Ancient Nasca Settlement

by Helaine Silverman

Overview

Nasca society arose on the south coast of Peru two thousand years ago and evolved over the course of the next seven hundred years. Helaine Silverman's long-term, multistage work on the south coast of Peru has established her as one of the world's preeminent authorities on this brilliant and enigmatic civilization. Ancient Nasca Settlement and Society is the first extended treatment of the range of sites occupied by the people responsible for some of the most exquisite art, largest ground drawings, most intense hunting of human heads as trophies, and most ingenious hydraulic engineering of the pre-Columbian world.

Ancient Nasca Settlement and Society is based on Silverman's comprehensive survey of the Ingenio Valley, a water-rich tributary of the Río Grande de Nazca drainage; it also includes a critical synthesis of the settlement pattern data from the other river valleys of the system maps and tables, Silverman allows comparisons among the various phases of change in Nasca society. A companion CD-ROM provides a great deal of graphic material and allows users to manipulate the data in alternative scenarios.

Silverman situates the various classes of Nasca material culture within the spatial, social, economic, political, and ideological realities that can be adduced from the archaeological record. A work of archaeo-logical ethnography focused on a once-living society, this convincing and highly original book illuminates the ancient Nasca people's social construction of space and cultural meaning through their manipulation of their natural setting and their creation of particular kinds of built environments.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781587294297
Publisher:	University of Iowa Press
Publication date:	10/01/1963
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	11 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

 Helaine Silverman is associate professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; she has been working on the south coast of Peru since 1983. Author of many articles and book chapters, she is also the author of Cahuachi in the Ancient Nasca World (Iowa, 1993) and Ancient Peruvian Art: An Annotated Bibliography and coauthor, with Donald Proulx, of The Nasca.

 

Table of Contents

ONE To Be Human Is to Dwell: Settlement Patterns and Social Geographies TWO Environmental Paradoxes in the Rio Grande de Nazca Drainage 21 THREE Survey Methodology and Data Analysis 34 FOUR Site 165 50 FIVE Nasca 1 Settlement Patterns in the Ingenio and Middle Grande Valleys 58 SIX Nasca 2 Settlement Patterns in the Ingenio and Middle Grande Valleys 87 SEVEN Nasca 3 Settlement Patterns in the Ingenio and Middle Grande Valleys ioo EIGHT Nasca 4 Settlement Patterns in the Ingenio and Middle Grande Valleys no NINE Nasca 5 Settlement Patterns in the Ingenio and Middle Grande Valleys 114 TEN Nasca 6 Settlement Patterns in the Ingenio and Middle Grande Valleys 128 ELEVEN Nasca 7 Settlement Patterns in the Ingenio and Middle Grande Valleys 131 TWELVE Nasca 8/Loro Settlement Patterns in the Ingenio and Middle Grande Valleys 133 THIRTEEN Nasca Settlement Patterns in the Other Valleys of the Rio Grande de Nazca Drainage 134 FOURTEEN The Identifiable Components of Nasca Settlement Patterns in the Rio Grande de Nazca Drainage 142 FIFTEEN Reconstruction of the Nasca Economy 149 SIXTEEN Theorizing Nasca Society 160 SEVENTEEN Nasca Archaeology in the Twenty-First Century 174