The Russian Archaeological Project in South America: Principal Findings and Prospects
https://doi.org/10.17746/1563-0110.2023.51.4.055-064
Abstract
This study outlines the findings of field and laboratory studies by the first Russian archaeological expedition to South America in 2014–2015 and 2017–2018 in collaboration with colleagues from Ecuador and Japan. The project focused on sites of the Archaic (10.8–6.6 ka BP) and Early Formative period (5.5–3.5 ka BP) in the coastal zone of Santa Elena Province, Ecuador. Excavations at Real Alto (Valdivia culture) and Loma Alto (Las Vegas culture) yielded representative archaeological, anthropological, and faunal samples and a large series of AMS dates, providing a basis for a number of novel proposals regarding the chronology and periodization of cultures, their origin, and early pottery-production in South America. Specifically, we have demonstrated that at the very beginning of the Formative period, two early ceramic traditions coexisted—Valdivia and “San Pedro”. We have demonstrated the peculiarity of the “Tropical package” in the stone toolkit, and traced the previously unknown features of the funerary rites of the Las Vegas and Valdivia cultures. Radiocarbon analysis helped to correct the chronology of the late stage of the pre-ceramic Las Vegas culture (8.0–4.8 ka BP) and to estimate the tentative date of the earliest pottery manufacture at 4.8–4.7 ka BP. In conclusion, we outline the top priorities and prospects of Russian archaeological studies on the Pacific coast of South America, underscoring the importance of international cooperation.
Supporting agencies: This study was supported by the Russian Science Foundation, Project No. 22-28-00059. We thank Professor J.G. Marcos for his long-term and multidimensional cooperation (Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral, Guayaquil), Dr. R. Lunniss (Technical University of Manabi, Portoviejo), Prof. Y. Kanomata (Tohoku University, Sendai), and Prof. E. Neves (University of São Paulo), as well as all Russian and Ecuadorian participants of expeditions of 2014–2015 and 2017–2018. We express especial gratitude to the residents of the Pechiche commune (Santa Elena Province, Ecuador).
About the Authors
A. N. Popov
Educational and Scientific Museum, Far Eastern Federal University
Russian Federation
Russian Federation
Director, Educational and Scientific Museum, Far Eastern Federal University.
Okeansky pr. 37, Vladivostok, 690091
A. V. Tabarev
Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences
Russian Federation
Russian Federation
Leading Researcher, Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences.
Akademika Lavrentieva pr. 17, Novosibirsk, 630090
References
1. Bashilov V.A. 1972 Drevniye tsivilizatsii Peru i Bolivii. Moscow: Nauka.
2. Berezkin Y.E. 1983 Mochika: Tsivilizatsiya indeitsev severnogo poberezhya Peru v I–VII vv. Leningrad: Nauka.
3. Bischof H., Viteri J.G. 1972 Pre-Valdivia occupations on the southwest coast of Ecuador. American Antiquity, vol. 37: 548–551.
4. Bischof H., Viteri J.G. 2006 Entre Vegas y Valdivia: La fase San Pedro en el suroeste del Ecuador. Bulletin de l’Institut Francais d’Etudes Andines, vol. 35 (3): 361–376.
5. Bushnell G.H.S. 1951 The archaeology of the Santa Elena peninsula in South-West Ecuador. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.
6. Cerâmicas arqueológicas da Amazônia: Rumo a uma nova síntese. 2016 Belém: Instituto do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional.
7. Damp J., Vargas L.P.S. 1995 The many faces of Early Valdivia ceramics. In The Emergence of Pottery: Technology and Innovation in Ancient Societies. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, pp. 157–168.
8. Estrada E. 1956 Valdivia: Un sitio arqueológico formative en la costa de la Provincia del Guayas, Ecuador. Guayaquil: Museo Victor Emilio Estrada.
9. Evans C., Meggers B.J. 1958 Valdivia: An Early Formative culture of Ecuador. Archaeology, vol. II (3): 175–182.
10. Kanomata Y., Marcos J., Popov A., Lazin B., Tabarev A. 2019 New data on early pottery traditions in South America: The San Pedro complex, Ecuador. Antiquity, vol. 93 (369): 1–6.
