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Jisk'a Iru Muqu ( Aymara, ''jisk'a'' small, ''iru'' a type of grass, ''(Festuca orthophylla)'', ''muqu'' knot; joint of a part of the
reed Reed or Reeds may refer to: Science, technology, biology, and medicine * Reed bird (disambiguation) * Reed pen, writing implement in use since ancient times * Reed (plant), one of several tall, grass-like wetland plants of the order Poales * Re ...
, also spelled ''Jiskairumoko, Jisk'airumoko'') is a
pre-Columbian In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era spans from the original settlement of North and South America in the Upper Paleolithic period through European colonization, which began with Christopher Columbus's voyage of 1492. Usually, ...
archaeological site south-east of
Puno Puno ( Aymara and qu, Punu) is a city in southeastern Peru, located on the shore of Lake Titicaca. It is the capital city of the Puno Region and the Puno Province with a population of approximately 140,839 (2015 estimate). The city was establ ...
,
Peru , image_flag = Flag of Peru.svg , image_coat = Escudo nacional del Perú.svg , other_symbol = Great Seal of the State , other_symbol_type = Seal (emblem), National seal , national_motto = "Fi ...
. The site lies in the mountains at elevation 4,115 meters (13,500 feet), in the Aymara community of Jachacachi, adjacent to the Ilave River drainage, of the Lake Titicaca Basin, Peru. Occupation of Jisk'a Iru Muqu spans from the Late
Archaic Archaic is a period of time preceding a designated classical period, or something from an older period of time that is also not found or used currently: *List of archaeological periods **Archaic Sumerian language, spoken between 31st - 26th cent ...
to the Formative.


Research

The site was first formally recorded by
Mark Aldenderfer Mark S. Aldenderfer (born 1950) is an American anthropologist and archaeologist. He is the MacArthur Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Merced where he was previously the Dean of the School of Social Sciences, Humanities, a ...
in 1994, during a pedestrian survey of the Ilave River. The first
excavations In archaeology, excavation is the exposure, processing and recording of archaeological remains. An excavation site or "dig" is the area being studied. These locations range from one to several areas at a time during a project and can be condu ...
at the site were conducted in 1995.Aldenderfer and de la Vega (1996) Jisk'a Iru Muqu is the first Archaic open-air site excavated in the Lake Titicaca Basin. Under the direction of Aldenderfer, a team from
University of California, Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduates and 2,983 graduate students enrolled in 2021–2022. It is part of the ...
, including Nathan Craig and Nicholas Tripcevich, conducted additional excavations at the site during the austral winters of 1999-2004. In-field
geographic information system A geographic information system (GIS) is a type of database containing geographic data (that is, descriptions of phenomena for which location is relevant), combined with software tools for managing, analyzing, and visualizing those data. In a ...
(GIS) methods were
used in recording exposed surfaces
Craig (2000)Craig and Aldenderfer (2003)Craig (2002) The site was plowed by tractor in 2005.


Results and interpretations

Jisk'a Iru Muqu plays a significant role in understanding the pre-Columbian history of Andean Peru due to: early prestige objects, architectural transitions, variation in structure internal organization, ritual preparation embedded in domestic use areas, and the formation of regular trade routes.


Early prestige objects

Nine gold beads were found in the grave of an older adult and a juvenile buried adjacent to a Terminal Archaic pit house.Aldenderfer et al. 2008 Charcoal recovered from the burial dates the gold beads to 2155-1936 cal BC, which makes them the earliest known gold artifacts in the Americas. The burial of the objects with the deceased implies the wealth and prestige of its owner through the disposal and remove from display and recirculation. The find bolsters the concept that metalworking developed from multiple independent technologies that were focused on native materials.Lechtman (1984)


