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Ceramic variation and negotiated communities in the Late Valdivia phase of coastal Ecuador
Abstract
Previous research of prehispanic coastal Ecuador has argued for the development of social hierarchies during the Late Valdivia period (2400–1800 BCE), based on changing regional settlement patterns, increased long-distance exchange, and increasing intra-site differentiation. Recent investigations at Valdivia sites have highlighted the diversity of settlement patterns and social forms during this period. The present research utilizes a negotiated community framework to investigate practices of community formation and maintenance. Through a comparative analysis of ceramic assemblages from four Late Valdivia sites I highlight differences in ceramic use and assemblage composition that indicate diverging ways of fomenting community through participation in communal eating. These differences point to the negotiated nature of communities, highlighting differing strategies for community maintenance at different sites, and emphasizing the contingent nature of increasing social complexity within Valdivia society.
... В основном памятники представляют собой небольшие поселения, крупные, как правило, разрушены деятельностью последующих культур. Тем не менее существует несколько памятников (Р еаль-Альто, Лома-Альта, Ла-Эмеренсиана, Сан-Исидро, Буэн-Сусесо), на которых удалось проследить планиграфию и особенности архитектуры как бытового, так и церемониального назначения [Damp, 1984;Marcos, 1988;Raymond, 1993;Rowe, 2016]. ...
... Монументальная архитектура служит не только «инструментом измерения археологами масштабов экономической или политической власти», но и своеобразным показателем наличия коллективной памяти населения и психологического воздействия [Trigger, 1990, p. 125]. Примером материализации коллективной памяти [DeMarrais, Castillo, Earle, 1996] является сохранение архаичных архитектурных традиций на периферийном памятнике Буэн-Сусесо [Rowe, 2016]. ...
The article is devoted to the analysis of residential and ceremonial architecture and settlement planning of the Valdivia culture, Ecuador (5500–3500 BP) in a large historical-archaeological perspective. Sites researched in the article are Real Alto, Loma Alta, La Emerenciana, San Isidro, Buen Suceso. The absence of at least one fully excavated Valdivia site is the main limitation of this analysis. The Valdivia culture settlements were U-shaped or ring-shaped with a plaza in the center. This planning appeared in the early phases (Real Alto), but was retained at peripheral sites in the later phases (Buen Suceso). This may indicate a conservative tradition in settlement planning. The ceremonial architecture of the Valdivia culture is ground platforms which had either a burial or communication function. One of the most important factors of ceremonial (or monumental) architecture is the materialization of the ideological control of the elites over the population. Residential dwellings were elliptical. There are broad analogies between the residential structures of the Valdivia culture and the archaeological and ethnographic materials of the Amazon region. It is possible to study the socio-political organization of the Valdivia culture from evidence of the scale of residential and ceremonial architecture. The standardized architecture attested in Valdivian settlement sites confirms J. Zeidler and C. McEwan’s view of the hierarchical nature of relationships in Valdivian society. The present hypothesis is proposed for the evolution of socio-political complexity in Valdivian society. It is directly related to the architecture and settlement planning, as from small communities living in ring-shaped settlements, Valdivian society evolves to a middle-range polity (simple/complex chiefdom or their analogues). The conclusions are preliminary and require further empirical research.
... People have lived in coastal Ecuador for at least 8,000 years, harvesting coastal resources, foraging and farming on land, and creating complex cultural traditions (Lunniss 2008;Masucci 2008;Reitz and Masucci 2004;Stahl and Stothert 2020;Staller 2001;Stothert 1993;van der Merwe et al. 1993). During the Formative Period (4400-300 B.C.), people settled in small villages along the Ecuadorian coast, invested in agriculture alongside deep-sea and tidal resource collection, developed metallurgy including smelting gold and silver, built large ritual centers at special locations along the coast, and increasingly invested in social aggrandizing (Bruhns 1994;Lunniss 2020;Rowe 2016;Scott and Bray 1994;Stothert 2003;Zarillo et al. 2008;Isaacson 2003, 2008;Zeidler et al. 1998). This period included cultures such as Valdivia, Machalilla, and Chorrera, although variations within these cultural divisions existed and the socioeconomic changes of the period were unevenly experienced across groups (Rowe 2016;Zeidler 2008). ...