11. Kanomata Y., Tabarev A.V., Popov A.N., Lazin B.V., Gavrilina T.A., Rudenko M.K., Marcos J.G. 2021 Stone tool functions in the preceramic period at the Loma Atahualpa site in Ecuador. Bulletin of Tohoku University Museum, No. 20: 21–40.
12. Kanomata Y., Tabarev A.V., Popov A.N., Lazin B.V., Marcos J.G. 2019 Flake tool functions in early ceramic culture at the Real Alto site in Coastal Ecuador. Bulletin of Tohoku University Museum, No. 18: 11–29.
13. Lanning E. 1967 Peru before the Incas. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, Inc.
14. Las Vegas: The Early Holocene Archaeology of Human Occupation in Coastal Ecuador. 2020 Pittsburg: Univ. of Pittsburg Center for Comparative Archaeology. (Univ. of Pittsburgh Memoirs in Latin American Archaeology; No. 25).
15. Lathrap D.W., Collier D., Chandra H. 1975 Ancient Ecuador-Culture, Clay and Creativity, 3000–300 B.C. Chicago: Field Museum of Natural History.
16. Lathrap D.W., Marcos J.G., Zeidler J. 1977 Real Alto: An ancient ceremonial center. Archaeology, vol. 30: 2–13.
17. Lunniss R.M., Zeidler J., Aguilú J.J.O. 2021 La transición Arcaico Tardío – Valdivia: Una reevaluación en base a evidencias de los sitios Salango y Valdivia. In Valdivia, una Sociedad Neolítica: Nuevos aportes a su conocimiento. Portoviejo: Universidad Técnica de Manabí, pp. 120–158.
18. Marcos J.G. 1990 Poyavleniye rannezemledelcheskikh obshchestv v Severnykh Andakh, V.A. Bashilov (trans. from Spanish). In Problemy arkheologii i drevney istorii stran Latinskoy Ameriki. Moscow: Nauka, pp. 86–111.
19. Marcos J.G. 2003 A reassessment of the Ecuadorian Formative. In Archaeology of Formative Ecuador. Washington: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, pp. 7–32.
20. Marcos J.G. 2015 Un sitio llamado Real Alto. Quito: Universidad Internacional del Ecuador.
21. Meggers B.J. 1997 La cerámica temprana en América del Sur: ¿Invención independiente or difusión? Revista de Arqueologia Americana, vol. 13: 7–40.
22. Meggers B., Evans C., Estrada E. 1965 The Early Formative Period of Coastal Ecuador: The Valdivia and Machalilla Phases. Washington: Smithsonian Inst. Press. (Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology; vol. 1).
23. Neves E.G. 2020 Rethinking the role of agriculture and language expansion for ancient Amazonians. In Rethinking the Andes–Amazonia Divide. London: Univ. College London Press, pp. 211–220.
24. Popov A.N., Tabarev A.V., Marcos J.G., Lazin B.V., Vasilieva L.E. 2016 Arkheologicheskiye issledovaniya na pamyatnike Real-Alto v 2014–2015 gg. Tikhookeanskaya arkheologiya, iss. 38: 187–206.
25. Porras P. 1973 El Encanto – La Puna: Un sitio insular de la Fase Valdivia asociado a un conchero anular. Quito: Ediciones Huancavilca.
26. Pre-Columbian Central America, Colombia, and Ecuador: Toward an Integrated Approach. 2021 Washington: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.
27. Pugliese F.A., Neto C.A.Z., Neves E.G. 2019 What do Amazonian shellmounds tell us about the longterm indigenous history of South America? In Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. Cham: Springer. URL:https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51726-1_3030-2
28. Raymond S.J. 1993 Ceremonialism in the Early Formative of Ecuador. Senri Ethnological Studies, vol. 37: 25–43.
29. Roosevelt A.C. 1995 Early pottery in the Amazon: Twenty years of scholarly obscurity. In The Emergence of Pottery: Technology and Innovation in Ancient Societies. Washington: Smithsonian Inst. Press, pp. 115–131.
