disk 1 polished black ceramic bottle rim 2 chunks of green clay 2 coarse undecorated Yutopian, Argentineans micaceous sherds
RAW Data
Comparative characteristics of Yutopian structures To make sense of Formative would begin by summarizing and comparing salient features of the different structures to identify meaningful patterns and associations.
Table 12. Comparative characteristics of Yutopian structures Est. 1
Est. 2
Est. 3
Patio
Est. 4 Upper 1
Est. 4 Lower 1
Est. 5
Est. 11
yes
no 3 1 (in pit)
no
no
no
no 1
no
1 5 1 lapis 1 turq
7
3 1
12 ?
no
no
no??
no?
yes
yes yes
yes
yes
Hearth (clay lined) Scoria Conanas (whole)1 Candelaria jar
1
Llama figurine Copper (alloy)
1 flat piece 5 15 1 lapis
3 8 1 turq2
5 10 2 turq
yes
yes
(in pit)
yes ?
yes ?
Projectile points Slate knives Stone beads: tubular, lapis lazuli, flat round turquoise Condorhuasi Passage entryways Remodeled house features
yes 4 1
yes
2
flat piece 1 2
no
2 2 wires
7 lapis 1 turq
Note : In 9th row, tubular, lapis lazuli = lapis, and flat round turquoise = turq. The conana count does not include grinding stones rebuilt into structural walls or laid in entryways. Rather, these are counts only from occupation floors. 2 At least three more flat, round turquoise beads were recovered from the surface. 1
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Comparative characteristics of Yutopian structures
A few patterns are noticeable. The structures with formal hearths (Estructura 1 and the upper occupation floor of Estructura 4) are also the only structures with llama figurines and tubular stone beads (although many—not all— of the stone beads seem to have found their way down into the lower level, along the wall spaces). These same two occupation locations also seem to be where the Candelaria face neck bottles occur (the unique anthropomorphic face pots with tear lines and punctate eyebrows), although fragments of one of these was also recovered from the large pit feature in Estructura 3. Interestingly, these two occupations seem to have occurred about 100 years apart (Bit 72). However, a different pattern occurs with the conanas since whole conanas were located in both Estructuras 1 and 3, and another in “5” (in quotes because we could not conclude it was, in fact, a structure), but not in Estructura 4. Interestingly, no whole conanas were located in the patio areas where we might expect women to do their grinding. Projectile points and slate knives were found in most locations and have the least patterning of the major artifact groups.
72 raw Data
Radiocarbon chronology The chronology for Yutopian rests on thirteen 14C dates, all taken from charcoal samples and all run at the Beta Analytic laboratory. Table 13a1 presents the raw data: the standard radiometric counts arranged from earliest to latest. Here dates are given as years before present (BP). All calibrations were reset in 2012, resulting in slightly older dates. Table 13b spells out the date ranges as BP and converts them to BCE/ CE (before Common Era/Common Era) dates, again in 1-sigma and 2-sigma ranges for each date, again presenting them from earliest to latest, and locates each sample in the site. The single AMS date is shown in bold. Finally, we can arrange the 14C dates by sectors across the site (see Table 13c).
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Comparative characteristics of Yutopian structures
A few patterns are noticeable. The structures with formal hearths (Estructura 1 and the upper occupation floor of Estructura 4) are also the only structures with llama figurines and tubular stone beads (although many—not all— of the stone beads seem to have found their way down into the lower level, along the wall spaces). These same two occupation locations also seem to be where the Candelaria face neck bottles occur (the unique anthropomorphic face pots with tear lines and punctate eyebrows), although fragments of one of these was also recovered from the large pit feature in Estructura 3. Interestingly, these two occupations seem to have occurred about 100 years apart (Bit 72). However, a different pattern occurs with the conanas since whole conanas were located in both Estructuras 1 and 3, and another in “5” (in quotes because we could not conclude it was, in fact, a structure), but not in Estructura 4. Interestingly, no whole conanas were located in the patio areas where we might expect women to do their grinding. Projectile points and slate knives were found in most locations and have the least patterning of the major artifact groups.
72 raw Data
Radiocarbon chronology The chronology for Yutopian rests on thirteen 14C dates, all taken from charcoal samples and all run at the Beta Analytic laboratory. Table 13a1 presents the raw data: the standard radiometric counts arranged from earliest to latest. Here dates are given as years before present (BP). All calibrations were reset in 2012, resulting in slightly older dates. Table 13b spells out the date ranges as BP and converts them to BCE/ CE (before Common Era/Common Era) dates, again in 1-sigma and 2-sigma ranges for each date, again presenting them from earliest to latest, and locates each sample in the site. The single AMS date is shown in bold. Finally, we can arrange the 14C dates by sectors across the site (see Table 13c).
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RAW DATA RAW DATA
Table 13a. Calibrated 14C dates (BP) from Yutopian, arranged earliest to latest, given at 1-sigma and 2-sigma confidence levels
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Remodeled house features
?
?
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
Note : In 9th row, tubular, lapis lazuli = lapis, and flat round turquoise = turq. The conana count does not include grinding stones rebuilt into structural walls or laid in entryways. Rather, Radiocarbon these are counts only from occupation floors. chronology 2 At least three more flat, round turquoise beads were recovered from the surface. 1
{Table 13a can be found in the art folder} {Designer, please note: I wasn’t able to get rid of the shading in this table, but please remove it and just retain the boldface.}
Table 13b. Calibrated 14C dates from Yutopian showing their relationships to excavated structures Provenience
14
Estructura 4, upper floor (anomalous) Estructura 11, Formative level Pozo de Prueba 12E, Formative level Estructura 3, large central pit, lowest level Núcleo 2, below formal doorway Patio of Núcleo 1, lowest level Núcleo 2, central patio pit Estructura 1, occupation floor Núcleo 2, upper level adjacent to Est. 4 Estructura 2, occupation level Estructura 4, upper hearth levels (2–5) Estructura 4, lower floor/hearth Núcleo 2, pit adjacent to Estructura 4
C BP
Cal. 2 -BCE/CE -160–332 -58–381 69–380 89–405
Sample No.
1970±90 1940±90 1870±60 1830±60
Cal. 1 -BCE/CE 1–220 24–239 125–320 140–338
1820±100 1800±90 1730±90 1720±40
136–382 171–405 249–529 264–427
52–533 76–532 135–562 255–532
Beta 127010 Beta 127007 Beta 127011 Beta 203472
1670±90 1640±60 1630±60
342–549 414–545 420–550
238–623 336–608 343–613
Beta 127009 Beta 203474 Beta 95611
1610±90 1600±80
419–596 428–590
260–654 343–652
Beta 127005 Beta 127008
Beta 127006 Beta 95610 Beta 95608 Beta 95609
Table 13c. Distribution of 14C calibrated dates (BP) across Yutopian site sectors Levels 1–4 5 6 7 8 9 10 13/14 Pit into bedrock
Núcleo 1 Est. 1 Est. 2
Est. 3
Patio
Núcleo 2 Est. 4 Est. 5
Est. 11
1630±60 1970±90 1800±90
Off Sector PP 12 1870±60
1730±90 1820±100 1670±90
1720±40 1640±60
1610±90 1940±90 1830±60
1600±80
Table 14. Deposits associated with passageway entrances Estructura 1 200 cm long gero pages new3.indd 247
Estructura 2 180 cm long
Estructura 3 ramp and simple gap in structure wall
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RAW DATA
The intent was to consistently date Formative levels, especially where stylistically later materials had been deposited on top of earlier ones. Thus, both for Estructura 11 and for the carbon-rich Pozo de Prueba 12, we were careful to sample the lower levels to obtain dates that were clearly associated with the Formative occupations. Although the suite of Formative dates is satisfyingly tight, one date stands out here as clearly anomalous: the very early date of 1970 + 90 BP (or between 1 and 220 CE) from the upper floor of Estructura 4, which is both too early for the overall Yutopian sequence (it would be the earliest date from the site) and is dramatically compromised by the more recent date below it (Scattolin and Gero 1999). Since the upper floor of Estructura 4 sealed the tri-lobate hearth from the lower hearth, it is impossible for the upper floor date to be earlier than the lower hearth. We are left to explain this on the grounds of the ubiquitous rodent burrows and the introduction of older carbon into the level of the upper floor, or by chemical contamination of the sample. The other dates fall comfortably into four groups (while dates within each group are virtually interchangeable, given the confidence ranges for each time period): 1. 1940 + 90 BP and 1870 + 60 BP. Both of the earliest dates are from outside the northern sector. They represent the earliest Formative occupation of Yutopian in the central area of the site. 2. 1830 + 60 BP, 1820 + 100 BP, 1800 + 90 BP. These three dates represent pits and features within the northern sector but none were taken from occupation floors. The pits that these dates come from could have been associated with earlier structures, or else fill from earlier structures has been introduced into later structures in the northern part of the site. Note that one date is from just below the anomalous doorway of Estructura 5, which leads into no detectable structure or patio. 3. 1720 + 40 BP, 1730 + 90 BP. The extant structural layout of the northern sector of the site is represented by these dates, so they tell us when Núcleos 1 and 2, as we now recognize them, were occupied. Estructura 1 thus offers the earliest date for an occupation level since no other occupation floors date to this period. Only one other feature of the sector dates to this period, the central pit of Núcleo 2. 4. 1670 + 90 BP, 1640 + 60 BP, 1630 + 60 BP, 1610 + 90 BP, 1600 + 80 BP. These most recent dates correspond to the most intensive phase of occupation at the north end of the site: within a relatively brief span of less than a hundred years the lower and upper floors of Estructura 4 were used, remodeled and reused! Since these dates also corre248
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spond to the adjacent areas lying directly outside Estructura 4 on the other side of the wall, in the elusive Estructura 5, we also assume that the remodeling events that shrank Estructura 4 were taking place around these dates. At the same time, Estructura 2 shows material dated to this (later) time near the lowest levels of the floor; that date is probably the most surprising of all. Does this suite of dates match our expectations? I suppose not. We more or less took for granted that the northern area was part of a larger contemporaneous Formative occupation at Yutopian, and that Estructuras 1 and 2 were occupied earliest in the northern sector. Then we probably would have said that at some later date, around the time that Estructura 3 was remodeled, a second núcleo was established just a few meters to the north, with a more substantial time separation between the lower and upper occupations of that building. But our first expectations are readily shed and revised in light of the 14 C results. Suddenly the unfolding of events at Yutopian makes new and compelling sense. Of course the Formative period is long—several centuries; archaeologists have been giving this range of dates for decades. There is no real reason to expect a uniform or coeval settlement of all the Formative structures at Yutopian, although since we cannot seriate the Formative ceramic assemblage into shorter time spans, we tend to flatten it and make it a mere moment in time. And of course the extant structures of the northern sector at Yutopian are late and atypical of the rest of the Formative structures on the site; we selected them for excavation precisely because they were extraordinarily well preserved and intact, because they were not reoccupied and their earlier Formative occupation floors destroyed. Today, it is so easy to think: of course we should have known better. Note
1. I thank Axel Nielsen for his help in presenting the data in this format.
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73 Narrative
The Formative settlement at Yutopian During the Early Formative, Yutopian was a small village perched on an elongated hill. For its time it was unusually large, although Valle de Tafí also contained population pockets, and there appear to be contemporaneous villages nearby (e.g., Cardonal). But most Early Formative settlements were dispersed homesteads composed of a few agglutinated structures (typically without patios), adjoining corrals and walled gardens. From Pozo de Prueba 12 and Estructura 11 we know that semisubterranean residences with stone walls and thatch roofs covered a large portion of the Yutopian ridgetop during the first part of the Early
Figure 99. Artist’s reconstruction of Núcleo 1 at the north end of Yutopian ridge. 250
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The Formative settlement at Yutopian
Formative, suggesting roughly (from sketchy data) a population of perhaps some 100–150 people. Some residences may have stood abandoned, their roofs collapsing and filling with trash, just as others were established: births and deaths swelled and shrank households, and people changed their residential commitments. Small walled gardens were probably kept near homes (Bit 79) but we are hard pressed to tell whether the domesticated animals (llamas) were corralled on the hilltop or down below. Some Formative residences were clearly spread below the ridgetop, but we know little about these occupations. We don’t even know if house clusters with central patios (patio groups) were characteristic of many residential arrangements or whether this arrangement was exceptional in the northern area. In all our testing we never located discrete middens (Formative or otherwise), either between structures or on the eastern terraces. Observations on the steeper north and south faces of the ridge similarly showed no obvious midden deposits although trash (all organic!) was most likely thrown over the edge to create sheet midden deposits that were washed away in the northern arroyo during seasonal runoff. We do know that trash was allowed to accumulate in empty enclosures until the rooms were reoccupied and new floors laid down. Some two centuries after the midridge structures were first occupied, the Formative settlement at Yutopian spread northward on the ridgetop. Our earliest dates from the northern sector, the patio of Núcleo 1 and the earliest pit feature in Estructura 3, announce these next constructions, and there is simultaneous utilization of the area even further north where we dated two pit features in the open area we called “Estructura 5.” For several generations (about 100 years), Núcleo 1 was occupied and continued to evolve and expand until the final form of Núcleo 1 was achieved and the intact living floor of Estructura 1 was in use. Quite likely, the raised clay hearth had special functions at this time, together with an assemblage of material items that co-occur again in other locations at the site. The abandonment of the Estructura 1 occupation level—and of Núcleo 1 more generally—appears to have been sudden, with entire vessels left in place, tucked up against walls or lying on the floor. After that, the settlement moved north again. Our 14C dates suggest that just under 100 years elapsed before the construction and modifications of Estructura 4 were completed, but this is imprecise at best. We don’t know whether the carbon we retrieved from the occupation floor of Estructura 1 was from the very last fire, or whether the tightly clustered dates surrounding the modifications to Estructura 4 capture the first episodes of Estructura 4 construction. Given the dates we have, it is even possible that Estructura 4 more or less accompanied the abandonment of Núcleo 1 and directly replaced its function. It does seem certain that 251
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NARRATIVE
activities using much of the same material assemblage found in Estructura 1 were later carried out in Estructura 4. Some Early Formative features of Yutopian were clearly not residential. The broad leveled terrace that runs the length of the ridge on the east side was used not for housing but for agriculture, making us wonder why so much earth-moving energy was invested in garden plots when land below was abundant. Even further north, at the extreme northern tip of the ridgetop, a flat circular area 13 m in diameter had been laid out, defined by meter-high encircling stones placed with their dressed surfaces facing inward (Fig. 100). The ridge here is so narrow that the open circle occupies virtually its entire width, falling away on three sides but especially steeply toward the arroyo just beyond the north perimeter. Some of the perimeter stones have now fallen or appear casually skewed at odd angles, but their dressed forms and regular placement announce that they are part of a “public” area (Bit 74). The artificially leveled space can only be entered from the south by means of a narrow elevated causeway 10 m in length, also leveled, with a double retaining wall running along its east-
Figure 100. Yutopian’s plaza at the very northern end of the site. 252
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The Formative settlement at Yutopian
ern length to create a lower eastern terrace the length of the causeway. Where the causeway opens onto the plaza, a curious smaller, circular enclosure had been constructed in which we also placed a test pit. Our test pits in the plaza had little depth and we recovered few artifacts from either the test pits or the plaza surface, but the few diagnostic finds were all exclusively Early Formative. On other evidence as well, I am confident assigning the plaza to the Early Formative and associating it with the structures in the northern sector of the site. Not only does the plaza lie close to the Formative structures and connect to them by means of the causeway, but the standing stones are fashioned and placed very similarly to the large portal stones in Estructura 1 and “Estructura 5.” Logically (but without confirming evidence), the plaza was developed in conjunction with the remodeling of Estructura 4 and the elaboration of its tri-lobate hearth, occurring late in the Yutopian Formative chronology. As part of the radical remodeling project where “Estructura 5” was demolished (but its portal left standing), the dressed stones from the constructions were possibly used to define this new plaza which is no longer associated with any specific patio group. Perhaps the beverages brewed in Estructura 4 were destined for consumption in the open plaza. This scenario would reinforce the development of a wider “public” and more inclusive ritual or ceremonial activities in the last episodes of the Early Formative, the culmination of the increasingly specialized structures and the movement north toward ever-higher ground at Yutopian. (This, of course, is largely speculative.) Yutopian is fed by springs from the slopes above the site on the west (Bit 78). Although never abundant, there is water elsewhere in the valley, but Yutopian is still occupied today largely for its dependable ojo de agua (“water eye”), or springs. On the other hand, the position of this village on a pronounced and largely defensible ridge midway along the west margin of the Valle del Cajón makes it geographically significant. Today there are no villages the size of Formative Yutopian in the Valle del Cajón; modern dispersed settlements consist of only a single or perhaps two homesteads linked by kinship, and even where the “municipal” government has supported the construction of schools and health clinics such as in La Quebrada and La Hoyada, there may be only a few additional buildings (including a chapel) and up to five residences clustered in the designated locality. But Yutopian appears to have been an important central location with upwards of 150 residents. Jorge and Álvaro regularly shook their heads at the idea of a settlement this size, as neither had ever imagined so many people having lived in their windswept backyard.
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74 Backstory
Plazas and a “public” Set apart from the living areas and positioned dramatically at the extreme northern end of the site is a unique nonresidential area: flat and circular and defined by a perimeter of upright, loosely spaced and partially dressed stones. We came to call this area Yutopian’s “plaza.” It would not have served as a corral for keeping animals since animals could wander in and out between the defining perimeter stones (of course brush and planks could have completed the enclosure). The space was not subdivided in any visible way, and we found no evidence of large-group eating or feasting here, nor evidence of production activities. Did it relate in any way to the long tradition of public plazas in the Andes? What was its public function at Yutopian, and who was its “public”? Plazas are places of interaction and encounter where ritual and ceremonial practices take place in unroofed featureless arenas (Moore 1996:798, 2004:268). The presence of formally prepared spaces to stage aggregational events is familiar from many parts and many time periods of the central Andes. Open plazas are essential central features of the earliest monumental constructions in the Andes, appearing at late Preceramic and Initial period Peruvian sites (e.g., Caral [Shady et al. 2000], El Paraiso/Chuquitanta [Quilter 1985], Mina Perdida [Burger and Salazar-Burger 1998]) as part of large, singular, open mound-plaza complexes used for large-scale public displays and activities (Helmer et al. 2012:86). At El Paraiso, the appearance of red pigment grinders, bird feathers, fruit tree branches and unfired figurines is suggestive of elaborate and repetitive rituals associated with the plaza (Moseley 1992:119– 121; Stanish and Haley 2005) and access to the action is unrestricted. Later in the Peruvian sequence, plazas are somewhat smaller and embedded in dense agglomerations of enclosed walled compounds, suggesting that they might be neighborhood-based (Stanish and Haley 2005). Whereas the earlier plazas have unrestricted entranceways that would have encouraged open participation, later plazas show narrow, complicated, restricted access corridors, more clearly separating plaza-permitted personnel and plaza-related experiences from everyday activities. 254
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Plazas and a “public”
Researchers agree (Helmer et al. 2012; Kaulicke and Dillehay 2005; Nielsen 2006) that what went on in the architecturally distinct plazas probably involved music, movement and spectacle: dances, processions and performances (shown on Moche vessels, and reconstructed from archaeologically recovered clay pan pipes and larger-than-life puppets in the central Andes); the display of exotic objects (perhaps as markers of status); and sometimes funeral ceremonies (Matsumoto and Shimada 2011). Most fundamentally, the unfamiliar scale of interaction would itself have been intoxicating to people who were accustomed to living in small and quiet groups. Whether we call these rituals or festivals or supra-household gatherings, we can imagine how such affairs created common emotional and sensory experiences, thus socially reenacting and reproducing the community. But while plazas are central to the whole sequence of monumental architecture in the central Andes, Argentina lacks this tradition, and few plaza-like public spaces— or ceremonial spaces of any kind—have been noted in the Early Formative landscape. Sixty-five km east of Yutopian, in Tafí del Valle, where we already noted ceramic similarities with Yutopian, an unusual “ceremonial feature” has long been recognized (Ambrosetti 1897): the large El Mollar mound, standing 30 m long and 3 m high, contains several huge carved stelae (menhires) on its summit (Fig. 101), and two more occur in the center of a related circular stone enclosure, dated to 100 CE (Tartusi and Núñez Regueiro 1993:18). The other models for Early Formative ceremonial/public spaces, the Alamito sites on the Campo del Pucurá, are altogether different. Each of the many Alamito sites consists of a circular arrangement of differentiated dwellings constructed symmetrically around an open patio and associated with a large mound and pairs of platforms (Fig. 102). For their axial symmetry, formal architectural patterns and the associated metallurgical workshops, these Formative sites are also interpreted— somewhat controversially—as ceremonial centers (Núñez Regueiro 1970; Tartusi and Núñez Regueiro 1993). At Yutopian, the plaza is much less elaborate, although it represents a deliberate creation of a formal space large enough to allow assemblies that could not be accommodated within any of the structures or patio courtyards. Moreover, the labor of leveling and encircling the plaza with dressed stones is our clearest example at Yutopian of an undertaking entirely removed from the residential patio groups and relying upon supra-household cooperation (although cooperative labor across households may also have been common in building residential structures).1 Although plazas are generally located at the center of a populated area or in the middle of a large building complex, Yutopian’s plaza is isolated at the northern end of the ridgetop where the artificially flattened 255
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Figure 101. Some examples of the famous Early Formative menhir stones from Tafí del Valle.
Figure 102. Map of Alamito, Catamarca (1993) (after Tartusi and Núñez-Regueiro 1993).
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Plazas and a “public”
area would have stood out visually from the uneven terrain surrounding it. People accustomed to scanning the landscape would have located it easily for both its position in space and its altered topography, allowing visual and auditory access from points far from the site (cf. Albeck and Zaburlín 2007). In fact, whatever transpired there would have been observable from below and from the other side of the quebrada to the north. Sounds emanating from the plaza would carry from this isolated end of the ridge into the valley around it, unblocked by other topographic features. Recalling the insistent presence of our initial (1993) procession to Yutopian with the ethereal sounds of flutes, drums and accordion carrying plaintively and self-consciously into the seemingly empty valley (Bit 6) reminds us that making an audible impact in a sparsely populated environment is a social, spiritual and perhaps even a political achievement. Almost surely, then, aggregations at Yutopian were intended to integrate people from other settlements, perhaps especially the majority of people in dispersed homesteads who seldom participated in village life. Did just a few people wear special clothing and carry ritual paraphernalia as they entered the plaza, and everyone else comprised a viewing audience? Or were the actions largely participatory, carried out by most of the attendees? Does the existence of the plaza depend upon and ultimately imply a social time-reckoning system, a calendar of aggregation dates? Or were the ad hoc dates of events passed along by word of mouth? A perhaps relevant idea concerns the source of religious authority in the Andes and the different practices that can bestow authority through religious leadership (Oyuela-Caycedo 2001; Rick 2005). I certainly won’t do the argument justice in these short pages, but the idea is that religious leadership may be recognized in (at least) two contrastive forms: shamanic practice, where authority derives from the ability of an individual to experience the sacred and enter an ecstatic state, versus the ability of an individual to guide a group through a “canon” of sacred routines (Moore 2005:266). The ecstatic experience of the shaman can be juxtaposed with the larger, shared experience of the group. While shamans address small audiences about quite particular outcomes, “canonists” assert influence over more general issues of well-being for larger audiences. Each form of religious practice tends to utilize different architectural settings, with shamanic practice taking place in small, restricted places, while canonist practices often rely on large open areas where many people may gather (Moore 1996). This dichotomy of shamanic authority versus “canonist” practices may have direct relevance to the plaza at Yutopian. The unusual prepared and well-defined Early Formative plaza at Yutopian with its formal 257
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BACKSTORY
terraced causeway might suggest the beginning of incorporating “routinization” as a significant part of ritual ceremonies. Rituals generally occur in specially prepared public spaces, suggesting their importance in the creation and maintenance of legitimacy and power. It is tantalizing to speculate that perhaps here is where/how the ritual “canonists” begin to hold sway . . . but even if this admittedly far-fetched idea has no relevance for the Yutopian plaza, we are surely observing a very early experiment in defining and preparing space for large-scale interactions. Note 1. The construction and maintenance of irrigation canals at Yutopian would also have depended on the organization of supra-household labor.
75 Argument
Yutopian’s boundaries and the site map When we drew our map of Yutopian, and when we used this map to orient new students to the project or explain our work— or even as I inserted the site map at the beginning of this book—it was easy to forget that the map is our creation, our idea of what the site consisted of. We don’t specify who saw the site thus bounded (probably not the occupants, nor neighbors nor visitors), nor do we say when in its occupation it might have been bounded in this way. We certainly don’t specify which activities were circumscribed within these boundaries. Without doubting that the site—a site— occupied the top and upper eastern terraces of the Yutopian ridge for almost a thousand years, as is shown, we must nevertheless acknowledge this as a heuristic archaeological map, hardly encompassing a self-contained functioning social unit. For one thing, Yutopian isn’t really a stand-alone ridgetop whose occupants had to fit within the flattish top portion plus terraces. Although the ridge falls steeply to the floodplain along the north, south and east sides, the west side of the ridge only drops off subtly as a poorly defined dip before rising again to Álvaro’s house, and then climbs higher still as 258
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BACKSTORY
terraced causeway might suggest the beginning of incorporating “routinization” as a significant part of ritual ceremonies. Rituals generally occur in specially prepared public spaces, suggesting their importance in the creation and maintenance of legitimacy and power. It is tantalizing to speculate that perhaps here is where/how the ritual “canonists” begin to hold sway . . . but even if this admittedly far-fetched idea has no relevance for the Yutopian plaza, we are surely observing a very early experiment in defining and preparing space for large-scale interactions. Note 1. The construction and maintenance of irrigation canals at Yutopian would also have depended on the organization of supra-household labor.
75 Argument
Yutopian’s boundaries and the site map When we drew our map of Yutopian, and when we used this map to orient new students to the project or explain our work— or even as I inserted the site map at the beginning of this book—it was easy to forget that the map is our creation, our idea of what the site consisted of. We don’t specify who saw the site thus bounded (probably not the occupants, nor neighbors nor visitors), nor do we say when in its occupation it might have been bounded in this way. We certainly don’t specify which activities were circumscribed within these boundaries. Without doubting that the site—a site— occupied the top and upper eastern terraces of the Yutopian ridge for almost a thousand years, as is shown, we must nevertheless acknowledge this as a heuristic archaeological map, hardly encompassing a self-contained functioning social unit. For one thing, Yutopian isn’t really a stand-alone ridgetop whose occupants had to fit within the flattish top portion plus terraces. Although the ridge falls steeply to the floodplain along the north, south and east sides, the west side of the ridge only drops off subtly as a poorly defined dip before rising again to Álvaro’s house, and then climbs higher still as 258
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Yutopian’s boundaries and the site map
part of the Sierra del Hombre Muerto, which defines and encloses the Valle del Cajón. Yutopian is stuck to the side of this range, a semidetached ridgetop. But this is not suggested by the two-dimensional site map that shows walls “enclosing” the ridgetop on both east and west sides, and then an emptier terrace on the east. A few walls below on the east go nowhere. The site is shown neatly separated from a flat expanse that surrounds it and seems to extend out from it in all directions. This particular configuration of the Yutopian map is the result of many factors. Since Jorge had built his house at the northeast base of the ridge, and his parents before him had their house lower and farther around the northern arc of the ridge base, we thought of these homesteads as “modern” and “off-site.” Álvaro had constructed his home, gardens and livestock pens on the western perimeter and slightly above the site, again circling but not infringing on the visible ruins. All the currently occupied areas look nothing like the mapped site: cultivated, separated from the site by steep slopes and shallow dips, green where the site is barren, rocky and grey-brown. The contemporary constructions stand in opposition to what we study and what we can study; they are where we and our friends live, and they divide the ancient from the new, outliers to the ridge and thus to the site. Our map was produced by Catherine Heyne with a total station we borrowed from a nearby project; we actually borrowed Catherine as well just long enough to map the site, urging her to get it all in but not to bother with the surrounding “off-site” landscape; we couldn’t afford more time or expense to map “everything.” In many ways we—and she—made a map of the site in the image that we had of living and working at the site. But the map we made doesn’t capture all the cultural remains associated with the excavated ridgetop. In our initial explorations we had identified poorly preserved wall fragments and areas of low artifact concentrations further east beyond Jorge’s house in the low flat area where the track/road now runs. Cristina’s field notes (March 14, 1994) refer to “Area de los campos,” or large incomplete enclosures, perhaps corrals or large gardens, that lie below the site to the southwest. These poorly preserved, scattered areas offered little promise to investigate households, so we gradually left them out of the picture of the otherwise nicely contained ridgetop, even when Jorge showed us his classic Candelaria duck pot that was recovered from a cementario in the sandy bank across an arroyo near the road (Fig. 103). And Álvaro frequently produced Formative finds that he claims vaguely came from his land and garden above and west of the ridge: sherds, points, a copper bracelet (Fig. 104), a stone tube/pipe, an antler haft, although of course these may have been col259
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ARGUMENT
Figure 103. Candelaria vessel in Jorge Chaile’s possession, 12 cm tall and 11 cm long.
lected elsewhere. But some occupation probably extended up onto the slope above his house, although no walls are visible there now, and we didn’t feel entirely comfortable digging under his burros. We also left that part off the map. Still, I stand behind the map we offer here. It follows archaeological convention to define “the site” as the area most intensely investigated, without accounting for contingent areas that lack architecture and where less important or poorly understood finds had been located. As Stephen reminds me, “You have to draw a line somewhere . . .” and “We can always extend the map.”
