Link to Article #1 & Questions for Article #1 "Mapping Ancient Civilization in a Matter of Days." by John Noble Wilford, New York Times, May 11, 2010, p. D1 &4.
Click here to read "Mapping Ancient Culture..."
Questions for "Mapping Ancient Civilization..."
1) Click on the "multimedia" graphic on p. 1. You can use this image as well as the article to explain the advantage of lidar laser over satellite imagery (or "previous remote-sensing techniques".
2) How many years had the husband-and-wife team of Arlen and Diane Chase spent in the "tropical vegetation" (i.e. on the ground) trying to determine the size of the Mayan settlement area of Caracol? How long did it take the airplane to do the lidar survey? How many square miles were measured in this way?
3) Does your answer to question #2 mean the preceding years of slow research had basically been wasted? Why or why not (use the article to support your answer).
4) The article mentions a number of technological "leaps" which aided our attempts to understand the physical lay-out of ancient cultures. The first dates from "about a century ago," and the second hails from the 1950s. What were these discoveries and their applications?
5) When were Mayan hieroglyphics interpreted, according to the article? Why might the information to be gleaned from Maya writing be of limited use in truly understanding the culture?
6) What were some of the specific conclusions to emerge from the lidar laser images (and the Chase's previous work)?
___________________________________________________________________________________________
Click here to see the article "Maya Intensively Cultivated..." The article is included here (below), but if you are interested, the website contains interesting links to explore.
Article #2 & Questions "Maya Intensively Cultivated Manioc 1400 Years Ago" Science Daily, June 17, 2009.
Questions for "Maya Intensively Cultivated ..."
1) What burning question about Maya civilization does this discovery answer?
2) How does the discovery highlighted in this article relate to the discoveries made in Caracol (article #1)?
3) What are the food staples that are traditionally attributed to the Maya? Why might this new staple crop have been important according to the researchers?
4) Would the lidar techqiue used in Caracol have made the work described in the article easier? Why or why not?
5) Have human remains been discovered in this site? In your opinion, what might this mean?
A University of Colorado at Boulder team has uncovered an ancient and previously unknown Maya agricultural system -- a large manioc field intensively cultivated as a staple crop that was buried and exquisitely preserved under a blanket of ash by a volcanic eruption in present-day El Salvador 1,400 years ago.
Evidence shows the manioc field -- at least one-third the size of a football field -- was harvested just days before the eruption of the Loma Caldera volcano near San Salvador [El Salvador] in roughly A.D. 600, said CU-Boulder anthropology Professor Payson Sheets, who is directing excavations at the ancient village of Ceren. The cultivated field of manioc was discovered adjacent to Ceren, which was buried under 17 feet of ash and is considered the best preserved ancient farming village in all of Latin America.
The ancient planting beds of the carbohydrate-rich tuber are the first and only evidence of an intensive manioc cultivation system at any New World archaeology site, said Sheets. While two isolated portions of the manioc field were discovered in 2007 following radar work and limited excavation, 18 large test pits dug in spring 2009 -- each measuring about 10 feet by 10 feet -- allowed the archaeologists to estimate the size of the field and assess the related agricultural activity that went on there.
Sheets said manioc pollen has been found at archaeological sites in Belize, Mexico and Panama, but it is not known whether it was cultivated as a major crop or was just remnants of a few garden plants. "This is the first time we have been able to see how ancient Maya grew and harvested manioc," said Sheets, who discovered Ceren in 1978.
Ash hollows in the manioc planting beds at Ceren left by decomposed plant material were cast in dental plaster by the team to preserve their shape and size, said Sheets. Evidence showed the field was harvested and then replanted with manioc stalk cuttings just a few days before the eruption of the volcano.
A few anthropologists have suspected that manioc tubers -- which can be more than three feet long and as thick as a man's arm -- were a dietary salvation for ancient, indigenous societies living in large cities in tropical Latin America. Corn, beans and squash have long been known to be staples of the ancient Maya, but they are sensitive to drought and require fertile soils, said Sheets.
