scholarly journals Early pre-Hispanic use of indigo blue in Peru

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (9) ◽  
pp. e1501623 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey C. Splitstoser ◽  
Tom D. Dillehay ◽  
Jan Wouters ◽  
Ana Claro
Keyword(s):  
Cotton Fabrics ◽  
Blue Pigment ◽  
North Coast ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Before Present ◽  
The North ◽  
The World ◽  
Indigo Blue ◽  
North Coast Of Peru ◽  
Blue Jeans

Archaeological research has identified the use of cultivated cotton (Gossypium barbadense) in the ancient Andes dating back to at least 7800 years ago. Because of unusual circumstances of preservation, 6000-year-old cotton fabrics from the Preceramic site of Huaca Prieta on the north coast of Peru retained traces of a blue pigment that was analyzed and positively identified as an indigoid dye (indigotin), making it the earliest known use of indigo in the world, derived most likely from Indigofera spp. native to South America. This predates by ~1500 years the earliest reported use of indigo in the Old World, from Fifth Dynasty Egypt [ca. 4400 BP (before present)]. Indigo is one of the most valued and most globally widespread dyes of antiquity and of the present era (it being the blue of blue jeans).

The Meaning within Moche Masks

2020 ◽  
pp. 180-212
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
North Coast ◽  
The North ◽  
Ritual Action ◽  
The World ◽  
Jequetepeque Valley ◽  
North Coast Of Peru ◽  
Shed Light

In this chapter, the author examines the remains of broken ceramic masks recovered in feasting middens at the Moche ceremonial center of Huaca Colorada (AD 650–900) in the southern Jequetepeque Valley of the North Coast of Peru. One objective of the chapter is to demonstrate that Moche masking traditions varied in terms of the rites and social context in which they were employed. The ceramic masks depicting Moche powerful beings became deeply meaningful and engines of semiosis in their own right within specific frames of ritual action. Those masks shed light on Moche theories of being and the workings of the world (i.e., “ontology”). Their iconography suggests they were worn by officiants who reenacted heroic myths and stories of creation in rites that promoted agricultural bounty, life, and fertility.

Chimú Art and Architecture

Art History ◽  
2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanne Pillsbury
Keyword(s):  
North Coast ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Late Intermediate Period ◽  
Intermediate Period ◽  
The North ◽  
North Coast Of Peru ◽  
Art And Architecture ◽  
La Luna

The Chimú culture flourished on what is now the north coast of Peru from around 1000 ce to c. 1470, when the polity was conquered by the Inca. The Chimú state, sometimes referred to in the historical sources as Chimor, dominated a length of approximately one thousand kilometers of the coast, from nearly what is now the border between Peru and Ecuador to just north of the modern capital of Lima. The Chimú were the most powerful entity in the period known as the Late Intermediate period but drew upon cultural traditions developed in the same region in earlier periods, particularly the Moche and the Lambayeque (also known as Sicán). Indeed, the capital of the Chimú state, Chan Chan, was constructed just a few kilometers away from the earlier Moche center of Huaca de la Luna and Huaca del Sol, in what is now the outskirts of the modern city of Trujillo. There is a fair amount of published archaeological research on the Chimú, although in recent years, in the wake of the spectacular finds at the Moche site of Sipán, Chimú studies have been eclipsed by Moche-focused projects. The literature specifically on Chimú art and architecture, however, is far less abundant. As yet there are no dedicated journals to Chimú studies, nor are there specific bibliographies, anthologies, reference works, or textbooks.

Huaynuná, a Late Cotton Preceramic Site on the North Coast of Peru

1990 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Pozorski ◽  
Shelia Pozorski
Keyword(s):  
North Coast ◽  
The North ◽  
North Coast Of Peru

BIOLOGICAL DISTANCE PATTERNS AMONG THE NORTHERN MOCHE LORDS: DENTAL PHENOTYPES AND POLITICAL ORGANIZATION IN ANCIENT PERU

2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 696-717 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haagen D. Klaus ◽  
Walter Alva ◽  
Steve Bourget ◽  
Luis Chero
Keyword(s):  
Hierarchical Cluster ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
North Coast ◽  
Biological Distance ◽  
R Matrix ◽  
One Dimensional ◽  
The North ◽  
Limited Gene Flow ◽  
Dental Traits ◽  
North Coast Of Peru

