INTRODUCTION TO ARCHAEOLOGY Nancy White - Touro Institute

Lesson Objectives: Trace the development of several cultures on the continent; compare early
civilizations here with others elsewhere on earth.
What geographical and archaeological biases appear in
the discussion of native civilizations in South
America? As discussed in the book (p. 365), the focus
is always on the Andes highlands and the dry desert
western coast. Why is the jungle ignored in so many
treatments of South American archaeology? Because,
well, it is a jungle out there, which presents two
problems: preservation of remains is not good, and it is
very difficult to do archaeology. This situation often
resulted in the view that everything important
happened in the west of the continent and bits of things
diffused eastward. Lately the work of Anna Roosevelt
and others has shown complex and early sociopolitical
evolution in the lowlands of Venezuela and Brazil that
developed indigenously, with little or no stimulus from
the outside. But there is essentially no treatment of this
vast area of the continent in
the textbook.
What are some general
characteristics to note in
South American
civilizations? The culture
history presents a picture of the rise of horizon
styles, sometimes
associated with empire, and then the shift to smaller regional states,
and back again. We will again look at just a few major sites,
monumental centers. Preservation of organic remains is often
excellent on the desert coast, where cultures are named after the
valleys of the short rivers running to the sea on which they are
located. Fascinating political systems based on community
organization and state control and ownership seem to have evolved
early. Centralized rulership and ancestor worship meant that the
living maintained the monuments and compounds of dead rulers, and new leaders had to
establish their own centers. Domestic animals are more important than in North America,
especially the llama, for fur, eating, and carrying, and the guinea pig, for food. Massive stone
construction took place. The archaeological record also shows how earthquakes and other
continual tectonic movement, expectable in the relatively young mountain chain of the Andes,
affected various cultural developments, as well as how the El Niño weather pattern affected
people making a living on the Pacific Coast. South American civilizations are the only ones
which developed no writing systems, though they recorded bureaucratic details in other ways.