"As 'high anxiety' crops, they received a lot of attention, including major roles in religious and cosmological activities of the Maya," said Sheets. "But manioc, which grows well in poor soils and is highly drought resistant did not. I like to think of manioc like an old Chevy gathering dust in the garage that doesn't get much attention, but it starts right up every time when the need arises."
Calculations by Sheets indicate the Ceren planting fields would have produced roughly 10 metric tons of manioc annually for the 100 to 200 villagers believed to have lived there. "The question now is what these people in the village were doing with all that manioc that was harvested all at once," he said. "Even if they were gorging themselves, they could not have consumed that much."
The CU-Boulder team also found the shapes and sizes of individual manioc planting ridges and walkways varied widely. "This indicates the individual farmers at Ceren had control over their families' fields and cultivated them they way they wanted, without an external higher authority telling them what to do and how to do it," he said.
The team also found that the manioc fields and adjacent cornfields at Ceren were oriented 30 degrees east of magnetic north -- the same orientation as the village buildings and the public town center, said Sheets. "The villagers laid out the agricultural fields and the town structures with the same orientation as the nearby river, showing the importance and reverence the Maya had for water," he said.
The volcano at Ceren shrouded adobe structures, thatched roofs, house beams, woven baskets, sleeping mats, garden tools and grain caches. The height of the corn stalks and other evidence indicate the eruption occurred early on an August evening, he said.
Because it is unlikely that the people of Ceren were alone in their intensive cultivation of manioc, Sheets and his colleagues are now investigating chemical and microscopic botanical evidence at other Maya archaeological sites that may be indicators of manioc cultivation and processing.
Sheets said Maya villagers living in the region today have a long tradition of cutting manioc roots into small chunks, drying them eight days, then grinding the chunks into a fine, flour-like powder known as almidón. Almidón can be stored almost indefinitely, and traditionally was used by indigenous people in the region for making tamales and tortillas and as a thickening agent for stews, he said.
Since indigenous peoples in tropical South America use manioc today to brew alcoholic beverages, including beer, the CU-Boulder team will be testing ceramic vessels recovered from various structures at Ceren for traces of manioc. To date, 12 structures have been excavated, and others detected by ground-penetrating radar remain buried, he said.
Sheets is particularly interested in vessels from a religious building at Ceren excavated in 1991. The structure contained such items as a deer headdress painted red, blue and white; a large, alligator-shaped painted pot; the bones of butchered deer; and evidence that large quantities of food items like meat, corn, beans and squash were prepared on-site and dispensed to villagers from the structure, said Sheets.
Ceren's residents apparently were participating in a spiritual ceremony in the building when the volcano erupted, and did not return to their adobe homes, which excavations showed were void of people and tied shut from the outside. "I think there may have been an emergency evacuation from the ceremonial building when the volcano erupted," he said. To date, no human remains have been found at Ceren.
_________________________________________________________________________
Article #3 & Questions: "Recent Finds in Archaeology." Athena Review, Vol. 2 No. 3, http://www.athenapub.com/incamum1.htm
Questions for "Recent finds...":
1) Describe what exactly was discovered, were any technological advances responsible?
2) What events led to this discovery and when was it made?
3) Has this work shed light on Inca settlements and society?
When Francisco Pizarro toppled the Inca monarchy in the mid 1530’s with a few hundred Spanish adventurers, the popular culture supporting the Inca rulers of the Peruvian Andes sank into relative obscurity. While there are many accounts of the subsequent colonial period, and numerous architectural ruins at Inca sites from Cuzco to Machu Pichu, many aspects of the lives of the pre-Spanish Incan people - a major Native American civilization - have been little known from the period just before the Conquest.
Now this is changing, with the discovery of thousands of Inca mummies near Lima from the period of about AD 1470-1535. About 2,200 mummy bundles of Inca men, women, and children, many in an excellent state of preservation, have been excavated at a shantytown named Tupac Amuru built over the Inca cemetery site of Puruchuco- Huaquerones, at the base of desert foothills on the eastern edge of the Peruvian capital.
