Radiocarbon dates can provide an effective overview of regional trends in non-complex societies when treated in a quantitative manner. In spite of intervening biases, numbers of radiocarbon dates should reflect the patterns of occupation across time. Using the date record of preceramic Perú, I illustrate very different radiocarbon trends for highland and coastal zones. These suggest exponential growth, equilibrium, and altitude shift for the occupations of coastal, puna, and highland valley regions. Biases caused by variation in temporal and geographic investigation, and the effects of sea-level rise are considered, but I argue that general occupational patterns overshadow distortions of the date record.
Erosion can produce heterogeneous distributions of cultural materials of differing densities, weights, and shapes within an archaeological site. A large, provenienced surface collection from a preceramic site in highland Peru is examined for evidence of downslope movement as an explanation for observed heterogeneity in artifact distribution. Statistical methods of spatial analysis are used to define the extent of movements of surface materials in this site. For this particular area of Peru, critical angles for downslope movement will limit the site areas in which analysis of horizontal distributions can be expected to produce culturally significant information.
Hand-crafted illustrations are often more effective than photographs for conveying the shape and important features of an object, but they require expertise and time to produce. We describe an image compositing system and user interface that allow an artist to quickly and easily create technical illustrations from a set of photographs of an object taken from the same point of view under variable lighting conditions. Our system uses a novel compositing process in which images are combined using spatially-varying light mattes, enabling the final lighting in each area of the composite to be manipulated independently. We describe an interface that provides for the painting of local lighting effects (e.g. shadows, highlights, and tangential lighting to reveal texture) directly onto the composite. We survey some of the techniques used in illustration and lighting design to convey the shape and features of objects and describe how our system can be used to apply these techniques.
The Early Horizon type site of Chavín de Huántar, located in the north-central Andes of modern Peru, is distinguished by a long sequence of construction, as well as outstanding features such as abundant lithic art, use of cut stone in construction, a complex of underground gallery systems, and exceptional alteration of local land forms. This chapter explores the implications of these characteristics for the evolution of power and authority at this site across the later Initial Period and Early Horizon (approximately 1300 to 600 B.C.). Particular attention is focused on the concepts of power and authority in relation to religious belief systems and the intrinsic factors that might have connected the site's characteristics to a developing system for convincing populations to increasingly accept the dominance of a priestly leadership. These characteristics argue that not only were the emerging authorities at Chavín exceptionally creative in their manipulation of the human mind through landscape, architecture, images, sound, light, and the use of psychoactive drugs but also that this apparent highly planned ritual context demonstrates the very intentional and conscious strategies employed in the transformation of early politico-religious organization.
The Early Horizon type site of Chavín de Huántar, located in the north‐central Andes of modern Peru, is distinguished by a long sequence of construction, as well as outstanding features such as abundant lithic art, use of cut stone in construction, a complex of underground gallery systems, and exceptional alteration of local land forms. This chapter explores the implications of these characteristics for the evolution of power and authority at this site across the later Initial Period and Early Horizon (approximately 1300 to 600 B.C.). Particular attention is focused on the concepts of power and authority in relation to religious belief systems and the intrinsic factors that might have connected the site's characteristics to a developing system for convincing populations to increasingly accept the dominance of a priestly leadership. These characteristics argue that not only were the emerging authorities at Chavín exceptionally creative in their manipulation of the human mind through landscape, architecture, images, sound, light, and the use of psychoactive drugs but also that this apparent highly planned ritual context demonstrates the very intentional and conscious strategies employed in the transformation of early politico‐religious organization.
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