Jordan T Downey | Western University Canada (original) (raw)

Papers by Jordan T Downey

Archaeological sites are often dated through seriation analysis of artifacts found on the site's ... more Archaeological sites are often dated through seriation analysis of artifacts found on the site's surface. This relative dating method remains common despite the widespread availability of absolute dating methods because it is fast and cost-effective compared to scientific dating methods such as radiocarbon dating. Surface seriation is especially important for regional survey studies that involve a large number of sites and little to no excavation. In this context it is important to ask: are surface assemblages as reliable an indicator of the age of a site as determined through excavation? This unique study addresses this question using data from seven sites in the Virú Valley on the north coast of Peru. Surface assemblages are compared with excavated ones using the G-test statistic. It is found that surface assemblages do not closely resemble excavated ones in a statistically significant sense. Nevertheless, the relative date of surface assemblages typically resembles the relative date of excavated assemblages. Caution is urged when dating surface assemblages purely through seriation because the surface may not actually be representative of excavated assemblages.

Los sitios arqueológicos son a menudo fechados a través del análisis por seriación de los artefactos encontrados en superficie. Este método de datación relativa sigue siendo común a pesar de la amplia disponibilidad de métodos de datación absoluta, ya que es rápido y económico en comparación con los métodos de datación científica tales como la datación por radiocarbono. La seriación de superficie es especialmente importante para los estudios de reconocimiento regional que incluyen un gran número de sitios con poca o ninguna excavación. En este contexto, es importante preguntarse: ¿Es el análisis de las recolecciones de superficie un indicador tan confiable de la edad de un sitio como lo es la excavación? Este es un estudio único que analiza la pregunta utilizando datos de siete sitios en el valle de Virú, en la costa norte de Perú. Se comparan los conjuntos de superficie y los conjuntos excavados utilizando el metodo estadístico de la prueba G. Encontramos que, estadísticamente, los conjuntos de superficie no se parecen mucho a los excavados. Sin embargo, el fechamiento relativo de los conjuntos de superficie normalmente es parecido al fechamiento relativo de los conjuntos excavados. Se recomienda precaución al asignar una fecha a los conjuntos de superficie solamente por medio de seriación ya que es posible que estos no representen los conjuntos excavados.

vis-à-vis: Explorations in Anthropology, Jan 1, 2010

Archaeologists frequently overlook the lithic technologies of complex societies, in part because ... more Archaeologists frequently overlook the lithic technologies of complex societies, in part because these technologies are often very informal and expedient. Lithic assemblages from Andean complex societies show that informal chipped lithic tools were used extensively throughout the pre-Hispanic Andes, although few studies have focused on these artifacts. In this paper, I explore ways that we can derive social information from informal lithic tools and their waste cores and debitage. I do this by analyzing the chipped lithic artifacts excavated from four sites associated with the Oracle of Catequil, a major ceremonial center in the northern highlands of Peru that was in use from ca. 400-1555 C.E.. This assemblage consists almost exclusively of informal lithic tools and these were produced in a very expedient manner. By studying both production and function, I show that important social and economic information can be discerned from studying informal and expedient chipped lithic assemblages.

Thesis/Dissertation by Jordan T Downey

This dissertation is an archaeological study of statecraft in the Virú Valley, Peru, during the E... more This dissertation is an archaeological study of statecraft in the Virú Valley, Peru, during the Early Intermediate Period (ca. 400 B.C. – A.D. 800). Virú was the subject of an influential research program in the 1940s (the Virú Valley Project), which produced important datasets for studying early complex societies in the region. But recent work has begun to upend many of the original conclusions, pointing to the need for a thorough review of the chronological foundation on which they rested, and calling for the re-analysis of ancient settlement patterns and infrastructure projects as proxies of the increasing centralization of authority during this key period of Andean prehistory.

