Antes

de
Orellana

Actas del
3er Encuentro Internacional
de Arqueología Amazónica

Stéphen Rostain
editor

3
© Instituto Francés de Estudios Andinos,
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Este volumen corresponde al tomo 37 de la Colección

“Actes & Mémoires de l’Institut Français d’Études Andines” (ISSN 1816-1278)

Antes de Orellana.
Actas del 3er Encuentro Internacional de Arqueología Amazónica

Stéphen Rostain editor

Edición: - Instituto Francés de Estudios Andinos

- Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales
- Embajada de EEUU

Diseño: Stéphen Rostain

Diagramación: Stéphen Rostain

ISBN: 978-9942-13-892-7

Impresión: Artes Gráficas Señal

Impreso en Quito, Ecuador, Mayo de 2014

4
 Simposio “En honor de Donald Lathrap y Betty Meggers”

Amazonian Ethnoarchaeology
and the Legacy of Donald Lathrap
James A. Zeidler

Colorado State University

Introduction Don Lathrap and the Interpretation of

Lowland South American Archaeology
Donald Lathrap’s influence on Amazonian
archaeology, past and present, has been both Let me say at the outset that my treatment
legendary and long-standing even if in today’s of this aspect of Lathrap’s work represents
research environment some of his ideas have but a small part of his career and intellectual
been considerably refined or even discarded contributions. For a more comprehensive
due to new data and new analytical perspectives biography of both his life and his career,
(see, for example, Heckenberger 2002; Neves I strongly recommend the insightful and
1999) (Figure 1). His temporal focus was usually definitive summary provided by my colleague
set to “deep time” on the order of millennia and fellow Lathrap student, Dr. Jose Oliver,
rather than centuries and his geographic gaze in 1991 shortly after Don’s untimely death the
typically ranged from the macro-regional to previous year (Oliver 1991).
the continental (e.g., Lathrap 1970a), and Don Lathrap’s early forays into
sometimes even inter-continental. Still he was “ethnoarchaeology” occurred before that term
always capable of attending to the minutiae of was even invented and recognized as a separate
complex archaeological excavations and that field of study. They began with his dissertation
attention was no less acute when he observed research in the late 1950’s and early 1960s
daily life among contemporary Amerinidan (Lathrap 1962) and his immersion in Shipibo-
groups such as the Shipibo-Conibo on the Conibo society in his archaeological study area
Central and Upper Ucayali River in eastern on the Ucayali River in the Upper Amazon.
Peru.
In this article, I briefly explore two aspects
of his Lathrap’s work that have had a lasting
effect on many of his students and followers:
ethnoarchaeology and the use of ethnographic
analogy. His pioneering ethnoarchaeological
insights among the Shipibo-Conibo peoples
have had a tremendous influence on the
archaeological study of ceramic production
as well as ceramic use and discard behavior
in Lowland South America. Furthermore,
much of his interpretive work in diverse
areas such as archaeological settlement plan,
domestic architecture, long-distance trade, and
iconography is infused with detailed analogies
gleaned from his encyclopedic knowledge
of Lowland South American ethnographies.
After reviewing the highlights of Lathrap’s
legacy, I then show how ethnoarchaeological
research derived from an Amazonian context
has been productively applied in Lathrap’s
archaeological investigations in the tropical
lowlands of coastal Ecuador, specifically at the Figure 1. Donald W. Lathrap, 1927-1990
Early Formative Valdivia site of Real Alto. (Photograph by David Minor)

