Studies of social complexity increasingly recognize the role of maritime communities in the development of large sociopolitical systems. The Central Andes present an ideal region for understanding maritime aspects of ancient social complexity, due to one of the most productive sea biomasses in the world. In this study the author investigates Samanco, an ancient seaside town, and its contribution to urban transformations along the North-Central coast of Peru during the mid-1st millennium BCE. This book focusses on Samanco's primary occupation (circa 500-1 BC). The author consults a theoretical framework of performance and its influence on community organization as a framework for analyzing sociopolitical development. Two field seasons of intensive excavations at Samanco in 2012 and 2013 yielded a substantial dataset to analyze performance and maritime aspects of early urbanism in the Central Andes. This book provides an in-depth look at Samanco's archaeological record, supplanted with theoretical analysis of performance, common experiences, and community organization. The research reveals a thriving coastal town during a period of settlement nucleation, known as the Salinar phenomenon, which is not adequately understood in the ancient Andean world.

Ancient Households on the North Coast of Peru provides insight into the organization of complex, urban, and state-level society in the region from a household perspective, using observations from diverse North Coast households to generate new understandings of broader social processes in and beyond Andean prehistory. Many volumes on this region are limited to one time period or civilization, often the Moche. While Ancient Households on the North Coast of Peru does examine the Moche, it offers a wider thematic approach to a broader swath of prehistory. Chapters on various time periods use a comparable scale of analysis to examine long-term continuity and change and draw on a large corpus of prior research on states, rulership, and cosmology to offer new insight into the intersection of household, community, and state. Contributors address social reproduction, construction and reinforcement of gender identities and social hierarchy, household permanence and resilience, and expression of identity through cuisine. This volume challenges common concepts of the “household” in archaeology by demonstrating the complexity and heterogeneity of household-level dynamics as they intersect with institutions at broader social scales and takes a comparative perspective on daily life within one region of the Andes. It will be of interest to both students and scholars of South American archaeology and household archaeology. Contributors: Brian R. Billman, David Chicoine, Guy S. Duke, Hugo Ikehara, Giles Spence-Morrow, Jessica Ortiz, Edward Swenson, Kari A. Zobler

Maritime Communities of the Ancient Andes examines how settlements along South America’s Pacific coastline played a role in the emergence, consolidation, and collapse of Andean civilizations from the Late Pleistocene era through Spanish colonization. Providing the first synthesis of data from Chile, Peru, and Ecuador, this wide-ranging volume evaluates and revises long-standing research on ancient maritime sites across the region. These essays look beyond the subsistence strategies of maritime communities and their surroundings to discuss broader anthropological issues related to social adaptation, monumentality, urbanism, and political and religious change. Among many other topics, the evidence in this volume shows that the maritime industry enabled some urban communities to draw on marine resources in addition to agriculture, ensuring their success. During the Colonial period, many fishermen were exempt from paying tributes to the Spanish, and their specialization helped them survive as the Andean population dwindled. Contributors also consider the relationship between fishing and climate change—including weather patterns like El Niño. The research in this volume demonstrates that communities situated close to the sea and its resources should be seen as critical components of broader social, economic, and ideological dynamics in the complex history of Andean cultures. A volume in the series Society and Ecology in Island and Coastal Archaeology, edited by Victor D. Thompson

The organization and characteristics of early and ancient states have become the focus of a renewed interest from archaeologists, ancient historians and anthropologists in recent years. On the one hand, neo-evolutionary schemas of political transformation find it difficult to define some of their most basic concepts, such as ‘chiefdom’, ‘complex chiefdom’ and ‘state’, not to mention the transition between them. On the other hand, teleological interpretations based on linear dynamics, from less to increasingly more complex political structures, in successive steps, impose biased and too rigid views on the available evidence. In fact, recent research stresses the existence of other forms of socio-political organization, less vertically integrated and more heterarchical, that proved highly successful and resilient in the long term in tying together social groups. What is more, such forms quite often represented the basic blocks on which states were built and that managed to survive once states collapsed. Finally, nomadic, maritime and mountain populations provide fascinating examples of societies that experienced alternative forms of political organization, sometimes on a seasonal basis. In other cases, their consideration as ‘marginal’ populations that cultivated specialized skills ensured them a certain degree of autonomy when living either within or at the borders of states. This book explores such small-scale socio-political organizations, their potential and the historical trajectories they stimulated. A selection of historical case studies from different regions of the world may help rethink current concepts and views about the emergence and organization of political complexity and the mechanisms that prevented, occasionally, the emergence of solid polities. They may also cast some light over trajectories of historical transformation, still poorly understood as are the limits of effective state power. This book explores the importance of comparative research and long-term historical perspectives to avoid simplistic interpretations, based on the characteristics of modern Western states abusively used retrospectively.

An Archaeology of Ancash is a well–illustrated synthesis of the archaeology of North Central Peru, and specifically the stone structures of the Ancash region. All the major cultures of highland Ancash built impressive monuments, with no other region of South America showing such an early and continuous commitment to stone carving. Drawing on Lau’s extensive experience as an archaeologist in highland Peru, this book reveals how ancient groups of the Central Andes have used stone as both a physical and symbolic resource, uncovering the variety of experiences and meanings which marked the region’s special engagement with this material. An abundant raw resource in the Andes, stone was used for monuments, sculptures and other valuables such as carved monoliths, which were crucial to the emergence of civilization in the region, and religious objects from magical charms to ancestor effigies. Detailing the ways stone has played both an everyday and an extraordinary part in ancient social life, Lau also examines how cultural dispositions towards this fundamental material have changed over time and considers how contemporary engagements with these stone remains have the potential to create and regenerate communities. With an ample selection of color photos which bring these sites and artifacts to life, An Archaeology of Ancash is an essential guide to the key monuments, places and objects that distinguish this region and its rich archaeological heritage.

Pyla-Koutsopetria I presents the results of an intensive pedestrian survey documenting the diachronic history of a 100 ha microregion along the southern coast of Cyprus. Located around 10 km from the ancient city of Kition, the ancient coastal settlements of the Koutsopetria mircoregion featured an Iron Age sanctuary, a Classical settlement, a Hellenistic fortification, a Late Roman town, and a Venetian-Ottoman coastal battery situated adjacent to a now infilled, natural harbor on Larnaka Bay. This publication integrates a comprehensive treatment of methods with a discussion of artifact distribution, a thorough catalogue of finds, and a diachronic history to shed light on one of the few undeveloped stretches of the Cypriot coast.

"This handbook brings together work by leading scholars of the archaeology of early Christianity in the Mediterranean and surrounding regions. The 34 essays to this volume ground the history, culture, and society of the first seven centuries of Christianity in the latest currents of archaeological method, theory, and research."--