Steamed or Boiled: Identity and Value in Food Preparation

How do daily meals resemble larger feast gatherings? In many cultures every act associated with food is filled with meaning and sanctity. Feasts usually feed more people than daily household meals, and by their scale, gain centrifugal meanings. These ritual foods for the deities, ancestors and large groups do not often look like daily meals in the Andean region. One of the goals of the Taraco Archaeological Project (TAP) is to study the past foodways in the Lake Titicaca Basin, Bolivia. Evidence of unusual ingredients suggests that experimentation with exotic foods occurred in ritual settings on a community level, reflecting centripetal constructions in these larger meals

Identity and Value in Food Preparation

How do daily meals resemble larger feast gatherings? In many cultures every act associated with food is filled with meaning and sanctity. Feasts usually feed more people than daily household meals, and by their scale, gain centrifugal meanings. These ritual foods for the deities, ancestors, and large groups do not oten look like daily meals in the Andean region. One of the goals of the Taraco Archaeological Project (TAP) is to study the past foodways in the Lake Titicaca Basin, Bolivia. Evidence of unusual ingredients suggests that experimentation with exotic foods occurred in ritual settings on a community level, reflecting centripetal constructions in these larger meals

Quinoa, potatoes, and llamas fueled emergent social complexity in the Lake Titicaca Basin of the Andes

The Lake Titicaca basin was one of the major centers for cultural development in the ancient world. This lacustrine environment is unique in the high, dry Andean altiplano, and its aquatic and terrestrial resources are thought to have contributed to the florescence of complex societies in this region. Nevertheless, it remains unclear to what extent local aquatic resources, particularly fish, and the introduced crop, maize, which can be grown in regions along the lakeshores, contributed to facilitating sustained food production and population growth, which underpinned increasing social political complexity starting in the Formative Period (1400 BCE to 500 CE) and culminating with the Tiwanaku state (500 to 1100 CE). Here, we present direct dietary evidence from stable isotope analysis of human skeletal remains spanning over two millennia, together with faunal and floral reference materials, to reconstruct foodways and ecological interactions in southern Lake Titicaca over time. Bulk stable isotope analysis, coupled with compound-specific amino acid stable isotope analysis, allows better discrimination between resources consumed across aquatic and terrestrial environments. Together, this evidence demonstrates that human diets predominantly relied on C(3) plants, particularly quinoa and tubers, along with terrestrial animals, notably domestic camelids. Surprisingly, fish were not a significant source of animal protein, but a slight increase in C(4) plant consumption verifies the increasing importance of maize in the Middle Horizon. These results underscore the primary role of local terrestrial food resources in securing a nutritious diet that allowed for sustained population growth, even in the face of documented climate and political change across these periods

Temporal inflection points in decorated pottery: a bayesian refinement of the late formative chronology in the Southern Lake Titicaca Basin, Bolivia

The Late Formative period immediately precedes the emergence of Tiwanaku, one of the earliest South American states, yet it is one of the most poorly understood periods in the southern Lake Titicaca Basin (Bolivia). In this article, we refine the ceramic chronology of this period with large sets of dates from eight sites, focusing on temporal inflection points in decorated ceramic styles. These points, estimated here by Bayesian models, index specific moments of change: (1) cal AD 120 (60-170, 95% probability): the first deposition of Kalasasaya red-rimmed and zonally incised styles; (2) cal AD 240 (190-340, 95% probability): a tentative estimate of the final deposition of Kalasasaya zonally incised vessels; (3) cal AD 420 (380-470, 95% probability): the final deposition of Kalasasaya red-rimmed vessels; and (4) cal AD 590 (500-660, 95% probability): the first deposition of Tiwanaku Redwares. These four modeled boundaries anchor an updated Late Formative chronology, which includes the Initial Late Formative phase, a newly identified decorative hiatus between the Middle and Late Formative periods. The models place Qeya and transitional vessels between inflection points 3 and 4 based on regionally consistent stratigraphic sequences. This more precise chronology will enable researchers to explore the trajectories of other contemporary shifts during this crucial period in Lake Titicaca Basin's prehistory.Fil: Marsh, Erik Johnson. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mendoza; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Laboratorio de Paleoecología Humana; ArgentinaFil: Roddick, Andrew P.. Mc Master University; CanadáFil: Bruno, Maria C.. Dickinson College; Estados UnidosFil: Smith, Scott C.. Franklin & Marshall College; Estados UnidosFil: Janusek, John W.. Vanderbilt University; Estados UnidosFil: Hastorf, Christine A.. University of California at Berkeley; Estados Unido