Figure 104. Copper bracelet recovered near Yutopian by Álvaro Chaile.
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Why Yutopian has so little Formative context
76 Socio-politics
Why Yutopian has so little Formative context The permitting regulations that authorize foreigners to conduct archaeological research in Argentina were modified in 2004 to give more control to the centralized Instituto Nacional de Antropología in Buenos Aires. But our work at Yutopian was carried out under the old rules, under the authority of provincial bureaucracies headed by the Director General de Antropología de la Provincia de Catamarca. Each year from 1994 to 1999 we (mostly Cristina) dutifully reapplied to Catamarca’s Head of Patrimony, a position that was held by three different Directors General over those years, although locally in Santa María the overseer of these policies was always Rubén Quiroga, the director of the Regional Museum of Santa María, our friend and peacemaker. Argentina archaeology permits are (or were) granted upon presentation of a sufficiently thoughtful and professional research plan in relation to a specific geographically circumscribed region. Once a permit is granted, the defined region remains the provenience of the permit holder, even during periods when research is not actively under way. In the case of Yutopian, we applied to investigate Formative sites in the (neglected) Valle del Cajón on the basis of the surface survey I conducted in 1993. However when we arrived to conduct the first field season at Yutopian in 1994, we learned that another researcher from Buenos Aires had applied a few months before us for—and had received—a permit covering the whole Valle del Cajón for Inka research. It took me some time to understand the gravity of this situation; I kept insisting there was no problem since our interests were different, and we would probably not even be in the field at the same time of year. I even tried to suggest advantages of the situation since we could now exchange information on those parts of the culture sequence that were of interest to the other party’s research plans. But this only showed my woeful ignorance of how things worked. Greatly saddened that it had come to this, Rubén and the Director General pointed out that the first permit had gone to the other party, and no, they did not know why she 261
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SOCIO-POLITICS
had shown up after there having been no interest in this part of the world for decades, but now she was legally entitled to the whole valley, and we would have to negotiate for favors from her. Protracted negotiations yielded us only restricted access to the two specific sites that I had located in 1993 and that were named in the project application, although we had wanted to conduct ongoing surveys to locate additional sites over the duration of the project. All the work of our project from then on was restricted to within the site boundaries of these two sites, and we still have little idea where or how many other Formative sites are situated within this naturally defined Valle del Cajón study area. The permit situation we confronted derives from and is related to other local arrangements. Argentinean archaeology projects, although directed by single individuals and usually involving small teams of mostly students, are generally linked to larger research directions and educational institutions through the existence of trensas (braids), a colloquial term for informal Argentinean research camps united under a common professor or university program, or sharing a research approach, but often ferociously opposed to one another theoretically, politically and socially. These informal associations of researchers might reveal themselves at national meetings, sometimes when pointed and difficult questions are posed to a speaker after his/her delivery of a paper, or when symposia are put together by an organizer to include some but not other researchers. The trensas operate behind the scenes all the time and are a very real part of the socio-political landscape of archaeology; they determine who shares information, gossip and support with whom, and who accuses and detracts from whom. Offering to collaborate with the wrong person, or divulging information, can have unfortunate consequences in the long run because Argentinean trensas are strong, far-reaching and long-lasting, and antagonisms run deep, ironically energizing much Argentinean research. Of course research camps exist in North American archaeology as well, and I suspect they exist everywhere: universities carry brands; philosophies attract ardent followers who are sometimes impatient with or even cruel to one another; geographical zones collect genealogies of related researchers. But Argentina represents a particularly forceful example of these arrangements, and the research of the 12-year Yutopian project was severely curtailed by such socio-political realities.
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Entranceway ideologies
77 Entranceway ideologies Earlier in Estructuras 1 and 2 we had recovered similar materials from within and beneath the entrance passageways and doorways (Bit 43). In both structures, burnt (llama?) offerings had been made in pits under threshold stones at one or the other end of the passage entranceway, and other llama parts were left nearby. Conanas, whole and damaged, were recovered at the doorway just inside each structure, and Estructura 1 also had two conanas in the passageway itself. Highly decorated jar or bowl fragments had been distributed inside the doorways. As we were looking for Estructura 5 we had revealed the shorter passage entranceway of Estructura 4 and found that it also contained an inverted, broken conana (Bit 64) as well as a pile of carefully arranged llama bones on the bedrock surface adjacent to the northern end of the passageway. What is evident is that the excavated Early Formative passage entranceways are associated with conanas (broken or whole) and other
Table 14. Deposits associated with passageway entrances Estructura 1 200 cm long
Estructura 2 180 cm long
stone paved steps shallow conana on top of another used broken one in passage threshold stone at beginning of passageway, with dedicatory pit beneath
sloped bedrock ramp
flat paved area broken half conana inverted in passage
deflector stones at doorway with ash lens beneath filed-edge llama cranium in passageway
burnt pit at beginning of passageway on north side, containing camelid bone pile and ochre, covered by undamaged camelid scapula
llama mandible in patio, in front of threshhold burnt llama mandible in pit slate knife between paving stones gero pages new3.indd 263
polishing, grinding stones
llama bones in upper fill llama teeth below that more llama teeth!!! 92 cm: smashed pot
Estructura 3 ramp and simple gap in structure wall
Estructura 4 125 cm long
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Estructura 1 200 cm long
Estructura 2 180 cm long
Estructura 3 ramp and simple gap in structure wall
stone paved steps sloped bedrock ramp ENTRANCEWAY IDEOLOGIES shallow conana on top of another used broken one in passage threshold stone at beginning deflector stones at Table 14. Deposits associated with with passageway Table 14.dedicaContinued of passageway, with doorway ash lens entrances beneath filed-edge tory pit beneath Estructura 1 Estructura 2 in pasEstructura 3 llama cranium sageway 200 cm long 180 cm long ramp and simple gap in structure wall llama in patio, in stone mandible paved steps sloped bedrock ramp front of conana threshhold shallow on top of burnt llama in pit another usedmandible broken one in llama bones in upper fill passage slate knifestone between paving threshold at beginning deflector stones at stones teeth below that of passageway, with dedica- llama doorway with ash lens tory pit beneath beneath filed-edge more llama teeth!!! llama paspolishing, grinding stones 92 cm:cranium smashedinpot sageway with llama long bone Vaquarías Vaquarias sherds sherds llama mandible in patio, in Condorhuasi sherds Condorhuasi sherds front of threshhold INSIDE STRUCTURE at burnt llama mandible in pit doorway:
round mortero with mano slate knife between paving stones polishing, grinding stones incised, painted sherds, Condorhuasi jar pieces Vaquarias sherds points broken projectile Condorhuasi sherds INSIDE STRUCTURE at doorway: round mortero with mano
inside Vaquerías and Ciénaga sherds
Estructura 4 125 cm long
flat paved area broken half conana inverted in passage burnt pit at beginning of passageway on north side, Estructura 4camelid containing bone pile and ochre, 125 cm long covered by undamaged camelid scapula flat paved area broken half conana inverted in passage burnt pit at beginning of passageway on north side, containing camelid bone pile and ochre, covered by undamaged camelid scapula
llama bones in upper fill 2 halves of broken conana llama teeth below that more llama teeth!!! another broken conana stood end pot 92 cm:on smashed with llama long Condorhuasi andbone inside sherds Ciénaga Vaquerías and Ciénaga sherds
2 halves of broken
conana smaller hand-held grinding stones, as well as with camelid bones (in natural forms and/or made into implements), both in the passageways another broken conana themselves and immediately inside the doorways. But the two kinds of stood on end entranceway offerings seem to function in different ways. Burnt (bone) incised, painted sherds, Condorhuasi and offerings were madeCiénaga undersherds significant terminal stones of the passageCondorhuasi jar pieces ways (or in pits close by) and this was done early in the construction broken projectile points Table 15. Distribution of faunal at Yutopian sequence, seemingly as taxa dedicatory rituals; similarly the unburnt camelid bones were deposited in lower levels of the entranceways where they Est. 1 Est. 3 Patio 4 Est. 4 Est. 5 Est. 11 probably remained throughout the life Est. of the structure. Núcleo 1 Lower Upper But the conanas, which required considerable effort to position in Total bones the entranceways (I3,436 could barely restrict recovered 2,241 143 lift one), 21 and which 1,897 effectively 303 2,573 movement96.16% once placed, another80.95% matter. 40.00% These must have been Identified 89.43%seem 59.44% 67.98% 96.15% Artiodactyla 264 (% of id’d)
90.67% 95.54% Camelids (% of id’d) 5.66% 4.55% Table 15. Distribution of faunal taxa NonArtiodactyla 9.33% 4.46% gero pages new3.indd 264 Est. 1 Est. 3 (% of id’d)
88.23%
68.42%
84.52%
53.51%
93.65%
12.94%
47.36%
21.42%
41.74%
6.22%
11.77% Patio Núcleo 1
31.58% Est. 4 Lower
15.48% Est. 4 Upper
46.49% Est. 5
6.35% 8/20/15 Est. 11
at Yutopian
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Entranceway ideologies
positioned in the entranceways only as residents were leaving, although we don’t know whether they expected to return or whether this was a last action of permanent abandonment. Why place conanas in the portals? Hendon argues, “[Grinding stones] are neither commemorative nor symbolic, neither a fossilized memory nor a work of art” (2007:85–86), which seems true enough. But conanas surely carry enormous significance, perhaps as important inheritable possessions, surely identified with women’s work and possibly the most significant piece of “furniture” in an Early Formative house, associated with the ability to produce food and feed the family. In fact, “food” cannot be produced without a large grinding stone, secured from the proper granitic rock, shaped and dragged home, smoothed from years of work, and passed from mother to daughter (Weismantel 1989). Access to the use of a family conana signals incorporation into the network of kin and food sharing, and setting up an independent household requires obtaining a new conana of one’s own. Thus placing the heirloom conana in the entranceway states that no food will be prepared for some time. Closing the door behind you, “locking up shop,” simply means that food cannot or will not be prepared here for awhile, underscoring the centrality of women and food preparation in the occupation of the residence. So while the dedicatory llama (or camelid) bones marked the initiation of the entranceway construction sequence, conanas concluded the leaving of a house. The dedication ceremony of the entranceway used organic matter—parts of once living animals—while the closing out of houses involved inorganic, inanimate material, solid and heavy. The final contrast would be that while grinding stones are known to be associated with women and women’s work, llamas may have been the prerogative of men, as we believe they were in many agro-pastoral societies.1 This would establish an interesting gendered opening and closing of the structures, but for the present this must rest as tantalizing speculation. Note 1. My own studies of roughly contemporaneous Recuay ceramics, although from the central Andes, demonstrate a close association of the newly domesticated llama with male authority (Gero 1999).
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78 Andean ways
Water management at Yutopian Any city slicker who climbs the Yutopian ridge several times daily eventually considers how water would have been available on the site . . . and perhaps thinks too about the erosion caused by rainfall gushing down the slopes and making arroyos. Since we walked up the east side, it seemed that a lot of water must have been hauled up the steep slopes to maintain the settlement. We had to remember that on the west side the Yutopian ridgetop is actually only semidetached from the foothills of the Sierra del Hombre Muerto, which makes all the difference. Water at Yutopian was gravity-fed from one of several ojos de agua (springs) that lie above the site in the Sierra del Hombre Muerto west of Yutopian. Indeed, Jorge and other lugareños still carefully maintain canals that Jorge says are “very old” and come from these same scarce and vital springs. The water we consumed daily at Jorge’s house came from a long irrigation canal that wound around the northern end of the site; Jorge told us you can follow these canals uphill (and we tried) although in places the water runs underground. Associated with the ojo de agua is a ciénaga, although it’s too far above Yutopian to be visible, so Jorge described it: a lighter green, well-watered (sometimes swampy) area made up of a single plant species that grows very densely. Seasonally, the ciénaga provides excellent forage food, and of course its lushness makes the location of the spring evident. The Early Formative engineer-farmers had clearly drawn water to themselves rather than carrying it up from the valley bottom. Without using formal measuring devices, their impressive skills enabled water to be transported long distances over mountainous terrain without cascading abruptly or stagnating in still pools. In some places the ancient canal had been dug into the bedrock while elsewhere a 3-m-long wall supported an aqueduct to conduct the water across a dip in the uneven topography, maintaining a constant gradient of approximately 2o. Too steep and potholes will form, preventing further flow; too shallow and the canal silts up as water evaporates (see Bit 79). But even with uncannily optimal gradients, canals will collect silt, get weedy, suffer wall collapse and clog up with fallen stones. In fact 266
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maintenance and repairs plague all water transport systems, and when a spring-fed system feeds several households or a small community, the annual maintenance is undertaken cooperatively, scheduled at the beginning of the growing season and participated in as a ritual occasion of renewal and fertility, accompanied by ritual food and drink (e.g., Isbell 1985; Mitchell 1976). It is tantalizing to imagine such civicreligious celebrations taking place in Early Formative Yutopian albeit with fewer households celebrating the life-giving properties of the canals; drums and flutes might have been played, and specific rituals, feasting and dancing could have taken place along the canal route (Mitchell 1976:36–37). Haber (2007:287) reminds us that for most farmers, the water transport canals are not their own work but rather had been part of the landscape since before they were born, part of the sacred system of subsistence over the centuries, requiring nurturing in reciprocity for nurturance. Today canal repair is more lonely work, falling to Jorge, his sister and his uncles . . . with a little beer to help. During our recent stays at Yutopian Jorge demonstrated his talent at moving water across the site, astutely judging gradients and improvising small-scale canals to conduct rain water around areas where we were working so our test pits wouldn’t flood. In fact all the Chaile men regulated surface water around each house foundation to prevent the erosion of wall trenches and protect the lower courses of adobe walls. They excavated small pools along canals for gathering clean water (here the silt would drop out of the moving stream), and when one pool became sullied or muddied, it was closed off and a pool opened at another point. We foreigners were the primitives, filthying the water by washing our hands or clothes or dirty dishes directly in the canals (although the Chailes were too polite to point out our stupidity). Over the years we learned to store canal water in big barrels in the house so that particles could settle out before use, and we learned not to wash directly from the water sources (canal or barrel), which was second nature to the lugareños.
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DATA FROM THE EXPERTS
79 Data from the experts
Agricultural practices at Yutopian (with Jack Rossen)1 Warm by day, chilly at night, frost often greeting us on June mornings, Yutopian’s elevation of 3200 m (10,000 feet) puts it above the presentday tree line and close to the puna lands above, indeed at the highelevation margin of agriculture. With its limited growing season— effectively December to March—Yutopian presents seemingly impossible conditions for early agricultural experimentation, and a most unlikely location for an early and specialized tropical grass like corn. Water is scarce at the best of times, and conditions include el sonda, the warm windstorms that periodically blast the area and sometimes kept us inside for days; our flotation tank once was blown more than a mile away. Although we were seldom at Yutopian to observe planting, tending or harvesting, both Jorge and Álvaro maintain active gardens, partly based on ancient Formative agricultural systems. Their modern gardens are located on south- and southwest-facing terraced slopes and are enclosed by 1.5- to 2-m-high stone walls. Like their ancient counterparts, the gardens are oriented to catch the oblique early morning sun as well as to protect from potentially strong and damaging winds. Within the enclosed gardens, ancient terraces are rebuilt and maintained. Since stones heated by the sun during the day will retain and radiate heat into the cooling evening air, the garden walls are important features for raising ambient temperatures, and Jack Rossen recorded soil temperatures that were consistently 15–20o F higher within 2 ft of walls or terrace steps than elsewhere in the gardens. Several varieties of corn dominate the gardens, among them 14-row flinty varieties and some recently introduced hybrids (Figs. 105, 106). Other corn varieties—such as a soft, floury, irregularly rowed type known as capia and a very hard, flint corn with pointed kernels—appear to be more traditional. Also grown in the gardens are several varieties of common bean, along with squash, potato, sunflower, and the Eurasianintroduced legume arveja (Vicia sativa). Corn and beans are grown in 270
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Agricultural practices at Yutopian Figure 105. Contemporary corn types grown at Yutopian (from top): cappia, criolla, popcorn. Photograph by Robert Thompson.
Figure 106. Farmers like Álvaro Chaile work small subsections of the Yutopian terrace system. Photograph by Jack Rossen.
relatively small amounts near the stone walls, the warmest location in the garden. Álvaro has two plots situated on the southern slope of the Yutopian ridge that receive water from the ancient irrigation canal. He speaks of the importance of soil and of the difficulty of avoiding rocky areas. 271
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His land is steeply sloped, and he continually removes stones and adds animal dung to the garden. His plot is 608 m2, which he realizes is marginal for producing enough food for himself, and he speaks of expanding it. The labor input for expansion is high, however, because of the removal of rocks (many of which are taken from archaeological walls and terraces), building up of soils, and resetting of walls that must be done. The land cultivated by Jorge is located along the southeastern slope of the Yutopian ridge and is watered by a branch of the same canal that feeds the site and Álvaro Chaile’s plots. Jorge’s single plot, which supports his family, measures 1400 m2. It includes one unmaintained terrace remnant and two rebuilt terrace remnants. The garden has outside walls 1.6–1.9 m high and one wall that provides an internal segmentation. The ancient terraces are noticeable outside the modern garden to the southeast. In 1997–1998, Jorge grew only five bean plants along his warmest wall, and potatoes were not grown because of local drought conditions that year. In general, approximately 600–700 m2 of land is needed to support each person. Present-day farming at Yutopian suggests that corn is (and was) the primary crop, and that other plants are (and were) grown in specialized plots near walls or terrace edges. Corn cultivation at Yutopian occurred (and continues today on a much smaller scale) beyond its usual environmental margin. In the more northern latitudes of Peru, for example, about 6o south of the equator, corn is not cultivated above 3500 m, which is the border between the indigenously defined suni and puna ecozones (Pulgar Vidal n.d.). In comparison, Yutopian lies at 3200 m but is 26o south of the equator. It is thus not surprising that the recovered corn specimens are extremely small and morphologically primitive or stunted (Bit 80). At Yutopian, corn morphology was stable, and little or no development of the plant occurred right up through modern times. Perhaps the agricultural technology surrounding the plant—such as the walling of agricultural zones, terracing, microenvironmental placement and angling of fields to maximize sun exposure— developed instead of the plant itself; it certainly makes a crucial difference in growing plants like corn and beans at Yutopian today. Alternatively, there may be inherent limits on the development of corn in such a marginal environment. It may be a mark of the advanced agricultural practices undertaken at Formative Yutopian that its layout of houses and fields differs from other Formative sites in the region. Whereas known Early Formative sites regularly integrate a tight cluster of residential units with walled agricultural gardens (as still practiced by dispersed farmers in the zone today), at Yutopian this pattern does not appear. Rather, agricultural fields are 272
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laid out away from the houses, and walled gardens aren’t incorporated into residential areas. Neither the spacing nor the size differences of patio groups at Yutopian support the direct association of gardens with residences, suggesting that this true village must have maintained its gardens down below, at the foot of the hillside, on the floodplain (unless, of course, the garden areas were eradicated by subsequent occupations). This violates the Early Formative dispersed patterns of settlement but appears to be more like the settlement and agricultural patterns at later Regional Development sites in the valley. We can compare this pattern to the site of Cardonal, another large Formative village located in my 1993 survey of the Valle del Cajón; we also conducted archaeological work there in 1999 and 2004 (Bits 88–97). At Cardonal a household level of agricultural production is represented by small, walled garden plots near the circular stone houses (see Fig. 120). Canals contain numerous small check dams that control water flow, and reservoirs have multiple exits with removable stone gates for alternately feeding different sections of bottom-fed fields. It may be that some of these agricultural features correspond with later occupations, but we found so little later material at Cardonal that this not likely; such features are missing at Yutopian. It is interesting to speculate that rather than being an intensive agricultural system, these Formative technological systems were ultimately extensive; that is, only a fraction of the modified landscape included within walls and terraces was truly productive, primarily strips of land near walls and terrace steps where heat was sufficiently retained to overcome the high-elevation cold. This pattern is clearer in the later Regional Development period when massive field systems seem to be associated with relatively small settlements. Perhaps this was true of the Formative as well.
Agricultural Facts • Nighttime freezes occur seven months per year and almost daily between April and August (Turner 1973:17). • In August, the average soil temperature near terrace walls is 12o C (54o F), while in the terrace interiors and outside the cultivation areas, the average soil temperature is 5o C (41o F).
Note 1. Dr. Jack Rossen participated in the Yutopian project in 1998 and 1999, both as supervisor of flotation and as ethnobotanist for plant identifications and analysis of plant remains.
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80 Data from the experts
Plants and diet, now and then (with Jack Rossen) During our May–July field seasons at Yutopian we ate a mixture of foods we brought in with us (cans of tuna, fresh fruit and vegetables, milk, cookies, oatmeal, tea, and coffee), and food that we traded for or received as gifts from Jorge and other lugareño friends (chicken, cuts of meat, fava beans, corn, carrots) or bought from the tiny depósito 2 km away at La Arroyo (pasta, rice, potatoes). Many of the leafy local crops harvested in February and March had already been consumed, dried for storage, or saved for use as seed for next year’s crops. Thus what we subsisted on hardly overlapped at all with the diet of the Formative Yutopian people. The archaeological plant remains from Yutopian are scarce and poorly preserved, and middens are rare at the site; trash was apparently dumped off the plateau edge into the gullies and washed below where it could not be recovered. But although plant frequencies are moderate to low, they are repetitive and consistent throughout the site, with the same few economic plants occurring in all site areas and contexts, in patios as well as in structures, with few exceptions as noted. Both systematic flotation samples and opportunistic grab samples were collected, sometimes yielding different kinds of data: corn cupules occurred exclusively in the systematic flotation samples, while fused kernel masses were present only in the grab samples; plant species such as chenopod, tuna cactus, cardón cactus and purslane occurred only in the flotation sample and not in the more visible, tangible grab samples. Most of the recovered plant remains are carbonized, but fragile, noncarbonized, desiccated plant remains also occurred, including all the tuna cactus seeds (n = 57) and many but not all the cardón seeds. Since these are quite brittle, it is likely that other desiccated plant remains did not survive. The desiccated remains come from foods that were less processed, probably eaten fresh or dried rather than cooked. Yutopian’s plant assemblage is dominated by wood charcoal, representing around 80 percent of the total collection, but species identifications were not possible. People living at Yutopian today exclusively use 274
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a bush known as vizcol (Latin name undetermined) for firewood, but they report having used churqui (Acacia caven) in the past before it was overexploited. All wood recovered from the site represents small brush twigs, much the same as those in the present environment. The agriculture of Yutopian was apparently corn-based, and the morphology of the recovered corn is noteworthy. Cupules are unusually small, with cupule widths (the largest dimension) ranging only from 18 to 40 mm, with most examples measuring 22 to 24 mm. The cupules exhibit thick walls and glumes and are much smaller than even the notably undersized prehistoric 8- and 12-row species of the eastern United States (Rossen 1992). Corn kernels are also tiny, even considering the shrinkage associated with carbonization. They are also too fragmentary to determine variety or row number, but specimens probably represent a small flinty species. The kernel fragments are low, broad and crescent-shaped with short embryos, in contrast to the higher-yield tall and narrow kernels that tend to appear as a variety develops and that were being grown at more or less the same time at Early Intermediate sites in Peru. These developments are not apparent in the corn recovered from Yutopian. Recovered plant materials include 26 carbonized masses of agglutinated sprouted corn kernels, mostly from the lower levels of a single house structure (Estructura 4) but also from Pozo de Prueba 12. These kernel masses are almost surely pot scrapings from the manufacture of chicha. In traditional chicha manufacture, corn is left to sprout in large ceramic pots, then boiled with water over a very hot fire (and sometimes scorched?). A little sugar is added and the brew is left to ferment (Allen 1988:140). We wondered whether chicha brewing added an incentive for technological innovations that allowed corn to be cultivated beyond its normal environmental limits (Logan et al. 2012) in marginal zones such as Yutopian. Seeds of a small chenopod, carbonized and often popped, were recovered as a low-density, high-distribution presence at the site. This is a very small chenopod, with diameters from 0.7 to 1.3 mm and most seeds measuring around 0.8 mm, compared to its relative quinoa (Chenopodium quinua) which averages 3 mm in average diameter. This smaller variety has been recovered from other sites in the region but has not been identified to species (González and Perez 1968); one likely possibility here is cañiwa (Chenopodium pallidicaule). Its ubiquitous distribution and consistent association with corn, along with the high-altitude environment of the site, all suggest it was a cultivated plant. Other cultivated plant remains were recovered in low frequencies. These include cultivated legumes such as the five recovered common beans (Phaseolus vulgaris) or porotos, and the one peanut (Arachis hypo275
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geal). Three of the bean specimens were recovered from the Núcleo 1 patio, and these were all cotyledons, while two other specimens recovered from the lower levels of Estructuras 4 and 5 were distal end stem fragments (see Gonzáles and Perez 1968). This contrast supports an interpretation of patio materials as food-processing debris, while distal end stems are general discard materials. The only measurable bean, from the Unit 357 “square feature” on the Núcleo 1 patio is comparable in size to modern cultivated P. vulgaris specimens. Both beans and peanuts are usually associated with midslope elevations and valleys in the central Andes, but Álvaro grew a row of bean plants against his garden wall while we lived at Yutopian. Most likely the beans from Yutopian were grown at the site in small amounts within the specialized terrace and wall system that is still practiced locally on a small scale. The peanut, on the other hand, may have been brought to the site from lower elevations, either the valley floor or further afield. Collecting tree legume pods and seeds is represented at Yutopian by the edible chañar nuts (Geoffoea sp.) and algarroba beans (Prosopis sp.). The local chañar species (G. decorticans var. subtropicalis) grows near Yutopian, and the hard dense shell and internal segmentation septums of the archaeological samples are well preserved and easily matched with modern comparative specimens. Chañar nuts are still roasted or used to prepare syrup and an alcoholic beverage (Kiesling 1994:331– 332; Latcham 1936:48–49). At Yutopian, chañar is widely distributed in Estructuras 4 and 5, but not in the lower levels of either location. It is likewise absent from the pit features in the structure floors and from all patio samples. It remains unclear whether chañar was only utilized during the later Formative site occupation, or if the distribution is a product of sampling error. Two species of edible-nut-bearing algarrobo trees (Prosopis chilensis and P. pugionata) are located today on the valley floor several kilometers from the site (Kiesling 1994:271–272), but the pod fragments collected at Yutopian are too small and too fragmentary to identify to species. Unlike chañar, most algarrobo specimens were recovered from flotation samples (n = 50) rather than from the grab samples (n = 12). Also in contrast to chañar, a small concentration of algarrobo pods was recovered from the pit features of Estructura 4 (Unit 334) and Estructura 5 (Unit 343). Other remains of wild foods include cactus fruit seeds from both the cardón (columnar) cactus (Echinopsis sp.) and the tuna or prickly pear cactus (Opuntia sp.). Cardón cactus still grows near the site today and could easily have been collected in season and dried for storage. Prickly pears grow on the valley floor south and east of the site, but local 276
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farmers report that they don’t grow well at Yutopian. The highest concentration of 43 cactus fruit seeds occurred in Level 9 of Estructura 11, a deeply Formative level, and a smaller concentration of 16 cardón seeds was found in the Núcleo 1 patio samples of Unit 354. Finally, a substantial frequency of purslane (Portulacca sp.) seed is present, predominantly from shallow deposits in the patio area of Núcleo 1. This is an herbaceous annual with edible leaves that occurs broadly locally. The seeds, however, are minute, averaging .6 mm in diameter, and these could represent either fortuitous inclusions or economic plant remains. The presence of eight purslane seeds from the lower Level 9 of Estructura 4, however, is suggestive of economic plant use. Ethnobotanical data thus suggest that the Formative people of Yutopian practiced corn-based agriculture within a mixed economy that included a substantial component of wild-plant collecting.