The starting point for this research is Gordon Willey’s (1953) settlement pattern study and James Ford’s (1949) ceramic seriation—what I call the Ford-Willey sequence. These were seminal works but their conclusions are no longer entirely tenable. The first part of this dissertation re-analyses and updates Ford’s work. It is concluded that corporate and domestic ware ceramics are fundamentally different classes of object that developed along separate timescales and should not be seriated together, that the Virú Valley sequence shows far more continuity than the Ford-Willey sequence indicated, and that the period from ca. 400 B.C. – A.D. 750 should be considered a single cultural sequence—Virú—with an Early, Middle, and Late phase. This updated cultural sequence for Virú provides a more reliable scheme for dating settlement patterns than was previously available. The second part of this dissertation explores Early and Middle Virú statecraft by mapping sites using satellite photography and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) software. It is concluded that the valley was unified into a single polity with its capital at the Gallinazo Group during the Middle Virú Period, and that this polity sponsored a program of infrastructure building to materialize its power and to develop political authority over valley.

Appendices are available as supplementary files from http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/2687/. A kmz file of all sites is also available.

Chipped lithic artifacts represent an under-studied artifact class in the complex societies of th... more Chipped lithic artifacts represent an under-studied artifact class in the complex societies of the Peruvian Andes, and this thesis adds to the small body of literature regarding lithic technology in this area. A comprehensive analysis was conducted on a sample of the lithic assemblage recovered from four sites associated with the Oracle of Catequil, a sacred site of ancestor veneration and a place of pilgrimage located in San José de Porcón, Peru. The various sites were in use from ca. 400 C.E. to 1555 C.E. A chaîne opératoire framework guided this analysis which used an attribute analysis method to describe the assemblage and to determine patterns lithic production, while a low-power microscopic use-wear analysis was used to determine tool function. It is concluded that the assemblage represents a prime example of an informal, expedient lithic technology, in keeping with expectations for lithic use within complex, sedentary societies.

Conference Presentations by Jordan T Downey

The Salinar Period (400–200 B.C.) has long been considered a time of extensive warfare on the nor... more The Salinar Period (400–200 B.C.) has long been considered a time of extensive warfare on the north coast of Peru. In the Virú Valley, fortifications and defensible settlements were common during this period, and warfare is thought to decline in the subsequent Virú Period (200 B.C.–A.D. 600). While Virú Period settlements were commonly built in open and undefensible locations, a new type of monumental fortification, the Castillo, first appeared during this time. These structures clearly served a strategic purpose and were a potent symbol of power, but they also housed large towns with public spaces. Was warfare actually less common in the Virú Period compared to Salinar, or did the nature of warfare in the valley change? Using a GIS-based approach, I show that the valley did indeed experience less warfare in the Virú Period and hypothesize that the changing nature of fortified settlements in the Virú Period can be explained by the development of a strong, centralized authority that unified the valley command and ensured that warfare was not conducted within the valley itself.

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Paper to be submitted to a journal in the coming months.

Early states have been a hotbed of research in the Andean region in recent years, with much atten... more Early states have been a hotbed of research in the Andean region in recent years, with much attention going towards incipient and secondary states on the coast and highlands. On the north coast of Peru, archaeologists studying early states rely on valley-based cultural sequences that originated with the seminal work of Gordon R. Willey and James Ford in the 1940s. Working in the Virú Valley, Ford, Willey, and their colleagues were the first to develop a long-term cultural sequence for any north coast valley. Their work is largely preliminary and untested, and yet it has formed the basis for subsequent studies in other valleys while Virú itself has been largely overlooked. In this study, I revisit the cultural sequence developed by Ford and Willey, re-seriate the sites included in their work, and study the development of the Virú (Gallinazo) polity out of Puerto Morin (Salinar) society (ca. 150 B.C) using modern spatial analytical tools (GIS). While Willey’s hypothesis that the region’s earliest state developed during the Virú Period is still supported, I argue that archaeologists need to revisit the basic dating of cultural sequences for north coast valleys because these sequences still rely on many untested assumptions.