... During the Formative Period (4400-300 B.C.), people settled in small villages along the Ecuadorian coast, invested in agriculture alongside deep-sea and tidal resource collection, developed metallurgy including smelting gold and silver, built large ritual centers at special locations along the coast, and increasingly invested in social aggrandizing (Bruhns 1994;Lunniss 2020;Rowe 2016;Scott and Bray 1994;Stothert 2003;Zarillo et al. 2008;Isaacson 2003, 2008;Zeidler et al. 1998). This period included cultures such as Valdivia, Machalilla, and Chorrera, although variations within these cultural divisions existed and the socioeconomic changes of the period were unevenly experienced across groups (Rowe 2016;Zeidler 2008). ...
In South America, most examples of dental modification come from Ecuador; however, none have been directly radiocarbon dated and few have associated cultural materials or context. In fact, many modified teeth and crania are housed in museum collections, divorced from their cultural and temporal milieus, and because of this it is generally assumed that this limits the interpretive possibility of these individuals. We used multiple methods to investigate temporal and geographic origins of seven crania with dental modification housed in the Museo Antropológico y Arte Contemporáneo in Guayaquil, Ecuador. We identified diverse forms of dental modification, including dental inlays and appliques, incised lines, and anterior dental avulsion. Additionally, teeth from four modified individuals were sampled for radiocarbon dating and isotopic analyses (Sr, Pb, O). The dates indicate that dental modification persisted for at least 600 years (cal. A.D. 990–1646). The relatively heavy oxygen isotopes in the sampled teeth are consistent with Ecuador as a place of origin for the four individuals assayed, but strontium isotopes are quite varied, from 0.70462 to 0.70777 indicating that they did not reside in the same geographical area. Interestingly, the observed variations in strontium isotopes in the four individuals are lower than the modeled 87Sr/86Sr for the region. The values suggest the individuals resided in terrains with volcanic bedrock, which are abundant in Ecuador, yet their influence on the strontium isoscapes is not well represented by the published regional models. This analysis highlights the utility of multiple methods in bioarchaeology and biogeochemistry to investigate “orphaned” museum collections. En Sudamérica, la mayor parte de los ejemplos de modificación dental surgen de Ecuador; sin embargo, ninguno de estos casos ha sido fechados utilizando análisis de radiocarbono y pocos están asociados con contextos o materiales culturales. De hecho, varios dientes y cráneos modificados están localizados en colecciones museísticas y han sido divorciados de sus entornos culturales y temporales originales, generalmente con la suposición que limitan la posibilidad interpretativa de estos individuos. Nosotros utilizamos varios métodos bioarqueológicos y biogeoquímicos para investigar los orígenes temporales y geográficos de siete cráneos con modificaciones dentales ubicados en el Museo Antropológico y Arte Contemporáneo en Guayaquil, Ecuador. Nosotros identificamos varias formas de modificaciones dentales, incluyendo incrustaciones y aplicaciones dentales, incisiones de líneas y avulsión dental anterior. Adicionalmente, los dientes modificados de cuatro individuos fueron muestreados para fechar con análisis de radiocarbono y análisis isotópico (Sr, Pb, O). Las fechas indican que la modificación dental persistió durante por lo menos 600 años (990–1646 DC). Los isótopos de oxígeno relativamente pesados en los dientes muestreados son consistentes con Ecuador como lugar de origen para los cuatro individuos analizados, pero los isótopos de estroncio son bastante variados, de 0.70462 a 0.70777, lo que indica que no residían en la misma área geográfica. Las variaciones observadas en los isotopos de estroncio son más bajes de los 87Sr/86Sr modeladas para la región e indican que estos individuaos residían en regiones con la roca de fondo volcánica. Las rocas volcánicas son abundadas en Ecuador y aparentemente no está bien representadas en los modelos. Aún más, esta es la primera evidencia bioarqueológica sugerente de avulsión dental en Ecuador prehispánico. Finalmente, este análisis resalta la utilidad de métodos mixtos en bioarqueología y biogeoquímica para investigar colecciones museísticas que han “quedado huérfanas”.