61
Back then, very little literature existed on the
idea of archaeologists studying living peoples
for the purpose of gaining insights on the
formation of the archaeological record, and
the primary reference was a 1956 article by
Maxine Kleindienst and Patty Jo Watson on
what they termed action archaeology (Kleindienst
and Watson 1956). But for Don, this type
of endeavor was a “no-brainer” (in today’s
parlance) and was simply part of the research
context in which he was working. He did not
theorize about it nor did he attempt to give it
a name. It was both a logical and an immediate
way to go about interpreting the archaeological
record, and as Oliver (1991:11) has noted, his
research program in the Ucayali “produced
some of the earliest ethnoarchaeological
reports in lowland South America,” (e.g.,
Lathrap 1969, 1970b, 1983; DeBoer and
Lathrap 1970; DeBoer 1974). Moreover, he
instilled an interest in ethnoarchaeology in
several cohort groups of his graduate students,
resulting in a series of South American
archaeology dissertations throughout
the 1970s and 1980s that incorporated
ethnoarchaeological research. Many of these
former students continued publishing on these
topics in subsequent decades (see, for example,
DeBoer 1991; Raymond et al. 1995; Roe 1995).
Meanwhile, ethnoarchaeology finally came
into its own as a sub-field of archaeology by
1974 with publication of a volume of collected
papers entitled Ethnoarchaeology, co-edited by
Christopher Donnan and William Clewlow.
This was followed a few years later by two
widely read volumes of collected papers in 1978
(Gould 1978a) and 1979 (Kramer 1979), both
of which delved deeper into philosophical and
methodological issues in ethnoarchaeological
research and both of which presented
a very wide array of topics, themes, and
methodological approaches. This eclecticism,
both in topics and in methodological
approaches, still characterizes ethnoarchaeology
today and, as ethnoarchaeologist Nicholas
David (1992) has pointed out, at the forefront
of these differences are the processual
approaches espoused by Lewis Binford and
others pitted against post-processual approaches
characteristically associated with the work of
Ian Hodder, among others. This distinction,
of course, can be traced along a series of
related oppositions such as (a) “scientist”
versus “hermeneutic” analytical styles, (b) an
ultimate goal of finding universal cross-cultural
behavioral laws or law-like generalizations versus
62
discovering cultural patterning and meaning in
a given cultural context, and (c) a tendency to
apply quantitative statistical methods versus a
reliance on qualitative and contextual methods
of research. This should not be surprising since
the scope of ethnoarchaeological research is
simply a reflection of the theoretical diversity
and topical eclecticism found in contemporary
archaeology generally (see for example, Hodder
[2001], Preucel and Hodder [1996], and Trigger
[1989], among others).
While Don Lathrap did not verbally identify
his work with one camp or the other, he always
steered clear of arguing for behavioral laws of
any kind, and most would agree that the body
of his work in ethnoarchaeology, as well as
his judicious use of ethnographic analogy, fell
squarely in the camp of the post-processualists
even before this approach had a name. His
analytical style was always hermeneutic and
was concerned with cultural patterning and
the search for meaning in specific cultural
contexts. Furthermore, with respect to
Jerimy Cunningham’s (2003) discussion
of various “roles” of ethnoarchaeological
research, of the four he mentions,1 Lathrap’s
work clearly conforms to numbers 3 and 4:
ethnoarchaeology as a form of “interpretive
discovery” and ethnoarchaeology “aimed at
raising analogical consciousness.” In fact, Don
was an absolute master at the latter role, as
anyone familiar with his lecture style can affirm
(see Oliver 1991).
Nicholas David (1992: Fig.1; see also David and
Kramer 2001) has developed a useful diagram
for understanding “the cultural domain and
its relationship to interpretive approaches
and analytical styles” in ethnoarchaeology
(Figure 2) and it can also be used to illustrate
Don Lathrap’s place in this scheme (see text
and boxes in red). As mentioned, Lathrap
was firmly in the “hermeneutic” camp as
far as analytical styles went and his areas of
topical interest ranged from the Phenomenal
Order containing Technical activities (ceramic
manufacture and discard behavior) to Social