81 Data from the experts
Phytolith facts During the 1996 field season, Bob Thompson joined the Yutopian project as our paleoethnobotanist and phytolith expert. While he was with us, Thompson took samples from (1) modern species of corn (two different varieties), (2) archaeological food residues (from both Formative and later Hispano-Indígena ceramic vessels), and (3) modern cooking pot residue (one of Ramona Chaile’s well-used earthenware ollas). The charred food residues from the interiors of the archaeological and modern vessels were scraped and prepared for testing, as were the modern corncobs. Some years later we learned the phytolith facts: 1. The food residue taken from the large Candelaria pot near the hearth of Estructura 1 was identified as corn and, more specifically, as a variety of popcorn. As Piperno and Pearsall (1993) have noted, the assemblage created by Argentinean popcorn is unique, small-eared 277
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farmers report that they don’t grow well at Yutopian. The highest concentration of 43 cactus fruit seeds occurred in Level 9 of Estructura 11, a deeply Formative level, and a smaller concentration of 16 cardón seeds was found in the Núcleo 1 patio samples of Unit 354. Finally, a substantial frequency of purslane (Portulacca sp.) seed is present, predominantly from shallow deposits in the patio area of Núcleo 1. This is an herbaceous annual with edible leaves that occurs broadly locally. The seeds, however, are minute, averaging .6 mm in diameter, and these could represent either fortuitous inclusions or economic plant remains. The presence of eight purslane seeds from the lower Level 9 of Estructura 4, however, is suggestive of economic plant use. Ethnobotanical data thus suggest that the Formative people of Yutopian practiced corn-based agriculture within a mixed economy that included a substantial component of wild-plant collecting.
81 Data from the experts
Phytolith facts During the 1996 field season, Bob Thompson joined the Yutopian project as our paleoethnobotanist and phytolith expert. While he was with us, Thompson took samples from (1) modern species of corn (two different varieties), (2) archaeological food residues (from both Formative and later Hispano-Indígena ceramic vessels), and (3) modern cooking pot residue (one of Ramona Chaile’s well-used earthenware ollas). The charred food residues from the interiors of the archaeological and modern vessels were scraped and prepared for testing, as were the modern corncobs. Some years later we learned the phytolith facts: 1. The food residue taken from the large Candelaria pot near the hearth of Estructura 1 was identified as corn and, more specifically, as a variety of popcorn. As Piperno and Pearsall (1993) have noted, the assemblage created by Argentinean popcorn is unique, small-eared 277
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and small-kerneled, and easily separable from assemblages produced by other varieties of maize. 2. However, more than corn alone is most likely represented in this Formative food residue. A nongrass phytolith appears compatible with legumes, although it was not possible to say if domestic beans or wild legumes are represented. 3. A comparison of the corn from the Candelaria vessel with a modern popcorn demonstrated very strong genetic continuity between the early corn at Yutopian and the modern Argentinean popcorn known as pisankalla. This early corn is also related to residue samples from Peruvian Early Horizon sites including Ancon and Sierra Gorda, and to roughly contemporaneous corn residues from Pirincay, Ecuador.1 The modern variety, grown at Yutopian in 1995, is now largely used for ceremonial purposes. 4. Food residues from the later archaeological vessels and contexts at Yutopian derived from a different corn, related to modern Capia varieties which are still grown at Yutopian. In addition, food residues from a modern earthenware cooking vessel are virtually indistinguishable from the archaeological samples of the later vessels. The genetic continuity of early varieties of corn across space and over time are the most impressive results of this analysis (Thompson 2001, 2006), but we also see substantiation of popcorn appearing as the first corn variety (Smith 1995), replaced later by corn varieties that yield flour. Finally, we are able to demonstrate that a corn-based food, possibly chicha, was prepared in the large well-preserved Candelaria style pot recovered near the hearth in Estructura 1. Note 1. The movement of popcorn lineages across the continent of South America appears to be a very ancient phenomenon. Anderson (1947) describes the presence of pointed popcorn in burial contexts from early pottery-bearing sites throughout South America.
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Faunal remains
82 Data from the experts
Faunal remains (with Andrés Izeta) Of the wild animal resources around Yutopian, we archaeologists partook only of armadillo as a traditional “wild” food that had been enjoyed in Formative times. But we heard stories of mountain lion and wild suri (the flightless ostrich-like birds featured on Santamariana ceramics) that had been hunted locally in the recent past, as well as deer, vizcacha (a rabbit-sized rodent) and birds that are still hunted and eaten regularly. To study the ancient faunal remains from the site, Dr. Andrés Izeta joined the project. Here was an Argentinean zooarchaeologist who had received training in faunal studies in both Argentina and the United States and who knew large ungulates. That he agreed to work at Yutopian still seems an incredible stroke of luck (Fig. 107). Izeta analyzed the faunal material recovered from the occupation level of each structure excavated at Yutopian (both the upper and lower levels of Estructura 4 were analyzed, but nothing was analyzed from Estructura 2 since we never identified an occupation level there). In general the preservation of bones (specifically the camelids) of the Yutopian assemblages were described as unweathered, with less than 1 percent exhibiting carnivore damage and less than 1 percent exhibiting rodent gnawing. In other words, for the most part samples were not affected by subearial weathering processes, scavengers or burrowing rodents’ actions. Thus, the samples reflect with a high degree of confidence the bone discard or abandonment patterns of Formative individuals instead of postdepositional disturbances of the archaeological record. Essentially, the faunal assemblages vary little from one living floor to another (Izeta 2007b: 471). Bones were relatively scarce on the patio of Núcleo Uno, in the lower (earlier) occupation of Estructura 4, and in the closely related Estructura 5. Not surprisingly, these locations are also where the fewest number of identified taxa occurred. Estructura 3 represents the highest number of recovered faunal remains. In every structure, camelids— or, more correctly, Artiodactyla (eventoed ungulates including the camelids and deer)— dominate the assemblages at around 98–99 percent, complemented by small numbers of burrowing rodents and armadillos (Izeta 2007a). Previously we offered 279
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Figure 107. Worked camelid bones, including 3 metapodials and 1 scapula, all with distal end modification.
generalized counts of Artiodactyla where more specific characteristics could not be identified, but we also identified Hippocamelus antisensis (taruca or North Andean deer) and three distinct camelid species: Lama glama (llama), Lama guanicoe (guanaco) and Vicugna vicugna (vicuña), demonstrating a dependence on both wild and domesticated species. Taxonomic identification was based on the recognition of distinctive anatomical features as well as the use of osteometry (Izeta 2007a, 2007b, 2008), which allows identification of camelid species based on differences in bone morphology and size. In this way we were able to separate large from small camelids using different complete bones recovered for every occupation at Yutopian. Mainly we used the first phalanges, but other bones (astragalus, accessory carpal, first carpal, radial carpal, third carpal, humerus, metatarsal, third phalange, radius-ulna, tibia and central tarsal) were also used for taxonomic identifications. Rodents identified at Yutopian consist of the Ctenomyidae (also known as the tuco tuco, similar to the North American pocket gopher), Microcavia or cavy (or southern mountain cavy), Chinchillidae, and 280
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Lagidium viscacia (locally known as vizcacha, a burrowing rabbit-like rodent related to chinchillas). All of these are common in the region today. Birds of different body sizes were identified at Yutopian, and some of these most likely correspond to the Furnariidae family (small birds like the horneros or ovenbirds). We anticipated finding the well-recognized Pterocnemia pennata or Lesser Rhea (the American Ostrich) known locally as suri. This large flightless bird has been recorded at late-period archaeological sites from Argentina and Chile; usually the distal portions of the hind legs predominate in these assemblages (Cruz and Elkin 2003:37). Federico, the oldest crewmember from Yutopian, remembers hunting them in the 1960s and ’70s, and the iconography of Santamariana pottery uses suri images extensively. But no suri remains were recovered from Yutopian nor have they been recovered from other Formative period sites in the puna or upland valleys (Izeta, personal communication 2010; Izeta 2007a: 12). On the other hand, suri eggshells were apparently collected and have been recovered at later period sites, and Izeta (2007a: 235) reports suri eggshells from two Formative sites in the Cajón region. We also recorded a small quantity of suri eggshell from a bedrock pit in Estructura 1 (Gero, field notes, March 23 and May 5, 1994), although this find was subsequently not relocated in our faunal collections. The armadillo is well represented by Chaetophractus vellerosus, known in English as “the screaming hairy armadillo[!]” but locally called quirquincho. Throughout our excavations we recovered very small plates of its hard outer shell and some other bones and already knew it was readily eaten. Like so many other dry-adapted species in the region, this is a burrowing animal. The single identified Canidae from Estructura 1 corresponds perhaps to a fox. Very few carnivore remains were recovered, two from the upper level of Estructura 4 and two from Estructura 11; one of these, most likely a claw bone, belongs to a large felid, most likely a puma, and the other to a smaller wildcat. It is known that mountain lions (or pumas) were still hunted in the hills until recently, and we expected them in the Yutopian assemblages. Certainly the animal figurine recovered from the early pit in Estructura 3 suggests some kind of spotted cat (see Fig. 59). Finally, three human teeth were recovered: a human molar from the lower occupation level of Estructura 4 and two human tooth fragments from the closely related Estructura 5. This might suggest contemporaneity between Núcleo 2 and the occupation of the lower level of Estructura 4 (Izeta 2007a). Certain basic patterns stand out here (see Table 15). The large ungulates (mostly camelids but also some deer) dominate every occupation 281
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INSIDE STRUCTURE at doorway: round mortero with mano
2 halves of broken conana
DATA FROM THE EXPERTS another broken conana stood on end level, suggesting specialization in these species (and also incised, painted sherds, a sophisticated Condorhuasi and CiéCondorhuasi jar pieces naga sherds the improved chances of recovering large bones). In every occupation
level at Yutopian we can see that the ratio of adult camelids to juve-
broken projectile points
Table 15. Distribution of faunal taxa at Yutopian Est. 1
Est. 3
Patio Núcleo 1
Est. 4 Lower
Est. 4 Upper
Est. 5
Est. 11
Total bones recovered
2,241
3,436
143
21
1,897
303
2,573
Identified
96.16%
89.43%
59.44%
80.95%
40.00%
67.98%
96.15%
Artiodactyla (% of id’d)
90.67%
95.54%
88.23%
68.42%
84.52%
53.51%
93.65%
Camelids (% of id’d)
5.66%
4.55%
12.94%
47.36%
21.42%
41.74%
6.22%
NonArtiodactyla (% of id’d) No. of different taxa Special notes (no. of bones, not animals)
9.33%
4.46%
11.77%
31.58%
15.48%
46.49%
6.35%
12
9
4
5
6
7
11
1 guanaco
1 llama
1 llama 3 vicuña 1 human molar
6 llama 1 vicuña 1 guanaco
2 human teeth
niles is very constant: 85 percent adults to 15 percent juveniles (adults are defined as 36 months or older). Thus, animals were not being consumed when they were young but rather were kept even after achieving maximum weight gain, perhaps for secondary products like wool or for use in transport (Izeta 2008; Izeta and Cortés 2006). We also note that this pattern does not hold for Formative period camelid assemblages from the higher puna zones or at another lower valley occupation, Soria 2 (Belotti 2011), where juveniles and subadults are represented in greater frequencies. Thus there may be two different patterns of humancamelid relationship in the valleys and up on the puna; in the puna there may have been a pastoralist economy rather than a basically agricultural economy where pastoralists deliberately bred and ate younger animals. 282
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Faunal remains
Meanwhile, at Yutopian and other Formative Valley sites a higher proportion of food came from agriculture (Izeta 2008:143). Wild and domestic camelid bone proportions in the valley occupations also reveal that hunting was important throughout the Formative period, because either ancient people used risk-management strategies or, as suggested above, they were protecting the herds to maintain a reliable stock of wool and a potential cargo force. The latter case is indirectly supported in camelid bone paleopathologies such as those registered nearby (e.g., Cartajena et al. 2013; Izeta and Cortés 2006), and on weaving instruments made with camelid metatarsals. These tools are found in at least seven occupations of the Santa María and Cajón Formative households as part of the trash left behind or in cache areas (Izeta et al. 2013). Even more notably, weaving tools made on camelid metapodials were found as grave goods in a tomb east of Cardonal (Cortés 2013), underscoring the importance of wool weaving and the production of textiles in Formative occupations. At Yutopian, four metapodial weaving implements were recovered, one complete in Estructura 1 and three in Estructura 4 (two broken and one complete). A final approach used at Yutopian was bone refuse analysis, allowing us to understand what people ate—a critical cultural marker that can differentiate one group of people from another—as well as other social aspects of their lives. Ways of doing things, how they produced or acquired raw material, the morphology of their bone artifacts, how they used household space and the landscape they were living in are some social aspects that can be answered by simply looking very closely at tiny pieces of bones. Lastly, the zooarchaeological record lets us see things that are apparently missing from the archaeological record or hard to interpret with other lines of evidence—such as weaving, herding, transporting—all of this intertwined with daily life activities of individuals in a context of short- and long-distance relationships through time.
283
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DATA FROM THE EXPERTS
83 Data from the experts
Ceramic forms and designs (with M. Fabiana Bugliani) The forms and designs of Yutopian’s ceramics were analyzed in a doctoral dissertation by María Fabiana Bugliani (2008), who studied Formative period ceramic assemblages south of the Calchaquí Valley, later modifying her analysis in some particulars (Bugliani 2010). Like Izeta’s treatment of Yutopian’s faunal remains, Bugliani’s approach is comparative and offers valuable information about the assemblages recovered from Núcleos 1 and 2. Bugliani examined almost 13,000 ceramic fragments from Yutopian. She began her study by defining three types of “ordinary” ceramics (Burnished, Polished and Red) and four types of “fine or intermediate” ceramics (Polished Grey, Incised Grey, Fine Red and Intermediate Smoothed). She describes her types as follows:
The “ordinary” ceramics at Yutopian Ordinary Smoothed (ceramics) present pastes with abundant nonplastic inclusions and smoothed surfaces that vary from beige to brown in color, often fire-blackened from use in food preparation. These occasionally show incised decorations introduced when the clay was fresh. Ordinary Polished resembles the previous type but the external surface is more polished. Ordinary Red has the same characteristics as Ordinary Smoothed but is covered with a thin red slip. Some fragments are decorated with clay appliqué and deep incisions, perhaps corresponding to vessels defined as Monochrome Red at other sites in Northwest Argentina.
The “Fine and Intermediate” Ceramics at Yutopian Polished Grey ceramics have a compact paste with few or no nonplastic inclusions, and thin or medium vessel walls that grade in color from 284
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beige or light grey to dark grey or almost black. The surface is finished with different grades of polish, sometimes showing polishing lines but in other cases showing a surface that is highly polished and shiny. Fragments may belong to open vessel forms that have decorated, modeled and incised rims. It is possible that some sherds classified as Polished Grey are from Incised Grey vessels, which are alike in paste and surface treatments but which are generally decorated with incised geometric designs introduced into the fresh clay. A few examples are engraved (incised when the clay is already hard). Some designs in this group can be assimilated into previously defined styles from Northwest Argentina known as Río Diablo, Ciénaga and Aguada. Fine Red wares have an orangish paste that can sometimes be grey at the center, sometimes porous, with a small amount of nonplastic inclusions. The external surface is well polished and generally covered with thick red paint which can also appear as brown. Geometric designs are painted in white and/ or black similar to the Condorhuasi style. Finally, Intermediate Smoothed exhibit two kinds of pastes: one with abundant nonplastic (temper) and thick walls that fracture irregularly, and the other with fewer inclusions, thin walls, and a straight or concoidal fracture pattern. In both cases the pastes are orange-red or reddish, indicating an incomplete oxidized firing atmosphere. External surfaces are mostly smoothed, although they may be polished in some areas. Many fragments show an uneven distribution of white slip, possibly dissolved from erosion. Anthropomorphic faces achieved with clay appliqué and incision may be present, similar to Candelaria. Using these definitions, Bugliani found that every structure at Yutopian contained more ordinary sherds than fine or intermediate sherds: 84 percent in Estructura 1, 73 percent in Estructura 2, 85 percent in Estructura 3, 80 percent in the patio of Núcleo 1, 98 percent in the lower level of Estructura 4, 87 percent in the upper level of Estructura 4 and 90 percent in the patio of Núcleo 2. This pattern may occur because the ordinary vessels, usually used for cooking or storage, are larger than the fine/intermediate vessels (used for serving), but also because the fine/ intermediate vessels suffer less breakage. The fine/intermediate sherds, although a small percentage of the total pottery, include significant stylistic and morphological variability. Within them, Polished Grey and Intermediate Smoothed types predominate in all structures and both patios; especially in Estructura 2 there is an abundance of Intermediate Smoothed. Estructura 2 also has an overrepresentation of Ordinary Polished sherds, while all the other contexts contain mostly unmodified ordinary sherds (Bugliani 2010:71). In Estructura 4, the lower floor shows extremely low counts of fine/inter285
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DATA FROM THE EXPERTS
mediate sherds (only 2 percent of the sherd count from that context), and there are no Incised Grey sherds. Fine Red and Incised Grey types are always represented in very low frequencies. Bugliani was also able to establish a minimum number of vessels recovered from each structure and the patios, and these better-preserved vessels were sorted by general morphological forms as shown in Table 16. Table 16. Distribution of ceramic vessel forms by structure at Yutopian Morphological Group
Open bowl Shallow plate Pitcher Cup or jar (cooking) Pot Jug Total minimal number of vessels per archaeological unit
Núcleo 1
Núcleo 2
Total
Est. 1
Est. 2
Est. 3
Patio
Est. 4 Lower
Est. 4 Upper
Est. 5 (patio)
7 4 4 3 18
6 1 12 19
3 1 1 1 1 7
2 2 2 6
1 2 5 8
2 1 1 2 2 8
2 1 2 5 1 11
24 5 1 10 30 7 78
Note : After Bugliani 2008:99, Table 11.
As expectedoffrom domestic structures, the most common form of Table 17. Distribution obsidian in Núcleo 2 ceramics is the cooking pot, followed by open bowls and jars associated with serving eating food. With90–100 so many pots in110–120 use, it is also logi0–50 and 50–70 70–80 80–90 100–110 120–130 130+ cal that cm many cm of themcmshowcm up broken in Estructura 2, which cm cm cm cm we had cm already decided had served as a dump in its final use-phase; in fact a lot Est. 4 of everything 6/11 ended 4/9 2/12 3/11 2/92. The2/9 3/9 are 7/7 0/2 up in Estructura open bowls widely distributed across structures, but the jugs and pitchers, both related to liqEst. 5 uid (patio) 7/5 1 enjoy 11/17more 9/12restricted 8/17 use 1 /2contexts 9/11 and 2/7 3/6 often— storage, occur most in Estructuras 1 and 4 (upper level), plus the Estructura 5/Núcleo 2 patio. Note : Ona obsidian/Cueros de Purulla obsidian. Although obsidian from both sources is recovered It islevel worth noting that both Estructuras 1 and 4 (upper level) are thede from every of Estructuras 4 and 5, there is a marked preference for obsidian fromalso Cueros two contexts that have hearths, where water would have been kept for Purulla, the second number in each pair, especially in the occupation levels. cooking. Somewhat surprisingly, bowls, plates, jars and cooking pots were all produced in ordinary pastes as well as in fine/ intermediate pastes. On 286
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Figure 108. Candelaria vessels from Estructura 1 (left) and Estructura 4 (right).
the other hand, jugs (for storing liquids) were made only from ordinary and intermediate pastes, while jars (as drinking vessels) only appear as fine types, generally decorated. This demonstrates a marked correlation between the forms/uses of receptacles and the kind of ceramics from which they were made. Bugliani (2010) also observed that decorative standardization was uniquely applied to the liquid storage containers. The larger intermediate containers for liquid transport and serving (cántaros, or jugs) show a uniform kind of decoration using modeling, appliqué and incision (but not painting), forming a human face on the vessel neck, with the belly of the jug suggesting the belly of a person made to be filled (ibid., 28). Both the standardization and the humanization of the Candelaria-style jugs are noteworthy (Fig. 108). When Bugliani (2010:100) compared the reconstructed ceramic assemblages (n = 78) from Núcleos 1 and 2 by ceramic types instead of vessel forms, she found a different pattern (Figs. 109, 110). The highest percentages of fine types within the reconstructed vessels occurred in Estructura 3 and the patio of Núcleo 1 (over 60 percent of the ceramics recovered in each context), followed by Estructura 1 (over 50 percent) and Estructura 2 (over 40 percent); that is, the Núcleo 1 contexts tended to have more fine ceramics. In contrast, vessels of ordinary ceramic types were more prevalent in Núcleo 2. 287
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Figure 109. Vessel types from Núcleo 1 (from Bugliani 2010).
Figure 110. Vessel types from Núcleo 2 (from Bugliani 2010).
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Ceramic forms and designs
If we examine only the ordinary paste type across the formal vessel categories, we find almost identical distributions of bowls, pots, jars and jugs in Núcleos 1 and 2, with ollas, or cooking pots, the most common form, and other forms also equally represented in smaller quantities, in both patio groups. However when the distribution of fine pottery was observed, the two núcleos were not alike. Núcleo 1 had many more fine open bowls (17 compared to 3) and more fine cooking pots (8 compared to 2) than Núcleo 2; however, both patio groups had fine jars and jugs. It may be that Núcleo 1 enjoyed and practiced higher-prestige eating and thus exhibited the majority of the fine bowls and fine cooking pots, or possibly Núcleo 1 was simply in use for a longer period. Bugliani also analyzed the diameters of vessel openings for each formal category, and from this she was able to estimate and compare the sizes of vessels between the two núcleos: the diameters of vessels from Núcleo 2 were generally much smaller. For example, the cooking pots of Núcleo 2 ordinary wares showed diameters between 10 cm and 18 cm, while in Núcleo 1 the openings ranged between 12 cm and 31 cm. Similarly, the bowls—the most abundant form in the fine-type series—were also smaller (between 10 cm and 22 cm) in Núcleo 2 than in Núcleo 1 where the diameters of the openings reached as large as 28 cm. Not surprisingly, the most intensely decorated and polished vessels are jars, medium-sized jugs and bowls (both small and medium), all of which are associated with serving and consumption and would have circulated among the largest numbers of people (Bugliani 2010:27–28). These again are recovered largely from Estructuras 1 and 4 (upper occupation level). Ceramics from the occupation floor of Structure 3 tell another story because they represent an association of ceramic styles typical of different zones, including valleys located east of the site (a subtropical, rainforest-like ecozone), and high valleys located south of the site. The styles included there are Candelaria, Condorhuasi Polychrome, and Polished Grey and Incised Grey wares (Scattolin and Gero 1999:353). Bugliani’s (2010) comparison of Yutopian’s ceramic assemblages with other Formative assemblages in the wider region (including assemblages from other domestic sites, but also from Formative tombs) yields another interesting fact: that Yutopian has an especially high proportion of cooking wares and ordinary ceramics, even compared to other domestic sites (146). Note 1. Most solids like seeds or minerals can be stored in baskets or in folded cloth and generally are not placed in breakable ceramic vessels.
289
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COOKING THE DATA
84 Cooking the data
Chalcedony and obsidian, part 2 To understand Núcleo 1, we observed the changing distribution of speTable 16. Distribution of ceramic forms byand structure at Yutopian lithic materials from different structures the patio, as a means Table cific 16. Distribution of ceramic vessel vessel forms by structure at Yutopian to date individual buildings (Bit 45). Now we can extend this analysis Núcleo Núcleo 2 irregular Total toMorphological includeNúcleo Núcleo 4 and area Morphological 1 2, 1composed of Estructura Núcleo 2 the Group as Estructura 5, to observe the larger data set. Group known 1Est. 2 lithic Est. 2Est. 3 Patio 4 41 and Est. 42 5resulted Est. 5 Attempts correlate distributions in Núcleos Est. to 1 Est. 3 Est. Patio Est. 4 Est. Est. Est. Lower Upper (patio) Lower Upper (patio) in a big surprise: chalcedony is completely absent in the occupation levels, pits and fill in both Estructuras 4 and 5 (the patio). Of the 562 OPEN BOWL 7 6 32 2 1 2 2 2 24 OPEN chalcedony BOWL 7 flakes 6 3 recovered from the entire1 site, only two 2occurred in SHALLOW 1 1 2 1 - 5 SHALLOW - This marked 1 1 restriction 2 - a mundane 1 Núcleo 2. spatial of raw material PLATE PLATE raises many intriguing questions. --- - 1 11 PITCHERPITCHER CUP Atorthe same time, Estructuras 4 1and 5 show a regular preference for JAR 4 2 1 2 10 CUP or JAR 4 1 2 1 2 Purulla over Ona obsidian, an exact reversal from the Núcleo 1 pattern. (cooking) 12 1 12 25 5 2 2 5 5 30 (cooking) POT 4POT 4 12 And finally, although chert is virtually absent from Núcleo 1, it appears JUG 3 1 2 17 JUG 3 1 2 1 inTotal small but regular quantities in Núcleo 2, perhaps as a substitute for 18 19 19 7 76 68 8 8 8 11 1178 Total mini- mini-18 chalcedony. mal number mal number dramatic contrasts in lithic consumption between the two of These vessels per of vessels per archaeological patio groups are surprisingly consistent throughout the occupation archaeological unit unit sequence: Núcleo 1 uses chalcedony and prefers Ona obsidian, while Núcleo 2 uniquely uses chert and prefers Purulla obsidian.
Total
24 5 1 10 30 7 78
Note :Bugliani After Bugliani 2008:99, Table 11. Note : After 2008:99, Table 11.
Table 17. Distribution of obsidian in Núcleo 2 Table 17. Distribution of obsidian in Núcleo 2 0–50 0–50 50–70 50–70 70–80 70–80 80–90 80–90 90–10090–100 100–110100–110 110–120110–120 120–130120–130 130+ 130+ cm cm cm cm cmcm cm cm cm cm cm cm cm cm cm cm cm cm Est. 4 Est. 4
4/9 2/12
2/12 3/11
3/11 2/9
2/92/9
2/93/9
3/97/7
7/70/2
0/2
Est. 5 (patio) 7/5 Est. 5 (patio) 7/5 11/17 11/17 9/12
9/12 8/17
8/17 1 /2
1 /2 9/11
9/11 2/7
2/73/6
3/6—
—
6/11
6/11 4/9
Note : Ona obsidian/Cueros de Purulla obsidian. Although from both sources is recovered Note : Ona obsidian/Cueros de Purulla obsidian. Although obsidianobsidian from both sources is recovered from every level of Estructuras 4 and 5, there is a marked preference for obsidian from Cueros de from every level of Estructuras 4 and 5, there is a marked preference for obsidian from Cueros de the second each pair, especially in the occupation Purulla,Purulla, the second numbernumber in eachin pair, especially in the occupation levels. levels.