Between AD 100 and 800, the Moche culture emerged on the north coast of Peru. Diverse debates surround the nature of Moche territorial and political centralization, sociopolitical identities, and the internal social diversity of Moche society. Here we address some of these issues in a biodistance study based on phenotypic variation of inherited dental traits within and between 36 individuals in the royal tombs of Sipán (Lambayeque valley), Úcupe (Zaña valley), and Dos Cabezas (Jequetepeque valley). Metric and nonmetric dental trait data were analyzed using hierarchical cluster and R-matrix analyses. The results independently indicate that the highest-level Sipán and Dos Cabezas lords likely represented different endogamous kin groups, while limited gene flow occurred between groups of Moche lower nobility between the Lambayeque and Jequetepeque regions. Although biology and material cultural link the Lord of Úcupe to Dos Cabezas, many objects in his tomb demonstrate his participation the world of the Sipán elites. These Moche lords were, on some levels, bioculturally interconnected. Nonetheless, the data broadly lend support to a “many Moches” model of sociopolitical structure, further casting doubt on earlier one-dimensional visions of a centralized hegemonic Moche polity.

The Use and Construction History of Huaca Prieta, North Coast of Peru

2020 ◽  
pp. 101-128
Author(s):  
Tom D. Dillehay
Keyword(s):  
Late Pleistocene ◽  
North Coast ◽  
Marine Resources ◽  
Human Presence ◽  
Social Correlates ◽  
The North ◽  
History Of ◽  
Chicama Valley ◽  
North Coast Of Peru

Chapter 4 summarizes the construction, subsistence, and social correlates of Huaca Prieta, a mound site in the lower Chicama Valley on the north coast of Peru, from the earliest evidence of human presence in the Late Pleistocene (ca. 12,500 14C BP) through abandonment at 3,800 14C BP. Marine resources were important throughout the sequence, which saw an early advent of agriculture and increasing population, complexity, and monumentality.

Life, Death, and Burial of Children on the North Coast of Peru

2018 ◽  
pp. 126-170
Author(s):  
Haagen D. Klaus
Keyword(s):  
18Th Century ◽  
North Coast ◽  
Hispanic Children ◽  
Contextual Data ◽  
Spanish Conquest ◽  
Cultural Perception ◽  
The North ◽  
Blood Sacrifice ◽  
Health Burdens ◽  
North Coast Of Peru

This chapter examines bioarchaeological data funerary patterns, and other contextual data derived from a sample of nearly 900 subadults who lived and died in the Lambayeque region of Peru's north coast from A.D. 900 to 1750. Paralleling various ethnohistoric perspectives, stark paleodemographic under-representation of the young in cemeteries and the preference for children as blood sacrifice victims points to the possibility that late pre-Hispanic Lambayeque childhoods involved meanings, symbolisms, and identities radically different from that of adults. Pre-Hispanic childhood may have been a liminal state, bridging supernatural and human realms. Following the Spanish conquest, indigenous experiences of childhood changed radically. Multiple skeletal indicators show that, when compared to pre-Hispanic children, many Colonial children bore much greater health burdens. Practices of childcare also changed, as millennia-old cradle boarding practices ceased rapidly in some areas. Alterations of childcare and inclusion of children into Colonial cemeteries indicates distinct changes in the cultural perception of childhood. However, the differential mortuary treatment of various children suggests that the young were still somehow distinct, as probably conceptualized in a hybrid Euro-Andean framework into the mid-18th century.

Exploring the Technology and Meaning behind Early Ceramic Figurines from the Casma Valley, Peru

2018 ◽  
pp. 99-130
Author(s):  
Shelia Pozorski ◽  
Thomas Pozorski
Keyword(s):  
New World ◽  
Initial Period ◽  
North Coast ◽  
Andean Archaeology ◽  
The North ◽  
Early Ceramic ◽  
North Coast Of Peru ◽  
Stone Carvings ◽  
The Temple

The Sechín Alto Polity, centered in the Casma Valley on the north coast of Peru, constructed the largest mound structures in the New World during the Initial Period (2100–1000 B.C.). The polity united at least six inland sites and three coastal satellites into a political and economically cooperative unit within which different sites and different monumental structures had distinct, but complementary, functions. Prominent among the artifacts that define the Sechín Alto Polity are ceramic figurines. Examples are consistently from domestic or residential contexts; most (more than 350 fragments) were recovered from Sechín Alto site, the polity capital, where they were likely manufactured. Iconography within Andean archaeology of the figurines connects them with warrior figures and victims depicted in the Cerro Sechín stone carvings and by extension with anthropomorphic friezes that adorn the temple mound of Moxeke within the Sechín Alto Polity. These data suggest that the Casma figurines may represent distinct groups of people who in turn reflected sacred vs. secular aspects of Casma Valley society.

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