30. Rowe S.M., Duke G.S. 2020 Buen Suceso: A new multicomponent Valdivia site in Santa Elena, Ecuador. Latin American Antiquity, vol. 31: 639–645.
31. Stothert K.E. 1988 La Prehistoria Temprana de la Península de Santa Elena: Cultura Las Vegas. Guayaquil: Museos del Banco Central del Ecuador.
32. Stothert K.E., Piperno D.R., Andres T.C. 2003 Terminal Pleistocene/Early Holocene human adaptation in coastal Ecuador: The Las Vegas evidence. Quaternary International, vol. 109/110: 23–43.
33. Tabarev A.V. 2016 Formativniy period v arkheologii Ekvadora: Anatomiya termina i voprosy prakticheskogo primeneniya. Teoriya i praktika arkheologicheskikh issledovaniy, No. 1: 111–126.
34. Tabarev A.V., Kanomata Y., Marcos J.G., Popov A.N. Lazin B.V. 2016 Insights into the Earliest Formative Period of coastal Ecuador: New evidence and radiocarbon dates from the Real Alto site. Radiocarbon, vol. 58 (2): 323–330.
35. Tabarev A.V., Kanomata Y., Popov A.N., Poshekhonova O.E., Zubova A.V. 2021 Towards the characteristics of Early Formative, coastal Ecuador: Joint Russian-Japanese-Ecuadorian excavations at Real Alto site in 2014–2017. In Valdivia, una Sociedad Neolítica: Nuevos aportes a su conocimiento. Portoviejo: Universidad Técnica de Manabí, pp. 64–97.
36. Tabarev A.V., Marcos J.G., Popov A.N. 2015 Sovsem ne “pechalniye” tropiki: Rossiyskaya arkheologicheskaya ekspeditsiya v Ekvadore. Nauka iz pervykh ruk, No. 5/6: 156–171.
37. Tabarev A.V., Popov A.N. 2014 Vozvrashcheniye v Yuzhnuyu Ameriku: Nekotoriye itogi, problemy, perspektivy. In Problemy arkheologii, etnografii, antropologii Sibiri i sopredelnykh territoriy, vol. XX. Novosibirsk: Izd. IAET SO RAN, pp. 289–291.
38. Tabarev A., Popov A.N., Marcos J.G., Kanomata Y. 2016 New excavations at Real Alto site, Valdivia culture: Joint Russian-Japanese-Ecuadorian project, 2014–2015. In The Latest Results of American Studies: II Intern. Symp. University of Wroclaw, Sept. 12–14. Wroclaw: Univ. of Wroclaw, p. 44.
39. Tabarev A.V., Popov A.N., Marcos J.G., Kanomata Y. 2019 New excavations at Real Alto site, Valdivia culture: Joint Russian-Japanese-Ecuadorian project, 2014–2015. The Latest Results of American Studies: Tambo. Boletin de Arqueologia, No. 4: 247–272.
40. Valdez F. 2011 La cerámica Mayo Chinchipe, el Formativo Temprano de la Ceja de Selva Oriental. Revista Nacional de Cultura, vol. III: 685–705.
41. Yakovleva L.M. 2010 Keramika chimu iz kollektsii L.I. Shrenka v sobranii MAE. In Etnografiya i arkheologiya korennogo naseleniya Ameriki. St. Petersburg: MAE, pp. 176–186. (Sb. MAE; vol. LVI).
42. Zarrillo S., Pearsall D.M., Raymond S.J., Tisdale M.A., Quon D.J. 2008 Directly dated starch residues document Early Formative maize (Zea mays L.) in tropical Ecuador. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 105 (13): 5006–5011.
Review
For citations:
Popov A.N., Tabarev A.V. The Russian Archaeological Project in South America: Principal Findings and Prospects. Archaeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia. 2023;51(4):55-64. https://doi.org/10.17746/1563-0110.2023.51.4.055-064
Views:
257
Email this article 