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Ceramic Seriation and Site Reoccupation in Lowland South America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Warren R. DeBoer ,
Keith Kintigh  and
Arthur G. Rostoker
Warren R. DeBoer
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Queens College, City University of New York, Flushing, NY 11367
Keith Kintigh
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287
Arthur G. Rostoker
Affiliation:
Program in Anthropology, City University of New York Graduate Center, New York, NY 10036
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Abstract

A 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 variability. On the basis of this evaluation, we conclude that the case for reoccupation, based on seriation, is unconvincing.

Dentro de los estudios arqueológicos de la Amazonia, uno de los mayores debates versa sobre si los grandes sitios arqueológicos en el área representan comunidades contemporáneas o palimpsestos de múltiples reocupaciones. Esta última tesis ha sido sustentada por análisis cuantitativo de seriaciones cerámicas. El presente trabajo evalúa los argumentos expuestos por las seriaciones cerámicas, en especial sus bases estadísticas y las certezas asumidas sobre la fuente u origen de la variabilidad cerámica. Con base en esta evaluación concluimos que, en su presente etapa de desarrollo, las seriaciones cerámicas que argumentan la tesis de reocupación no son convincentes.

Type
Reports
Information
Latin American Antiquity , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , September 1996 , pp. 263 - 278
Copyright
Copyright © Society for American Archaeology 1996

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