activities (settlement patterns and site plans) to
the Ideational Order where iconography, art style,
and symbolism were of paramount importance
in his thinking, his “comfort zone,” if you will.
His insights derived from his
ethnoarchaeological research and his
prodigious use of well-reasoned ethnographic
analogies can be found threaded through
virtually all of his writings and here I would
highlight three works dating to the first half
of the 1970s (Lathrap 1970, 1973, 1975), an
extremely productive period in Don’s career as
he moved his research focus from Amazonian
Peru and began a large archaeological project at
the Early Formative Valdivia site of Real Alto
on the coast of Guayas Province, Ecuador. The
Upper Amazon (1970) is his tour de force summary
of cultural development and population
movements in prehistoric Amazonia with
particular emphasis on the results of his own
long-term archaeological and ethnographic
research program on the cultural history of
the Ucayali River in the Peruvian montaña.
This book provided a powerful alternative
model for cultural development in the
Amazon Basin to that previously proposed by
Meggers and Evans and remains a landmark
in Amazonian archaeology today. The second
work, his article entitled “Gifts of the Cayman:
Some Thoughts on the Subsistence Basis of
Chavín” (1973), represents a key publication
in his varied interpretations of Early Horizon
iconography of the highland Chavín culture
from the perspective of the Tropical Forest
cultures of the Peruvian montaña. It is also
noteworthy for his articulation of a simple,
yet elegant, tripartite methodology for the
analysis of meaning in religious art, including
the formal, the mythic, and the structural aspects
(see Roe 1995 for a masterful elaboration of
that approach). And finally, his text for the
museum catalog Ancient Ecuador: Culture, Clay
and Creativity, 3000 – 300 B.C., dictated almost
verbatim to a transcriber over the course of
two days, offers Don’s interpretive vision
for the Formative Period cultures of coastal
Ecuador (Valdivia, Machalilla, and Chorrera),
again viewed through the lens of Amazonian
Tropical Forest Culture.
Two points stand out in these works. First,
they nicely incorporate Don’s thinking
on all three levels of the cultural domain
identified in Nic David’s chart (Figure 2)—the
Technological, the Social, and the Ideational—
as well as demonstrate his careful application of
ethnoarchaeological insights and ethnographic
analogies. The second point has to do with
one of the more curious aspects of Don’s
contributions to South American archaeology
and that is his role in providing a seemingly
ever-present counterpoint to the research and
writings of Betty Meggers and Clifford Evans,
both in Amazonia and in coastal Ecuador.
Out of all of these writings and ruminations
on South American prehistory, if I were
asked to pick Don’s most important legacy
63
to ethnoarchaeology specifically, and to
archaeological method, more generally, I
would suggest that it was the unique form of
modal ceramic analysis that he pioneered in his
dissertation research at Yarinacocha on the
Ucayali River (Lathrap 1962, 1969, 1970b,
and 1983) and prominently displayed in the
DeBoer and Lathrap (1979) article on “the
making and breaking of Shipibo-Conibo
pottery.” He instilled this approach in all of
his students, several of whom continued to
publish ceramic studies and analyses of art style
using this method (see especially Raymond
1995; Raymond et al. 1975; Roe 1995). It has
since been introduced to new generations of
students working throughout Latin America,
the results of which have turned out to be a
significant counterpoint to the Type-Variety
ceramic classification method and Fordian
seriation with “battle-ship curves” favored
by Meggers and Evans, but which Lathrap
abhorred as being largely useless analytical
tools for archaeological interpretation. It is
noteworthy that ethnoarchaeologists Nicholas
David and Carol Kramer open their influential
2001 volume on ethnoarchaeology with a small
tribute to this 1979 study as an exemplary case
of “ethnoarchaeology in action” (David and
Kramer 2001:2-4).
Ethnoarchaeology and the Domestic House
Floor: From Pechiche to Pumpuentza and
Back Again
I turn now to another ethnoarchaeological
case study from South America also inspired
by Don Lathrap’s vision, but in this case on
the coast of Guayas Province in southwestern
Ecuador at the Early Formative Period Valdivia
