Recent geophysical survey at the early urban center of the Gallinazo Group in the Virú Valley highlights the potential for a multifaceted approach to remote sensing on the desert coast of South America and underscores the value of these well-established techniques for the rapid and detailed mapping of complex urban architecture. The Gallinazo Group (100 B.C.-A.D. 700) was an early city home to a population of between 10,000 and 14,400 people living in a network of agglutinated houses, plazas, public buildings, and alleyways. In 2008, detailed analysis of the site was undertaken, integrating traditional excavation techniques, soil coring, magnetometry, and ground-penetrating radar to gain a better understanding of the urban morphology of the site. The results of this fieldwork were extremely successful, with large areas of the urban layout being mapped in great detail. This article presents results from our survey, highlighting the potentials and limitations of each technique.

This paper addresses the diversification of plant resource management practices in the lowlands of southeastern Uruguay starting in the fourth millennium B.P. Our approach includes (a) a reexamination of ethnohistorical sources; (b) a review of lithic and ceramic materials; (c) the presentation of new ethnoarchaeological information; and (d) the analysis of starch grains from grinding stones. The results highlight the importance of the palm Butia odorata as a source of food and useful materials for much of the year. Furthermore, the analysis of both macro- and micro-residues has enabled us to identify the presence of Datura ferox seeds and starch grains from edible plants. While many of these identifications confirm the use of a number of previously reported species, others are new, as is the case with Phaseolus sp., Arachis sp., and Typha domingensis. Continuity in the management of certain plant species and in environmental conditioning is interpreted as an important investment in the long-term cycles of human-environment interactions.

The Preceramic archaeological record of highland Mesoamerica is biased toward rockshelter sites. We advocate more fieldwork in streamside settings, where open-air sites are likely to be found for reasons related both to the systemic context of hunter-gatherer lifeways and to the geoarchaeological context of site burial and preservation. Predicting site location requires attention to the peculiar nature and behavior of incised ephemeral streams (barrancas) and to the complex alluvial stratigraphic sequences that they leave behind. Four case studies—from the Mexican states ofTlaxcala, México, Morelos, and Oaxaca—reconstruct the geometry and age structure of late Quaternary alluvium from exposures in cutbanks, brickyards, and purposefully dug trenches. We identify deeply buried locales with the remains of extinct megafauna, intentionally set fires, and lithic debitage. We distinguish between geographical areas, stream reaches, and time intervals that do or do not hold much promise for further research. The fragmentary nature of the alluvial record and the paucity of sites can be explained by changes in stream behavior wrought by agricultural land use and are conditioned by the intensity and antiquity of agriculture in any given area. Deposits and sites of Paleoindian age may be more commonly preserved than those of Archaic age.

We discuss Chinchorro mortuary practices during the Middle Archaic (7000-5000 B.P.) as demonstrated by 12 funerary contexts excavated at the site of Maestranza Chinchorro, northern Chile. First we describe each of the funerary contexts. Then we discuss the variability of mortuary practices, the configuration of multiple burials, the mortuary treatment of human fetuses, lifestyle, and paleopathology. We conclude that mortuary practices are heterogeneous and that not all subjects received elaborate treatment. Mortuary ritual focused on the seven infants in the group, which included two fetuses of a few months' gestation, something fairly unusual in human prehistory. Treatment consisted in the removal of all soft tissue and the use of sticks to reinforce the skeletons, upon which abundant gray clay was mounted in order to model the human figure. In contrast to the infants, just one young adult woman received complex mortuary treatment. Finally, based on the spatial distribution of contemporary burial sites, we propose that Middle Archaic communities in coastal Arica comprised small groups, including adults and children of different sexes, that settled around key resources like watering holes, rivers, wetlands, and hunting and fishing areas. This resulted in fierce intergroup competition and highly territorial behavior.

Over 30 funerary bundles were excavated in 2005 from a large chamber tomb at the prehispanic religious center of Pachacamac on the central coast of Peru. The largest and most elaborate bundle was found in the innermost part of the tomb, tightly surrounded by other bundles. We hypothesized that this bundle contained the deceased leader of a social group whose members collectively cared for their ancestor's bundle (for example, by rewrapping it) and continued to use the tomb to inter deceased individuals from subsequent generations. We tested this hypothesis by dating samples from different layers of the wrapping materials and soft tissue from the bodies and conducting a Bayesian analysis of the resultant dates. We determined carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios in the diet of the interred individuals to correct for marine reservoir effects. Our findings suggest that (1) rewrapping did not occur; (2) the tomb was used for over 500 years starting at cal A.D. 1000; and (3) existing bundles were reshuffled each time new bundles were introduced. Overall, diverse lines of evidence indicate that the tomb had a complex use history and contained individuals with diverse geographical and social origins. This challenges conventional thinking about the social and chronological significance of coexisting bundles in large tombs.

We contend that political structures emerge in the course of interpersonal dealings conducted by people organized within overlapping social networks. It is through these webs that resources needed to define and achieve goals and exert control over others are mobilized. Elites seeking to construct hierarchies and concentrate power must restructure the preexisting matrix of networks to redirect the flow of assets to their benefit. In doing so, they seek to create an affiliation that transcends loyalties to extant social groups while securing for themselves positions of preeminence within the overarching affiliation. Such social engineering involves manipulating the material symbols by which interpersonal ties are made tangible and imbued with emotional significance. The resulting political structures are less nested sets of stable territorial groups than dynamic networks of networks through which assets are deployed in the practices by which power is exercised. This perspective is used to describe Late Postclassic (A.D. 1300-1532) political processes in the Naco Valley, northwestern Honduras, calling attention to how power of various sorts took shape through complex relations among diverse people and varied things orchestrated within overlapping social networks. The implications of a network approach for studying political processes generally are also considered.