The mummies were revealed largely by accident during the past decade, as the suburb of Tupac Amuru (named after the last Inca monarch, killed by Spaniards in 1572) grew from settlers fleeing 1980s guerrilla warfare in the mountains. Sewage from the new settlement disturbed the sleeping city of the dead just underground, well preserved until then by the typically dry, sandy conditions of coastal Peru. Salvage excavation led by archaeologist Guillermo Cock of Peru's National Institute of Culture, and partly funded by the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration, converted streets into excavation trenches, to recover this unparalleled sample of the late 15th-early 16th century Inca population. Overall cemetery size at Puruchuco is estimated by Cock at about 10,000 bundles containing 15,000 people, making it one of the two largest Peruvian mummy burial sites known, and the largest for the Late Horizon, Inca period. An estimated 60 percent of the burials remain undisturbed.
The excavations recovered over 1,200 burials in ten weeks last year, with Tupac Amaru residents assisting at the emergency dig. The archaeologists have been rewarded with a database that, quite literally, will rewrite our understanding of Incan culture. The several hundred Inca mummies examined so far represent two to three generations and a variety of social classes over a period of 60-75 years who died from a variety of causes ranging from malnutrition, anemia, and probable tuberculosis, to trauma and human sacrifice. The dead (many with hair, skin, and eyes still intact) were wrapped in cocoon-like bundles of raw cotton and woven textiles holding as many as seven individuals, some with both adults and children probably representing families. The bodies were dried or embalmed by being wrapped in fabric and buried upright in pits filled with crushed pottery shards and gravel, which rapidly leached out the moisture. Some 45 per cent of the buried individuals were children under 12 years old. About 40 of the larger mummy bundles, meanwhile, were topped with false heads (some with wigs) known to have been used for burials of Inca elite. Only one example of such “falsas cabezas” has been previously excavated. Many of the bundles contained artifacts, personal items, food, and utensils which were probably meant for use in the afterlife. One person, nicknamed “the cotton king,” holding a small child, was wrapped in over 300 lbs of raw cotton, along with a well preserved sack of coca leaves and brick of quicklime - a combination also much used today as a stimulant. The richest source of elite burials occurred beneath the town schoolyard.
The Inca empire, which spread north from Cuzco in 1438 to dominate the Andean region by 1450, has been considered an elite caste who took over local populations and imposed their imperial ideology on them. But the Puruchuco burial artifacts show a mixture of Inca and local styles, suggesting the creation of a unique synthesis around Lima. Given a relatively high proportion of elite burials mixed in with more modest mummy bundles, Cock believes there is evidence of a large Inca palace near the cemetery, and a perhaps as many as ten recognized Incan social statuses among the buried population. The well-preserved bodies will also allow detailed analysis of the diet, general health, and causes of death of the population, as well as their genetic relationships. Along with an estimated 50-60,000 artifacts from the mummy bundles, the Puruchuco burials represent a late Precolombian time capsule of incredible scientific value. Mummies and artifacts will eventually be displayed in a Puruchuco museum.
________________________________________________________________________________
Article #4 "Incredible Discovery - The Last INKA (Inca) Has Be Found and He is Not Peruvian He is Chileno!!!" posted by Juan Carlos, December 2, 2010
(http://www.tierraunica.com/tierra_unica/2010/12/incredible-discovery-the-last-inka-inca-has-be-found-in-lima-and-he-is-not-peruvian-he-is-chileno.html)
(http://www.tierraunica.com/tierra_unica/2010/12/incredible-discovery-the-last-inka-inca-has-be-found-in-lima-and-he-is-not-peruvian-he-is-chileno.html)
Question:
1) I copied this exactly as I found it. What do you think? Well, maybe later in the course, this will mean more to us.
 |
| Sebastian PiNera |
 |
| Huayna |
 | |||
| Atahualpa |
Inka Huaya Capac, was the king and ruler of the Inca Empire from 1493 - 1527. He was the 11th Sapa Inca (King of South America) and 6th of the Hanan dynasty. During Huaya Capac's rule, the Inca Empire was that largest empire in all the Americas in history. His empire included present day Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Colombia, and Western Brazil.
No comments:
Post a Comment