site of Real Alto near the hamlet of Pechiche.
The site was discovered by Ecuadorian
archaeologist and fellow Lathrap student Dr.
Jorge G. Marcos in 1972 and turned out to be
a large Valdivia site (~12.4 ha) representing all
but one of the 8 ceramic phases of the Valdivia
ceramic sequence (Lathrap et al. 1975; Lathrap
et al. 1977). In 1974, Lathrap received a National
Science Foundation grant to conduct extensive
excavations at Real Alto for a 12-month period,
and that Fall semester of 1974, Lathrap, Marcos,
myself, and Deborah Pearsall established
residency in the fishing village of El Real to
begin the year-long campaign of fieldwork2. As
soon as we initiated our excavations in Trench
A at the far southwestern end of the site, we
struck archaeological “gold” in the form of
a complete floor plan of a domestic dwelling
(Figure 3a) with deep, intact floor deposits
dating to Valdivia Phase 3 (2800 -2400 BC).
Numerous other domestic house structures
(Zeidler 1984) and ritual structures (Marcos
1988a, 1988b) were discovered, mapped, and
at least partially excavated in the succeeding
months and artifact recovery was carried out
through careful excavation and screening of
floor fill in 1 x 1m units and 10cm deep units,
or where sediments were unconsolidated,
through piece-plotting of individual artifacts in
situ followed by their removal in 1 x 1m x 10cm
units (Figure 3b). Separate sediment samples
were taken from each one of these units
and any internal features that were excavated
so that they could be processed through
flotation analysis and examined for charred
macrobotanical remains as well as microscopic
opal phytoliths and starch grains by Deborah
Pearsall (1988).
These excavation results presented an
attractive opportunity to reconstruct activity
areas and the internal organization and use of
household space and they formed the basis of
my doctoral dissertation (Zeidler 1984). They
also presented an attractive opportunity for
comparative ethnoarchaeological research on
household spatial organization and artifact
discard behavior in “living” house floors of
contemporary Amerindian societies, and it was
Don Lathrap who encouraged me to pursue
this additional field research even though we
both knew it would prolong my dissertation
Figure 4. Lateral view of Tsamirku’s house in Pumpuenzta (Morona-Santiago Province, Ecuador, July, 1977. Diagram above
house shows household composition. The male area (tankamash) and female area (ekent) of house are shown in red text
64
writing by another year (at least). It was also
Don that suggested that the dwellings (jea) of
the Jivaroan-speaking Shuar and/or Achuar
groups of Amazonian Ecuador would be
suitable analogues for comparative study.
By 1976, I was in contact with ethnologist
Michael Harner, then of the New School for
Social Research, who had recently published
his well-known monograph on Shuar culture
(Harner 1972), as well as ethnologist Norman
Whitten of the University of Illinois who
had been working with the Canelos Quichua
peoples in the Ecuadorian Amazon, to discuss
suitable research localities. It was through them
that I was later able to contact ethnologist
Pita Kelekna (then at the University of New
Mexico), who was conducting dissertation
research among the Achuar and she suggested
some of the Achuar settlements of her study
area as possible locations where I could
conduct my research. At that time, Salesian
missionaries had just published a brief booklet
on Achuar houses (Bolla and Rovere 1977)
and ethnologist Phillippe Descola was also
working in the Achuar territory at this time but,
regrettably, our paths never crossed until we
finally met at this EIAA conference in Quito
some 36 years later. His subsequent writings
(e.g., 1996a, 1996b) have nevertheless been of
tremendous value as I pondered the nature of
Achuar domestic space over the years.
In June of 1977, with the assistance of the
Salesian missionaries in Taisha, I was able to
arrange for a flight to the Achuar settlement
of Pumpuentza near the Makuma River and
spent the next three and a half months there
examining Achuar household space and artifact
discard behavior, principally in the household of
Tsamirku (see Bolla and Rovere 1977) (Figure
4). As with all Shuar and Achuar dwellings,
internal household space was rigidly separated
into a male area (tankamash) and a female area
(ekent), so they provided an intriguing field
laboratory for examining “gendered space”
and associated artifact discard behavior and