Discovering World Prehistory introduces the general field of archaeology and highlights for students the difference between obtaining data (basic archaeology) and interpreting those data into a prehistory, a coherent model of the past.
While Valdivia Phase 1 is conventionally accepted as dating to 4400 – 3400 BCE, with a Phase1a at 4400–3800 BCE, and a Phase 1b at 3800–3400 BCE, there are grounds for suggesting that this model needs to be revised. Accordingly, we first assess the radiocarbon dates from Real Alto and Loma Alta that were used to define Valdivia 1a, and find that these are more likely to be related to Late Archaic occupations of those sites, that there is no evidence for a Valdivia Phase 1a, and that Valdivia Phase 1 will then actually have begun at 3800 BCE, the date formerly ascribed to the start of Phase 1b. Second, after describing the contexts underlying Valdivia deposits at Salango and Valdivia, we use these and other data now available to outline a widespread occupation of the central coast of Ecuador during a Late Archaic period dating to 5300–3800 BCE. Third, we describe new evidence of San Pedro pottery at Salango and comment on current problems with San Pedro chronology and definition of its relation with Early Valdivia.
This chapter illustrates how gender histories are created by scholars trained in diverse disciplines using heterogeneous materials and singles out central questions they address. It is organized into three sections: observations about what we know about early villages; a discussion of studies of societies in which economic and political stratification was emerging but not fully institutionalized; and discussion of a selection of societies with the most hierarchical economic and political structures. Self‐conscious scholarship of gender begins with studies of early village life, and expands with explorations of women's status and roles in economically and politically stratified societies that developed from early villages. Exploration of the gendered lives of men and women in the Americas prior to colonization has been facilitated by the archaeological recovery of evidence of everyday practices. Documents written after colonization, in both European and Native American languages, have been widely employed to anchor understandings of primary sources.
New radiocarbon dates and excavations show that Buen Suceso (OSE-M-2M-4) in Santa Elena, Ecuador, was occupied between 3700 and 1425 BC. These dates demonstrate that Buen Suceso is a rare multicomponent Valdivia site and one of the longer-occupied Valdivia sites investigated to date.
The organizational structure of the famous Chaco Phenomenon has long been debated by southwestern archaeologists. To better clarify the nature and dynamics of Chacoan organization we need to rethink the relationship between social power and the appropriation of surplus labor in middle-range societies. Drawing on the tradition of anthropological political economy, I outline a theoretical approach that allows for the relative autonomy of power and labor relations in human social life and models Chacoan political economy using a ''thin definition'' of communalism. Empirical patterns from the Chaco and post-Chaco eras in the northern Southwest are presented in support of a model of Chaco communalism and change dynamics. Suggestions for furthering a political economy of the Chaco Phenomenon that respects the difference or ''otherness'' of the past are also detailed.
Human social systems are constituted at different scales; the local community, while an important organizational unit cross-culturally, has received limited archaeological study. We argue that community-centric studies in archaeology have significant potential in documenting the diversity of small-scale agricultural systems and in promoting comparative study of local societies. Using comparative data from social anthropology, we put forth a definition of community useful for the archaeologist based on three irreducible elements: social reproduction, agricultural production, and self-identification. These elements provide an ideal framework for cross-cultural comparison. We also argue that using a community approach requires certain methodological refinements, such as adopting an appropriate research scale, conducting intensive surface survey, and using analytical strategies such as labor investment and boundary maintenance. We present recently collected data from two prehistoric agricultural communities, Waiohuli in Hawai'i and Tsikwaiye in northern New Mexico, in order to illustrate the strength of this mode of research.