290
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Chalcedony and obsidian, part 2
Explaining the contrast or division as a chronological shift in procurement patterns could make sense since the Núcleo 2 dates (especially Estructura 4) tend to be younger than most of the Núcleo 1 dates (Bit 72). But this explanation only goes so far because while there are important overlaps in the date ranges of the two núcleos, there is virtually no overlap in raw material use. It is also possible that different raw materials carried different prestige, or different ritual/ historical meanings. The Purulla obsidian, used for almost all the projectile points from all structures at Yutopian, may mark Núcleo 2 as having consistent access to higher-status goods or greater participation in activities with specific social meanings. Still another explanation might recognize long-lasting relationships that different households maintained with suppliers of different exotic raw materials, or different longstanding access privileges to distinct sources of high-quality stone. Raw lithic material is not the only clean divide between Núcleos 1 and 2: a related contrast is the use of a unique artifact class of small, sometimes slightly irregular, denticulated triangular points made on unifacial flakes (see Fig. 38, center). Interestingly, these points are manufactured exclusively from chalcedony or obsidian. At first we thought of these as projectile points since the form is so clearly pointed, but their size (≤ 2 cm) and their finely denticulated edges suggest a different function. Closer examination of damage along one and sometimes two sides of each “point” led us to think that the small pointed flakes were hafted or set into a handle for fine engraving or for another specialized task. But most interesting, this distinctive class of tool is also only identified with Núcleo 1 where 10 of them were recovered; none of these artifacts appeared in Estructuras 4 and 5.
l
30+ m
/2
—
ered s de
Table 18. Distribution of small denticulated triangular points Structure Estructura 1 Estructura 2
Unit 306 310 313 322 323 352
Estructura 3 Patio
354
Depth 75–85 cm 70–80 cm 90–100 cm 50–60 cm 40–50 cm 56 cm, 62 cm Level 1
Lithic material chalcedony obsidian chalcedony chalcedony chalcedony agate, chalcedony
# Recovered 1 2 2 1 1 2
agate
1
Note : No denticulated triangular points were recovered from Estructuras 4 and 5 (Núcleo 2).
291
Table 19. Distribution of side-struck flakes by size and depth EST. 1 gero pages new3.indd 291
Depth
SML
EST. 2
EST. 3
EST. 4
SML
SML
SML
Patio Núc. 1 SML
Patio Núc. 2 SML
Total 8/20/15 9:11 AM
COOKING THE DATA
If the intended task associated with denticulated triangles was undertaken only by residents of Estructuras 1, 2 and 3—and never by residents of Estructura 4—we have further evidence of the differentiated function of the two patio groups. Perhaps the multiple small sharp triangles were used in food preparation, set into grooves and used either as graters for tubers or maybe to cut meat into strips (some task that did not damage the denticulated edges and tips of the tools); if so, this specific food production routine, whatever it was, was apparently not appropriate to the activities carried out in Núcleo 2. We still don’t know why small triangles were not made from other appropriate raw materials such as tuff or rhyolite, but their distribution underscores functional differentiation of patio groups at Yutopian.
85 Data
Stone tools from other angles Stone tools, the most fundamental culture-environment connection, are already discussed under other topics: as grinding stones, as defining activity areas, and as time-sensitive indicators of patterns of raw material consumption. Here I describe three functional classes of stone tools at Yutopian that appear integral to village life in the Formative: projectile points, slate knives and side-struck flakes. Projectile points at Yutopian are common but not remarkable. After the Archaic period in Northwest Argentina, projectile point traditions were uniformly based on unifacial rather than bifacial cores (Escola 1999:25). Thus Formative projectile points are seldom symmetrical in their ventral-to-dorsal sides and are often somewhat clunky and somewhat irregular. This broadly observed technological shift could underscore a greater reliance on domesticated animals rather than wild hunted game since domesticated animals are usually slaughtered with hand-held implements. However, we would be hard put to distinguish, among the 48 points recovered from Yutopian, between those that were launched to acquire game versus those used to spear domesticated livestock (Fig. 111). 292
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COOKING THE DATA
If the intended task associated with denticulated triangles was undertaken only by residents of Estructuras 1, 2 and 3—and never by residents of Estructura 4—we have further evidence of the differentiated function of the two patio groups. Perhaps the multiple small sharp triangles were used in food preparation, set into grooves and used either as graters for tubers or maybe to cut meat into strips (some task that did not damage the denticulated edges and tips of the tools); if so, this specific food production routine, whatever it was, was apparently not appropriate to the activities carried out in Núcleo 2. We still don’t know why small triangles were not made from other appropriate raw materials such as tuff or rhyolite, but their distribution underscores functional differentiation of patio groups at Yutopian.
85 Data
Stone tools from other angles Stone tools, the most fundamental culture-environment connection, are already discussed under other topics: as grinding stones, as defining activity areas, and as time-sensitive indicators of patterns of raw material consumption. Here I describe three functional classes of stone tools at Yutopian that appear integral to village life in the Formative: projectile points, slate knives and side-struck flakes. Projectile points at Yutopian are common but not remarkable. After the Archaic period in Northwest Argentina, projectile point traditions were uniformly based on unifacial rather than bifacial cores (Escola 1999:25). Thus Formative projectile points are seldom symmetrical in their ventral-to-dorsal sides and are often somewhat clunky and somewhat irregular. This broadly observed technological shift could underscore a greater reliance on domesticated animals rather than wild hunted game since domesticated animals are usually slaughtered with hand-held implements. However, we would be hard put to distinguish, among the 48 points recovered from Yutopian, between those that were launched to acquire game versus those used to spear domesticated livestock (Fig. 111). 292
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Stone tools from other angles Figure 111. Projectile point sequence from Estructura 11: top: mixed Levels 1–4; (next row, left to right): Levels 5–6, 7 and 9; (next row) small broken point from Level 11, large stemmed point from Level 12; (bottom) both from Level 13.
The Yutopian projectile points were distributed as shown in Figure 112. We noted the paucity of points from the Núcleo 1 patio, just one, in contrast to the numbers recovered in each of the structures where an occupation floor could be located, and the especially high frequency of points from Estructura 11. Yutopian projectile points were generally made of nonlocal materials, usually Purulla obsidian, but they were also produced from basalt or milky quartz and, in Estructura 4, a unique red jasper. By common wisdom, Early Formative projectile points are relatively large and stemmed (for hafting), apparently attached to long shafts and thrown like harpoons. During later periods people produced small stemless triangular points with deeply concave bases, better suited for hafting to an arrow shaft, and it is therefore suggested that bows and arrows were not used until after the Early Formative period (Escola 1998). But these expectations did not hold up at Yutopian; small stemless triangu293
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Figure 112. Distribution graph of projectile points from Yutopian.
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Stone tools from other angles
Figure 113. Slate knives from Estructura 4.
lar points appeared in the uppermost levels of Estructura 11 (HispanoIndígena period) where they were expected, but also deep in the Early Formative level. Larger stemmed points occurred appropriately enough in Early Formative contexts such as Estructura 11 (at 95 cm depth) and in Estructura 4 (at 126 cm depth), but we also found stemmed points in later contexts, such as in the upper levels of Estructuras 3 and 11. Thus our understanding of stemmed points changed from being diagnostic Early Formative tools to an association with Early and Late Formative contexts and possibly later-period contexts as well. Similarly Yutopian data demonstrate that small stemless triangular points were definitely used in Formative contexts. We were gratified that Escola concurred when she visited our project; she has also demonstrated that very small triangular obsidian points occur certainly by Late Formative times, but possibly also in Early Formative contexts (Escola 2007). Slate knives are a second well-recognized tool type at Yutopian; 39 were recovered, all from Formative contexts (Fig. 113). The compact depositional layering or bedding of slate means that the stone can easily be separated into flat pieces of a required size and thickness, and edges can be ground and reground for sharpening into knives as needed (Fig. 114). Ethnographically, slate knives are widely associated with slitting and skinning fish (Frink 2003), but obviously fish resources are irrelevant in the high dry desert at Yutopian. Morphologically, in size and shape, the slate knives from Yutopian resemble raederas de módula grandísimo (very large scraping tools) found at Argentinean puna sites and corre295
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Figure 114. Distribution graph of slate knives from Yutopian.
Figure 115. Large basalt scraping tools (raederas de módulo grandísimo) with characteristic steep edges
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Stone tools from other angles Figure 116. Side-struck flakes from the Estructura 4 cache.
lated with harvesting or threshing minute local grains (Chenopodium quinoa and Ch. pallidicaule) (Babot et al. 2008; Escola and Hocsman 2011). In fact, raederas also appear at Yutopian (Fig. 115), produced from basalt rather than slate, and made by flaking and retouch rather than grinding—a quite different tool. The slate knives from Yutopian show a roughly standard size but also much breakage. Most plausibly, the Yutopian slate knives were employed as hide scrapers and defleshing tools, useful in hide preparation where the fat layer directly under the hide is to be cut, while the hide itself is scraped but preserved intact. Interestingly, like projectile points, slate knives were recovered from all the excavated structures but were absent on the patios apart from one well-preserved example associated with the (later) square feature on the patio of Núcleo 1. Both Estructuras 1 and 2 had concentrations of slate knives in their lower levels, while Estructura 4 had somewhat fewer, which again tallies with the reconstructed use of hide scraping. “Side-struck flakes” (my term) are produced by a sufficiently unusual technique that their occurrence deserves notice (Fig. 116). Most flakes exhibit their longest dimension between the striking platform and the opposite tip of the flake; that is, the striking platform occurs at one end of the flake. But on some long flakes, the striking platform appears on the side of the flake, making the flake not long and narrow but extremely wide and short. A cortex band sometimes remains along the long edge opposite the striking platform. Producing short, wide side-struck flakes entails radically different core preparation and technological sequencing from normal flaking, and when we encounter numerous examples we recognize that a deliberately different tool type is being produced. The inclusion of five 297
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Structure Estructura 1 Estructura 2
Unit 306 310 313 322 323 352
Depth Lithic material # Recovered 75–85 cm chalcedony 1 70–80 cm obsidian 2 90–100 cm chalcedony 2 Estructura 3 50–60 cm chalcedony 1 DATA 40–50 cm chalcedony 1 Patio 56 cm, 2 matched side-struck flakes in the toolagate, cachechalcedony of Estructura 4 underscores 62 cm their significance as a specialized—and perhaps highly valued—tool 354 Level 1 agate 1
class. Side-struck flakes at Yutopian are always made of basalt and occur
Note : No denticulatedthe triangular points were recovered throughout assemblage (Table 19). from Estructuras 4 and 5 (Núcleo 2).
Table 19. Distribution of side-struck flakes by size and depth
Depth (cm) 0–50 50–60 60–70 70–80 80–90 90–100 100–110 110–120 120–130 130–140 140–150 Total
Est. 1
Est. 2
Est. 3
Est. 4
SML
SML
SML
SML
-32431-322-1-
241 212122211112-1-41-1-32
334213-11-152-41-
31
21-11-2-1 11-
10
21
Patio Núc. 1 SML
Patio Núc. 2 SML
Total
3--
11 8 1 23-
39 23 11 11 11 12 7 6 4 1 1 126
2-2--
3
29
Note : S (small) = 1–3 cm; M (medium) = 3–6 cm; L (large) = 6+ cm. These counts do not include the five examples from the Estructura 4 cache.
The absence of side-struck flakes from the patio of Núcleo 1 reflects the nonrandom distribution of work that requires these specialized tools, apparently undertaken only inside the structures at Yutopian and preponderantly in Estructuras 1 and 4, the two structures coincident with raised clay hearths. Two basalt cores appropriate for this technology— flat slabs approximately 5 × 3 cm in size and 1 cm thick, sometimes with a cortex rind—were also recovered in association with Núcleo 2 (e.g., Estructura 4 Unit 333 and Estructura 5 Unit 342). Both the diversity of standardized stone tools and the diversity of lithic raw materials at Yutopian are unusual at Early Formative sites. Not only were multiple quarries and sources of stone maintained and exploited by residents (apparently on a household basis), but a specialized technology is represented by distinctive classes of implements. While local stone, especially quartz and basalt, dominates the lithic material on living floors and fill in all the excavated units at Yutopian, there is also 298
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Stone tools from other angles
obsidian, rhyolitic tuff, slate, quartzite and small quantities of chert and chalcedony. And while the formal assemblage described here is used throughout the Formative settlement, there was also a heavy reliance on utilized flakes and much resulting debitage.
86 Data
Cross-mends and what they tell us Recovering pieces of the same artifact from different locations on the site can be informative in many directions: to suggest living surfaces that were open and in use at the same time; to inform how things were made or how they might have been broken; to illuminate garbage disposal patterns; to trace postdepositional disturbance in an archaeological context. At Yutopian, we noted several ceramic cross-mends and, less frequently, lithic refits.
{Table 20 figure goes here, as shown; I have left it embedded in the file for now, but you’ll find it among the art files.}
Table 20. Distribution of ceramic cross-mends in Estructura 4 Depth 70–80 cm (Level 3) 80–90 cm (Level 4) 90–100 cm (Level 5) 100–110 cm (Level 6) 110–120 cm (Level 7)
Unit 330 Xs X X
Unit 331 Xm Xm Xsm Xsm
Unit 332 X
Unit 333
Unit 334
Xsm
m sm Xm
m
Note : X = Candelaria face pot (special find #208) fragments; s = Candelaria face pot (special find #210) fragments; m = Río diablo pot (special find #209) fragments. {Author asked if we could use different symbols in this table; she’d like to replace # with circles 299 and @ with squares or triangles. If designer can do this, we’ll have to change the key in this note, too.}
Table 21. Distribution of lapis lazuli beads in Estructura 4
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obsidian, rhyolitic tuff, slate, quartzite and small quantities of chert and chalcedony. And while the formal assemblage described here is used throughout the Formative settlement, there was also a heavy reliance on utilized flakes and much resulting debitage.
86 Data
Cross-mends and what they tell us Recovering pieces of the same artifact from different locations on the site can be informative in many directions: to suggest living surfaces that were open and in use at the same time; to inform how things were made or how they might have been broken; to illuminate garbage disposal patterns; to trace postdepositional disturbance in an archaeological context. At Yutopian, we noted several ceramic cross-mends and, less frequently, lithic refits.
{Table 20 figure goes here, as shown; I have left it embedded in the file for now, but you’ll find it among the art files.}
Table 20. Distribution of ceramic cross-mends in Estructura 4 Depth 70–80 cm (Level 3) 80–90 cm (Level 4) 90–100 cm (Level 5) 100–110 cm (Level 6) 110–120 cm (Level 7)
Unit 330 Xs X X
Unit 331 Xm Xm Xsm Xsm
Unit 332 X
Unit 333
Unit 334
Xsm
m sm Xm
m
Note : X = Candelaria face pot (special find #208) fragments; s = Candelaria face pot (special find #210) fragments; m = Río diablo pot (special find #209) fragments. {Author asked if we could use different symbols in this table; she’d like to replace # with circles 299 and @ with squares or triangles. If designer can do this, we’ll have to change the key in this note, too.}
Table 21. Distribution of lapis lazuli beads in Estructura 4
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DATA
Easiest to identify were the cross-mends of decorated vessels from the upper levels of Estructura 4; these had evidently broken while still located where they’d been used. Each of these large vessels was distributed over at least four different excavation units and at least three horizontal depth levels, showing much horizontal and vertical dispersion since the occupation of the structure (although no sherds penetrated the clay floor separating the upper and lower occupation levels. Also, one last sherd of the incised, globular Río Diablo vessel was recovered from outside Estructura 4, just north of the entranceway on the east side of the {Table 20 figure goes here, as shown; I have left it embedded in the file for now, but you’ll find it structure (see Fig. 81). among the art files.} Some of the dispersion was certainly caused by the extensive rodent burrowing noted everywhere, but we also see an east-to-west sloping trend in the depths of matching sherds, a pattern that excavators had Table 20. Distribution of ceramic noted during digging but cross-mends I rejected at the time. Why would people live on a sloping surface (Bit 53)? Now the sloping cross-mends return our Depth thoughts to the puzzling Unit 330 function Unit 331 Unit 3324: if not Unita 333 Unit 334 of Estructura domestic resi70–80 dence, cm (Levelthen 3) might ceremonial X mdrinks beX prepared and served from a 80–90 higher cm (Level s Xm to4)a lowerXposition? 90–100 cmBy (Level X the 5) same token, Estructura X s m4 also Xyielded s m a lithic m cross-mend in Unit 333 Level be refitted, tell100–110 cm (Level 6) 7, Xwhere two agate X s mthinning flakes could sm ingcmus(Level that7)tool preparation actually took place on the Xupper floor,m at the 110–120 m same level as the hearth. Note : X = CANDELARIA FACE POTeight (special find lazuli #208) fragments; s 87) = CANDELARIA FACE POT 4 The case of the lapis beads (Bit from Estructura (specialmight find #210) DIABLOofPOT (special find #209) alsofragments; count asman= RÍO instance a cross-mend if wefragments. assume they had originally been deposited together—strung on a common cord or held {Author asked if we could use different symbols in this table; she’d like to replace # with circles and @ with in Ifa designer bag— orcaneven scattered across the same squarestogether or triangles. do this, we’ll have to change the keyliving in thissurface. note, too.} The single bead in the upper level of Unit 333 (50–60 cm depth) is clearly an outlier of a distinct solid grey-brown color (Fig. 117). But even the seven similar motTable 21. Distribution of lapis lazuli beads in tled blue/blue-green beads Estructura 4 from the lower occupation level came from differUnit 330 Unit 331 Unit 333 ent depths in the northern 50–60 cm X excavation units and do not 60–70 cm follow the sloping east-to70–80 cm west tendency noted for the 80–90 cm cross-mended sherds; three 90–100 cm of them are from pits in the 100–110 cm X bedrock floor. Perhaps they 110–120 X were deliberately scattered 120–130 cm XX around during the in-filling 130–140 cm X (pit) X X (pit) of the lower occupation Total 2 2 4 floor of Estructura 4; perTable 22. Distribution of spindle whorls from Yutopian 300 Depth 50–60 cm gero pages new3.indd 60–70 cm
Est. 1 Unit 306 300
Est. 2 Unit 313
Est. 3 Unit 323
Patio Unit 352 XX
Est. 4 Unit 330
Unit 333 8/20/15 9:11 AM
Cross-mends and what they tell us
Figure 117. Lapis lazuli beads from Estructura 4.
haps, despite their similarity, they were never a united unit. And there is also the matter of the other single bead from the pit in Estructura 1. In Estructura 1 (Unit 303, 92 cm depth), the almost complete Candelaria jar near the hearth (see Fig. 49) seems to have been broken in situ, lying on its “back,” with fracture lines radiating out from a single point at its highest contour. The fact that it broke while still lying on the living floor, before the structure began to accumulate fill, was reinforced by examining cross-mends: a patch of matching sherds from this jar was recovered from another adjacent unit, 300, at the greater depth of 112 cm, suggesting that breakage occurred when the jar was still in open air and pieces could disperse. (In contrast, two cross-mended Condorhuasi sherds from Estructura 1, recovered from PP 18 and the contiguous Unit 303, were both recovered at the same 70–80 cm level, confirming limited postdepositional lateral movement.) The deliberately smashed pots covering the bedrock floor in the lower occupation of Estructura 4 were closely arrayed, reminding us that they were never disturbed in an openair environment. Finally, the unique and surprising Aguada sherd recovered from the upper levels of the square feature (Unit 357) in the Núcleo 1 patio (Bit 42) had no broken parts nearby that matched it, nor did we necessarily expect matching sherds because the piece was stylistically and chrono301
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logically so out of place at Yutopian. However when we reopened the bags of ceramics from the earliest test pits three years after they had been dug, there was a definite match with a sherd recovered from PP 14 in Estructura 3. Our chronology of remodeling and late reoccupation of this structure was confirmed, but how the pot got dispersed remains a puzzle.
87 Data
Beads and spindle whorls We still have to account for the appearance of two special items at Yutopian, one perhaps over-represented at the site (an unexpected nine tubular lapis lazuli beads, recovered from both Núcleo 1 and Núcleo 2), and the other surprisingly under-represented (only six spinning weights or spindle whorls from the entire site). While the unexpected distribution of these two items makes it convenient to consider them together, there are no other commonalities such as both being, say, women’s property since beads and spinning can just as easily be associated here with men.
Why stone beads at Yutopian? As we saw in Table 12, the beads recovered at Yutopian were of two different kinds: tiny round, flat, perforated turquoise beads (recovered from Estructuras 2 and 3, the upper and lower occupations of Estructura 4 and the surface) and tubular biconically drilled lapis lazuli beads, about 1.5 cm long and highly polished; eight of these came from Estructura 4 and one from Estructura 1 (Figs. 117, 118). The tubular beads exhibited variation in color from grey-green (in Estructura 1) to grey/brown and blue/blue-green (Estructura 4). It seemed logical that the blue-toned beads (all from the lower Estructura 4 occupation) were strung together at one time but we have no evidence to support this. Rather many of the beads were recovered from pit contexts where they seem associated with dedicatory rituals or ceremonies. Beads of both types have been recovered from other Formative con302
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logically so out of place at Yutopian. However when we reopened the bags of ceramics from the earliest test pits three years after they had been dug, there was a definite match with a sherd recovered from PP 14 in Estructura 3. Our chronology of remodeling and late reoccupation of this structure was confirmed, but how the pot got dispersed remains a puzzle.
87 Data
Beads and spindle whorls We still have to account for the appearance of two special items at Yutopian, one perhaps over-represented at the site (an unexpected nine tubular lapis lazuli beads, recovered from both Núcleo 1 and Núcleo 2), and the other surprisingly under-represented (only six spinning weights or spindle whorls from the entire site). While the unexpected distribution of these two items makes it convenient to consider them together, there are no other commonalities such as both being, say, women’s property since beads and spinning can just as easily be associated here with men.
Why stone beads at Yutopian? As we saw in Table 12, the beads recovered at Yutopian were of two different kinds: tiny round, flat, perforated turquoise beads (recovered from Estructuras 2 and 3, the upper and lower occupations of Estructura 4 and the surface) and tubular biconically drilled lapis lazuli beads, about 1.5 cm long and highly polished; eight of these came from Estructura 4 and one from Estructura 1 (Figs. 117, 118). The tubular beads exhibited variation in color from grey-green (in Estructura 1) to grey/brown and blue/blue-green (Estructura 4). It seemed logical that the blue-toned beads (all from the lower Estructura 4 occupation) were strung together at one time but we have no evidence to support this. Rather many of the beads were recovered from pit contexts where they seem associated with dedicatory rituals or ceremonies. Beads of both types have been recovered from other Formative con302
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Beads and spindle whorls
Figure 118. Flat turquoise beads from Estructura 2 and the surface.
texts in Northwest Argentina, including from a patio floor of a residential unit at the site of La Ciénaga (Cremonte 1996, cited in Domínguez-Bella and Sampietro 2005) and a burial cyst under the floor of a habitation structure in the El Tolar region of the Tafí Valley (ibid.), where 299 beads of different shapes and dimensions were buried with a single individual. Analysis of eight of these using XRF and X-ray diffraction show that most were produced using a nonlocal source, most likely in northern Chile and the Antofagasta Desert area (ibid.). At 340 CE, the Tafí cyst burial is comparable in age to the lower Estructura 4 occupation at Yutopian, and it seems likely that Yutopian’s beads also came from afar. Other lines of evidence also suggest a distant origin for Yutopian’s stone beads. Large Formative bead production sites such as Tulán-54 (Núñez et al. 2007) are known from Antofagasta in northern Chile, and beads have also been recovered from Formative period caravan campsites between the Atacama area and northern Argentina (Nielsen 2013:401). Apparently beads were flowing into Northwest Argentina in the Formative—and perhaps earlier—from northern Chile by llama caravan routes. As early trade items, beads were hardly practical or required for daily life by the receiving social group. On the other hand they travel well, can be strung together so as not to abrade in transport, and introduce rare color combinations in small, intense polished units. It may be that 303
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T
D
Figure 119. Spindle whorls (left to right): one from Estructura 4, two from Núcleo 1 patio, one surface find.
5 6 7 8 9 1 1 1 1 T
rituals were developed that demanded the presence of beads, and interchange established, as we see borne out at Yutopian.
Why so few spindle whorls? Worldwide, prehistoric villages (like Yutopian) often have hundreds of spindle weights (whorls) because among people who weave their own cloth, some kind of fiber (cotton, wool, flax, linen, etc.) must be twisted (spun) to create yarn, and the yarn is collected by wrapping it around a stick or spindle. To keep the spindle from flying in all directions, a weight is attached at one end, and such weights are commonly found in archaeological contexts. Often they are made of recycled ceramic sherds— drilled and roughly smoothed to twirl better—but they can also be made specifically for this purpose out of stone or clay or a dense wood, plain or fancy (Fig. 119). On the other hand, sometimes a clump of mud or a raw vegetable is stuck on the end of the spindle for this purpose, and here the archaeologists are out of luck. At Yutopian, although Álvaro, Ramona and others were often spinning, we found only eight archaeological spindle whorls (plus one from the surface which we aren’t counting here—it could be modern!). These couldn’t have been more widely dispersed: from all structures and levels, pits, floors and patios, one here and one there. Nor could they be more different in style or raw material, except that they were mostly broken. Perhaps as at Yutopian today, much of this work was carried out in undedicated places during unstructured bits of time, while walking or visiting or waiting, and they simply aren’t concentrated in any one spot.
T
M
N e V H M N a
304
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Beads and spindle whorls
Although very few spindle whorls were recovered from Yutopian, Ramona owns many that she uses for her own spinning, including one of soapstone, one of a piece of cut rubber, and at least one perforated ceramic disk. Both the soapstone and the perforated ceramic disk could be archaeological finds, and other archaeological spindle whorls could have been recovered and recycled over the centuries, contributing to their low counts from excavated levels. And although I can’t recall Ramona using a potato or other vegetable as a spindle whorl, perhaps that is what the ancient occupants mostly used. Table 22. Distribution of spindle whorls from Yutopian Depth 50–60 cm 60–70 cm 70–80 cm 80–90 cm 90–100 cm 100–110 cm 110–120 cm 120–130 cm 130–140 cm Totals
Est. 1 Unit 306
Est. 2 Unit 313
Est. 3 Unit 323
Patio Unit 352
Est. 4 Unit 330
Unit 333
XX X
X
X X X
X 1
2
1
2
1
1
Table 23. Comparative features of Yutopian and Cardonal
Maximum length of site Number of identifiable structures/ enclosures Variation in size of enclosures Height above valley floor Maximum 14C range of dates Nunber of test pits undertaken a 14
Cardonal 3000 masl 370 m, oriented E-W
YUTOPIAN 3200 masl 330 m, oriented N-S
92 2–24 m 210 m 60–240 CE, 70–220 CEa 12
>35 2–20 m 100 m 20 BCE–350 CE 27
C date from Scattolin et al. 2009a.
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NARRATIVE
88 Narrative
The “other” Early Formative site: Cardonal After the 1999 analysis season, my nonteaching energies were doggedly devoted to developing the Fifth World Archaeological Congress, held for the first time in the United States (Washington, DC) in 2003, and I didn’t visit Argentina for several years. Cristina and I had both presented papers (Gero 2000; Scattolin 2003b) and published articles
Figure 120. Map of Cardonal showing placement of initial 12 test pits. (Note: The east and west sections of this map are separated by only a meter.)