The Rise and Fall of Wiñaymarka: Rethinking Cultural and Environmental Interactions in the Southern Basin of Lake Titicaca

Investigations of how past human societies managed during times of major climate change can inform our understanding of potential human responses to ongoing environmental change. In this study, we evaluate the impact of environmental variation on human communities over the last four millennia in the southern Lake Titicaca basin of the Andes, known as Lake Wiñaymarka. Refined paleoenvironmental reconstructions from new diatom-based reconstructions of lake level together with archaeological evidence of animal and plant resource use from sites on the Taraco Peninsula, Bolivia, reveal frequent climate and lake-level changes within major cultural phases. We posit that climate fluctuations alone do not explain major past social and political transformations but instead that a highly dynamic environment contributed to the development of flexible and diverse subsistence practices by the communities in the Titicaca Basin

Temporal inflection points in decorated pottery: a bayesian refinement of the late formative chronology in the Southern Lake Titicaca Basin, Bolivia

The Late Formative period immediately precedes the emergence of Tiwanaku, one of the earliest South American states, yet it is one of the most poorly understood periods in the southern Lake Titicaca Basin (Bolivia). In this article, we refine the ceramic chronology of this period with large sets of dates from eight sites, focusing on temporal inflection points in decorated ceramic styles. These points, estimated here by Bayesian models, index specific moments of change: (1) cal AD 120 (60-170, 95% probability): the first deposition of Kalasasaya red-rimmed and zonally incised styles; (2) cal AD 240 (190-340, 95% probability): a tentative estimate of the final deposition of Kalasasaya zonally incised vessels; (3) cal AD 420 (380-470, 95% probability): the final deposition of Kalasasaya red-rimmed vessels; and (4) cal AD 590 (500-660, 95% probability): the first deposition of Tiwanaku Redwares. These four modeled boundaries anchor an updated Late Formative chronology, which includes the Initial Late Formative phase, a newly identified decorative hiatus between the Middle and Late Formative periods. The models place Qeya and transitional vessels between inflection points 3 and 4 based on regionally consistent stratigraphic sequences. This more precise chronology will enable researchers to explore the trajectories of other contemporary shifts during this crucial period in Lake Titicaca Basin's prehistory.Fil: Marsh, Erik Johnson. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mendoza; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Laboratorio de Paleoecología Humana; ArgentinaFil: Roddick, Andrew P.. Mc Master University; CanadáFil: Bruno, Maria C.. Dickinson College; Estados UnidosFil: Smith, Scott C.. Franklin & Marshall College; Estados UnidosFil: Janusek, John W.. Vanderbilt University; Estados UnidosFil: Hastorf, Christine A.. University of California at Berkeley; Estados Unido

Steamed or Boiled

In welcher Weise gleichen tägliche Mahlzeiten größeren festlichen Zusammenkünten? In vielen Kulturen ist jede mit Nahrung verbundene Handlung mit Sinn und religiöser Bedeutung aufgeladen. Bei Festen werden meist mehr Menschen verköstigt als bei Mahlzeiten im Haushalt. Durch diesen größeren Rahmen erlangen Feste nach außen wirkende, zentrifugale Bedeutung. In den Anden gleichen solche rituellen Speisen für Götter, Ahnen und größere Gruppen selten alltäglichen Mahlzeiten. Eines der Ziele des Taraco Archaeological Project (TAP) ist es, zu untersuchen, wie in der Vergangenheit in der Region um den Titicaca-See (Bolivien) Nahrung produziert, verarbeitet und konsumiert wurde. Das Vorkommen von ungewöhnlichen Zutaten legt nahe, dass in rituellen Zusammenhängen auf Gemeindeebene mit exotischen Lebensmitteln experimentiert wurde, was integrierende Aspekte dieser größeren Mahlzeiten widerspiegelt.How do daily meals resemble larger feast gatherings? In many cultures every act associated with food is filled with meaning and sanctity. Feasts usually feed more people than daily household meals, and by their scale, gain centrifugal meanings. These ritual foods for the deities, ancestors, and large groups do not oten look like daily meals in the Andean region. One of the goals of the Taraco Archaeological Project (TAP) is to study the past foodways in the Lake Titicaca Basin, Bolivia. Evidence of unusual ingredients suggests that experimentation with exotic foods occurred in ritual settings on a community level, reflecting centripetal constructions in these larger meals