Architectural transitions

Domestic architecture exposed during excavation is the earliest evidence of reduced residential mobility in the region. Three pithouses, a semisubterranean structure, and two above ground structures were exposed during excavation. Twenty-five
radiocarbon dates Radiocarbon dating (also referred to as carbon dating or carbon-14 dating) is a method for determining the age of an object containing organic material by using the properties of radiocarbon, a radioactive isotope of carbon. The method was dev ...
show that pithouses occurred early (ca. 3200 cal BC), the semisubterranean structure is intermediate, and above ground prepared floor structures occurred later (ca. 1400 cal BC).Craig (2005) This change in residential structures from pithouses to above ground structures is another example of a classic architectural transition observed in many parts of the world.Flannery (1972)Flannery (2002) Image:Pithouse1.jpg, Pithouse 1 Image:SemiSubterranean1.jpg, Semi Subterranean Structure 1 Image:Rectangular1.jpg, Rectangular Structure 1


Organization of space

The patterns of genetic relatedness and resource sharing are important variables for understanding the social structure of a village.Murdock (1949)Ember (1975)Ember (1983)Ember and Ember 1971Weissner (2002)Hawkes (1983)Hawkes (1991)Hawkes (1992)Hawkes(1993)Maschner (1996) The spacing between structures and the organization of space within structures served as proxies to address these social questions. Ethnoarchaeological research shows that among use labor of subsistence based economies, as space between structures increases there is a decrease in the level of genetic relatednessGarget and Hayden (1991)Gould and Yellen (1987) and sharingBrooks et al. (1984)Kaplan et al. (1984)O'Connell et al. (1991) between occupants of the structures. Among mobile peoples, increased formality in the internal organization of space tends to be correlated with longer term residential occupations.Binford 1982Kelly (1992) The location of small storage facilities within houses suggests that resource distribution takes place at the household level, whereas large and formalized exterior storage facilities imply that resource distribution is mediated or managed by an authority figure. The excavators of Jiskairumoko defined three types of structures each of which showed differences in the spacing between like structure, the internal organization of space, and storage. These variations imply shifts in social relations during the occupation of the site. Pithouses 1-3 had the lowest distance between structures, this implies "high relatedness" and sharing between structure occupants. These pithouses all contained small yet numerous internal alcoves. These were interpreted as storage facilities. The numerous small alcoves suggest that storage was limited, and that resource distribution was a household affair that was not mediated by an individual with supra-household authority like a
head A head is the part of an organism which usually includes the ears, brain, forehead, cheeks, chin, eyes, nose, and mouth, each of which aid in various sensory functions such as sight, hearing, smell, and taste. Some very simple animals may no ...
man. None of the pithouses contained kitchen rocks. (Large stones used to support containers or serving as work surfaces.Aldenderfer (1998)) Semi-Subterranean structures were spaced considerably further apart. This suggests a decline in the level of genetic relatedness between structure occupants and indicates that sharing between structure occupants also declined. Storage in the deepest occupational levels of Semi-subterranean Structure 1 was composed of a single large pit in the floor. These lower occupational layers were not associated with kitchen rocks. Internal storage features were not present in later occupational levels of Semi-Subterranean Structure 1. However, kitchen rocks were used during the later occupations of Semi-Subterranean Structure 1. Rectangular Structures were spaced further apart than the pithouses, but were not spaced as far apart as Semi-Subterranean structures. No recognizable internal storage features were encountered in either Rectangular Structure 1 or 2. This implies that either storage was practiced in a form that did not leave a recognizable archaeological signature, or all storage was exterior. Both of the Rectangular Structures contained kitchen rocks. At the Archaic village of Jiskairumoko, it appears that over time genetic relatedness and sharing decreased. Storage appears to have become more centralized within structures and the use of internal storage pits was eventually abandoned. About this same time the occupants of the structures began using kitchen rocks. This suggests that processing or serving activities took on greater importance within residential architecture.