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The “other” Early Formative site
(Gero and Scattolin 2002; Scattolin and Gero 1999) about Yutopian, and we worked on a comprehensive article (Gero and Scattolin n.d.) while Cristina also conducted research in other parts of Northwest Argentina. But after the WAC-5 Congress, when my time was my own once more, there were good reasons to resume work at Yutopian, to excavate comparative Early Formative occupations underlying other parts of the site and to define more precisely the boundaries of portions of the site that remained below Jorge’s house. Indeed, there’s no telling what we might have found, or how it could have changed even fundamental understandings of Yutopian and Early Formative life in Northwest Argentina. But even though no saintly procession led us to Cardonal, I thought to work there next instead of returning to Yutopian, hoping Cristina would join me once more. The earlier research at Yutopian had proven too unusual to understand in isolation: Were its unexpected Early Formative features unique, or were they a regional phenomenon? With its formal and apparently ceremonial aspects, how did Yutopian relate to other Early Formative villages in the region, and what differences and
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similarities could we identify between villages? I found these questions too compelling to return to Yutopian “just” to fill in details, as significant as they might have been. Like Yutopian, Cardonal lies on the western flanks of the Valle del Cajón, 8 km south of Yutopian and 2 km northwest of La Quebrada, the tiny outpost we had used briefly as a survey base in 1993 (see Fig. 2). Sometime in the twentieth century this must have been a sizeable settlement but outmigration had been intense, and now its center contained only three adobe houses (one of which also served as the post office), an adobe depósito (store) where a couple of dozen different products are sold, a chapel and a state-run school, all tenuously linked to the larger world by 16 km of dirt road (and sometimes a river bed) that connects to Route 40 and Santa María. Although the Early Formative (archaeological) villages of Yutopian and Cardonal seem surprisingly close to one another for being so unusual and contemporaneous, this distance was heartbreakingly huge when the Chaile children had to walk those same 8 km twice a day, to and from primary school, five days a week. Cardonal lies at an elevation of 3000 m above sea level and is aligned east-west along a flat shallow terrace set into the western flanks of the Sierra del Hombre Muerto, the mountain range that forms the western
Figure 121. Overview of Cardonal enclosures in Sector I. 310
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70–80 cm 80–90 cm X 90–100 cm X 100–110 cm 110–120 cm Thecm “other” Early Formative site 120–130 130–140 cm Totals
X 1
2
X
X
X
1
2
1
1
Table 23. Comparative features of Yutopian and Cardonal
Maximum length of site Number of identifiable structures/ enclosures Variation in size of enclosures Height above valley floor Maximum 14C range of dates Nunber of test pits undertaken 1 14
Cardonal 3000 masl 370 m, oriented E-W
Yutopian 3200 masl 330 m, oriented N-S
92 2–24 m 210 m 60–240 CE, 70–220 CE1 12
>35 2–20 m 100 m 20 BCE–350 CE 27
C date from Scattolin et al. 2009a.
boundary of the Valle del Cajón. The site’s location is surely strategic, situated close to a major pass connecting the temperate valley environment with the community of Laguna Blanca, the high puna and its resources: salt, grazing lands, distinct wood species and volcanic rock. Larger than Yutopian, the site of Cardonal consists of well-preserved structural walls, some two to three courses high, arranged as circular or subcircular recintos (enclosures) (Fig. 120). Although the overall distribution of structures is roughly linear, the recintos are aggregated into different-sized sectors ranging from 9 to 29 recintos in each sector, with individual recintos varying in size from 2 to 6 m in diameter (Fig. 121) (Nishizawa 2004). At the western end of the terrace are two pairs of disproportionately large enclosures, 20–24 m in diameter, which clearly served another function, most certainly corrals. Like Yutopian, surface materials here indicate a significant Early Formative occupation with less later material than at Yutopian; tantalizing surface finds included a 15 cm stone spoon and a denticulated basalt knife. In the summer of 2004 my students and I returned specifically to Cardonal, putting in test pits, correcting the site map and excavating in one of the well-preserved structures of a patio group. Later that year Cristina took her own students to Cardonal and completed excavations where we had left off. Then they excavated a second structure . . . and later another and another.
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89 Argument
Testing archaeology and its methods Leaving Yutopian to investigate Cardonal raised many questions. How well had we done at Yutopian, exposing, recording, recovering and interpreting the patterns of Early Formative life? Had our methods been appropriate? Efficient? Effective? Were our methods capable of disproving what we had expected, and could they reveal what we had never expected, in ways that would withstand the test of time? Did we miss evidence that other researchers would have located and understood? Did we recognize overarching patterns of evidence despite misleading singularities . . . and vice versa: did we recognize when apparently disparate bits of evidence were in fact evidentially related? At what price of alternative understandings did we gain insights into the specific conclusions we’ve been able to reach? These difficult questions should matter, and all archaeologists might want to ask them, regularly and publicly. Instead, we fall back on how carefully we followed the time-honored conventions of archaeological fieldwork, classification and interpretative precedents, relying on colleagues and readers (and privacy) to critique our most obvious faults. But in the end we don’t know how effective we were in our investigations since, to repeat, our excavations concurrently destroy our evidence. No one can come later and redo our archaeology, improving on our context-specific methods and techniques, revealing more significant associations or more robust comparisons. In the end, the constant decision making and the ongoing interpretive processes that guide how a site is studied—and that ultimately determine what we know from it— are unassailable. I believe we could make our practices more transparent and more accountable if archaeologists had an inclination or incentive to do so, but most steps in this direction would violate cherished conventions. In an earlier publication I already suggested improvements for North American practice: Especially given the destruction and non-replicability of archaeological sites we might organize archaeological field projects in less hierarchical 312
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fashions, avoiding the situation of a single [isolated and] unchallengeable authority who pronounces judgments from the top.1 Instead, feminist practice might . . . coordinate multiple strategies and objectives of different coinvestigators into the research of nonrenewable archaeological resources. (Conkey and Gero 1997:429)
Fifteen years later, I’m ready to go further: archaeologists should be held accountable for their specific methodologies and the kinds of data these deliver at specific sites, defending them against alternative methodologies that might have delivered other data. The discipline should be studying the outcomes of different practice sequences, and field training should include, explicitly, the evaluation of methodological options. Especially in an increasingly digital environment, when the demand for sharing archaeological data is rising, careful consideration of effective methodologies is needed. One (somewhat awkward) way to do this would be to organize parallel excavations at a single site, asking different teams of archaeologists, each with its own theoretical approach and its own research agenda, to take responsibility for excavating a different portion of the site. This would clearly work best at sites that contain repetitive elements such as multiple individual houses, courtyard clusters or residential terraces of the same time period. (A village site such as Yutopian— or Cardonal— would provide an excellent context for doing this.) Each excavation team would bring its own arsenal of strategies and methods, objectives and decisions, its theory-laden practices and by-the-book techniques, to unravel its portion of the selected site, and each of the undertakings would represent a roughly equivalent bundle of data, although variations would have to be anticipated. (Since the point of this practice would be to evaluate the relationship between decisions made in the field and what we know about the past, it would be important not to position experienced practitioners against inexperienced ones. Teams should be comparable and practiced.) After several field seasons we could observe how the decision making had differed between teams in each sector, what data and interpretations had been secured, and what knowledge claims each team was ready to put forward.2 Significantly, this would be framed not as a competition but as a demonstration of the degree to which our starting assumptions and theoretical commitments are deeply entwined with our decision chains and methodologies in fieldwork—the degree to which what we do in the field determines our knowledge of the past. Of course such a compelling undertaking would be hugely problematic within today’s culture of archaeology, certainly among North American archaeologists, in terms of funding and logistics: Would teams work side by side (without exchanging ideas, data and techniques?) or sequen313
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tially (and not be influenced by earlier teams’ findings)? How would results be coordinated? Would teams be able to record and re-create enough of their thinking to make this useful? I wish we had had such experimental teams in Northwest Argentina during the 1990s and 2000s. In fact we did have two nonoverlapping teams working, at different times, at the site of Cardonal: one all-Argentinean team under Cristina (Scattolin et al. 2009a, 2009b) and one nearly all North American team in 2004 under me. And even though in this case the directors had worked together previously and exchanged ideas and techniques over many years, we still found different things! Keep reading. Notes 1. A call for multiple directors of archaeological projects was made as early as 1975 by Hanson and Schiffer. 2. A similar “test” was undertaken by having three different zooarchaeologists (Atici et al. 2012) study the same “legacy” dataset, abandoned and unpublished for 40 years after collection by another project, and they arrived at quite different interpretations of the data based on their inclinations to lump or split time periods and biological taxa!
90 Socio-politics
Traveling to Cardonal The “all American” (American University) team traveled awkwardly to Cardonal, with many delays for bureaucratic clearance and long phone discussions between previous co-directors (Cristina and me). Unforeseen and unexpected, the permit papers had been lost during administrative turnovers, and now previous collaborative friendships turned sour. Would our field season be able to go forward? The permit frenzy was clearly related to the national and regional power shifts that had occurred in the years I’d been away from Santa María and Argentina. Political parties affiliated with the Peronistas had been in power throughout our years of working at Yutopian, but in 1999 power shifted briefly to the Social Democrats (members of the Unión 314
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tially (and not be influenced by earlier teams’ findings)? How would results be coordinated? Would teams be able to record and re-create enough of their thinking to make this useful? I wish we had had such experimental teams in Northwest Argentina during the 1990s and 2000s. In fact we did have two nonoverlapping teams working, at different times, at the site of Cardonal: one all-Argentinean team under Cristina (Scattolin et al. 2009a, 2009b) and one nearly all North American team in 2004 under me. And even though in this case the directors had worked together previously and exchanged ideas and techniques over many years, we still found different things! Keep reading. Notes 1. A call for multiple directors of archaeological projects was made as early as 1975 by Hanson and Schiffer. 2. A similar “test” was undertaken by having three different zooarchaeologists (Atici et al. 2012) study the same “legacy” dataset, abandoned and unpublished for 40 years after collection by another project, and they arrived at quite different interpretations of the data based on their inclinations to lump or split time periods and biological taxa!
90 Socio-politics
Traveling to Cardonal The “all American” (American University) team traveled awkwardly to Cardonal, with many delays for bureaucratic clearance and long phone discussions between previous co-directors (Cristina and me). Unforeseen and unexpected, the permit papers had been lost during administrative turnovers, and now previous collaborative friendships turned sour. Would our field season be able to go forward? The permit frenzy was clearly related to the national and regional power shifts that had occurred in the years I’d been away from Santa María and Argentina. Political parties affiliated with the Peronistas had been in power throughout our years of working at Yutopian, but in 1999 power shifted briefly to the Social Democrats (members of the Unión 314
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Traveling to Cardonal
Cívica Radical, or UCR). In 2003, power switched back to a Peronista party, and by 2004 many city governments had replaced their bureaucracies again with local Peronista (“Justicialist”) mayors and administrative officials. Our permit applications had gone missing in this shuffle of resignations and new appointments at the provincial level. But as is often the case, the worst and best happen together, and we were amazed at the outpouring of support of the new power base all the way to Cardonal. The same authorities who have the power to stop operations by scrutinizing unintentional mishaps could also speed authorization with a patched-together ad hoc process to get us moving quickly. Up and down the administrative hierarchy we had help from everyone: the museum director bustling in and out of our pensión on our behalf, a borrowed typewriter missing several keys, faxes flying to and from Cultural Patrimony in the provincial capital, energetic measures by our wonderful Santa María schoolteacher friends Noemi and Mario. While the permit fracas was roiling, we also had to be concerned with how we would get to the Valle del Cajón and Cardonal now that our familiar truck driver, Don Beto, was employed full-time at the municipalidad. But friends called friends, and we quickly found ourselves in the municipal buildings of San José, the town next to Santa María, at a meeting with the secretary to the mayor, the San José architect, the San José “finance minister” and the Santa María museum director, sitting beneath two large framed portraits of Eva Perón. The topic was clear: How could archaeology be put at the service of the community? Newly empowered, this small town was bubbling with renewed Peronista energy and would be delighted to provide us with truck transport to our site. And when the day arrived and our gang and gear were loaded into the large San José truck, we surprise-stopped again in San José for a send-off celebration of freshly made empanadas, soda pop (part of any real celebration), alfajores of different types—some filled with nougat and others with dulce de leche, some frosted with egg white/sugar frosting, some rolled and some in layers—and nueces confitadas (sugared walnuts, a delicious local product), with folksong accompaniment by the local trio Herba del Incas. (“No Italian influences here,” they assured us, taking a stab at UCR as they deliberately distinguished songs from Santiago del Estera, Tucumán and finally from San José itself.) Then the mayor and architect jumped on the truck and traveled with us to La Quebrada with wine and cookies to inaugurate the project, eager to be associated with our project as we undoubtedly would restore sites for tourism, put exhibitions in the local schools and give them back the past. But our arrival in La Quebrada was met with less jubilation. This tiny outpost had little use for the Peronistas, whom they held responsible for the backward state of the Valle del Cajón. Indeed, the national highways 315
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Figure 122. Cardonal crew at dinner with no solar power!
built by Peronista governments had bypassed this valley, and neither roads nor electricity nor phone service had been introduced here during the many years of Peronista political dominance in the twentieth century . . . presumably because the people of the Cajón, from the start, had not been behind Perón and his party. The situation continued during the 1990s, when we had worked at Yutopian and the Peronistas had still been in charge. But just as we left in 1999 and the presidency passed to the UCR, new solar panels had been installed in the homes of three families and in the school in La Quebrada! Needless to say, despite the soda and cookies, the Peronistas from San José were met with polite skepticism, their enthusiasm dismissed as “politics as usual.” Assembling our work crew at Cardonal was also pure politics. Cristina and her students were no longer with us, so our team consisted of graduate students (Jodi Barnes, Ali Ghobadi, Lisa Munns, and Hideyuki Nishizawa) and undergraduate students (Jocelyn Knauf and Jeremy Walter) from American University, Stephen Loring from the Smithsonian, and our waitress from the Santa María comedor (restaurant) María Costilla, who had been hearing our stories for years but had never visited the other side of the mountain range that framed her home town (Fig. 122). Which lugareños would join us? Throughout the 1990s at Yutopian, folks from La Quebrada would visit and ask to be hired, as access to cash anywhere in the Valle del Cajón was hard to come by. But we had 316
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hired only the local Chailes, coming to rely on their field experience, lifesaving generosity and kindness. Now we needed to recognize new dependencies and expertise, including Sr. Menelaos Gutierrez, who had originally shown me the site of Cardonal 11 years earlier. We would have to hire people from La Quebrada, but I couldn’t imagine working without Jorge. In the end, we asked Jorge to work with us still, and asked him to bring one other person from Yutopian. (He showed up with his young new brother-in-law, the handsome José Chico, while we had thought he would bring Álvaro or Federico; this was also clearly a political move on his part, ingratiating himself with his new wife’s family.) We included Virgilio Liendro and Marco Chayle, the postmaster/store owner, on the team, and many local children got paid to wash pottery.
91 Episode
A short field season testing Cardonal house structures Cristina had devoted time to mapping Cardonal during the years we were nearby at Yutopian, and we now arrived at Cardonal needing only to “ground-truth” the map and clear cactus from walls and wall junctures before we could begin excavations. We intended to follow an exploratory sequence similar to what we had used at Yutopian: testing across the length and breadth of the site for differences in occupational histories by placing test pits in relation to selected features of the broad terrace (within and outside enclosures), on slopes and on flat terrain, at the eastern and western extremes and in the middle. As we checked and corrected the map, we also learned the site layout: unlike Yutopian, which was sprawled homogeneously over its ridgetop elevation, Cardonal was settled on its terrace in discrete clusters of different-sized enclosures; on the map we numbered the Sectors I–VI from east to west (Fig. 120). Sector VI, occupying the highest elevation at the western end of the site, contains only two very large enclosures that we decided were corrals. These are combined with tiny round struc317
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hired only the local Chailes, coming to rely on their field experience, lifesaving generosity and kindness. Now we needed to recognize new dependencies and expertise, including Sr. Menelaos Gutierrez, who had originally shown me the site of Cardonal 11 years earlier. We would have to hire people from La Quebrada, but I couldn’t imagine working without Jorge. In the end, we asked Jorge to work with us still, and asked him to bring one other person from Yutopian. (He showed up with his young new brother-in-law, the handsome José Chico, while we had thought he would bring Álvaro or Federico; this was also clearly a political move on his part, ingratiating himself with his new wife’s family.) We included Virgilio Liendro and Marco Chayle, the postmaster/store owner, on the team, and many local children got paid to wash pottery.
91 Episode
A short field season testing Cardonal house structures Cristina had devoted time to mapping Cardonal during the years we were nearby at Yutopian, and we now arrived at Cardonal needing only to “ground-truth” the map and clear cactus from walls and wall junctures before we could begin excavations. We intended to follow an exploratory sequence similar to what we had used at Yutopian: testing across the length and breadth of the site for differences in occupational histories by placing test pits in relation to selected features of the broad terrace (within and outside enclosures), on slopes and on flat terrain, at the eastern and western extremes and in the middle. As we checked and corrected the map, we also learned the site layout: unlike Yutopian, which was sprawled homogeneously over its ridgetop elevation, Cardonal was settled on its terrace in discrete clusters of different-sized enclosures; on the map we numbered the Sectors I–VI from east to west (Fig. 120). Sector VI, occupying the highest elevation at the western end of the site, contains only two very large enclosures that we decided were corrals. These are combined with tiny round struc317
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tures no more than 1.5 m in diameter, for storage or to isolate an animal from the herd, or even to accommodate an overnight overseer. The central area of the site sits in a kind of trough and includes four sectors (II, III, IV, and V), which combine large and small enclosures suggesting domestic structures and attached gardens; two of these central sectors are small (around 10 enclosures) and two are bigger (around 20 enclosures). The elevation of Sector I at the eastern end of the site is higher again; it represents the largest and most homogeneous agglomeration of enclosures (29 total), with none of the outsized attached walled gardens of the central sectors (Nishizawa 2004, 2005). It is also in this high-elevation Sector I that a leveled causeway had been laid out (as at Yutopian), although it was not associated with an open plaza. Many enclosures at Cardonal are organized into familiar-looking patio groups, again repeating the Yutopian pattern. Construction walls are sometimes impressively formal and well preserved. Ghobadi (2005) found that in every sector, the elevations of shared patios were lower than the structures around them, and that some patio groups exhibited more than one patio. During our first days at Cardonal, we noticed the repeated placement of a single white quartz boulder in the walls of structures directly opposite from the entranceway; if you stand in the doorway and look directly across the room, there is a small but bright white spot on the opposite wall. A variant of this pattern was the incorporation of two quartz boulders into walls directly across from one another, and other patterns also occurred: Structure 1 (known first as Recinto 4) had three quartz cobbles on the west wall, and Recinto 28 had a quartz boulder built into the south wall. The distribution of white-boulder-containing enclosures was not patterned, nor was the orientation of the walls into which the white focus points were built. But the stark contrast of a single point of white against the otherwise grey interior must have carried significance and/ or brought pleasure (cf. Albeck and Zaburlín 2007:166). Also visible in these first days was the remarkable nearly ubiquitous presence of conanas (actually, we later came to know these as cutanas), broken and whole (Fig. 123), as well as other grinding equipment, littering the ground but also used in the construction of walls and doorways and left in entranceways, seemingly denser in the eastern Sectors I and III. We also noted two sets of bedrock morteros pecked into large rock outcroppings on site (Bit 94). By the time we had been at Cardonal for 10 days, we had excavated thirteen 1 × 1 m pozos de prueba across the site, with special emphasis on enclosures we suspected were residential, to maximize comparisons with Yutopian (Fig. 124). The students, exposed to many classroom lectures on methodology, were dismayed that our test pits were placed nei318
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Figure 123. Broken and worn-out cutanas are prominent on the surface and built into structure walls at Cardonal.
Figure 124. Cardonal Enclosure 15 in Sector III, with upright portal stones marking the doorway. Test pit 8 is under excavation.
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ther randomly nor systematically, and therefore any statistical analysis of the distribution of finds would not be valid. But the intentional placements of test pits allowed me to verify residential and patio arrangements. (In areas that appeared to be patios, test pits reached depths no greater than 40–50 cm below ground surface, but pits placed in what appeared to be residential structures went as deep as 90–100 cm below ground surface, as at Yutopian). I agree, however, that we would now know a different Cardonal had we followed a different testing pattern, less focused on residential patio groups. Although our testing program yielded no artifacts that were not Formative, there was a paucity of diagnostic wares: one Vaquerías sherd and a drilled slate pendant from near the surface, a single spindle whorl and two projectile points accounted for all the standardized artifacts. Our very first pozo in an open patio area yielded a polished pestle. Ceramic sherds were largely undecorated and nondiagnostic. The lithic materials were less varied in form and raw material than at Yutopian, and animal bone represented an array of now familiar species: camelids, armadillo, rodents and birds. Altogether it seemed that the saintly beneficence so apparent at Yutopian was missing here, as significant diagnostic finds— as well as patterns among finds— eluded us. But PP 3 in Sector I (Fig. 125) promised greater information on domestic activities as its soils were stained black in a 30-cm-thick lens throughout the test unit. We extended the test unit eastward, opening an adjacent 1 × 1 m unit (PP 3E) to find a circular pit excavated 63 cm into the bedrock, reaching a total depth of 95 cm bs. Where we had expected perhaps to find a hearth, this pit was packed with flat, square, polished
Table 24. Distribution of test pits and ceramic counts across Cardonal Sector
1 2 3 4 5 6
# of Recintos
29 9 22 19 10 4
# of Test Pits Dug
6 1 3 1 2 0
Conanas/cutanas (Grinding Stones)
42 6 29 12 6 0
Mean Ceramic Sherd Count Per Test Pit
210 283 220 185 80 —
Mean Lithic Counts
Overall Per Test Pit 182 194 59 83 97 —
Obsidian Per Test Pit 2 6 6 — 1 —
Source : After Nishizawa 2005.
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Figure 125. Map of Cardonal Sector I and test pits.
stones and fist-sized cobbles plus a ball of raw clay (Fig. 126). This was unlike any hearths we knew, certainly nothing like the tri-lobate, clayringed hearths at Yutopian, despite the soot-blackened soils. The circular pit had a raised stone lip of bedrock around its opening, an intriguing extra bit of care in its production. Based on this find we decided to spend our last days of the field season opening more of this recinto, which we now called Structure 1.1 As at Yutopian, we were following our best leads to locate information on domestic arrangements, and again we ended up in one of three structures that shared a common patio. At least three other such patio groups could be identified in Sector I, all roughly the same size and all composed of three structures surrounding and giving access to a common patio, but there were also many enclosures on the site that were not organized as patio groups, and a different project— certainly one that had not started at Yutopian—might have concentrated on learning more about these (Fig. 127, map of Structure 1). To excavate Structure 1, we imposed a grid of four 2 × 2 m squares on the circular area, extending each unit some few centimeters to reach the exterior walls of the structure, and again we were forced to dig in 10 cm 321
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Figure 126. Circular pit with raised bedrock rim and packed with stones to support a vertical timber, Cardonal PP 3, Structure 1.
Figure 127. Map of Structure 1 floor plan.
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levels for lack of discernible cultural strata. Again we used ⅛" screens. Time constraints limited our work to only two of the four gridded units, and by the time we had to leave the field, we had completed the east side of the structure to bedrock, approximately 95 cm below ground surface, but the western two units were only excavated to a depth of 50 cm. Black soils continued to appear in a widespread pattern. Diagnostic Early Formative polished grey and incised ceramics showed up in all the excavated levels, while a few later painted sherds appeared in the upper house levels. Many fragments of two ceramic pipes and two small hammered copper pieces from the lower occupation zone were reminiscent of Yutopian Formative occupation levels. A stone bowl/ mortero came from the lowest excavation level, as well as a particularly large piece of carbonized wood (“the log”) which offered us a secure opportunity for a 14C date associated with the original occupation floor of the structure, calibrated to 1870 + 40 BP (or, more familiarly, between 80 and 330 CE at a 95 percent probability range). This date corresponds to the earliest occupations of Yutopian: Estructura 3 before remodeling, the Núcleo 1 patio, and the pits in the bedrock of Núcleo 2. Note 1. I refer to the excavated structures at Cardonal using English “structure” and “patio group” for three reasons: (1) in 2004 we were an almost fully English-speaking team; (2) to reduce confusion with our excavations at Yutopian; and (3) because Cristina’s later work at Cardonal was published majorly in an English article (Scattolin et al. 2009a).
92 Raw data
Special finds from the 2004 Cardonal field season Note the near absence of decorated pottery among these finds. Several “slate needles” are recorded (thin, polished, round slate lengths) which we also noted at Yutopian, but the function of these items still escapes us. Pipes and snuff tablets co-occur. 323
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levels for lack of discernible cultural strata. Again we used ⅛" screens. Time constraints limited our work to only two of the four gridded units, and by the time we had to leave the field, we had completed the east side of the structure to bedrock, approximately 95 cm below ground surface, but the western two units were only excavated to a depth of 50 cm. Black soils continued to appear in a widespread pattern. Diagnostic Early Formative polished grey and incised ceramics showed up in all the excavated levels, while a few later painted sherds appeared in the upper house levels. Many fragments of two ceramic pipes and two small hammered copper pieces from the lower occupation zone were reminiscent of Yutopian Formative occupation levels. A stone bowl/ mortero came from the lowest excavation level, as well as a particularly large piece of carbonized wood (“the log”) which offered us a secure opportunity for a 14C date associated with the original occupation floor of the structure, calibrated to 1870 + 40 BP (or, more familiarly, between 80 and 330 CE at a 95 percent probability range). This date corresponds to the earliest occupations of Yutopian: Estructura 3 before remodeling, the Núcleo 1 patio, and the pits in the bedrock of Núcleo 2. Note 1. I refer to the excavated structures at Cardonal using English “structure” and “patio group” for three reasons: (1) in 2004 we were an almost fully English-speaking team; (2) to reduce confusion with our excavations at Yutopian; and (3) because Cristina’s later work at Cardonal was published majorly in an English article (Scattolin et al. 2009a).
92 Raw data
Special finds from the 2004 Cardonal field season Note the near absence of decorated pottery among these finds. Several “slate needles” are recorded (thin, polished, round slate lengths) which we also noted at Yutopian, but the function of these items still escapes us. Pipes and snuff tablets co-occur. 323
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RAW DATA
Table 25. Inventory of special finds from the 2004 Cardonal field season Special Find No.