The Early Formative Valdivia culture appeared on the Ecuadorian coast around 3300 BC and became well-known because of the precociousness of the Valdivia ceramics in the Americas. This report offers an interpretation of some of the settlement-pattern data in three coastal valleys. -from Author
This article presents an analysis of 35 years of published experiments testing decision making in prisoners' dilemmas. The objective is to begin to reconnect the theory and the evidence of rational behavior by accumulating the experience of the laboratory and examining this record for those factors that consistently altered subjects' choices. It is shown that a model of pure self-interest is usually inconsistent with the results of experimental decision making, predicting either the wrong sign, as in the case of monetary stakes, or ignoring influential variables, such as the content of instructions. This incongruity is widest with respect to the role of language in encouraging cooperation.
Aggregated villages with large, central plazas appeared across the Western Pueblo region of the US Southwest by the fourteenth century AD. We view the adoption of this settlement form not strictly as an adaptive response to economic and social circumstances, but rather as a reflection of changes in the social relations of power and conceptualizations of community in the Pueblo world. Enclosed plazas became a form of panoptic architecture, structuring what were intrinsically unequal social relations between individuals or groups and the entire communities of which they were a part. This process has implications for the emergence of new power relations in pre-state societies.
Community governance is the set of small group social interactions that, with market and state, determine economic outcomes. We argue (i) community governance addresses some common market and state failures but typically relies on insider-outsider distinctions that may be morally repugnant and economically costly; (ii) the individual motivations supporting community governance are not captured by either selfishness or altruism; (iii) communities, markets and states are complements, not substitutes; (iv) when poorly designed, markets and states crowd out communities; (v) some distributions of property rights are better than others at fostering community governance; and (vi) communities will probably increase in importance in the future.
Archeologists' dissatisfaction with Service's band-tribe-chiefdom-state model of sociocultural complexity has resulted in the epistemological reexamination of hierarchy, the exploration of heterarchy, and the historical and contextual flux between them. This calculus of power relations within and between polities aids understanding of how power shifts occur and under what conditions various power distributions constitute stable and unstable configurations. Power relations, while predicated on systems of values, leave physical evidence when their importance is ranked and reranked by individuals, groups, and organizations as conditions change. The hierarchy-heterarchy relation offers a new approach to the study of agency, conflict, and cooperation.
The tension between hierarchy and communalism is a prominent feature of social life in transegalitarian societies. How are hierarchy and communalism combined in these societies? How are they materialized in everyday life? In this paper, we examine the relationship between hierarchy and communalism in the transegalitarian societies of the Northwest Coast of North America. We focus on households, the primary socioeconomic units of the culture area, and on the plank houses that contained them. Despite the apparent contradiction between hierarchy and communalism, we find that in Northwest Coast households with highly developed social hierarchies, communal practices remained deeply entrenched, while in households with weaker hierarchies, communalism was less developed. The relative importance of hierarchy and communalism in daily household life was clearly materialized in the spatial order of plank houses. By simultaneously objectifying both principles, the house may have played an important role in easing the tension between them.
The tension between hierarchy and communalism is a prominent feature of social life in transegalitarian societies. How are hierarchy and communalism combined in these societies? How are they materialized in everyday life? In this paper, we examine the relationship between hierarchy and communalism in the transegalitarian societies of the Northwest Coast of North America. We focus on households, the primary socioeconomic units of the culture area, and on the plank houses that contained them. Despite the apparent contradiction between hierarchy and communalism, we find that in Northwest Coast households with highly developed social hierarchies, communal practices remained deeply entrenched, while in households with weaker hierarchies, communalism was less developed. The relative importance of hierarchy and communalism in daily household life was clearly materialized in the spatial order of plank houses. By simultaneously objectifying both principles, the house may have played an important role in easing the tension between them.
