Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-05T02:30:47.788Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Ceramic Seriation and Site Reoccupation in Lowland South America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Warren R. DeBoer ,
Keith Kintigh  and
Arthur G. Rostoker
Warren R. DeBoer
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Queens College, City University of New York, Flushing, NY 11367
Keith Kintigh
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287
Arthur G. Rostoker
Affiliation:
Program in Anthropology, City University of New York Graduate Center, New York, NY 10036
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A long-standing debate in Amazonian archaeology is whether large sites represent contemporaneous communities or palimpsests accrued through multiple reoccupations. Quantitative ceramic seriation has been used to support the latter view. This argument is evaluated in terms of its statistical basis and its assumptions about sources of ceramic variability. On the basis of this evaluation, we conclude that the case for reoccupation, based on seriation, is unconvincing.

Dentro de los estudios arqueológicos de la Amazonia, uno de los mayores debates versa sobre si los grandes sitios arqueológicos en el área representan comunidades contemporáneas o palimpsestos de múltiples reocupaciones. Esta última tesis ha sido sustentada por análisis cuantitativo de seriaciones cerámicas. El presente trabajo evalúa los argumentos expuestos por las seriaciones cerámicas, en especial sus bases estadísticas y las certezas asumidas sobre la fuente u origen de la variabilidad cerámica. Con base en esta evaluación concluimos que, en su presente etapa de desarrollo, las seriaciones cerámicas que argumentan la tesis de reocupación no son convincentes.

Type
Reports
Information
Latin American Antiquity , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , September 1996 , pp. 263 - 278
Copyright
Copyright © Society for American Archaeology 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References Cited