material deposition in house floor contexts.
Michael Schiffer’s (1972) flow models for
artifact discard and deposition were all the
rage in ethnoarchaeology at that time (see also
DeBoer and Lathrap 1979) and that scheme also
guided my research. Over several month’s time,
observations of artifact use and discard in the
gendered space of the Achuar house allowed
for real-time ethnographic documentation of
the archaeological formation processes that
Schiffer was describing in his flow diagrams.
Fixed features in the house interior such as
furniture, storage racks, multiple hearths, and
postholes were mapped much like the mapping
of cultural features in an archaeological site.
Next, a wide variety of material cultural items
was mapped in situ, including items resting
on the floor surface as well as items stored in
above-ground storage racks and shelves. Here
special attention was paid to the mapping of all
ceramic vessels found in the house at the time
of mapping including the five basic ceramic
vessel categories in Achuar culture, whether
these were in primary or secondary use.
These included the large chicha brewing jars
(muits), the cooking ollas (ichinkian), the chicha
drinking bowls or “beer mugs” (pininkias), the
food bowls (tachau), and a specialized cooking
vessel (yukunt) for brewing tea. Special note
was also made of how these different vessel
categories were used within household space,
how they were broken and discarded, and how
they were deposited into the floor deposits
of the house structure. For example, only the
drinking bowls and food bowls would have
been circulated from storage in the ekent sector
of the house into the tankamash sector when
in use for chicha drinking and meal serving,
and would thus have had a greater probability
of breakage, discard, and deposition in large
areas within the household space, whereas
the other vessel categories would have had a
greater propensity for breakage, discard, and
deposition only within the ekent sector in the
rear half of the house.
65
Different kinds of activity areas were identified
and mapped, generally categorized as either
“individual, multi-purpose activity areas”
(e.g., the household matriarch Chakukui’s
personal space at the back of the structure),
or “communal, task-specific activity areas”
such as the centralized chicha storage area in
the ekent sector of the house that was shared
by all of the adult females of the household.
Observations were made on sweeping and
cleaning habits as well as trampling behavior
that resulted in the incorporation of small
materials culture items into the floor matrix.
Differential deposition of refuse in floor
sediments across the house floor could also
be observed, both in actively inhabited houses
and in abandoned houses, and it was noted that
the female-associated ekent sectors consistently
demonstrated thicker depositions of floor
sediments, ash, and cultural refuse than the
male-associated tankamash sectors.
These ethnoarchaeological insights obtained
in Pumpuentza on the gendered use of
internal household space, artifact breakage
and discard behavior, and the differential
deposition of cultural refuse and its differential
accumulation in the floor deposits, all became
extremely useful analogues for returning to
Pechiche and analyzing the floor deposits of
the Valdivia dwellings at Real Alto (Zeidler
1983, 1984) (Figure 5). But in this case, the
analogies were “contrastive” (Gould 1978b)
rather than completely homologous. One
thing that became immediately clear is that the
Valdivia dwellings did not exhibit as rigid and
pronounced a gender separation in the use of
internal space as that evidenced among the
Shuar and Achuar peoples. Nor did it conform
to a front-to-back segregation as in the Shuar/
Achuar case. Instead, we find a centralized
food preparation area centered between two
small hearths and a large area of burned
earth as a probable female-associated activity
area, with an area of probable male-oriented
activities around the periphery of this central
space. The right side of the house between the
central hearth and the wall also appears to have
been a major traffic area. At the very front of
the house was a partition wall that delineated
a separate activity area or personal space
(perhaps for adolescent males?). At the back,
we found a slightly burned area perhaps used
for small heating fires, and based on posthole
density and patterning (not shown in Figure 5),
it is suggested to be the private sleeping area
of the house.