Archaeological models of increasing sociopolitical complexity have over-privileged processes of centralization in comparison to decentralization. In western Burkina Faso, ethnologists have long been intrigued by several "village societies," with complex communities characterized
by heterogeneous populations (in kin and ethnicity), endogamous socioeconomic specialist groups, diverse ritual systems, and strong village autonomy. Rather than structured by a hierarchical sociopolitical organization, these multifaceted communities are defined by village communalism and
an intricate horizontal organization. This paper presents the developmental trajectory of a community ancestral to a modern "village society," through an exploration of the dynamic political strategies of multifamily houses at the Iron Age archaeological site of Kirikongo, located
in Burkina Faso (ca. A. D. 100-1700). Extensions of power by Kirikongo's founding house in the 1st millennium A. D. led gradually to increasing inequalities and a subversion of common descent. However, in the early 2nd millennium A. D. these developments were rejected through an egalitarian
revolution that transformed the identity of the house, leading to an increased importance of the village community and civic institutions. In addition to exclusionary power strategies, I stress the transformative role of egalitarian behaviors in shaping the nature of power and leadership,
particularly when derived from collective action by the community.
The Early Formative site of Real Alto on the southern coast of Ecuador yielded a minimum of 72 human burials attributable to the Valdivia III phase. The construction of an abridged life table represents the first demographic analysis of a prehistoric South American population. Expectation of life at birth was 21 years and at age 15 was 18 years. Comparison with model life tables suggests a crude birthrate of 0.048, a generation length of about 26 years, and completed family size of 6.4 children. The fact that the sample represents a natural population argues against the suggestion that the skeletons largely represent victims of ritual sacrifice.
by William Alfred Hinds. Includes bibliographical references.
Why do communities persist despite their inability to exploit the efficiency-enhancing properties of markets and the advantages of universal enforcement of rules provided by states? One reason is the capacity of communities to foster cooperative behavior. Communities align the individual and collective benefits and costs of people’s actions. We model three mechanisms by which communities raise the net benefits to individual pro-social behaviors: reputation, retaliation, and segmentation. Unlike most treatments of the evolution of group-beneficial traits our communities promote pro-social behaviors in the absence of group selection. We further show that the restricted mobility associated with communities (parochialism) enhances these mechanisms. Communities are thus specifically adapted to settings that make formal property rights systems untenable and preclude the efficient centralized determination of outcomes.
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Any attempt at understanding social action must consider space. This paper questions the assumption that changes in architecture, specifically monumental architecture and public buildings, correspond directly to changes in political organization. Lefebvre's conceptual framework is used herein to gain insight into the variations in the use and construction of space, as they are reflective of different political and ideological agendas. As a case study, this paper examines the use of space and architecture at the Irene site (9CH1), a Mississippian site on the Georgia coast. Previous interpretations of the site suggest that changes in space and architecture relate to a shift towards a more egalitarian social organization. In contrast to these ideas, the argument is offered that such changes actually reflect the changing forum and expression of power by political actors rather than a wholesale shift in socio-political complexity.
The prevailing view of the Formative in Ecuador is of a period characterized by precocious development and transformation. Initially, the Early Formative (Valdivia) period is marked by a very early appearance of ceramics associated with large U-shaped or circular villages reminiscent of Tropical Forest Culture in the Amazon Basin. Subsequently, through the Valdivia period, these villages assumed an increasingly ceremonial function, while much of the population was dispersed among small settlements scattered along the river valleys. The Early Formative thus apparently witnessed a transformation in settlement, from nucleated villages to a dispersed peasantry surrounding ceremonial centers, and this is characterized as a perhaps seminal, first step in the evolution of the great ceremonial centers of Nuclear America. While the outcome of this evolutionary process in Mesoamerica and the central Andes is well known, it seems to have had little impact in Ecuador: at the end of the Valdivia period, ceremonial activity at the old village sites appears to have ceased, while population seemingly remained dispersed.