Seriation is the oldest dating method in archaeology and it continues to be very important for ar... more Seriation is the oldest dating method in archaeology and it continues to be very important for archaeological research despite the widespread use of more modern and precise absolute dating techniques. Absolute dating methods are expensive and require secure datable samples that are not available in all contexts, whereas seriation requires experience and a time commitment more than anything else. Seriation is particularly important for regional survey projects since excavation at multiple sites would be a very expensive and logistically challenging prospect. But such projects often rely on old regional chronologies that were ground-breaking when first published but have since been shown to contain significant errors and yet have never been updated. This is certainly the case on the north coast of Peru where ceramic sequences first developed in the 1930s and 1940s continue to be used without refinement to date sites and to establish supposed ethnic affinities. In this paper I re-examine James Ford’s seriation project in the Virú Valley--the first Andean regional ceramic chronology to include both domestic and corporate ware ceramics, and the basis of many other seriation projects--to propose a new chronology of Virú Valley sites. Furthermore, I argue that domestic and corporate ware styles were made for different purposes by different people and developed along independent timelines and cannot be integrated into a single ceramic sequence. Recognizing these as separate timelines will allow archaeologists to seriate sites--and by extension the communities they represent--with considerable nuance.

For decades north coast specialists worked within a paradigm that viewed the Moche as an expansio... more For decades north coast specialists worked within a paradigm that viewed the Moche as an expansionist state. Moche fine ware was regarded as a reliable indicator for dating this polity's imperialism over its neighbours, an idea that traces its roots to the Virú Valley Project of the 1940s. Extensive recent field research has led many to question this colonial model, however, and to propose other, more fragmented, geopolitical scenarios. This shift has both undermined the universal usefulness of using fine wares like Moche for building chronologies and constructing political histories, and also underscored the need for refined chronologies in each valley. This shift led us to question the accuracy of the original Virú Valley seriation and to develop a program of radiocarbon dating in Virú. In this paper we present results from this program that sheds light on the political histories and foreign policies of the Virú and Moche polities during the Early Intermediate Period.

Archaeologists frequently turn to settlement pattern studies to help interpret the archaeological... more Archaeologists frequently turn to settlement pattern studies to help interpret the archaeological record. These studies can be very useful for understanding many things about the past, including subsistence practices, trade and raw material use, and the social, political, and economic organization of a region. Most settlement pattern studies in the Andean region were conducted prior to the development of modern spatial analysis tools, namely GIS. On the whole, these studies are excellent and informative, but the data that can be extracted from them is limited by their non-digital mapping techniques. In this paper, I show the benefits of updating older settlement pattern studies using GIS. I use Gordon R. Willey's settlement pattern study of the Virú Valley as a base, and map Puerto Morin- and Virú-Period settlements onto this base. Beyond merely mapping settlements in a modern way, this study shows that the entire valley system was centrally-organized during the Virú Period, whereas it was more fragmented during the earlier Puerto Morin Period. This finding reinforces data showing that a powerful polity took control of the valley in the Virú Period.

A broad-spectrum analysis of ceramics and textiles from the Virú Valley reveals fascinating proce... more A broad-spectrum analysis of ceramics and textiles from the Virú Valley reveals fascinating processes of relational and material entanglement, allowing us to move beyond the ‘local-foreign’ dichotomy and to question earlier, essentialist, periodizations of the region. Focussing on contextual data from the Early Intermediate period (200 B.C. – A.D. 800), this paper highlights how shifting trade relations with neighbouring societies over the long term (Salinar, Moche, Recuay, Huari) has shaped luxury-object making, and how these, in turn, may have shaped how foreign affairs were conducted. This focus on the
entangled nature of object making also brings us to query the value of utilitarian and fancy ceramics and textiles as building blocks for archaeological chronologies.

The goal of this paper is to highlight the problems encountered in relocating and resurveying a s... more The goal of this paper is to highlight the problems encountered in relocating and resurveying a selected group of sites in the Virú Valley, using Gordon Willey's 1953 publication. This survey is the first step in a dissertation project focusing on the development of regional and temporal lithic traditions on the north coast of Peru. Despite successfully surveying fifteen sites over two weeks, the project was hampered by incongruities between the original maps and modern digital equipment, as well as by the current state of the landscape that has been significantly altered by agricultural development in recent decades. We will discuss the importance of surface survey and aerial photography from past and present sources in relation to our work, our solutions to the problems we encountered in the field, and our plans for additional survey work next field season.

vis-à-vis: Explorations in Anthropology, Jan 1, 2010

Appendices are available as supplementary files from http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/2687/. A kmz file of all sites is also available.

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Paper to be submitted to a journal in the coming months.