Ritual preparations

In the sense used by
Émile Durkheim David Émile Durkheim ( or ; 15 April 1858 – 15 November 1917) was a French sociologist. Durkheim formally established the academic discipline of sociology and is commonly cited as one of the principal architects of modern social science, al ...
, the Late and Terminal Archaic residents of Jiskairumoko exhibited a simple cultural pattern. This does not imply the residents were simple, it indicates that components of culture (
economic An economy is an area of the production, distribution and trade, as well as consumption of goods and services. In general, it is defined as a social domain that emphasize the practices, discourses, and material expressions associated with t ...
practices,
political Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that studi ...
structures, spiritual practice) were embedded rather than strongly differentiated. At Jiskairumoko, the earliest pithouse, radiocarbon dated to ca. 3200 cal BC, appears to have served as a place of ritual preparation. Evidence for this comes in the form of thermal processing of
ochre Ochre ( ; , ), or ocher in American English, is a natural clay earth pigment, a mixture of ferric oxide and varying amounts of clay and sand. It ranges in colour from yellow to deep orange or brown. It is also the name of the colours produce ...
for use as a mineral
pigment A pigment is a colored material that is completely or nearly insoluble in water. In contrast, dyes are typically soluble, at least at some stage in their use. Generally dyes are often organic compounds whereas pigments are often inorganic comp ...
.Craig et al. 2006) At Jiskairumoko, these same ochre pigments were found sprinkled at the base of graves found outside some of the other pithousesPopelka-Filcoff et al. (in press) While rituals appear to have taken place within the site's oldest pithouse, regular domestic activities were also performed in this dwelling. Therefore, ritual and domestic activities were embedded spatially within the same architecture. During later periods of time in Andean Pre-Columbian history cultures became much more complex, and often ritual architecture is separated from domestic structures.


Development of regular trade routes

Excavations at Jiskairumoko recovered sixty eight obsidian tools. Elemental characterization of these fingers was performed by
X-ray fluorescence X-ray fluorescence (XRF) is the emission of characteristic "secondary" (or fluorescent) X-rays from a material that has been excited by being bombarded with high-energy X-rays or gamma rays. The phenomenon is widely used for elemental analysis ...
(XRF), at th
Berkeley XRF laboratory
ref name="Shackley_et_al2004">Shackley et al. (2004)
under the direction of Steven Shackley and by portable XRF by Jeff Speakman and Rachel Popelka-Filcoff from th
Archaeometry Laboratory
at th
University of Missouri Research Reactor
MURR.Craig et al. in press This research constitutes the largest sourcing program of Andean Archaic Period obsidian. Results eyes that all but two of the 68 obsidian fingers (97%) could be assigned to the Chivay obsidian source. The other two artifacts were assigned to the Alca obsidian source. Both sources are located in the
Arequipa Arequipa (; Aymara and qu, Ariqipa) is a city and capital of province and the eponymous department of Peru. It is the seat of the Constitutional Court of Peru and often dubbed the "legal capital of Peru". It is the second most populated cit ...
Region. The Chivay obsidian source is linked to the
Colca Canyon The Colca Canyon is a canyon of the Colca River in southern Peru, located about northwest of Arequipa. With a depth of about 1000 - 2000 m (3300 - 6600 ft) (whereas bottom is at cca 2000 m and edges are at 3000 - 4000 metres above the sea le ...
, and the Alca obsidian source is located at the
Cotahuasi Cotahuasi is a town in Southern Peru, capital of the province La Unión in the region of Arequipa Arequipa (; Aymara and qu, Ariqipa) is a city and capital of province and the eponymous department of Peru. It is the seat of the Constituti ...
Valley.


Archaeobotany

The remains of potato and ''
Phaseolus ''Phaseolus'' (bean, wild bean) is a genus of herbaceous to woody annual and perennial vines in the family Fabaceae containing about 70 plant species, all native to the Americas, primarily Mesoamerica. It is one of the most economically import ...
'' were identified from starch grains recovered from grinding tools found at the site.


See also

*
Excavation Excavation may refer to: * Excavation (archaeology) * Excavation (medicine) * ''Excavation'' (The Haxan Cloak album), 2013 * ''Excavation'' (Ben Monder album), 2000 * ''Excavation'' (novel), a 2000 novel by James Rollins * '' Excavation: A Memo ...
* GIS in archaeology * Soro Mik'aya Patjxa


Notes


References

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * {{Archaeological sites in Peru Archaeological sites in Peru History of Peru Former populated places in Peru Archaeological sites in Puno Region Andean preceramic High-altitude archaeology