During the process of territorial expansion of the Incas, the road systems played an essential structural role by shaping a type of spatial continuity through built infrastructure, which started in the capital of Tawantinsuyu and spread to distant peripheries. Far from being considered as obstacles or inaccessible places, the vast Andean landscapes and their high mountains were the abode of deities, which shaped a symbolic and ideological territoriality with strong material and cultural presence in the landscapes. So far, a little more than two hundred mountains with archaeological evidence have been studied in the Andes and other neighboring mountain ranges. On fifteen of these mountains human offerings were made, and in many of them, ceremonial roads leading to the top of the peaks have been surveyed. We have previously referred to the paths of Mount Chañi and the Llullaillaco volcano. Here, we present an extensive list of mountains with roads in an attempt to establish some archaeological and spatial indicators of these particular paths, built in some of the most extreme environments in the world.

Jesús Maza and Andy Combey

This article presents a study of the hydraulic structures -known as dams- in the Jimbe River sub-basin of the headwaters of the Nepeña Valley (Ancash), based on systematic surveys carried out in that sector. This study allowed for recording 14 pre-Hispanic dams in three different sub-valleys. The morphological and spatial analysis of these hydraulic systems suggests differentiated management of water on the western side of the Cordillera Negra and provides evidence for a reassessment of land use strategies set up by Sierra people during the late pre-Hispanic Period.

This paper analyses the material attributes and discovery contexts of a set of rocks that were intervened and circulated during the first Millennium of the Christian Era in settlements of the locality of Anfama, southern end of Cumbres Calchaquíes. Archaeological studies have made it possible to identify the original settings where these pieces were used, to propose chronological relations, and to discuss their traditional categorization as rocks exclusively associated with the cult of ancestors. The results allow to state that the manufacture and circulation of these objects took place mostly during the first half of the first Millennium, within a context of emergence and consolidation of village life, and that they acted as ordering entities in household routines and relationships.

Pre-Hispanic production of metallurgical ceramics in Northwest Argentina has been a subject little discussed in traditional archaeometallurgical studies. Nevertheless, these ceramics, mainly molds and crucibles, were indispensable inputs of the most complex technology carried out by the pre-Hispanic societies of the area, as was the production of metallic goods. Although they have been analyzed in certain specific aspects, little research has been done on the characterization of their ceramic fabric. In this paper, we present an analysis of metallurgical ceramics from archaeological sites in the area through petrographic procedures. The sample, composed of ten specimens, contains ceramics from the Valliserrana area, covering from the province of Jujuy up to the province of San Juan. The analysis is enriched with descriptions of objects from other regions of Northwest Argentina as well as from the North of Chile. In this first stage towards a regional comparison, the results indicate that, at a regional level, the morphology of metallurgical ceramics shows an important similarity in forms and proportions, while the ceramic petrography accounts for a wide range of variability in terms of size and nature of inclusions, degree of porosity, and percentage of matrix, reflecting technological decisions, which were influenced by local geology and constrained by use as production inputs.