Unit
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
PP 1 PP 3 PP 3 Str. 1 Unit 01 PP 3E PP 10 Str. 1, Unit 04 Str. 1, Unit 02
9 10 11 12 13 14 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35
Str. 1, Unit 02 Str. 1, Unit 04 Str. 1, Unit 02 Str. 1, Unit 02 Str. 1, Unit 02 Str. 1, Unit 01 Str. 1, Unit 02 Str. 1, Unit 02 Str. 1, Unit 02 Str. 1, Unit 02 Str. 1, Unit 01 Str. 1, Unit 01 Str. 1, Unit 01 Str. 1, Unit 01 Str. 1, Unit 01 Str. 1, Unit 01 Str. 1, Unit 01 Str. 1, Unit 01 Str. 1, Unit 01 Str. 1, Unit 01 Str. 1, Unit 01 Str. 1, Unit 02 Str. 1, Unit 04 Str. 1, Unit 02 Str. 1, Unit 02 PP 7 324
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Depth
Material
Description
surface 77 cm 65 cm surface 35 cm 45 cm
ceramic lithic lithic ceramic lithic lithic metal ceramic
49 cm 48 cm 45 cm 51 cm 56 cm 55–65 cm 65 cm 62, 66 cm 68 cm 56 cm 75–85 cm 80 cm 85–95 cm 85–95 cm 85–95 cm 85–95 cm 95 cm 95 cm 95–100 85–95 cm 85–95 cm 9–35 cm 9–35 cm 55–60 cm 60–70 cm 10–20 cm
lithic lithic lithic ceramic lithic lithic bone ceramic ceramic ceramic bone metal lithic botanic lithic ceramic lithic botanic lithic bone ceramic lithic lithic ceramic bone metal
Vaquerías sherd obsidian projectile point basalt projectile point—broken pipe fragment stones from the posthole pit drilled slate pendant (toothed) copper band—3 cm long 2 burnished incised sherds and a vertically painted jar neck sherd square incised slate fragment small stemmed obsidian projectile point polished slate snuff tablet—broken spindle whorl slender polished slate “needle” basalt projectile point—broken polished tool 2 pipe fragments 2 pipe fragments pipe joint and distal fragment polished tool copper fragment projectile point bean incised polished slate “needle” painted sherd complete mortero/bowl chañar seed polished mano stone tooth fragment pipe fragment projectile point base denticulated obsidian flake pipe joint (elbow) notched worked piece copper fragment
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16 Str. 1, Unit 02 65 cm bone polished tool 17 Str. 1, Unit 02 62, 66 cm ceramic 2 pipe fragments 18 Str. 1, Unit 02 68 cm ceramic 2 pipe fragments 19 Str. 1, Unit 02 56 cm ceramic pipe joint and distal fragment 20 Str. 1, Unit 01 75–85 cm bone polished tool Special 2004 Cardonal 21 Str. 1,finds Unitfrom 01 the 80 cm metal field seasoncopper fragment 22 Str. 1, Unit 01 85–95 cm lithic projectile point 23 Str. 1, Unit 01 85–95 cm botanic bean 24 Str. 1, Unit 01 85–95 cm lithic incised polished slate “needle” Table 25. Inventory of special finds from the 2004 Cardonal field season Table 25. Continued 25 Str. 1, Unit 01 85–95 cm ceramic painted sherd 26 Str. 1, Unit 01 95 cm lithic complete mortero/bowl Special 27 Str. 1, Unit 01 95 cm botanic chañar seed Find 28 Str. 1, Unit 01 Depth 95–100 lithic polished mano stone No. Unit Material Description 29 Str. 1, Unit 01 85–95 cm bone tooth fragment 130 PP ceramic Vaquerías sherd Str.11, Unit 01 85–95 cm pipe fragment 231 PP lithic obsidian point Str.31, Unit 02 9–35 cm projectileprojectile point base 332 PP lithic basalt projectile point—broken Str.31, Unit 04 surface 9–35 cm denticulated obsidian flake 433 Str. 11,Unit cm cm ceramic pipe fragment Unit01 02 77 55–60 joint (elbow) 534 PP cm cm lithic stones the posthole pit Str.3E 1, Unit 02 65 60–70 bone notchedfrom worked piece 635 PP 10 surface lithic drilled pendant (toothed) 7 10–20 cm metal copper slate fragment 7 Str. 1, Unit 04 35 cm metal copper band—3 cm long 8 Str. 1, Unit 02 45 cm ceramic 2 burnished incised sherds and a vertically painted jar neck sherd 9 Str. 1, Unit 02 49 cm lithic square incised slate fragment 10 Str. 1, Unit 04 48 cm lithic small stemmed obsidian projectile point 11 Str. 1, Unit 02 45 cm lithic polished slate snuff tablet—broken 12 Str. 1, Unit 02 51 cm ceramic spindle whorl 13 Str. 1, Unit 02 56 cm lithic slender polished slate “needle” 14 Str. 1, Unit 01 55–65 cm lithic basalt projectile point—broken 16 Str. 1, Unit 02 65 cm bone polished tool 17 Str. 1, Unit 02 62, 66 cm ceramic 2 pipe fragments Socio-politics 18 Str. 1, Unit 02 68 cm ceramic 2 pipe fragments 19 Str. 1, Unit 02 56 cm ceramic pipe joint and distal fragment 20 Str. 1, Unit 01 75–85 cm bone polished tool 21 Str. 1, Unit 01 80 cm metal copper fragment 22 Str. 1, Unit 01 85–95 cm lithic projectile point 23 Str. 1, Unit 01 85–95 cm botanic bean 24 Str. 1, Unit 01 85–95 cm lithic polished slate “needle” Since 2004, permission for a foreigner incised to conduct archaeological 25 Str. 1, Unit 01 85–95 cm ceramic painted sherd research in Argentina requires co-leadership with an Argentinean col26 Str. 1, Unit 01 95 cm lithic complete mortero/bowl laborator. Foreigners like me cannot undertake excavations with their 27 Str. 1, Unit 01 95 cm botanic seed students, including Argentinean students,chañar without an Argentinean 28 Str. 1, Unit 01 95–100 lithic polished mano stone partner who presumably shares in the planning and decision making. 29 Str. fortunate 1, Unit 01 to85–95 bone tooth fragment I was meetcmLic. Cristina Scattolin long before collaboration 30 Str. 1, Unit 01 85–95 cm ceramic pipe fragment was required, and we had worked together 12 years by the time these 31 Str. 1, Unit 02 introduced. 9–35 cm lithic I had always projectile base to work in measures were Indeed onlypoint wanted 32 Str. 1, Unit 04 9–35 cm lithic denticulated obsidian flake Argentina with Argentineans. 33 Unitis02not55–60 cm ceramic the problems pipe jointof(elbow) Str. But1,this to underestimate collaborative proj34 Str. 1, Unit 02 60–70 cm bone notched worked piece ects: cultural, economic, political, intellectual and personal. Cristina and 35 PP 7 10–20 cm ofmetal copper fragmentour exchanges I seemed to bypass many them, genuinely enjoying
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16 Str. 1, Unit 02 65 cm bone polished tool 17 Str. 1, Unit 02 62, 66 cm ceramic 2 pipe fragments 18 Str. 1, Unit 02 68 cm ceramic 2 pipe fragments 19 Str. 1, Unit 02 56 cm ceramic pipe joint and distal fragment 20 Str. 1, Unit 01 75–85 cm bone polished tool Special 2004 Cardonal 21 Str. 1,finds Unitfrom 01 the 80 cm metal field seasoncopper fragment 22 Str. 1, Unit 01 85–95 cm lithic projectile point 23 Str. 1, Unit 01 85–95 cm botanic bean 24 Str. 1, Unit 01 85–95 cm lithic incised polished slate “needle” Table 25. Inventory of special finds from the 2004 Cardonal field season Table 25. Continued 25 Str. 1, Unit 01 85–95 cm ceramic painted sherd 26 Str. 1, Unit 01 95 cm lithic complete mortero/bowl Special 27 Str. 1, Unit 01 95 cm botanic chañar seed Find 28 Str. 1, Unit 01 Depth 95–100 lithic polished mano stone No. Unit Material Description 29 Str. 1, Unit 01 85–95 cm bone tooth fragment 130 PP ceramic Vaquerías sherd Str.11, Unit 01 85–95 cm pipe fragment 231 PP lithic obsidian point Str.31, Unit 02 9–35 cm projectileprojectile point base 332 PP lithic basalt projectile point—broken Str.31, Unit 04 surface 9–35 cm denticulated obsidian flake 433 Str. 11,Unit cm cm ceramic pipe fragment Unit01 02 77 55–60 joint (elbow) 534 PP cm cm lithic stones the posthole pit Str.3E 1, Unit 02 65 60–70 bone notchedfrom worked piece 635 PP 10 surface lithic drilled pendant (toothed) 7 10–20 cm metal copper slate fragment 7 Str. 1, Unit 04 35 cm metal copper band—3 cm long 8 Str. 1, Unit 02 45 cm ceramic 2 burnished incised sherds and a vertically painted jar neck sherd 9 Str. 1, Unit 02 49 cm lithic square incised slate fragment 10 Str. 1, Unit 04 48 cm lithic small stemmed obsidian projectile point 11 Str. 1, Unit 02 45 cm lithic polished slate snuff tablet—broken 12 Str. 1, Unit 02 51 cm ceramic spindle whorl 13 Str. 1, Unit 02 56 cm lithic slender polished slate “needle” 14 Str. 1, Unit 01 55–65 cm lithic basalt projectile point—broken 16 Str. 1, Unit 02 65 cm bone polished tool 17 Str. 1, Unit 02 62, 66 cm ceramic 2 pipe fragments Socio-politics 18 Str. 1, Unit 02 68 cm ceramic 2 pipe fragments 19 Str. 1, Unit 02 56 cm ceramic pipe joint and distal fragment 20 Str. 1, Unit 01 75–85 cm bone polished tool 21 Str. 1, Unit 01 80 cm metal copper fragment 22 Str. 1, Unit 01 85–95 cm lithic projectile point 23 Str. 1, Unit 01 85–95 cm botanic bean 24 Str. 1, Unit 01 85–95 cm lithic polished slate “needle” Since 2004, permission for a foreigner incised to conduct archaeological 25 Str. 1, Unit 01 85–95 cm ceramic painted sherd research in Argentina requires co-leadership with an Argentinean col26 Str. 1, Unit 01 95 cm lithic complete mortero/bowl laborator. Foreigners like me cannot undertake excavations with their 27 Str. 1, Unit 01 95 cm botanic seed students, including Argentinean students,chañar without an Argentinean 28 Str. 1, Unit 01 95–100 lithic polished mano stone partner who presumably shares in the planning and decision making. 29 Str. fortunate 1, Unit 01 to85–95 bone tooth fragment I was meetcmLic. Cristina Scattolin long before collaboration 30 Str. 1, Unit 01 85–95 cm ceramic pipe fragment was required, and we had worked together 12 years by the time these 31 Str. 1, Unit 02 introduced. 9–35 cm lithic I had always projectile base to work in measures were Indeed onlypoint wanted 32 Str. 1, Unit 04 9–35 cm lithic denticulated obsidian flake Argentina with Argentineans. 33 Unitis02not55–60 cm ceramic the problems pipe jointof(elbow) Str. But1,this to underestimate collaborative proj34 Str. 1, Unit 02 60–70 cm bone notched worked piece ects: cultural, economic, political, intellectual and personal. Cristina and 35 PP 7 10–20 cm ofmetal copper fragmentour exchanges I seemed to bypass many them, genuinely enjoying
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about archaeology and midcareer joys and challenges. In fact, I have felt proud and privileged to work with Cristina, who had survived many years of doing archaeology in Northwest Argentina, demonstrated extraordinary talents in the field, worked harder than anyone I knew, and was fun and informative to be with. Still, our collaboration didn’t last, and it may be valuable to consider the pressures and fissures that ultimately make these arrangements difficult. Foremost may be the international politics that archaeologists from the global north—and especially from the United States—unwittingly and unwillingly represent in their collaborations. The United States’ declaration of war in Iraq in 2003 was seen by most South Americans as an unwarranted act of aggression, and I took to wearing an “international apology T-shirt” in Argentina. While people understand that I don’t represent my country’s actions, it did put a burden on my collaborator to defend her close interpersonal relations with someone from an “aggressor nation.” I certainly felt that in Argentina. More immediate, however, are the unequal structural relations to power and money that constantly come into play. For instance although both of us were successful in getting individual grants for the project, most of our funding came from the United States because US funding is more available and far more generous. Even where we wrote proposals as co-investigators, the awarded funds were from US foundations, channeled through my university, and ultimately I was responsible for project accounts. Professional opportunities to discuss our results in seminars and at meetings, and to publish our work in journals and books, were also more ample in the United States. At the same time, professors from US universities are under greater pressure to include students in their projects (and US students receive more funding for travel and on-project support), leading to their over-representation on collaborative projects. State-of-the-art archaeological equipment may have been produced and acquired in the global north and introduced to our colleagues in “southern” countries like Argentina, and so on. Maybe we from the North are also bossier. The pressure of US academic life often keeps us on a tight timeline, having constantly to prepare for and present at conferences and maintain a steady pulse of publications, as well as submit new grant proposals, teach new courses and mentor large numbers of graduate students. We learn ambition and forget to relax; we are more abrupt and spend less time being good responsive colleagues. Our lifestyles are more fractured, hurried and pressured; we have less fun and are less fun. We can share some skills and some resources, and be generous in some regards, inviting colleagues to our well-heeled countries . . . but this comes at a cost. Apparently, it often isn’t worth it to foreign colleagues. 326
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Other issues arise around what is valued in different national professional agendas. In Anglo-American academic circles, archaeologists are encouraged to make sense of their data at the highest possible levels of generality, applying patterns toward broader theoretical interpretations of “how things happen.” While theoretical contributions are also valued elsewhere (and certainly in Argentina), promotion and job stability are more closely linked to demonstrating the regional and national significance of finds and field techniques, or exquisite data recovery, or extensive typological command, or fine-grained comparative studies, also much admired and promoted (Bit 11). The global north collaborator can appear sloppy in the field and ignorant of relevant local data, while the global south collaborator is “merely” a taxonomist or field technician. It has been painful for me that my professional (international) field collaboration fell apart after many years, and surely there are personal issues also at play. I would like to think that opening a discussion about potential structural pitfalls could help prevent this outcome in other contexts. But archaeology is a way of life, and working side by side— across so many divides on things that really matter to all the parties— can never be easy.
94 Backstory
Grinding stones (conanas, cutanas, morteros) and the holes in them At Yutopian, grinding stones occurred regularly, clustered in one area of a structure or spread out across a floor, essential tools in daily use in the Early Formative (as they are still today). Grinding stones also serve archaeologists well; when found inside structures, whole and horizontal, they conveniently mark occupation floors, and when broken and incorporated into structural walls, they offer clues to wall remodeling or repairs. They are also significant because they can reliably be associated with the work of women. We had noted variations in size and form of grinding stones, but we only encountered a single example worn so 327
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North-South collaborations in archaeology
Other issues arise around what is valued in different national professional agendas. In Anglo-American academic circles, archaeologists are encouraged to make sense of their data at the highest possible levels of generality, applying patterns toward broader theoretical interpretations of “how things happen.” While theoretical contributions are also valued elsewhere (and certainly in Argentina), promotion and job stability are more closely linked to demonstrating the regional and national significance of finds and field techniques, or exquisite data recovery, or extensive typological command, or fine-grained comparative studies, also much admired and promoted (Bit 11). The global north collaborator can appear sloppy in the field and ignorant of relevant local data, while the global south collaborator is “merely” a taxonomist or field technician. It has been painful for me that my professional (international) field collaboration fell apart after many years, and surely there are personal issues also at play. I would like to think that opening a discussion about potential structural pitfalls could help prevent this outcome in other contexts. But archaeology is a way of life, and working side by side— across so many divides on things that really matter to all the parties— can never be easy.
94 Backstory
Grinding stones (conanas, cutanas, morteros) and the holes in them At Yutopian, grinding stones occurred regularly, clustered in one area of a structure or spread out across a floor, essential tools in daily use in the Early Formative (as they are still today). Grinding stones also serve archaeologists well; when found inside structures, whole and horizontal, they conveniently mark occupation floors, and when broken and incorporated into structural walls, they offer clues to wall remodeling or repairs. They are also significant because they can reliably be associated with the work of women. We had noted variations in size and form of grinding stones, but we only encountered a single example worn so 327
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thin in its center as to have a hole through it: the conana that was used as the pit “lid” in Estructura 3. We noted it as an “expended conana” (see Fig. 53). But at Cardonal, in addition to much higher numbers of broken grinding stones, most of these had been worn entirely through the bottom working surface. They were also shaped differently, either deliberately in manufacture or from wear in doing a different kind of work. This contrast required more study. Locally, the general term for the passive (non-mobile) portion of all kinds of grinding stones is mortero, but the lugareños differentiate these into more restricted categories: 1. Morteros as a specific category refer to smallish grinding stones that have rounded and deeply concave grinding surfaces (in English we might call them “mortars”). They are generally transportable as stone bowls with hemispherical concavities or cylindrical stone beakers with funnel-shaped concavities; morteros are also sometimes made in bedrock outcroppings on or near a habitation site where they occur as grouped cup-sized or small bowl-sized concavities (Fig. 128). Morteros are generally used with pestles: elongated polished stones used with one hand in a rotating or pounding motion. But broader bowl-like morteros can be worked by pounding with a round handheld stone. 2. Conanas (sometimes interchangeably called pecanas) are large, flattish grinding stones made from split boulders; their roughly shaped dimensions might typically be around 45 cm long (maximum), 30 cm wide, and 20 cm high. Conanas are used with a smaller polished ovate mano stone held in two hands and rocked back and forth on the upper surface of the conana to crush or pulverize material. Conanas remain in a fixed position on the ground and are not easily transportable. Today they are more often used on soft plants to produce a salsa, although grains, seeds, salt or pigments might also have been processed in them (Babot 2007:265). Galle (2002:25) suggests that some conanas may have been used specifically to process algarrobo seeds in Northwest Argentina. 3. Cutanas (sometimes called molinos) constitute a third local class of grinding stones. The cutana is roughly the same size as or larger than the conana, but it is more elongated and presents a deep troughshaped grinding surface or U-shaped depression (González and Núñez-Regueiro 1963:489) instead of the basically flat, slightly concave surface of the conana. Maximal lengths of cutanas typically range between 60 and 119 cm (Babot 2007:265). The cutana form suggests that the worked material, granular or fluid, is not supposed to spill 328
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Grinding stones and the holes in them
Figure 128. Bedrock morteros at Cardonal located at the south end of Sector III. Similar bedrock morteros are located at Yutopian.
over the edges while being worked, and/or that the motion used here is limited to exerting force down the central axis of the stone. Only a single trough-like cutana was recovered at Yutopian, yet this was the overwhelming mortero type (95 percent) nearby at Cardonal. Of the 90 cutanas observed at Cardonal, almost all were lying on the ground surface outside or between structures or had been built into walls, and all but 5 of these (94 percent) showed a central worn-though hole (Munns 2004), which, at the time, we explained as representing the many expended, literally worn out examples. The single excavated flat grinding stone from Cardonal (a “proper” conana like the ones at Yutopian) exhibited no hole. What to make of the dramatic contrast in grinding stone technology between Cardonal (trough-like cutanas, mostly expended with large holes through the bottoms, and used outside the living structures) and Yutopian (whole flat conanas used inside living structures)? (A further piece of the puzzle is the sheer volume of manos recovered at Cardonal but not at Yutopian [Bit 95].) The holes in the cutanas were the subject of much local discussion at Cardonal in 2004; schoolteachers and others repeated, earnestly and without irony, that Indian (native) women gave birth through these holes sitting on or in the stones and allowing the baby to pass through the hole. Although Jorge and his relatives never 329
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repeated this racist myth, it alerted us that “grinding stones with holes” constituted a widely recognized class of local artifacts. I have come to think that Cardonal represents a specialpurpose extraction or production site in addition to its residential aspects, and that the over-represented trough-like cutanas result from some specialized activity rather than as a variant style of the general everyday grinding stone. Perhaps Cardonal served as a center or industrial hub for processing grains and/or minerals for (or by) people who did not live at Cardonal (Bit 96). Processing suprahousehold products would account for the enormous ground interior surfaces of many cutanas, much larger than is needed to process a single household’s daily needs; the sheer number of these at Cardonal, representFigure 129. Examples of widely distributed ing an enormous output of cutanas at Cardonal. grinding labor; and the fact that cutanas are not recovered within excavated recintos but are left littering the outside ground surfaces. It also helps make sense of the many broken cutanas and their ongoing recycling as building materials for houses. But wholesale grinding leaves us the puzzle of why the expended cutanas at Cardonal show far more “use” (e.g., much bigger holes worn through the bottom) than functionally practical for containing the ground-up material: why and how did they continue to be used after they couldn’t contain anything? It is tempting to propose that some cutanas were used (or also used) for producing grinding stones—and their larger, deeper-grooved forms are the by-product of a stone-on-stone production sequence rather than having been shaped as deep troughs for 330
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grinding grain or minerals. As we will see in the next segment, hoarded mano stones were noted in various structures of Núcleo 1 at Cardonal. Perhaps some cutanas started out as corn-grinding conanas, rounder and flatter, and after significant use were put to another “groovier” function, but the largest ones would never have served that purpose at all. It seems reasonable that the deep, trough-like grooves of cutanas result from grinding and shaping mano stones or possibly even the edges of conanas after they had been pecked into a rough shape. If we are right, or even partially right, what motivated the need for so much grinding equipment at Cardonal? Specialized labor is hardly expected in this Formative context. Regardless of whether the cutanas with holes represent the production of grinding equipment or the grinding process itself, we are facing an exaggerated amount of grinding at Cardonal (Bit 96).1 Note 1. Alternatively, Cardonal’s cutanas might have been useful in some hard-to-fathom manner precisely because they had holes through them, and the holes might actually have been made deliberately after the grinding surface was sufficiently thinned. Yutopian’s Estructura 3 illustrates the function of a conana-with-hole for covering a pit while still allowing a long arm to reach the pit’s contents. In other parts of the Andes, feeding ancestors through an opening above the grave is facilitated with perforated stones (Isbell and Cook 2002:284 and Fig. 9.24), and in northern Mexico similar ground stone artifacts with central holes have been used as doorways for bird cages. None of these functions is convincing here.
95 Episode
Later work at Cardonal Although I never worked again at Cardonal—nor in Northwest Argentina—Cristina and her team of students returned to the site and excavated several more seasons (Scattolin et al. 2007; Scattolin et al. 2009a, 2009b). They completed the excavations of Structure 1 and then excavated the rest of the patio group (Compound 1, as they termed it in English). Cristina’s team also obtained a 14C date from the occupation level 331
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grinding grain or minerals. As we will see in the next segment, hoarded mano stones were noted in various structures of Núcleo 1 at Cardonal. Perhaps some cutanas started out as corn-grinding conanas, rounder and flatter, and after significant use were put to another “groovier” function, but the largest ones would never have served that purpose at all. It seems reasonable that the deep, trough-like grooves of cutanas result from grinding and shaping mano stones or possibly even the edges of conanas after they had been pecked into a rough shape. If we are right, or even partially right, what motivated the need for so much grinding equipment at Cardonal? Specialized labor is hardly expected in this Formative context. Regardless of whether the cutanas with holes represent the production of grinding equipment or the grinding process itself, we are facing an exaggerated amount of grinding at Cardonal (Bit 96).1 Note 1. Alternatively, Cardonal’s cutanas might have been useful in some hard-to-fathom manner precisely because they had holes through them, and the holes might actually have been made deliberately after the grinding surface was sufficiently thinned. Yutopian’s Estructura 3 illustrates the function of a conana-with-hole for covering a pit while still allowing a long arm to reach the pit’s contents. In other parts of the Andes, feeding ancestors through an opening above the grave is facilitated with perforated stones (Isbell and Cook 2002:284 and Fig. 9.24), and in northern Mexico similar ground stone artifacts with central holes have been used as doorways for bird cages. None of these functions is convincing here.
95 Episode
Later work at Cardonal Although I never worked again at Cardonal—nor in Northwest Argentina—Cristina and her team of students returned to the site and excavated several more seasons (Scattolin et al. 2007; Scattolin et al. 2009a, 2009b). They completed the excavations of Structure 1 and then excavated the rest of the patio group (Compound 1, as they termed it in English). Cristina’s team also obtained a 14C date from the occupation level 331
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EPISODE
in Structure 2 that was calibrated at the 1-sigma level to 70–220 CE (Calo 2008:41) and nicely overlaps our Cardonal 1-sigma calibrated date from Structure 1: 130–250 CE. Cristina’s team enumerated many new architectural features in Compound 1, including the construction of stone benches that follow around the interior walls of the largest structure, and the use of wedging stones between larger cobbles to stabilize stone walls and posts. Significantly, they also identified the regular use of round holes excavated into the bedrock within structures to accommodate upright posts, presumably to support roof beams; six of these, approximately 50 cm in diameter, were identified in Structure 2 and closely matched the stone-filled circular pit we found in the center of Structure 1. Structure 2 also contained a raised clay-ringed hearth constructed around three anchored potholding stones, very reminiscent of Yutopian. Cristina’s later work at Cardonal included the systematic collection of bone and plant samples from Compound 1, demonstrating a suite of food products similar to Yutopian’s: dominated by camelids and armadillo, carbonized chañar (Geoffroea decorticans), and carbonized beans (Phaseolus vulgaris) (Scattolin et al. 2007), but representing a somewhat narrower range of taxa. As at Yutopian, cooking activities and grinding work were distributed through different structures of the same patio group, using more and less formalized, concentrated and elaborated facilities. Ceramic forms and pastes at Cardonal were probably produced locally (ibid.), although their stylistic associations tie them to both the southern puna regions of high elevations and the eastern valley systems of lower elevations (ibid.). Similarly lithic resources and tool forms appear to overlap substantially with the repertoire from Yutopian; obsidians from Cardonal had been quarried from the same two major quarry sites (Ona and Cueros de Purulla) as had yielded most of the obsidian from Yutopian (ibid.), and like Yutopian, projectile points were produced in obsidian, basalt and quartz, although a somewhat wider range of materials was represented in the Yutopian projectile point assemblage. The artifacts reported from Structure 2 of Compound 1 are particularly interesting and unexpected. Although no cutanas or conanas were recovered, at least 32 manos (the smaller, active, handheld stone used in grinding) are illustrated (Scattolin et al. 2009a:409), and 76 “polished stones” are reported from this structure (Scattolin et al. 2007:219). The storage of handheld grinding stones in a context without basal (passive) stones could simply be a supply for use as needed within Compound 1, or they could be intended for use by all Sector I households. But given the high density of cutanas all over Cardonal—broken, “expended” and whole, outside and between structures, on the ground and built into 332
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walls—it seems more likely that the stockpiling of manos, pestles and other grinding equipment relates to a broader industrial activity, adding support for the earlier interpretation of Cardonal as a production site and/or exporter of grinding paraphernalia. Structure 3 had an even greater number of polished stones (84), although there were also several cutanas in various stages of use (Scattolin et al. 2009a:405–406). Two other sets of finds from Structure 2 are also intriguing. Recovered fragments of baked mud were found to have imprints of the bases of three coiled baskets, two with diameters of greater than 40 cm and one smaller but of a finer, more compact weave (Calo 2008:47; Scattolin et al. 2009a:406). Not only did these 26 mud fragments reveal the central importance and technological variability of Formative basketry styles, but they also displayed several places where the baskets had been mended. Other mud traces suggested a woven mat, further broadening the array of woven techniques. Finally, the ceramic vessels from Cardonal’s Structure 2 were unusual for their variety, their fine quality and, honestly, their charm. One Candelaria modeled and incised vessel appears to represent an armadillo head (Scattolin et al. 2009a:Plate 7b), but there was also a polished dark red bowl, a round-bottomed bowl (escudilla), a large polished bottle and a fragment of a Vaquerías-style polychrome painted bowl, each tied to a different ecological origin (Scattolin et al. 2007:217). Other features discovered by Scattolin’s teams at Cardonal are introduced in Bit 97 comparing Cardonal and Yutopian.
96 Andean ways
Llama caravans and long-distance exchange Back in June 1998, on the last afternoon of fieldwork and after a Pachamama offering in Estructura 4, while we were discussing backfill operations, an unfamiliar commotion bubbled up from the Chaile encampment: a head-to-tail caravan of 11 bag-loaded burros was materializing at 333
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walls—it seems more likely that the stockpiling of manos, pestles and other grinding equipment relates to a broader industrial activity, adding support for the earlier interpretation of Cardonal as a production site and/or exporter of grinding paraphernalia. Structure 3 had an even greater number of polished stones (84), although there were also several cutanas in various stages of use (Scattolin et al. 2009a:405–406). Two other sets of finds from Structure 2 are also intriguing. Recovered fragments of baked mud were found to have imprints of the bases of three coiled baskets, two with diameters of greater than 40 cm and one smaller but of a finer, more compact weave (Calo 2008:47; Scattolin et al. 2009a:406). Not only did these 26 mud fragments reveal the central importance and technological variability of Formative basketry styles, but they also displayed several places where the baskets had been mended. Other mud traces suggested a woven mat, further broadening the array of woven techniques. Finally, the ceramic vessels from Cardonal’s Structure 2 were unusual for their variety, their fine quality and, honestly, their charm. One Candelaria modeled and incised vessel appears to represent an armadillo head (Scattolin et al. 2009a:Plate 7b), but there was also a polished dark red bowl, a round-bottomed bowl (escudilla), a large polished bottle and a fragment of a Vaquerías-style polychrome painted bowl, each tied to a different ecological origin (Scattolin et al. 2007:217). Other features discovered by Scattolin’s teams at Cardonal are introduced in Bit 97 comparing Cardonal and Yutopian.
96 Andean ways
Llama caravans and long-distance exchange Back in June 1998, on the last afternoon of fieldwork and after a Pachamama offering in Estructura 4, while we were discussing backfill operations, an unfamiliar commotion bubbled up from the Chaile encampment: a head-to-tail caravan of 11 bag-loaded burros was materializing at 333
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Jorge’s house. Jorge’s old friend and longstanding trading partner had come down from the higher, treeless puna zones near Laguna Blanca with dried meat and salt (and perhaps other items that we didn’t see), a happy occasion and excuse for much merriment (Fig. 130). An extravagant communal dinner to jointly honor the arrival of the caravan and our last field day was quickly organized, ending with a lot of drinking and a bit of dancing and the men singing coplas (ancient songs that Jorge told us his father had taught him, based on a three-note “tritonic” scale and accompanied by the handheld tinya drum which is known prehistorically; this singing style survives only in isolated parts of the Andes) (Fig. 131). The next morning the highland traders and their animals, and their large bags of salt and meat, left us again, postponing the pick-up of Jorge’s corn and beans for the return trip back to Laguna Blanca in several days. Already as the caravan disappeared down-valley, I wished I had asked more interview questions. Several excellent ethnographies of contemporary Andean caravans (Korstanje 1998; Lecoq 1988; Nielsen 2001; Núñez and Dillehay 1995) offer other details of caravan trade today, based primarily on the distribution and trade of salt blocks (and smaller quantities of other upland goods: dried charqui meat, tallow or llama fat, medicinal plants, handmade rope, animal skins and fleeces, raw wool, and sometimes also older castrated male llamas). These caravanas sometimes employ burros instead of llamas (as at Yutopian) and are generally limited to diminishing areas where roads and truck travel have not yet appeared. Caravans often combine llamas or burros from four or five owners to reach as many as 50 to 70 animals, always castrated males (plus an essential dog or two), traveling together for trips that can last from two weeks to three Figure 130. Burro caravan from Laguna Blanca visiting Yutopian, June 1998.
