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Cerrillos is an Early to Middle Paracas civic-ceremonial site located in the upper Ica Valley of Perú. The site is known for its finely plastered adobe architecture, beautifully decorated ceramics, and complex textiles, many of which are decorated with camelid hair. Cerrillos was located in a strategically important place where the mountains meet the coastal desert and the Ica River bends south, a likely intersection in a road system that connected Cerrillos to contemporary sites in the Paracas region and beyond. This paper focuses on several early textiles, ceramics, and other artifacts, including ceramic palettes used for gold working and wooden earspools, that suggest that Cerrillos was involved in a cultural phenomenon or interaction sphere that linked sites as far away was Chavín de Huántar through the interchange of goods, beliefs, and practices. The paper presents a complete description of the textiles excavated at Cerrillos between 1999 and 2002, focusing on two fabric fragments with images of the Staff Deity and one with an abstract Chavín-like design. The ceramics discussed in the text demonstrate the wide variety of styles found at Cerrillos, including some that resemble the Janabarriu of Chavín de Huántar and several others that are either not Paracas or an Early Paracas style that has never been previously described. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the information gathered during the first season of the Kushipampa Archeological Project. By comparison with available data from coetaneal sites, this paper presents a preliminary identification of a new regional tradition emerging at the end of the Late Formative Period. This tradition was characterized by the use of a distinctive ceramic assemblage and architectural style at sites located mainly in the upper section of the Nepeña valley. After the decline of an economic system related to the Chavín cult, at 500 BC, a group of communities, including the one at Kushipampa, managed to create alternate exchange networks to replace the former system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The basic principles of relative and absolute chronology are presented in this introduction as they form the foundation upon which the collection of papers, published in the present and subsequent issue of the Bulletin, base their chronological and cultural schemes. he goal here is to compare and contrast these principles with common misunderstandings and misuses. The need for empirical data for the construction of chronological sequences is stressed in order to place them within a single periodification scheme. Another topic of concern is a coherent terminology rather than the use of different terms with different meanings. Lastly, the papers in these two issues are focused on «The Formative Period: Recent Approaches and Evidence&raquo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on matters of interpretation of early culture contact between northern cultures and coeval southern coastal evidence in a historical perspective starting with Tello. Due to problems related to terminology and methodology combined with incomplete presentation of the data recovered from excavation these interpretations are often contradictory and unsatisfying. Recent field work in the Río Grande de Nazca valley serves to discuss problems related to chronology, culture contact and the forming of new interaction spheres. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Paracas (900 BC-AD 1) of south coastal Peru are widely recognized for ceramics bearing patterned designs created from incised clay that was often post-fire painted. Analyses of containers, effigies, figurines and musical instruments recovered intact in tombs, have centered largely on temporal and iconographic concerns, and in evaluating prestige. A number of archaeological contexts offer an alternative view of ceramics and their role in public and domestic spheres. In this paper, the role of ceramics in ritual offerings is discussed and analyzed in tandem with the other forms and mediums they accompany. The contexts for these offerings differ from those of funerary ritual in which whole vessels are placed with the dead. These analyses indicate that the end cycle of ceramics is diverse, that their substance is valued in whole and fragmentary form, and that their spatial orientation is significant. Insights are offered into how ceramics as substances interact and complement other materials in offerings and how this bears upon our interpretation of specific iconographies and design symbols and their respective meanings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the general problem of the Formative Period and presents a proposal for subdivision based upon characterizations of material cultures and their distributions as interaction spheres and traditions. These reflect significant changes that may be related to changes in the mechanisms of language dispersal. It hypothesizes that a pre-protomochica was spoken in northern Perú; that multilingualism prevailed at the site of Chavín site; and that different languages existed in the north-central, central and south-central highlands, perhaps dominated by a pre-protoquechua. In other areas possible links between Formative Period styles and linguistics remain unknown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main objective of this paper is to construct a site chronology of the Campanayuq Rumi site which is a large ceremonial center of the Formative Period located in the Peruvian south-central highlands. For this purpose, 12 radiocarbon dates obtained from our excavations will be considered in combination with the data of both architectural and ceramic sequences of the site. Through the comprehensive interpretation of these data, we will present a new site chronology of the Campanayuq Rumi site. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Apart from the materials and archaeological contexts excavated at Hacha in the Acarí Valley, until now evidence for the Initial Period along the southern coast of Perú were limited to some isolated findings that lacked well-defined contexts, e.g. from sites like Erizo in the Ica Valley, Mastodonte in the pampa of Villacurí (Ica) and Disco Verde on the Paracas Peninsula. There were no reported findings from the Río Grande of Nasca region. Only very recently, with the development of the Nasca-Palpa Archaeological Project, were sites and evidence for the Initial Period in the Palpa Valleys encountered. These provide new insights into and new perspectives on the process of cultural development for this part of the south coast. In this paper we present and discuss the numerous finds and findings of the Initial Period that have been recovered in the excavations at Pernil Alto, which include architectural structures, ceramics and other associated materials. The analysis of these findings indicates that already in this moment in time the conditions for the stable and permanent development of the populations settling in the Río Grande drainage were given. Twenty radiocarbon dates confirm the chronological position of the contexts excavated in Pernil Alto. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we present the existence of Formative Period settlements and archaeological materials in a ravine near to the city of Lima, capital of Perú. Through comparatives analysis we have related these elements with data from others areas of Lima (Ancón, Huachipa, Tablada de Lurín, etc.), and we have reconstructed the early occupational landscape in this area of the Rímac Valley, and the use of the space and the settlement area in the lower zone that included different structures and a large worship zone that included a sanctuary in the upper ground. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Cerro Blanco site, located in the lower Nepeña Valley, is a ceremonial center of the Formative Period, which has been considered, without adequate substantiating data, to have been influenced by the Chavín culture. In this brief paper, a local chronology, complemented with data from the nearby site of Huaca Partida, will be presented in an attempt to establish Cerro Blanco within an interregional chronological frame. On the basis of the new archaeological evidence, this broad synchronic comparison suggests an episode of intensive trans-regional interaction. In this context, Cerro Blanco emerges as an essential site for understanding social dynamics during the Andean Formative Period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although not all of the papers in the two Boletín volumes focus explicitly on the themes of the V Symposium, Lima 2006 --emerging order, power, and identity-- several concluding trends can be drawn and discussed across South America and beyond. The attempt is to point out tendencies that cut across different regional and international contexts in order to understand the wider setting of this emergence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]