Ceramic Seriation and Site Reoccupation in Lowland South America

Abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. This content downloaded from 136.159.235.223 on Sat, 21 Sep 2013 11:53:15 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and ConditionsA long-standing debate in Amazonian archaeology is whether large sites represent contemporaneous communities or palimpsests accrued through multiple reoccupations. Quantitative ceramic seriation has been used to support the latter view. This argument is evaluated in terms of its statistical basis and its assumptions about sources of ceramic variabilitv. On the basis of this evaluation, we conclude that the case for reoccupation, based on seriation, is unconwZincing.Dentro de los estudios arqueologicos de la Amazonia, uno de l(vs mayores debates versa sobre si los grandes sitios arqueologicos en el area representan comunidades contemp(vraneas o palimpsestos de mu'ltiples reocupaciones. Esta u'ltima tesis ha sido sustentada por analisis cuantitativo de seriaciones ceramicas. El presente trabajo evalu'a los argumentos expuestos por las seriaciones ceramicas, en especial sus bases estadisticas y las certezas asumidas sobre la fuente u origen de la variabilidad ceramica. Con base en esta evaluacion concluimos que. en su presente etapa de desarrollo, las seriaciones ceramicas que argumentan la tesis de reocupacion no son convincentes.A continuing issue in archaeological interpretation is whether site size measures the extent of contemporary settlement or of deposits accrued through multiple reoccupations. This issue has figured prominently in the humid tropics of lowland South America where claims for large multi-hectare prehistoric communities have been questioned on the basis of microseriation analyses that suggest such large sites typically represent palimpsests formed through repeated occupation of favored locales. In this article, we offer an appraisal of the seriational bases of this argument. Although our critique is methodological, it impinges on a central debate concerning prehistoric adaptations to the humid neotropical lowlands. Specifically, it brings into question one of the arguments offered to support the premise that prehistoric Amazonia was a "counterfeit paradise" (Meggers 1971), one inherently beleaguered by environmental constraints that impeded the establishment of large, sedentary, and enduring settlements.There are numerous ethnographic cases in which native South American peoples periodi-cally reoccupy abandoned settlements. Gross ( I 983:439), Vickers ( 1983:471), and Kracke (1990), among others, have reported this pattern for various Amazonian societies. In a study of house movements among the Chachi a group occupying the tropical forest of coastal Ecuador, one of us has noted that such reoccupations would leave an archaeological record in w...

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