Figure 5. Contextual reconstruction of household space in
Structure 1 at Real Alto (from Zeidler 1984:480)
Still, despite the lack of congruence in the
positioning of gendered space between
the Achuar case and the Valdivia case, the
depositional processes at play in the Achuar
house seem to hold for the Valdivia dwelling
in that the female-associated activity areas
exhibit a greater accumulation of very small
cultural material refuse when compared to
inferred male-associated activity areas and/or
areas of heavy foot traffic. In the Valdivia case,
this has been convincingly documented by
my colleague Peter Stahl in his analysis of the
distribution of faunal bone across the house
floor and vertically through the depositional
matrix (Stahl and Zeidler 1990). He was able to
demonstrate a distinct patterning of small bone
accumulation and deposition in the inferred
food preparation area and small pockets of
deposition at the very front of the house and
the very back of the house. But these denser
areas of bone were arrayed in a linear fashion
from the front to the back of the house on its
left half, with lighter deposition on the far left
side of the structure. In contrast, the inferred
traffic area on the right half of the structure
was relatively devoid of bone material. This
right-to-left contrast can be readily seen in the
vertical deposition of the house floor as well,
both in terms of bone frequency and weight
(Stahl and Zeidler 1990: Figure 11 and Table
2).
In summary, then, the Achuar study of
household space and artifact use and discard
proved to be a valuable exercise for purposes of
archaeological interpretation by analogy. One
major difference between the two structures
used in this study was the lack of an encircling
wall in the Achuar case (Tsamirku’s house)
in contrast to the inferred wall encircling the
66
Valdivia houses. It is likely that the more
constrained space of a smaller Achuar house
with an encircling wall would have provided a
better analogical study. Such a house existed in
Pumpuentza when I was there, but it belonged
to Chiriap, a well-known Achuar shaman, and
although I was invited in on occasion for social
visits, I was unable to conduct a thorough study
of the structure’s interior space.
Conclusion
In conclusion, then, I would argue that Don
Lathrap’s legacy to Amazonian ethnoarcheology
was foundational and prophetic, and his
influence on students and colleagues was
profound. It certainly was for me. I suspect
that he would be very pleased with the long-
term ethnoarchaeological research of Peter
Siegel in Guiana and Perú going back more
than 25 years (see, for example, Siegel and Roe
1986, Siegel 1990, this volume) as well as the
more recent work of Michael Heckenberger
and his students in the Upper Xingu Basin of
Brazil (see, for example, Heckenberger 2005,
2013, this volume; Schmidt this volume). Here
we must also cite the work of Irmhild Wüst
(1994) on eastern Bororo ethnoarchaeology
(see also Wüst and Barreto 1999). And he
would be gratified to know that this conference
included an entire session on the topic of
ethnoarchaeology (see papers by Siegel, Mans,
Salles Machado, and Silva, this volume).
Still, if he were to assess the status of
Amazonian ethnoarchaeology today, I suspect
he would say that its potential for enhancing
archaeological interpretation is far from fully
realized and its ethnographic richness still has
much to offer the inquiring archaeologist in a
wide range of cultural domains. In short, we
need more—not less—ethnoarchaeological
research.
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Lathrap, Donald W., 1973b, The Antiquity and
Importance of Long-Distance Trade
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 for Archaeological Interpretation.
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68
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1
Cunningham (2003) makes reference to
four roles for ethnoarchaeology, as follows: (1)
ethnoarchaeology aimed at identifying law-like
“translations” of the archaeological record; (2)
ethnoarchaeology that tests archaeologically
derived propositions; (3) ethnoarchaeology
as a form of “interpretive discovery”; and (4)
ethnoarchaeology aimed at “raising analogical
consciousness”.
2
We were subsequently joined by Jonathan E.
Damp, then a graduate student at the University
of Calgary, who focused his field research on
the early Valdivia occupations at Real Alto
dating to Phases 1 and 2 (Damp 1988).
 Amazonian Ethnoarchaeology and the Legacy of Donald Lathrap
James A. Zeidler

Figure 2. The cultural domain and it relationship to interpretive approaches and

analytical styles in ethnoarchaeology and ethnoanalogy. Donald Lathrap’s approach and contributions are highlighted in red.
Reproduced from Nicholas David (1992: 335)

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 Amazonian Ethnoarchaeology and the Legacy of Donald Lathrap
James A. Zeidler

Figure 3. (a) Structure 1 at Real Alto prior to systematic excavation of the floor deposits (April, 1974).
(b) Systematic excavation of 1 x 1 m grid squares in 10 cm levels in consolidated floor deposits in Structure 1

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