Aldenderfer, M. 1991 The Analytical Engine: Computer Simulation and Archaeological Research. In Studies in Archaeological Method and Theory, vol. 3, pp. 195–247, edited by M. B. Schiffer. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.Google Scholar
Ascher, R. 1968 Time's Arrow and the Archaeology of a Contemporary Community. In Settlement Archaeology, edited by K. C. Chang, pp. 43–52. National Press Books, Palo Alto, California.Google Scholar
Balée, W. 1992 People of the Fallow: A Historical Ecology of Foraging in Lowland South America. In Conservation of Neotropical Forests: Working from Traditional Resource Use, edited by K. H. Redford and C. Padoch, pp. 35–57. Columbia University Press, New York.Google Scholar
Bowser, B. 1995 Style versus Substance: An Ethnoarchaeological Analysis of Achuar and Quichua Pottery from the Ecuadorian Amazon. Paper presented at the 60th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Minneapolis, Minnesota.Google Scholar
Brainerd, G. W. 1951 The Place of Chronological Ordering in Archaeological Analysis. American Antiquity 16:301–313.Google Scholar
Cowgill, G. L. 1972 Models, Methods, and Techniques for Seriation. In Models in Archaeology, edited by D. L. Clarke, pp. 381–424. Methuen, London.Google Scholar
DeBoer, W. R. 1984 The Last Pottery Show: System and Sense in Ceramic Studies. In The Many Dimensions of Pottery: Ceramics in Archaeology and Anthropology, edited by S. E. van der Leeuw and A. C. Pritchard, pp. 527–568. Institute for Pre- and Proto-history, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam.Google Scholar
DeBoer, W. R. 1989 The House that Jesusito Built. In Households and Communities, edited by S. MacEachern, D. Archer, and R. Garvin, pp. 478–489. Proceedings of the 21st Annual Chacmool Conference, Archaeological Association of the University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta.Google Scholar
DeBoer, W. R. 1990 Interaction, Imitation, and Communication as Expressed in Style: The Ucayali Experience. In The Uses of Style in Archaeology, edited by M. Conkey and C. Hastorf, pp. 82–104. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
DeBoer, W. R., and Lathrap, D. W. 1979 The Making and Breaking of Shipibo-Conibo Ceramics. In Ethnoarchaeology: Implications of Ethnography for Archaeology, edited by C. Kramer, pp. 102–138. Columbia University Press, New York.Google Scholar
Doran, J. E., and Hodson, F. R. 1975 Mathematics and Computers in Archaeology. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.Google Scholar
Ferguson, R. B., and Whitehead, N. L. (editors) 1992 War in the Tribal Zone: Expanding States and Indigenous Warfare. School of American Research Press, Santa Fe, New Mexico.Google Scholar
Ford, J. A. 1962 A Quantitative Method for Deriving Cultural Chronology. Technical Manual 1. Pan American Union, Washington, D.C. Google Scholar
Gross, D. R. 1983 Village Movement in Relation to Resources in Amazonia. In Adaptive Responses of Native Amazonians, edited by R. B. Hames and W. T. Vickers, pp. 429–450. Academic Press, New York.Google Scholar
Kintigh, K. W. 1984 Measuring Archaeological Diversity by Comparison with Simulated Assemblages. American Antiquity 49:44–54.Google Scholar
Kracke, W. 1990 Space as Movement: The Parintintin Settling of the Maici Valley. Paper presented at the 18th Annual Midwest Conference on Andean and Amazonian Archaeology and Ethnohistory, Chicago.Google Scholar
Lathrap, D. W. 1962 Yarinacocha: Stratigraphic Excavations in the Peruvian Montana. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.Google Scholar
Lathrap, D. W. 1968 The “Hunting” Economies of the Tropical Forest Zone of South America: An Attempt at Historical Perspective. In Man the Hunter, edited by R. B. Lee and I. DeVore, pp. 23–29. Aldine Publishing Company, Chicago.Google Scholar
Marquardt, W. H. 1978 Advances in Archaeological Seriation. In Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory, vol. 1, edited by M. B. Schiffer, pp. 266–314. Academic Press, New York.Google Scholar
Meggers, B. J. 1971 Amazonia: Man and Nature in a Counterfeit Paradise. Aldine Publishing, Chicago.Google Scholar
Meggers, B. J. 1984 Resource Optimization and Environmental Limitations in Lowland South America. Reviews in Anthropology 11:288–293.Google Scholar
Meggers, B. J. 1991 Cultural Evolution in Amazonia. In Profiles in Cultural Evolution, edited by A. T. Rambo and K. Gillogly, pp. 191–216. Anthropological Papers No. 85. Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.Google Scholar
Meggers, B. J. 1992 Prehistoric Population Density in the Amazon Basin. In Disease and Demography in the Americas, edited by J. W. Verano and D. H. Ubelaker, pp. 197–205. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C. Google Scholar
Meggers, B. J., and Maranca, S. 1980 Uma Reconstituicao Experimental de Organizaçao Social, Basada na Distribuiçao de Tipos de Cerâmica num Sítio Habitaçao da Tradiçao Tupiguarani. Separata de Pesquisas, Antropologia 31, pp. 226–247. Institute Anchietano de Pesquisas, Rio Grande do Sul, Brasil.Google Scholar
Miller, E. T., et al. [coauthors not identified] 1992 Archeology in the Hydroelectric Projects of Eletronorte: Preliminary Results. Centrais Eletricas do Norte do Brasíl, Brasília.Google Scholar
Myers, T. P. 1973 Toward the Reconstruction of Prehistoric Community Patterns in the Amazon Basin. In Variation in Anthropology: Essays in Honor of John C. McGregor, edited by D. W. Lathrap and J. Douglas, pp. 233–252. Illinois Archaeological Survey, Urbana.Google Scholar
Nelson, B. A. 1985 Reconstructing Ceramic Vessels and Their Systemic Contexts. In Decoding Prehistoric Ceramics, edited by B. A. Nelson, pp. 310–330. Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale.Google Scholar
Robinson, W. S. 1951 A Method for Chronologically Ordering Archaeological Deposits. American Antiquity 16:293–301.Google Scholar
Roosevelt, A. C. 1989 Resource Management in Amazonia before the Conquest: Beyond Ethnographic Projection. In Resource Management in Amazonia: Indigenous and Folk Strategies, edited by D. A. Posey and W. Balée, pp. 30–62. Advances in Economic Botany No. 7. New York Botanical Garden, New York.Google Scholar
Skibo, J. M., Schiffer, M. B., and Kowalski, N. 1989 Ceramic Style Analysis in Archaeology and Ethnoarchaeology: Bridging the Analytical Gap. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 8:388–409.Google Scholar
Vickers, W. T. 1983 The Territorial Dimensions of Siona-Secoya and Encabellado Adaptation. In Adaptive Responses of Native Amazonians, edited by R. B. Hames and W. T. Vickers, pp. 451–478. Academic Press, New York.Google Scholar
Whitehead, N. L. 1994 The Ancient Amerindian Polities of the Amazon, the Orinoco, and the Atlantic Coast: A Preliminary Analysis of their Passage from Antiquity to Extinction. In Amazonian Indians from Prehistory to the Present, edited by A. C. Roosevelt, pp. 33–53. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.Google Scholar