334
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Llama caravans and long-distance exchange Figure 131. Caravaneros singing coplas with Jorge, 1998.
months. The routes and camping spots, the trading locations, and the specific individuals who meet to exchange goods all depend on individual histories of who is traveling, and who and what is familiar to them. Known exchange partners, caseros, are often old friends (but never family members) like Jorge and his trading partner, and these encounters offer a comfortable place to bed down and share a meal. On the other hand, overnight stops away from known social relations require cooking and protection for the herds and the goods. Major rituals are performed at prepared sites along the route and involve offerings of alcohol, coca leaves, llama fat and small crudely shaped votive llama figurines made of moistened corn meal (much like the unfired clay llamas we found at Yutopian), as well as drinking through the night, with a day or two of rest afterwards (Nielsen 2001). The ethnographies also point out that the homeward route is slower, not only because it generally climbs uphill and the tired footsore animals must rest more often, but also because the corn collected along the way, usually about half the load, is heavy. Drovers will remove the kernels from cobs, sometimes using special wooden sandals to trample the corn for this purpose (Nielsen, personal communication 2012), and will seek to have it milled en route to turn it into meal. Ethnographic caravans use gristmills of paired horizontal stones close to where the corn is traded (Korstanje 1998:54; Nielsen 2001:184). More rituals are enacted, and the return of the caravan is greeted with a special meal and celebration in the originating upland village. Since a caravan had paraded through our own Andean experience, and since two Early Formative villages on the western slopes of the Valle del Cajón had now been (partially) excavated, the question presents itself: did caravans play a part in the interactions among Early Forma335
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tive communities, perhaps connecting them with more-distant peoples, even in other ecological zones? How isolated or integrated were early sedentary homesteads and villages, and how did nonlocal goods (and ideas—and potential mates) come and go? Questions about Early Formative interaction and exchange appear together with the first differentiation of Formative styles of ceramics (González 1955), when the dynamism of many contemporaneous ceramic styles crossing the boundaries of “self-sufficient” cultural zones was already recognized. Certainly potters and herders and farmers, adventurers and families and foreigners, were moving across the landscape continuously, walking much greater distances than we imagine today: exploring, homesteading, congregating, exchanging, carrying raw materials and new seeds and finished products as they went. But moving a few pots (or stone cobbles) in a shoulder sack, even carried regularly between homesteads by domesticated llamas, is different from the ongoing provisioning of volumes of raw obsidian or regular large supplies of pots or corn or salt from regions outside one’s home territory. If caravans are rare ethnographic cases today, there is every reason to believe they were common, varied and indispensable in Precolumbian times, extending back specifically as far as the Formative period and probably in use since the domestication of llamas. Nielsen (2013), for instance, has recovered ample evidence of Early Formative caravan movement north of the Calchaquí Valley in Jujuy and southern Bolivia, transporting malachite and other copper minerals, turquoise beads, obsidian and shell, backed by an appropriate Formative 14C date (ibid., 401). We recall that two distinct and stable distribution networks of obsidian (from the Ona and Cueros de Purulla quarries) were provisioning Cardonal and Núcleos 1 and 2 at Yutopian from as far away as 185 km (and also probably carrying salt). Long stretches of travel through unmarked mountain passes would have had to be memorized and passed down through successive generations, discouraging occasional or haphazard traffic and again supporting the idea of specialized caravans. Strong support for llama caravans in the Valle del Cajón comes from Cardonal and its noteworthy extensive grinding equipment, along with the suggestion of grinding tool production. Because returning upland llama caravans will seek to mill recently acquired corn to lighten burdens before the steep homeward climb, Cardonal occupies a likely location for this purpose: low on the western flanks of the valley, at the base of a major pass connecting valley bottom with the high puna landscape. Perhaps salt was also milled here, passing down from the puna into the lower warmer valleys. Cardonal’s location and its probable specialized function as an Early Formative milling location lend strong support for caravans passing through this topographically compelling landscape. 336
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97 Narrative
Cardonal and Yutopian The recognition of previously unknown Early Formative sites on the western slopes of the Valle del Cajón attests to . . . well, minimally, a population growth of intrepid archaeologists interested in the Formative period in this region! As well perhaps, population seems to have increased during the Early Formative, accounting for new settlements spreading into and along the western margins of this valley during the first century of the Common Era. Both Cardonal and Yutopian occupy elevated land forms on the western valley slopes with at least partial views of the valley floor below. Their respective locations in the landscape offer different advantages: Cardonal’s terrace position controls direct access to a mountain pass, while Yutopian is more defensively positioned on a semi-attached ridgetop with steep drop-off slopes on three sides. Indeed the Yutopian ridgetop was heavily reoccupied and reconfigured in later periods—with the Early Formative settlement preserved only at the extreme northerly end—while the Early Formative village of Cardonal covered the entire terrace shelf for only a limited period: the range of Formative 14C dates is much narrower for Cardonal than even for the range of Formative dates at Yutopian. Since so little of the Formative period occupation is preserved at Yutopian, we don’t know if loose clusters of patio groups, more or less formalized like those at Cardonal, were once constructed all along the Yutopian ridgetop; it seems likely. Certainly the asymmetry represented by the isolation and preservation of Núcleo 1 at Yutopian is not replicated at Cardonal. On the other hand, the forms of the excavated patio groups from both sites are quite similar, each consisting of an open, unroofed courtyard area and two to three semi-subterranean houses connected to it, each with rock foundations and upper courses of adobes roofed with thatch. Saucer-shaped floors slope toward the center of houses at both sites, perhaps increasingly as the central floor area was worn down with use, and sometimes a stone foundation or posthole is positioned in the middle of the floor to secure a vertical timber as roof support. Sootcovered structures (“kitchens”)—Structure 1 at Cardonal and Estructura 4 at Yutopian—reveal dietary regimes comparable to those mentioned 337
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in the previous section, and raised, clay-ringed hearths were used at both sites. Given the architectural parallels, it is hardly surprising that practices of living in the landscape also align, although these are not always immediately obvious. At both sites, high elevations carry some status; both sites have leveled stone-lined causeways at their highest points, although these were developed in different ways. The north end of the causeway at Yutopian leads into an open stone-encircled plaza, while the Cardonal causeway is flanked by two formal round-walled enclosures midway down its length. Yutopian’s high-prestige Núcleos 1 and 2 occupy the highest points at the northern extremity of the site, while the pattern at Cardonal is more subtle: the high ridgeline that runs through the eastern sectors of the site in fact connects the architecturally most prominent structures of each sector—structures that otherwise would seem to have nothing to do with one another. Apparently, “high” status is quite a literal Formative phenomenon. Significantly, at Cardonal cutanas were inverted in entranceways just as conanas were at Yutopian. Such similar customs or practices do not necessarily imply shared cosmological beliefs, but they do bespeak a commonality of practice between the communities, a shared way of doing and of being (Hendon 2010). It is easy to imagine similar bodily practices and sensory experiences surrounding the moving of large heavy grinding stones to turn them over and deposit them in entranceways. Whatever familiar routinized sequences of practices unfolded here in the living structures at Cardonal and Yutopian, they are likely to have been similar. One further example bears mention. Fragments of modeled ceramic pipes (Fig. 132) were recovered near hearths in houses at both Cardonal and Yutopian along with (broken) polished stone snuff tablets1 (Fig. 133); a chemical analysis of residues from the Cardonal pipe indicated the presence of alkaloids compatible with Anadenanthera sp. or cebil, a strong hallucinogenic plant traded throughout the southern Andes during the Formative (González 2000:289; Scattolin et al. 2009a:411). More than parallel material inventories, we witness common ways of “being Formative”: participating in the same circuits of circulating goods, and arranging and consuming them in common ways. Practices, if not beliefs, were certainly shared; only the heat of the fire and the good stories—wondrous, scary and humorous, traditional and/or highly inventive—are missing. Scattolin et al. (2007:212; also Scattolin 2006:375) have argued that the location of Cardonal is “privileged” in controlling access to the significant mountain pass behind it, connecting the resources and populations of the high puna with those of the lower valleys. In this scenario, 338
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Cardonal and Yutopian Figure 132. Ceramic pipe fragments from the floor of Structure 1 at Cardonal.
Figure 133. Snuff tablets or palates. The complete one in red slate was found by Federico; the broken one was excavated from Yutopian.
Cardonal’s strategic location offers a point of direct control over the circulation of goods, which is amply demonstrated in the Formative, and offers a strong counterargument to a view of Formative developments as strictly regional and bounded. Scattolin et al. (2006) point to the variety of pottery styles and sources of obsidian at Cardonal to make the case for considerable interregional interaction at this site; the Candelaria style armadillo vessel can be associated with areas east of the Valle 339
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del Cajón known as las selvas occidentales (the central-south area of Salta Province and the central-north part of Tucumán); polished, dark red/ black bowls resemble ceramic wares of the puna to the west, such as Antofagasta de la Sierra; polished, flat-bottomed bowls of a yellow paste appear related to yet other geographic regions in the yungas along the eastern slopes of the Andes. Undoubtedly these influences, and perhaps even the pots themselves, were boiling around in complex movements that indeed may have been funneling through the pass behind Cardonal. There is, however, a different argument to be made here, on both empirical and theoretical grounds, and I am uneasy about conceding spatial “privilege” and “control over access to traded goods” as holding critical significance in Early Formative society. Scattolin et al. (2007) point to the diversity of artifact assemblages— ceramics and obsidians —recovered from Cardonal to support the geographical importance of the site in controlling trade. Yet the Formative materials recovered from nearby Yutopian are even more varied and represent even more intense interaction with diverse communities, in both ceramics and lithic materials, including the presence of Condorhuasi polychromes and Candelaria, Vaquerías, Río Diablo Incised and grey/black polished wares (Scattolin 2006:375). By the same token, while there are more structures at Cardonal than at Yutopian, there is no indication of the greater internal site differentiation that should have resulted from a “privileged” position. The quebrada associated with Cardonal may indeed have justified and supported the site’s location as a place that provided specialized cornand salt-grinding for caravans and may have enjoyed certain dependable caravan traffic. But I don’t recognize any indication of a favored “control over access to trade.” (I’m not even sure what form “control over trade” might be appropriate for the Early Formative; what could “control over trade” consist of ? Getting a better exchange rate? Or first pick of the charqui? Directing drovers about whom to trade with, or what commodities to bring? Determining or taxing caravan routes?) Any such “controls” seem inappropriate and are rejected in other arguments about caravan traffic (Nielsen 2007:396). In my mind, opportunities to trade crops and products would have been determined by social distance (including issues of prestige), occasion and opportunity, and certainly by long-standing good-faith partnerships, rather than by narrow proximity (ibid.). I return to these ideas in Bit 99. Note 1. At Yutopian one snuff tablet was surface collected, while a second broken example was recovered from Estructura 2; at Cardonal the snuff tablet was excavated from Structure 1.
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98 Wrap-up
Putting the project to bed In 2004, after transporting all the crates, conanas, and specially boxed reconstructed pots, the final shutting of the doors to the museum storage facility in Santa María felt like a major “mechanism of closure”; it meant that our research was now limited to the records and photos we had and the analyses we had conducted up to that point. The handwrought wooden crates from four seasons at Yutopian and from the 2004 season at Cardonal were well marked and inventoried, and copies of these inventories and all annual reports had been left with the Dirección General de Antropología in San Fernando de Valle de Catamarca as well as with the staff of the Museo Provincial Arqueológico “Eric Boman.” Surely there was more to learn from studying the excavated materials . . . and indeed they have been left accessible for future researchers’ use. Meanwhile the field notes, catalogs, maps, drawings and photographs were copied for Cristina and taken to the United States for further study, to eventually become part of the National Anthropology Archives at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History where they also can be consulted by others. Additional work in the Valle del Cajón was quickly undertaken at Cardonal (Scattolin et al. 2007, 2009a, 2009b) and, following that, at another newly identified Early Formative site still farther west in the Sierra del Hombre Muerto; several doctoral dissertations have appeared based on this new work. Some of the students who worked with the Yutopian project are now full professionals in archaeology while others have gone on to different concerns. Cristina and her team continue to contribute actively and extensively to understanding the Early Formative period in the Cajón and the wider Valles Calchaquíes. The area in which we started work 20 years ago has become a busy and productive archaeological zone. So closing the doors on our stored materials has really hardly closed anything. In fact storage of the objects has opened new avenues of understanding! For instance, many assumptions I held after leaving the field were overturned once the primary data was locked out of sight, and I began to pore over the photos and records we had amassed instead of 342
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focusing on the next field season. Some surprises came from rereading all the field notes (notebooks, binders and field drawings) all the way through and finding notes I hadn’t recalled seeing. Sometimes I noticed a small detail that had previously escaped me and, when considered, affected my thinking about other things. Inconsistencies forced reinterpretations which sometimes caused further reinterpretations down the line. Sometimes my readings about other sites or other people’s interpretations of data would make me think differently about what we found or what had transpired at Yutopian. Sometimes a conundrum simply yielded after I had given up on ever understanding it (sometimes before I was even awake, just lying in bed!). In discussions, people would point things out or offer opinions I hadn’t considered. Not only did I gain new understandings by studying the field records, I also changed my mind . . . more than once. (Only a few of these changes are highlighted here—for example, locating the entranceway into Estructura 4 and rethinking how people lived on sloping floors.) This matter has loomed large for me in writing this book: why hadn’t I noticed or known something before? Am I the only person who changes her mind, sometimes dramatically? Among the large literature of published archaeological writing there is no genre of retractions or reinterpretations or reconsiderations, either of the data assumed to be relevant or of the interpretations given to the data (Springate 2013). There are certainly collegial attacks (or commentary from skeptical graduate students), and professional venues exist where we are invited to comment on each other’s ideas. Sometimes a statement is so crushed by critique that it can no longer stand and then passes out of acceptance, occasionally with a concession by the original proponent. But these outcomes are different from archaeologists stating that they have changed their own minds about their own conclusions, a realization that came well after closing the storage doors. Meanwhile, the profession itself has shifted in regards central to this project. Over the time we were conducting research at Yutopian, the academic study of knowledge making has intensified and diversified . . . and radicalized. Sometimes actor-network theory is used to describe the scientist and her tools and the objects of study as composing a network, underscoring the interdependence of subjects, objects, concepts and tools (Hodder 2012). Basic descriptions are recognized as “interventions,” “our own unavoidable complicity in reality making”; this approach “teaches us to nurture a basic uncertainty about what there is in the world” and to “ask questions which do not enforce particular conditions of possibility on whatever it is we are studying” (Law 2004:154). We are asked to “foreground the ‘elusive, ephemeral, and unpredictable aspects [of an object]’ which is otherwise rendered as being in every 343
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way tangible, lasting and long since predicted” (Munk and Abrahamsson 2012:57). In fact practitioners of science/ technology studies oppose “a predominant and singular ontology” and “deliberately, as the main interventionist goal, attempt to interfere [with it]” (ibid.). Such fundamental destabilizing of the knowledge-making process was never my intent (although it sounds like intellectual fun). If these goals were implicit in Bruno Latour’s early explorations about how science works, I never followed them to their logical conclusions. In setting out many years ago to use the Yutopian project to better understand how archaeologists produce knowledge, I could never have attempted this contemporary understanding because we had to rely heavily, understandably, on pre-erected conventions and practices, histories and typologies, simply unwilling or unable to constantly interrogate them. Although there was earnest attention to how our fieldwork and analytic decisions contributed to the specific Yutopian we came to know, in the end I just couldn’t set aside my practical and theoretical research instruments to inspect and question them more closely. It proved impossible for me to simultaneously hold in my mind the objectives and techniques of Early Formative research in the Valle del Cajón on the one hand, and the “interventions” on the other. True, I have tried to resist imposing modern meanings and using conventionalized systems of representing archaeological knowledge, and true, I have avoided asserting ambitious certainty where meanings eluded me (and made such situations clear). I have also avoided using (some) conventional mechanisms of closure such as chronological charts to stabilize notions with variable meanings. Yet again and again I have pronounced what we “found,” what it “was,” how it could be grouped with other things “like” it, and so on. I have still produced stratigraphic drawings of profiles and maps of house floors with clear demarcations even where we sometimes had long discussions about what we were seeing: the quasi-pits and patches of consolidated “floors.” I’m afraid many old assumptions are still intact. Insofar as I have related the steps of this research undertaking in some detail, perhaps our work can be deconstructed by others. Nevertheless, with the recovered objects now deep in storage, we have been able to note many forces (“interventions”?) that acted upon our data collection, that made some observations possible and precluded others, that shifted our focus or foreclosed options, that ultimately configured our singular knowledge outcomes. Many of these “forces” have been described here: the politics at every step of research and at multiple levels from the international to the personal, the ambiguity of evidence at different scales from major theoretical divergences to the function of individual artifacts. We have seen how the history of this now depop344
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ulated region preserved the site but also left us without a context for interpretation and with a predetermined work crew. We observed the sociology and the cultural practices of archaeological research and saw their effects on how and what we learned. We have seen emotional commitments to some artifacts, while others—perhaps not even mentioned here—are bypassed in our narratives. One final matter arises as we put the Yutopian project to bed: what could or should we have done differently, knowing more today? In the narrowest sense I wish we had devoted more attention in the field to the areas below the Yutopian ridgetop to define differences between life on the ridge and life below; there are certainly more structures there to investigate. I would very much have liked to have had more information about the northern plaza, pursuing more testing even after our two empty test pits. I am disappointed that we failed to interrogate Jorge and Álvaro and Ramona’s knowledge more deeply, to learn more about both what they know and what they would like to have known about the past at Yutopian. Mostly I wish that instead of teaching archaeology to our inexperienced lugareño field crews, I had encouraged them to record their untutored impressions and understandings.
99 Postscript
Early Formative society: Where’s the monumental? Our work at Yutopian and Cardonal identified and described two Early Formative settlements where previously nothing was known. The Valle del Cajón and indeed the larger Santa María Valley were empty of any Early Formative presence except for the sites Scattolin had located and worked at earlier: simple isolated farmsteads. Now we had not one but two villages composed of variable households, some apparently more complete and more deliberately preserved than others, allowing us intimate observations of household practices and dynamics. Unexpectedly, we also encountered prepared public areas, inviting us to speculate (per345
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ulated region preserved the site but also left us without a context for interpretation and with a predetermined work crew. We observed the sociology and the cultural practices of archaeological research and saw their effects on how and what we learned. We have seen emotional commitments to some artifacts, while others—perhaps not even mentioned here—are bypassed in our narratives. One final matter arises as we put the Yutopian project to bed: what could or should we have done differently, knowing more today? In the narrowest sense I wish we had devoted more attention in the field to the areas below the Yutopian ridgetop to define differences between life on the ridge and life below; there are certainly more structures there to investigate. I would very much have liked to have had more information about the northern plaza, pursuing more testing even after our two empty test pits. I am disappointed that we failed to interrogate Jorge and Álvaro and Ramona’s knowledge more deeply, to learn more about both what they know and what they would like to have known about the past at Yutopian. Mostly I wish that instead of teaching archaeology to our inexperienced lugareño field crews, I had encouraged them to record their untutored impressions and understandings.
99 Postscript
Early Formative society: Where’s the monumental? Our work at Yutopian and Cardonal identified and described two Early Formative settlements where previously nothing was known. The Valle del Cajón and indeed the larger Santa María Valley were empty of any Early Formative presence except for the sites Scattolin had located and worked at earlier: simple isolated farmsteads. Now we had not one but two villages composed of variable households, some apparently more complete and more deliberately preserved than others, allowing us intimate observations of household practices and dynamics. Unexpectedly, we also encountered prepared public areas, inviting us to speculate (per345
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haps more than is warranted) about the nature of the Yutopian community and its close neighbors. It has been exciting to recognize factors that stabilize and reproduce ongoing Early Formative social structures especially in the household, while simultaneously recognizing social mechanisms in Early Formative society that carry the potential for change, that hint at social differentiation at Yutopian, and that refute the timeless, changeless character of Northwest Argentina’s emerging Early Formative period. If we have gotten a feel, however partial, for arrangements at Yutopian (and perhaps Cardonal), identifying stability and change over the course of several hundred years, is this information useful to broader understandings of Early Formative society? I start by returning to the original questions that motivated our project: “How did exotic specialized goods function in the egalitarian context of Formative society? . . . How [did] specialized goods articulate with a model of Formative life that is characterized as replicative, egalitarian and gendered? At the household level in small-scale societies, with low densities of alienable goods, non-market distribution systems, and unspecialized, unconcentrated labor, how are we to understand the lateral cycling of specially crafted ‘surplus energy’?” This research focus seems as pressing today as when I wrote the grant proposal 20 years ago, especially since we actually succeeded in recovering “exotic” and “specialized” goods from both Yutopian and Cardonal in Early Formative contexts. Why and how (we wanted to know) did these specialized ceramics, the beads and the bronze pieces, circulate? Today we know a lot more about this subject. We know that a largescale exchange network of exotic pottery, stone and metal items— ”prestige goods”—was in place during the Early Formative. It reached sites across large distances in Formative Northwest Argentina and was neither recent nor casual (Nielsen et al. 2007; Williams et al. 2007); extensive interzonal spheres of reciprocal trade were already well established by the Late Archaic period (Nielsen 2011; Núñez et al. 2007), originating perhaps in early interconnections between the Atacama region and the Atlantic Coast (Pimentel et al. 2011). Archaeological surveys of caravan stopping places in Northwest Argentina have revealed early materials concentrated along the routes that originate in the west, in the Atacama region (Nielsen 2011:96), but the caravan routes lasted for centuries, passed down as personal knowledge from generation to generation, and may have become the basis for the widely admired Qhapaqñan, the extensive Inka road system. The objects that were traded were hardly tools in any narrow sense and fail to underscore economic interdependences between regions, 346
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not even as trade items exchanged for agricultural products. Although items traveled hundreds of kilometers and did so over the course of centuries, they were not hoarded or accumulated as “wealth,” nor was their exchange a mechanism for gaining status or accruing prestige, because we don’t observe increasingly sharp social divisions accompanying troves of exotic goods. Despite the impressive literature on the topic, many questions remain about how caravaners were supported, how specialized producers were organized, whether traders were producers, what agendas or opportunities were created or exploited to conduct trade and so on. But by the Early Formative, Yutopian and Cardonal were certainly participating in these “gift economy” networks, and while we expect that the organization of trading events varied considerably over time and space, we don’t really know how or why they functioned. But the power of material objects to organize social life cannot be underestimated. Many anthropologists/archaeologists have recognized that objects are key props through which socio-cultural practices are enacted, or as Julian Thomas put it, “ . . . objects and social relationships act as conditions for each other’s existence” (cited in Lazarri 2005:127). The widespread interactions involved in Northwest Argentina exchanges are perfect for study using models that forefront social-material interactions, where people and things are acknowledged to play equal parts in mutually constituting one another. We can imagine many ways in which objects made the people of the Early Formative into who they were, including their daily practices and annual routines. Cooking pots and spindle whorls and stone walls created cooks and spinners and builders. But nonroutine (traded) objects also constructed and confirmed the personhood of Early Formative individuals within the context of early sedentism, where local intensifications of land use and neighborly interactions were replacing or complementing the long annual rounds of earlier times. Knappett (2011:4) characterizes human social practices as generally creating expanding connections with others, enlarging face-to-face encounters through different mechanisms to wider and wider spheres of interaction, countervailing local existences. Thus it seems likely that the circulation of specialized goods existed to reproduce chains of social knowledge and obligation, passing along knowledge and obligation to create chains of knowledgeable and obligated people . . . because knowledge and obligation create the Formative condition. Certainly motives and mechanisms of trade were couched in different cultural rationales. But over long periods of continuity, the construction and maintenance of an expansive trade network must have come to define and hold in balance much of what is central to the Early 347
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Formative identity, which is precisely this: that to have (certain?) standing in Early Formative society meant participating in exchange networks with other parties. To be a worthy person in Formative Northwest Argentina might have been to be a person with connections, to be attached to others who may have lived at some distance but who could be counted as extensions of one’s world. In this view, the objects that were used for exchange—the fine Condorhuasi three-color painted and modeled ceramics and the bronze adornments and beads and bracelets that archaeologists use to characterize Early Formative society—would have come into being precisely to bring people into being, to allow them to count as people with connections. Notions of well-being might have aligned not with the accumulation of objects but with having articulations with a wider world, as Pease (1992) reports about Kuracas and ideas of power and wealth in the Andes at the time of the European invasion. People and prestige objects create each other as meaningful. I can’t say this was so. But it is one (attractive) way to view the longlasting, far-reaching system of nodes and networks that was in place to circulate exotic, labor-intensive objects in the seemingly egalitarian world of the Early Formative (although it does not—yet?—solve the questions of where producers were located, how they were supported and how exchanges were embedded in cultural routines): a mutually constituting human-object system, flexible but durable, richly interconnecting sedentary peoples. And there is one more thing to say about this early exchange network: it is monumental (sensu Burger 2007). The vital networks of exchange in the mountains of Northwest Argentina are effective in connecting people across space in part because of their enormous scale, precisely like the early monumental architecture in the Central Andes’ Preceramic and Initial periods. Burger has argued convincingly that for all the different (architectural) forms it can take, a common factor in achieving monumentality is that it brings people together across time and space, arising through cooperative rather than coercive labor (Burger 2007:346). Monumentality of scale and dimension was achieved by episodic accretion; rather than being finalized, the monumental Initial period temples were under constant modification and reinvention. In all these ways, monumental architectural constructions parallel the monumentality of large-scale exchange networks: many of the same purposes are served in the two systems, both arise in the early phases of sedentary society, and certainly both exhibit the same enduring temporality. It is only a matter of stretching our ideas of “monumental” to include less tangibly constructed, long-lasting works of great magnitude. 348
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Early Formative society in Northwest Argentina may have lacked monumental temples but it featured a collaborative monument of its own: an exchange system that left its fine craft productions scattered across small villages and isolated farmsteads instead of in the graves of a powerful few.
Figure 134. Fingerprints from the past.
