Although ancient civilizations in the Andes are rich in historyÑwith expansive empires, skilled artisans, and vast temple centersÑthe history of the Andean foothills on the south coast of present-day Peru is only now being unveiled. Nasca, a prehispanic society that flourished there from AD 1 to 750, is best known for its polychrome pottery, its enigmatic geoglyphs (the "Nasca Lines"), and its ceremonial center, Cahuachi, which was the seat of power in early Nasca. However, despite the fact that archaeologists have studied Nasca civilization for more than a century, until now they have not pieced together the daily lives of Nasca residents. With this book, Kevin Vaughn offers the first portrait of village life in this ancient Andean society. Vaughn is interested in how societies develop and change, in particular their subsistence and political economies, interactions between elites and commoners, and the ritual activities of everyday life. By focusing on one village, Marcaya, he not only illuminates the lives and relationships of its people but he also contributes to an understanding of the more general roles played by villages in the growth of increasingly complex societies in the Andes. By examining agency in local affairs, he is able for the first time to explore the nature of power in Nasca and how it may have changed over time. By studying village and household activities, Vaughn argues, we can begin to appreciate from the ground up such essential activities as production, consumption, and the ideologies revealed by ritualsÑand thereby gain fresh insights into ancient civilizations.

In Ancient Andean Houses, Jerry Moore offers an extensive survey of vernacular architecture from across the entire length of the Andes, drawing on ethnographic and archaeological information from Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in Colombia to the Patagonia region of Argentina and Chile. This book explores the diverse ways ancient peoples made houses, the ways houses re-create culture, and new perspectives and methods for studying houses. In the first part of this multidimensional approach, Moore examines the construction of houses and how they shaped different spheres of household life, considering commonalities and variations among cultural traditions. In the second part, Moore discusses how domestic architecture serves as both constructed template and lived-in environment, expressing social relationships between men and women, adults and children, household members and the community, and the living and the dead. Finally, Moore critiques archaeological approaches to the subject, arguing for a far-reaching and engaged reassessment of how we study the houses and lives of people in the past. Moore emphasizes that the house has always been a pivotal space around which complex human meanings orbit. This book demonstrates that the material traces of dwellings offer insight into significant questions regarding the development of sedentism, the spread of cultural traditions, and the emergence of social identities and inequalities.

Andean peoples recognize places as neither sacred nor profane, but rather in terms of the power they emanate and the identities they materialize and reproduce. This book argues that a careful consideration of Andean conceptions of powerful places is critical not only to understanding Andean political and religious history but to rethinking sociological theories on landscapes more generally. The contributors evaluate ethnographic and ethnohistoric analogies against the material record to illuminate the ways landscapes were experienced and politicized over the last three thousand years.

Reconstructs how life was in the ancient cities of the Andes including how village settlements gave way to religious centers, how city-states became empires, and the importance of Machu Picchu.

​Over the millennia, from stone tools among early foragers to clays to prized metals and mineral pigments used by later groups, mineral resources have had a pronounced role in the Andean world. Archaeologists have used a variety of analytical techniques on the materials that ancient peoples procured from the earth. What these materials all have in common is that they originated in a mine or quarry. Despite their importance, comparative analysis between these archaeological sites and features has been exceptionally rare, and even more so for the Andes. Mining and Quarrying in the Ancient Andes focuses on archaeological research at primary deposits of minerals extracted through mining or quarrying in the Andean region. While mining often begins with an economic need, it has important social, political, and ritual dimensions as well. The contributions in this volume place evidence of primary extraction activities within the larger cultural context in which they occurred. This important contribution to the interdisciplinary literature presents research and analysis on the mining and quarrying of various materials throughout the region and through time. Thus, rather than focusing on one material type or one specific site, Mining and Quarrying in the Ancient Andes incorporates a variety of all the aspects of mining, by focusing on the physical, social, and ritual aspects of procuring materials from the earth in the Andean past.

Mirrors of Clay: Reflections of Ancient Andean Life in Ceramics from the Sam Olden Collection features photographs and descriptions of sixty ceramic vessels from ancient Andean American cultures, including the Cupisnique, Chavín, Vicús, Nazca, Moche, Tiwanaku, Lambayeque, and Chimú, which flourished between 1200 BCE and 1550 CE. These distinctive ceramic vessels, selected from the collection of Sam Olden, were given to the Mississippi Museum of Art and are included in a special exhibition presented by the museum and Jackson State University. The pieces reveal each culture's stylistic aesthetics, religious ideologies, and political roles. The Pre-Columbian ceramic vessels presented in this catalogue are mainly from the Andean region of South America, which includes the modern countries of Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. By analyzing technologies, forms, and decorative designs, author Yumi Park reveals the unique aesthetics, social stratifications, religious ideologies, and political roles within each culture. Ancient Andean potters expressed their native individualities by depicting the forms of warriors, deities, architecture, flora, fauna, and daily life on their ceramic vessels. Collector Sam Olden lived in Peru during the 1960s. After visiting various archaeological sites and museums, including the Rafael Larco Herrera Museum in Peru, he became enamored with the ceramic vessels of the ancient Andes. Olden later settled in Yazoo City, Mississippi, and began to build an extensive collection of ancient Andean ceramics, eventually making a large donation to the Mississippi Museum of Art. Because of his passion for these artifacts, the people of Mississippi are now afforded a window on the ancient Andean world. The Sam Olden Collection gives us tangible and visible evidence of the social activities, political events, and ideological beliefs of ancient Andean cultures.