The emergence of Inka dominion: Historical and chronometric assessments

Este data set fue realizado en base a una exhaustiva compilación de fechados radiocarbónicos realizados en contextos arqueológicos a lo largo del imperio Inca. La primera versión de la misma data de 1998 y fue utilizada como dato primario para una publicación científica donde se ponía en cuestión la cronología tradicional del Imperio Inca basada en fuentes escritas. Por causas ajenas a los investigadores, este manuscrito nunca fue publicado, pero sí ampliamente circulado dentro de la comunidad científica internacional. Posteriormente, en el año 2007 se realizó una revisión de bibliografía, se actualizó la base de datos y se escribió un nuevo manuscrito inédito que fue presentado por sus autores en una mesa redonda sobre cronología Inca organizada por Dumbarton Oaks Precolumbian Studies, pero nunca publicado. En esa misma mesa redonda, y utilizándolos mismos datos primarios, Verónica Williams presentó “Southern Empire Chronology: Some Questions about Inca Archaeology“. En este dataset se incluye la versión actualizada de la planilla de fechados radiocarbónicos (con fecha 2007) y los manuscritos inéditos de 1998 y 2007.Fil: D'Altroy, Terence N.. Columbia University; Estados UnidosFil: Williams, Veronica Isabel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Saavedra 15. Instituto de las Culturas. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Instituto de las Culturas; ArgentinaFil: Bauer, Brian S.. University of Illinois; Estados Unido

Collaborative and competitive strategies in the variability and resiliency of large-scale societies in Mesoamerica

Examinations of the variation and duration of past large-scale societies have long involved a conceptual struggle between efforts at generalization and the unraveling of specific trajectories. Although historical particulars are critical to understanding individual cases, there exist both scientific and policy rationales for drawing broader implications regarding the growing corpus of cross-cultural data germane to understanding variability in the constitution of human societies, past and present. Archaeologists have recently paid increased attention to successes and failures in communal-resource management over the long term, as articulated by the transdisciplinary theory on cooperation and collective action. In this article, we consider frameworks that have been traditionally employed in studies of the rise, diversity, and fall of large-scale preindustrial aggregations. We suggest that a comparative theoretical perspective that foregrounds collective-action problems, unaligned individual and group interests, and the social mechanisms that promote or hamper cooperation advances our understanding of variability in these early cooperative arrangements. We apply such a perspective to an examination of cities from pre-Columbian Mesoamerica to demonstrate tendencies for more collective systems to be larger and longer lasting than less collective ones, likely reflecting greater resiliency in the face of the ecological and cultural perturbations specific to the region and era

An Inka Offering at Yayno (North Highlands, Peru): Objects, Subjects and Gifts in the Ancient Andes

While Marcel Mauss's landmark essay on The Gift has been vital in social anthropology, inspiring a vast and influential secondary literature, the gift has been much less prominent in archaeological interpretation. This study considers evidence for an ancient Andean gift economy, a system of reciprocal exchanges focused on making people and ensuring group social relations, rather than accumulating wealth/capital. Excavations at Yayno (north highlands, Ancash, Peru) revealed two features dating to the time of the Inkas: 1) a slab-lined cist burial; and 2) an offering deposit containing abundant long-distance trade and sumptuary items. Besides its mountaintop location, the burial's intrusive character and foreign items indicate that the offerings were made to propitiate the place, ruins and their divine aspect. This essay studies the reciprocal acts that led to the offerings, comparing them to gifting patterns in Inka human sacrifices known as capac hucha. The key actors in the exchange were children, divinities, Inka bureaucrats, local leaders and state subjects

A microwave spectroscope using a crystal harmonic generator as the transmitter

A microwave spectroscope was designed and built which used the crystal generated harmonics of the fundamental of a 723 A/B klystron as the source of power. Sufficient output was obtained for absorption measurements using both the second and third harmonics. The instrument was tested on NH₃ and a photograph of an inversion line at 25700 megacycles was made using the third harmonic.Science, Faculty ofPhysics and Astronomy, Department ofGraduat