The extensive literature on inventions of tradition and identity in the Pacific has dealt mostly with reifications that are positively upheld by the people under consideration. This article traces some changes in cultural objectifications over various phases of the encounter between islanders and colonizers, examining the ways in which the recognition of both others and selves made particular practices and customs emblematic of whole ways of life. The fact that these generalized constructions of customary ways can be negated as well as affirmed may have broad ramifications for the ways anthropologists think about culture. [tradition, identity, invention, colonialism, Pacific Islands]
Why do communities persist despite their inability t o exploit the eciency-enhancing properties of markets and the advantages of uni-versal enforcement of rules provided by states? One reason is the capacity of communities to foster cooperative behavior. Communities align the individual and collective benets and costs of people's actions. We model three mechanisms by which communities raise the net benets to individual pro-social behaviors: reputation, retaliation and segmentation. Unlike most treatments of the evolution of group-benecial traits our communities promote pro-social behaviors in the absence of altruistic agents. We further show that the restricted mobility associated with communities (parochialism) enhances these mechanisms. Communities are thus specically adapted to settings that make formal property rights systems untenable and preclude the ecient centralized determination of outcomes.
Embodied, sensual, engagements between people, earthly elements, and celestial bodies during focused, periodic acts of ritual
construction and artifact deposition in the southwestern British Bronze Age resulted in the remaking of identities, local
communities, symbolic/mythical knowledge, and the landscape itself. To appreciate how material culture, time, and space were
employed to define the criteria by which people understood themselves and their world necessitates an archaeological focus
upon shared practices in particular settings that served to define rules of engagement with the environment based upon shared
human perceptions. Agency appears in this encounter as central in the construction and perpetuation of symbolic perception,
shared social memory, and community identity.
The Andes encompass deserts, tropical forests, and high elevation environments. An equally diverse array of crops is present,
many with origins in regions as distant as west Mexico and Brazil (Figure 7.1). The story of agriculture, and the plant domestication
underwriting it, begins in the Early Holocene, in the economies of early hunter-gatherers. It culminates in the late pre-Hispanic
period when populations throughout the area had agricultural economies that supported large populations, many of which were
organized as highly complex societies. In this chapter I review the crops that underlie Andean agriculture, summarize our
understanding of their areas of origin, and review the archaeological record of plant domestication and agriculture. I focus
only on major domesticated plants that occur in the Andean archaeological record. The key sources include Hernández Bermejo
and León (1994), Piperno and Pearsall (1998), Sauer (1993), and Smartt and Simmonds (1995).
Extensive empirical evidence and theoretical developments in multiple disciplines stimulate a need to expand the range of rational choice models to be used as a foundation for the study of social dilemmas and collective action. After an introduction to the problem of overcoming social dilemmas through collective action, the remainder of this article is divided into six sections. The first briefly reviews the theoretical predictions of currently accepted rational choice theory related to social dilemmas. The second section summarizes the challenges to the sole reliance on a complete model of rationality presented by extensive experimental research. In the third section, I discuss two major empirical findings that begin to show how individuals achieve results that are "better than rational" by building conditions where reciprocity, reputation, and trust can help to overcome the strong temptations of short-run self-interest. The fourth section raises the possibility of developing second-generation models of rationality, the fifth section develops an initial theoretical scenario, and the final section concludes by examining the implications of placing reciprocity, reputation, and trust at the core of an empirically tested, behavioral theory of collective action.
Elinor Ostrom delivered her Prize Lecture on 8 December 2009 at Aula Magna, Stockholm University. She was introduced by Professor Bertil Holmlund, Chairman of the Economic Sciences Prize Committee.
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