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100 Follow-Through
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Index
Note: Page numbers followed by the letters f, n and t refer to figures, notes, and tables. adobe, 103–105, 104f41, 104f42, 242n1 agriculture, 252, 270–273, 271f105, 271f106, 275, 277, 282–283 Aguada pottery, 43, 44f23, 69, 285; from Núcleo 1, 94, 155, 158–159, 159f66, 164, 301 Alamito, 2, 39, 255, 256f102 ambiguity, 12–16, 120–123, 174, 344 Ancon, 278 Archaic period, 36, 292, 346 armadillos, 96, 117, 146, 156, 180, 228, 279, 281, 332; and recipe for quirquincho, 181–182 artifacts, 78, 85, 128–130, 132, 237–238, 240, 299–302, 345. See also specific artifact types, classes and materials; specific structures Bajo La Alumbrera, 24 Barnes, Jodi, 242, 316 beads, 205, 244t12, 245, 302–304, 303f118; from Estructura 4, 201, 204, 210, 211, 217, 233, 300–301, 300t21, 301f117 beans, 270–271, 272, 275–276, 278, 332; and hearths, 116f50, 158, 199, 200, 201, 236 beverages, alchoholic, 219, 235, 236, 253, 276, 300; and Pachamama offerings, 149, 151, 335 bones. See faunal materials botanical materials, 134, 135–138, 273n1, 274–278, 338; from Cardonal, 324t25, 332; from Estructura 1, 108, 108f43; from Estructura 4, 201, 212, 213t10, 233, 275, 276, 277; from Estructura 5, 276; from Estructura 11, 187, 277; from PP 12/12a, 190, 191–192, 191f75, 191t9. See also chañar; corn bracelets, 3, 3f1, 8n2, 43, 50, 259, 260f104 bronze, 3f1, 32, 35, 49, 50, 120, 122; and trade, 346, 348 Buenos Aires, 23, 129, 241, 261 Bugliani, Fabiana M., 237, 238, 284, 286, 287, 289
burials, 68–69, 70–71, 146, 165, 278n1, 303 butchering, 141, 156, 217, 292 Cajón Valley, 20–21, 22f5, 25, 26–27, 26f7, 259, 261–262 Calchaquí Valley, 18, 20, 23, 24f6, 27, 235, 342 camelids, 2, 279–280, 281–282, 282–283, 282t15, 320, 332; and butchering, 141, 156; and offerings, 160–161, 224, 264, 265; and pit finds, 206, 212, 216, 217, 228–229; and tools, 78f31, 117, 162, 180, 280f107. See also llamas Campo, Rachel, 132, 198, 199, 240f98 Campo del Pucurá, 255 Candelaria pottery, 21f4, 40, 41, 41f19, 43, 46, 50, 244t12, 245, 287, 299t20; from Cardonal, 333; from Estructura 1, 115–116, 115f49, 164, 184, 196, 203, 205, 287f108, 301; from Estructura 2, 94; from Estructura 3, 144, 145f58, 146, 164, 184, 196, 203, 289; from Estructura 4, 184, 196, 200, 203, 205, 287f108; and food residue, 277, 278; and Yutopian boundaries, 259, 260f103 carbon dating, 36, 38–39, 46, 164–165, 168, 187, 206, 230, 232, 251; and site chronology, 245–246, 247t13b, 247t13c, 248–249 Cardonal, 4, 33, 48–49, 310–311, 310f21, 314, 319f124, 323n1; excavation of, 317–318, 320, 321, 323; and food sources, 273, 311, 332; and grinding stones, 223f92, 319f123, 330–331, 333, 336; maps of, 308f120, 321f125, 322f127; and patio groups, 156, 172; and roof support pit, 229, 320–321, 322f126; special finds from, 324t25; and Yutopian, 309–310, 311t23, 337–340 Caspinchango pottery, 180 Catamarca, 2, 71, 237, 261 ceramic materials, 20, 190; analysis of, 57, 59, 59n1, 129, 132, 237, 238; and caravan trade, 3, 50, 336; from Cardonal,
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index 320, 320t24, 323, 324t25, 332, 333; from Estructura 1, 75, 76, 109, 109f44, 112, 115–116, 115f49, 117, 119t4b, 159, 162; from Estructura 2, 94, 96, 99, 159; from Estructura 3, 139, 142t6, 144, 145f58, 146; from Estructura 4, 203, 206, 206f84, 207, 211, 212, 213t10, 216, 216f89, 217, 233; from Estructura 5, 228, 229, 231t11; from Estructura 11, 177–178, 179f72, 180, 183, 183t8, 184, 187, 188; and food residue, 277–278; and NOA chronology, 36, 38–39, 40–41, 41f19, 43–44, 45–47; and Núcleo 1, 154, 155–156, 158–159, 164–165; and pottery production, 126, 217; reconstruction of, 90, 90f34, 238, 299t20, 300; from test pits, 60, 62, 63t1, 64–65, 67, 68, 69, 71; types of, 284–287, 289; and vessel forms, 286–287, 286t16, 288f109, 288f110, 289, 289n1. See also specific pottery types Cerro Colorado, 30 Cerro Negro, 27 chagas, 239, 242n1 Chaile, Álvaro, 127, 182, 209, 253, 259–260, 304, 345; and excavations, 65, 68, 162, 190, 194, 200; and farming, 71, 81, 154, 270–272, 276; and house building, 154, 259; and marriage, 33, 34, 127; and offering to Pachamama, 148, 149, 150f61 Chaile, Federico, 71, 81, 98, 209, 215f88, 228; and hunting, 90, 91f35, 281; and marriage, 33, 34, 127; and offering to Pachamama, 148, 149, 150f61 Chaile, Jorge, 30, 30f10, 32, 33, 34f13, 104, 242, 253; and caravan trade, 334, 335, 335f131; and excavations, 70–71, 111, 132, 186, 196–198, 215, 218, 317, 345; and farming, 81, 82, 82f33, 270–271, 272; and gifts, 209, 274; and marriage, 33–34, 91–92, 127; and offering to Pachamama, 148, 149, 150–151, 150f61, 151f62; and patio activities, 156, 156f64, 157; and solar panels, 207, 239; and water management, 136–137, 266, 267 Chaile, Ramona, 32, 33, 34, 71, 277, 345; and farming, 81, 82, 82f33; and spinning, 304, 305 Chaile family, 33–34, 49, 62, 127, 239, 310, 317, 329. See also specific family members chalcedony, 155, 166–167, 167t7a, 238, 290, 291, 299 chañar, 199, 201, 202f80, 211–212, 228, 276, 332; and ritual beverages, 200, 205, 212, 218–219, 235, 276 Chayle, Marco, 317 chicha, 192, 212, 219, 275, 278
Ciénaga pottery, 40, 43, 47, 94, 162, 163, 164, 285 coca leaves, 149, 335 community archaeology, 239–242, 315 conanas. See grinding stones Condorhuasi pottery, 40, 41f20, 43, 46, 47, 50, 244t12, 289; from Estructura 1, 78, 109, 115, 117, 162, 164, 301; from Estructura 2, 94, 96, 99, 163, 164; from Estructura 3, 144, 145f58, 146; from Estructura 11, 177, 183 copper, 108, 199, 199f79, 203, 210, 233, 244t12, 323; and caravan trade, 3, 50, 120, 336; and metallurgy, 94, 109, 120–123, 236; and mining, 24; ornaments, 3, 43, 50, 259, 260f104 corn, 2, 43, 98, 274, 275, 278n1; and caravan trade, 335, 336; and contemporary agriculture, 82, 270–271, 271f105, 277; and grinding stones, 65, 123, 124, 125–126; and hearth activities, 116, 199, 200, 201, 205, 212, 235; and Pachamama offering, 149, 150; and PP 12/12a, 190, 191t9, 192 Cornell, Per, 38 Cueros de Purulla. See Purulla obsidian Current Paleoethnobotany, 135 cutanas. See grinding stones data, 7, 9, 13–15, 56, 83–87, 130, 313–314, 314n2 decision making, 5, 6, 9, 10, 12, 132–134, 312–314, 344 Desrosiers, Sophie, 157n1 domestication, 2, 251, 292, 336 Early Formative period, 36, 38–41, 43, 45, 46, 250–253, 345–349 Ebin, Lauren, 241 elites, 46, 146, 166, 171, 289, 291, 338 El Mollar, 255 El Paraiso, 254 El Pichao, 38 entranceways, 169, 172, 263, 263t14, 264–265, 318. See also specific structures epistemology, 8–11, 13, 56, 83–87, 102, 132, 239, 313, 343–345 Escola, Patricia, 167, 295 escoria. See scoria Estructura 1, 94, 111f46, 154, 212, 237, 253; ceramic materials from, 159, 184, 196, 285, 286, 286t16, 287, 287f108, 289; chronology of, 163–164, 165, 166, 234, 248, 249, 251; and corn, 277, 278; and cross-mends, 301; entranceway to, 160– 162, 161f67, 163, 187, 224, 263, 263t14; excavation of, 66, 73–76, 73f28, 74f29,
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Index 92, 100, 108–112; faunal materials from, 281, 282t15, 283; function of, 201, 234, 236, 251–252; general finds from, 77t2a, 119t4b, 120; and hearth, 157, 171, 197, 200, 204, 205, 251; lithic materials from, 166, 167–168, 167t7a, 168t7b, 297, 298, 298t19; and metallurgy, 120–123; occupation floor of, 75f30, 112–117, 113f47, 184; special finds from, 77t2b, 108f43, 109f44, 110f45, 114f48, 117, 118t4a, 120, 302 Estructura 2, 93f36, 95f37, 97f39, 100–102, 154; ceramic materials from, 159, 285, 286, 286t16, 287; chronology of, 163–164, 165, 166, 249; entranceway to, 162–163, 187, 224, 263, 263t14; excavation of, 92–98, 108; lithic materials from, 98, 121, 166–167, 167t7a, 168, 168t7b, 297, 298t19; special finds from, 98–99, 98f40, 99, 99t3, 100, 302 Estructura 3, 133, 134, 139f53, 140f54, 141f55, 144f56, 245; ceramic materials from, 184, 285, 286t16, 287, 289, 302; chronology of, 163–166, 251; and cross-mends, 302; entranceway to, 163, 224, 263t14; excavation of, 138–142; faunal materials from, 279, 282t15; lithic materials from, 121, 166, 167–168, 167t7a, 168t7b, 295, 298t19; and offering to Pachamama, 148, 149, 150, 150f61; pits in, 143–144, 145f57, 145f58, 146, 147f59, 147f60, 148, 212; remodeling of, 186, 224; special finds from, 142t6, 143 Estructura 4, 194f76, 195f77, 204f83, 212f87, 227f94, 227f95, 231; and beads, 302, 303; cache pit from, 215–218, 215f88, 216f89, 233, 236, 298; ceramic materials from, 184, 207, 285–286, 286t16, 287f108, 289; and chañar, 218–219; chronology of, 207, 232–234; and cross-mends, 300–301; entranceway to, 210–211, 222–226, 222f90, 223f91, 233, 263, 263t14; excavation of, 169, 194, 196–200, 205–207, 209–212; faunal materials from, 279, 281, 282t15, 283; function of, 205, 218, 235–237, 251–252, 253; and larger núcleo, 226, 227f94, 228, 230, 232, 235; lithic materials from, 121, 290, 290t17, 291, 293, 295, 297, 298, 298t19; and lower hearth, 206–207, 210, 210f86, 212, 224, 225, 232, 248; remodeling of, 194f76, 196, 210, 224, 225–226, 225f93, 232, 233, 234, 235, 248–249, 251, 253; special finds from, 213t10; and upper hearth, 197–201, 198f78, 210f86, 219, 224, 225, 232, 233, 235, 248, 253 Estructura 5, 226, 227f94, 227f95, 228–231,
229f96, 230f97; ceramic materials from, 286, 286t16; chronology of, 232–234, 248, 249, 251; faunal materials from, 279, 281, 282t15; lithic materials from, 253, 290, 290t17, 291, 298, 298t19; special finds from, 231t11, 232. See also Núcleo 2 Estructura 11, 176f70, 178f71, 179f73, 180f74, 186–188, 224, 248, 250; bone materials from, 281, 282t15; ceramic materials from, 183, 183t8, 184, 185; excavation of, 134, 138, 176–178, 180–181; lithic materials from, 293, 293f111, 295; remodeling of, 184–186, 187, 188, 224, 235 exchange. See trade faunal materials, 129, 191, 237, 238, 279– 283, 282t15; from Cardonal, 320, 324t25, 332; from Estructura 1, 75, 76, 78, 78f31, 111–112, 115, 119t4b, 164; from Estructura 2, 97, 98, 162f68, 164; from Estructura 3, 141, 142t6, 143, 146, 165; from Estructura 4, 196, 203, 212, 213t10, 216, 216f89, 224, 233; from Estructura 5, 229, 231t11 feasting, 83, 105, 171, 219, 235, 267, 334, 335 feminism, 5, 8, 12, 56, 313 figurines, 32, 146, 244t12, 254; llama, 116, 200, 203, 204f82, 205, 206, 236, 245, 335; puma, 145f58, 146, 147f59, 164, 281 firewood, 218, 275 Fletcher, Josh, 132 flotation, 4, 136–138, 137f52, 273n1, 274, 276 food, 200, 219, 228, 236, 276; and production activities, 123–126, 199, 235, 265, 292; residues, 277–278; and wild-plant gathering, 276–277. See also botanical materials; chañar; corn Formative period. See Early Formative period; Late Formative period forms, excavation, 83–87, 181 Fraga, Cecelia, 132 gender, 4, 5, 23, 50; and archaeology practice, 87, 91–92, 135–136, 136t5a, 136t5b; and grinding stones, 245, 265, 327, 329; and household labor, 61, 123–127, 157, 217, 245, 265; and llamas, 265, 265n1; and settlement patterns, 127–128 Ghobadi, Ali, 316 González, Rex, 45 grinding stones, 244t12, 327–329; from Cardonal, 318, 319f123, 328, 329–331, 329f128, 330f129, 331n1; and entranceways, 163, 263, 264–265; from Estructura 1, 65, 66f26, 74, 75f30, 112, 114–115, 114f48, 117, 120, 161–162; from Estruc-
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index tura 2, 95, 96, 163; from Estructura 3, 138, 141–142, 144, 146, 148, 164; from Estructura 4, 199, 203, 212, 223, 223f91, 223f92, 228, 233; from Estructura 5, 228, 229; from Estructura 11, 177; and house building, 96, 164, 165, 327; and Núcleo 1, 171, 228, 245; and women, 123–127, 128, 245, 265, 327, 329 Guachipas pottery, 139 guinea pigs, 94 Gutierrez, Menelaos, 317 Hastorf, Christine, 135, 136 hearths, 97, 124, 156f64, 169, 190, 244t12; and Cardonal, 332; and Estructura 1, 110, 116, 197, 200, 204, 205, 229, 251; and Estructura 4, 196–201, 198f78, 202f80, 203, 205, 206–207, 229; and metallurgy, 109, 120, 121, 122–123, 200; and ritual activities, 165, 171, 245, 251, 286, 298 Heyne, Catherine, 92, 259 Hispano-Indígena period, 38, 178, 183, 183t8, 188, 277, 295 homesteads, 2, 27, 28, 29f9, 33f12, 39, 40f18, 253, 259; and matrilocality, 127–128 house building, 102–105, 186, 265, 318; and Estructura 4, 194f76, 210, 224, 225–226, 225f93, 233, 235, 249, 251, 253; and Estructura 11, 184–186, 187, 188; and group labor, 126, 219, 255; and remodeling, 164, 165, 180, 184–188, 196, 230, 234, 302 households, 4, 61, 70, 149, 234, 273, 345–346; and grinding stones, 123–127, 265, 330, 332; and group labor, 105, 255, 258n1, 267; growth of, 103, 184, 251; and labor, 28, 61, 123–127, 173–174, 189, 199, 292; and metallurgy, 120–123; and ritual activities, 236, 237, 255; and tools, 283, 291, 298; and trade, 50, 173, 291 Hualfín Valley, 43 hunting, 36, 279, 281, 283, 292 Indigenous movement, 242 Inka, 18, 20, 29, 36, 52, 261, 346 Inka period, 38, 44n1 irrigation canals, 136, 219, 239, 258n1, 266–267, 271, 273 Izeta, Andrés, 237, 238, 279, 284 kinship, 33–34, 127–128; and grinding stones, 124, 265; and pottery production, 47, 126–127; and settlement patterns, 105, 165, 170–171, 173, 187–188, 253 Knauf, Jocelyn, 316 knives, 62, 69, 94, 116, 162, 203, 292,
295f113, 296f115, 297; from cache pit, 216, 216f89, 217; distribution of, 166, 238, 244t12, 245, 295, 296f114, 297 knowledge production. See epistemology La Arroyo, 33, 132, 205, 207, 274 La Ciénaga, 303 Laguna Blanca, 40, 127, 311, 334 La Hoyada, 28, 29f8, 253 laminating stones, 97, 98–99, 98f40, 121, 164, 206 La Ovejería, 29–30, 33, 127 lapis lazuli, 117, 204, 205, 211, 233, 300–301, 300t21, 302 La Quebrada, 8n2, 34, 48, 104f42, 127, 182, 242, 253, 315–317 Late Formative period, 36, 38–39, 43, 45, 187, 295. See also Aguada pottery Leoni, Juan, 60 Lewis, Paul, 132, 145f57 Liendro, Virgilio, 317 lineage. See kinship lithic materials, 166–168, 290–291, 298–299; analysis of, 57, 129, 237, 238; from Cardonal, 320, 324t25, 332; from Estructura 1, 76, 119t4b; from Estructura 3, 141, 142t6, 146; from Estructura 4, 213t10, 300; from Estructura 5, 228, 231t11; from Núcleo 1 patio, 154, 155–156, 158; and reduction activities, 155–156, 167; from test pits, 62, 69. See also knives; obsidian; projectile points llamas, 67, 146, 191, 251, 280, 282t15; and caravans, 303, 333–336; and Estructura 2, 96, 98; and Estructura 4, 196, 203, 216, 224; figurines of, 116, 200, 203, 204f82, 205, 206, 236, 245, 335; and gender, 265, 265n1; and offerings, 160–161, 162, 163, 224, 263, 265; and tools, 115, 116, 141, 162f68, 164. See also camelids Llampa, Beto, 25, 26, 28, 81, 90, 132, 315 Loma Alto, 40f18 Loring, Stephen, 90–91, 91f35, 111, 157, 194, 196, 198–199, 209, 260, 316 los hermanos, 98–99, 98f40, 100 maize. See corn malachite, 108, 121, 164, 200, 336 Mamani, Mabel, 237 manos, 67, 69, 95, 154, 177, 190, 228, 328; from Cardonal, 329, 331, 332–333; from Estructura 1, 65, 66, 66f26, 112, 114, 117; from Estructura 4, 223, 228. See also grinding stones mapping, 56–57, 59, 60, 84–85, 92, 196, 258–260
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Index Marcaya, 172 Martinez, Leticia, 132 matrilocality, 127–128 mechanisms of closure, 14–15 menhires, 2, 255, 256f101 metal. See bronze; copper; scoria metallurgy, 120–123, 126, 164, 200, 206, 236, 255 mica, 141, 146 middens, 251, 274, 299 mining, 24–25, 149 Moche pottery, 46, 255 monographs, 5–6, 10 morteros. See grinding stones Munns, Lisa, 316 Museo Provincial Arqueológico “Eric Boman,” 25, 241, 342 Nielsen, Axel, 249n1 Nishizawa, Hideyuki, 316 Northwest Argentina (NOA), 19f2, 23–27, 35–44, 45, 47, 49–50, 346–349 Núcleo 1, 75, 155f63, 231, 235, 250f99; ceramic materials from, 285, 286t16, 287, 288f109, 289; chronology of, 163–166, 167–168, 187, 234, 248, 249, 251; excavation of, 92, 154–156, 176; faunal materials from, 181, 282t15; lithic materials from, 166–168, 167t7a, 168t7b, 291, 291t18, 292, 298t19; and metallurgy, 120, 121; and other patio groups, 133, 134, 169–171, 226; and patio activities, 134, 156–157; square feature from, 157–159, 158f65, 297, 301. See also Estructura 1; Estructura 2; Estructura 3 Núcleo 2, 196, 226, 227f94, 227f95, 229–230, 281; ceramic materials from, 285, 287, 288f110, 289; chronology of, 232–234, 248–249. See also Estructura 5 núcleos. See patio groups obsidian, 155, 166, 167–168, 168t7b, 238, 290–291, 290t17, 291t18, 299, 336; from Cardonal, 332; from Estructura 1, 116, 117; from Estructura 2, 94, 96f38, 98; from Estructura 4, 215, 216, 217; from Estructura 5, 229; from test pits, 67, 68, 69 Ona obsidian, 167–168, 217, 290, 290t17, 332, 336 Pachamama, 148–151, 150f61, 151f62, 158, 218, 230, 333 Pachao, José Chico, 317 Pachao, Roque, 30, 34, 92 Pachao, Santo, 33–34, 92, 127 Pachao family, 29, 30, 127
paleoethnobotany, 135–136, 136t5a, 136t5b, 277 patio groups, 72f27, 103, 133, 134, 170f69, 171–174, 251; at Cardonal, 318, 321; and patio activities, 28, 156–157, 172, 173. See also Núcleo 1; Núcleo 2 Pérez Jimeno, Laura, 60 Perón, Juan, 27, 316 Peronistas, 27, 314–316 Peru, 18, 172, 254, 272, 275, 278. See also Moche pottery Pico Colorado, 27 pilgrimage, 29–31, 30f10, 31f11 pipes, 42f22, 43, 121, 122, 232, 259, 323, 338, 339f132 Pirincay, 278 pithouses, 102–105, 184, 286 pits, 263, 264, 302; at Cardonal, 229, 320– 321, 322f126; and conana lid, 328, 331n1; from Estructura 1, 111–112, 160–161; from Estructura 2, 96–98; from Estructura 3, 142, 143–144, 145f57, 146, 147f60, 148, 164–165, 251; from Estructura 4, 205–206, 212, 215–218, 216f89, 224, 233; from Estructura 5, 228–230, 229f96, 230f97; from PP 12/12a, 190, 191, 191f75; and site chronology, 247t13b, 247t13c, 248, 251, 323. See also test pits plaza, 234, 235, 252–253, 252f100, 254–255, 257–258, 345 Politis, Gustavo, 18 Popper, Virginia, 135 population, 3, 13–14, 27, 34, 36, 39, 43, 337 porotos. See beans pottery. See ceramic materials; specific pottery types power. See social status pozos de prueba. See test pits PP 12/12a, 190–192, 191f75, 191t9, 192, 196, 248, 250, 275 PP 18, 65–66, 66f26, 67, 71, 73, 74f29, 114, 301. See also Estructura 1 practice, archaeology, 51–53, 83–87, 239–242; Argentinean, 56, 60, 261–262, 327; and artifact analysis, 129–130, 237–238; and epistemology, 134, 239, 312–313, 314nn1–2; and North-South collaboration, 56–57, 59, 325–327 prestige. See elites projectile points, 38, 65, 69, 78, 244t12, 245, 259, 291–293, 294f112; from Cardonal, 320, 332; from Estructura 1, 112, 117; from Estructura 2, 94, 96f38; from Estructura 3, 142t6, 143; from Estructura 4, 203–204, 205–206, 215, 216, 216f89, 217, 293; from Estructura 5, 229, 232;
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index from Estructura 11, 293, 293f111 public space. See patio groups; plaza Puentes, Hugo, 60, 65, 190 Purulla obsidian, 167–168, 290, 290t17, 291, 293, 332, 336 Queyash Alto, 18 Quilmes, 37f16, 38 Quinteros, Ramón, 132, 206 Quiroga, Rubén, 90, 261 quirquincho. See armadillos Recuay pottery, 265n1 reductionist starting principle, 13–14 Regional Development period (RDP), 36, 37f16, 38, 43, 94, 186, 273; and pottery, 20, 28, 38, 43, 64, 65, 179f72, 183, 183t8 Regional Integration period. See Late Formative period religion, 70–71, 257–258. See also ritual activities remodeling, 164, 165, 180, 184–188, 196, 230, 234, 302; of Estructura 4, 194f76, 196, 210, 224, 225–226, 225f93, 233, 234, 235, 249, 251, 253; of Estructura 11, 184–186, 187, 188 Rincón Chico, 38 Río Colorado, 25–26 Río Diablo pottery, 40, 202f81, 203, 219, 228, 285, 299t20, 300 ritual activities: and alcoholic beverages, 205, 219, 234, 235, 236, 253, 300; and beads, 302, 304; and caravan trade, 335; and ceremonial centers, 2, 39, 234–235, 255; and entranceways, 264, 265; and hallucinogens, 43, 338; and Pachamama, 148–151, 150f61, 151f62, 158, 218, 230, 333; and pilgrimage, 29–31, 30f10, 31f11; and public spaces, 43, 234, 236, 253, 254–255, 257–258; and water management, 267 rodent burrows, 4, 94, 96, 102, 109, 248, 279, 300 roofing, 96, 103, 105, 108, 160, 165, 203 Rossen, Jack, 137, 138, 191t9, 270, 273n1 salt, 209, 311, 328, 334, 336, 340 San José, 34, 315, 316 San Juan, 30, 30f10, 31, 32 San Miguel de Tucumán, 23 Santa María, 4, 18, 20, 23–25, 27, 33, 48, 128, 241, 261, 310 Santamariana pottery, 20, 20f3, 28, 35f14, 36, 37f15, 38, 39f17; and bird imagery, 279, 281; from Yutopian, 48, 69, 169–170, 177, 183
Santa María Valley, 24f6, 36, 38, 345 Santiago del Estera, 315 Scattolin, Cristina M., 28, 49, 138, 158, 208, 237, 242, 259, 308; and Cardonal, 311, 314, 323n1; and ceramics, 20, 64, 132, 203; collaboration with, 7–8, 18, 21, 56–57, 59, 261, 325–326; and Estructura 4, 194, 205, 209, 210, 211, 224–225; and solo-directed projects, 123, 129, 309, 342, 345 Schliemann, Heinrich, 52 scoria, 94, 109–110, 110f45, 120–121, 122, 123, 164, 200, 244t12 screening, 62, 135, 139, 323 sculptures, 42f21, 43 Sector I (Yutopian), 67, 68, 69, 96, 134 Sector II (Yutopian), 67–70 Sector III (Yutopian). See Núcleo 1; Núcleo 2 Sendero Luminoso, 18 Sierra del Cajón, 38 Sierra del Hombre Muerto, 26, 27, 259, 266, 310–311, 342 Sierra de Quilmes, 20, 23, 25, 26, 27 Sierra Gorda, 278 sloped floors, 68, 69, 93, 188–190, 337 snuff tablets, 95, 97, 146, 323, 338, 339f133, 340n1 Social Democrats. See UCR social status, 4, 177, 231, 349; and archaeology, 87, 208–209, 326; and Cardonal, 338–340; and ceramics, 46–47, 289, 348; and egalitarianism, 3, 4, 39, 49–50, 346, 348; within households, 124, 173; and patio groups, 169, 171, 291, 338; and power relations, 4, 11; and ritual activities, 255, 258. See also elites solar power, 207, 239, 240f98, 316 Soria, 282 spindle whorls, 95, 112, 155, 302, 304–305, 304f119, 305t22, 320 springs, 253, 266, 267 stratigraphy, 15, 61, 69, 177, 189, 196, 201, 344 Streibel, Jessica, 209, 237 suplicantes, 42f21, 43 surface finds, 32, 48, 49, 67, 68, 121, 304, 311; from Cardonal, 319f123, 329, 330 surveying, 28–29, 56, 262 Tafí del Valle, 23, 170f69, 171–172, 255 Tafí Valley, 2, 23, 39, 154, 250 Tarragó, Myriam, 38 Taylor, Walter, 168 terracing, 188, 190, 270, 272, 273, 313 test pits, 58f24, 60–68, 71, 93, 134, 154–155,
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Index 176–177, 226, 237, 253; at Cardonal, 311, 317, 318, 320, 320t24. See also PP 12/12a; PP 18 Thompson, Robert, 132, 137, 277 tools, 78, 238, 292–293, 295, 296f115; and denticulated triangular points, 291, 291t18, 292; from Estructura 1, 75, 78f31, 109, 112, 115, 116, 162; from Estructura 2, 95, 97; from Estructura 3, 141, 146; from Estructura 4, 203, 205, 216–217, 216f89, 218, 236; from Estructura 11, 180; and Núcleo 1, 155, 156, 164; and side-struck flakes, 297–298, 297f116, 298t19. See also knives; projectile points trade, 3, 39, 50, 120, 125, 173, 303, 333–336, 338, 340, 346–349 trash, 251, 274, 299 Tucumán, 23, 24, 315, 340 Tulán, 303 turquoise, 97, 164, 244t12, 302, 303f118, 336 UCR, 314–315, 316 urns, funerary, 20, 20f3, 35f14, 36, 37f15, 38, 39f17 Vaquerías pottery, 40, 41f19, 94, 159, 162, 320, 333, 340
Walter, Jeremy, 316 Wankarani, 218 water, 136–137, 187, 253, 266–267, 270, 271 weaving, 39, 126, 155, 157n1, 217, 283, 304, 333 Wheeler, Mortimer, 52 women, 91–92; and epistemology, 8, 13; and grinding stones, 123–127, 245, 265, 327, 329; and household labor, 157, 245, 265; and matrilocality, 127–128; and paleoethnobotany, 135–136, 136t5a, 136t5b. See also feminism; gender Yokasil pottery, 41f19 Yutopian, 34, 58f24, 250–254, 250f99; chronology of, 245–246, 247t13b, 247t13c, 248–249; comparison of structures at, 244, 244t12, 245; Formative context of, 123, 261–262, 272–273, 289, 302–303, 309–310; geography and climate of, 27, 253, 270, 273; initial locating of, 28–32, 48, 257; map of, 56–57, 58f24, 72f27, 258–260; reasons for excavating at, 48–50; reoccupation at, 169, 180, 187, 207, 230–231, 249, 251 Zavaleta, Manuel, 35f14
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