Buried Civilizations of the Americas--Keith Kintigh
6. Dating, Style, and the Nasca Culture
- Dating: Absolute and Relative
- Context. An item is generally dated in order to date what it was found with
- Absolute dating yields calendar year dates
- Tree-ring dating works by matching patterns in ring widths, back >2000 years in
SW US
- Radiocarbon dating, C14 14C
- 1947 Willard F. Libby
- only organic material, back 40,000 years
- cosmic radiation creates unstable carbon 14 in the atmosphere at a
constant rate
- living things absorb atmospheric carbon in the ambient proportions
- radioactive decay of C14 to C12, a random process w/ half-life of 5730
years.
- C14 dates in radiocarbon years before the present (BP) w/ a statistical
error
- calibration transforms radiocarbon years to calendar years, back 9000
years via tree-ring dating of bristlecone pine
- old wood problem: on the desert, wood 100s of years old can lie on the
surface
- accelerator dating allows dating of very small samples
- Relative Dating: yields a dates relative to each other, e.g., earlier, later
- Stratigraphy relatively dates levels though the principle of superposition
- Stylistic dating uses stylistic similarity of objects or groups of objects for relative
dates.
- Style refers visible, "non-functional" characteristics of an item.
- Style is used to reflect "influence", interaction, or temporal change; or to
communicate things like group membership.
- problems: the heirloom effect and unwarranted assumptions that all
stylistic change w/i a culture is temporal
- types: conceptual groupings of items based on overall similarity; argument
about whether inherent or imposed.
- Seriation an ordering of items (though time)
- assumes battleship-shaped curve model of stylistic popularity
- drawn from stratigraphy, grave associations, and stylistic "evolution"
- can be verified by absolute dating
- Cross-dating: the use of dated types to date undated types from the same context
- Nasca Ceramics - Applicatiion of Stylistic Dating
- developed by Dorothy Menzel, John Rowe, and Larry Dawson
- Slides
- monumental, transitional, and proliferous styles
- evaluation of the sequence: an assumption of this scheme is that all variation is
chronological, not based on cultural, functional or status differences.
- Nasca Culture - South Coast, Early Intermediate (200 BC-AD 600), also NaZca.
- Focused on 5 valleys, Chincha to Acarí
- Early Horizon
- U-shaped pyramids only S to cental coast
- only funerary textiles w/ Chavín influence
- advanced textile technology on south coast compared to rest of Peru
- abundant alpaca indicates early extensive trade with highlands
- Architecture
- temples built of conical and loaf-shaped adobes
- residences built of wattle and daub, canes woven together and covered with mud
- Sites
- Cahuachi, Nasca periods 2-4
- faced & capped hillsides covering .5 mi²
- 20m high Great Temple w/ 40 mounds, together, plaza 47x75m
- connected to lines of Nasca
- Helaine Silverman argues it was a vacant ceremonial center, not residential
complex because of little household debris
- Ventilla: largest Nasca residential site, 12 mi north of Cahuachi; same time span
as Cahuachi
- La Estaquería: square stepped adobe-walled platform adjacent to 12 rows of tall
wood posts, 20 to a row and about 2 m apart; later than Cahuachi
- Dos Palmitos in the Pisco valley
- Tambo Viejo in the Acarí valley; surrounded by fortification of stone and adobe,
Nasca 2-3
- Huaca del Loro in the valley of the Río Tunga, late Nasca
- small circular temple at the south edge of a complex of large adobe walled
compounds
- north of compounds were tombs with elaborately painted adobe walls
- Subsistence: primarily agricultural with some fishing and hunting
- Artifacts: ceramics, gold copper, a little stone, instruments: pan pipes, drums
- Burials
- circular pits, unlined, some covered with cane
- mummified bodies, flexed, facing south toward the Great Temple at Cahuachi
- with offerings of pottery and textiles
- evidence of mild social stratification
- looting an enormous problem