The devolution of mudbrick: ethnoarchaeology of abandoned earthen dwellings in the Bolivian Andes

This ethno-geoarchaeological study considers the formation of archaeological deposits through a study of abandoned contemporary mudbrick structures on the Taraco Peninsula, Bolivia. The study site was a domestic compound with rooms for different functions that had been abandoned for over 50 years. Structures were in variable states of decay in terms of roof cover, walling integrity and abandonment fills. Geoarchaeological samples were collected from intact and weathered adobes, earthen hearths, mud plaster, and flooring. Adobes and mud plaster were locally derived from topsoil containing archaeological sediments with added gravel and plant temper. This study found a relatively light anthropogenic signature for decayed earthen houses.Rising damp exfoliated mud plaster despite un-mortared cobble wall foundations. Organic matter from roof fall attracted thriving soil faunal populations, which furthered site destruction through bioturbation, particularly packed earth floors. Sediments derived from weathered mudbrick retained little evidence of prior use as construction materials unless exposed to heat. Sediments exposed to high-temperatures produced the most distinctive rubified features but were structurally compromised. Isolated thermal features from decomposed adobe would not be distinguishable from other hearth types. Adobes exposed to low or moderate heat had few distinctive features in thin section. Intact adobes and floors that were not exposed to heat have fewer pores than natural sediments and distinctive grass inclusions. These adobes disarticulated into loose sediments when exposed to weathering. Adobe fall outside the crumbling structures blended into topsoil.This study sheds light on functional attributes of pre-Columbian construction practices. Thick, fine-textured sterile flooring is commonly encountered in the study region. This would control bioturbation from roof fall in a previous occupation enabling reconstruction in abandoned dwellings. In contrast to the contemporary dwelling, prehistoric mortared cobble foundations would resist rising damp. Cobbles without mortar may relate more to design and construction than durability. These contrasts between contemporary and prehistory construction practices reflect differences in the design, construction costs and functional use-life of adobe structures.     

Book reviews

Ravi Arvind Palat (ed.). Pacific‐Asia and the Future of the World System. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. 1993. vii + 206 pp. $US55.00 (cloth).

Eric Jones, Lionel Frost and Colin White. Coming Full Circle: An Economic History of the Pacific Rim. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993. xv + 188 pp. $US49.95 (cloth), $US12.95 (paper).

Andrew MacIntyre (ed.). Business and Government in Industrialising Asia. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1994. xi + 312 pp. $29.95 (paper).

Michael C. Howard (ed.). Asia's Environmental Crisis. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993. ix + 293 pp. $44.95 (paper).

Richard W. Baker (ed.). The ANZUS States and Their Region. Regional Policies of Australia, New Zealand, and the United States. Westport, Conn.: Praeger Publishers, 1994. xiii + 228 pp. $US57.95.

Stephen Chee (ed.). Leadership and Security in Southeast Asia: Institutional Aspects. Singapore: ISEAS, 1991. xii + 187 pp. $US25.00 (cloth), $US17.00 (paper).

Gerald L. Curtis (ed.). Japan's Foreign Policy After the Cold War. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1993. xxvi + 382 pp. $US60.00 (cloth), $US22.50 (paper).

Taichi Sakaya. What is Japan? Contradictions and Transformations, trans. Steven Karpa. New York, Tokyo and London: Kodansha International, 1993. xxii + 312 pp. No price given.

Bill Brugger and Stephen Reglar. Politics, Economy and Society in Contemporary China. London: Macmillan, 1994. vii + 367 pp. $36.55 (paper).

Sung Chul Yang. The North and South Korean Political Systems: A Comparative Analysis. Boulder, CO: Westview/Seoul: Seoul Press, 1994. xiii + 983 pp. $US64.95 (cloth).

Mark L. Clifford. Troubled Tiger: Businessmen, Bureaucrats and Generals in South Korea. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1994. xiii + 357 pp. $US19.95 (paper).

Thongchai Winichakul. Siam Mapped. A History of the Geo‐Body of a Nation. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994. xvi + 228 pp. $US34.00 (cloth).

Derek Tribe. Feeding and Greening the World — The Role of International Agricultural Research. Wallingford: Centre for Agriculture and Biosciences International, 1994. xiii + 274 pp. $35.50 (paper).

Ernst Ulrich von Weizsacker. Earth Politics. London: Zed Books, 1984. xii + 234 pp. $US59.95 (cloth), $US25.00 (paper)

Neil Middleton, Phil O'Keefe and Sam Moyo. Tears of the Crocodile: From Rio to Reality in the Developing World. London: Pluto Press, 1993. xii+ 228 pp. $US66.50 (cloth), $US19.95 (paper).

Boris Kagarlitsky. The Disintegration of the Monolith, translated by Renfrey Clarke. London and New York: Verso, 1992. x + 169 pp. No price given.

George Schöpflin. Politics in Eastern Europe, 1945–1992. Oxford, UK and Cambridge, USA: Blackwell Publishers, 1993. viii + 327 pp. $39.95 (paper).

Andrei S. Markovits and Philip S. Gorski. The German Left: Red Green and Beyond. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993. xiii + 393 pp. $45.00 (paper).

Raymond L. Garthoff. The Great Transition: American‐Soviet Relations at the End of the Cold War. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1994. xiv + 834 pp. $US44.95 (cloth), $US14.95 (paper).

Richard N. Haass. Intervention: The Use of Military Force in the Post‐Cold War World. Washington, DC: The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1994. x + 258 pp. $US24.95 (cloth), $US12.95 (paper).

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The State of the World's Refugees: The Challenge of Protection. New York: Penguin Books, 1993. ix + 191 pp. $19.95 (paper).

Francis M. Deng. Protecting the Dispossessed: A Challenge for the International Community. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1993. xii + 175 pp. No price given.

Paul Wehr. Heidi Burgess and Guy Burgess (eds). Justice without Violence. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1994. ix + 300 pp. $US45.00 (cloth), $US18.95 (paper).     

New Research on the Late Prehistoric Coastal Polities of Northern Peru

Previously, the Chimú empire was thought to have dominated the north coast of Peru during the Late Intermediate period, virtually to the exclusion of other polities. However, new research on sites from this period has not only changed perspectives on the Chimú, but also shed light on two other important coastal polities: the Lambayeque/Sicán and the Casma, providing insights with the potential to reshape our understanding of the development of urbanism and the Andean state. This article presents a critical summary of recent literature, fieldwork, and discoveries. Analyses of these new data address a wide range of topics that can be loosely grouped into four major areas: complexity in political organization and the geopolitical landscape, variations in the urban environment, the intensification of trade and exchange, and dynamic expressions of religion and ideology. The latest interpretation of the north coast Late Intermediate period is a story of three major, competing polities that were eventually subsumed under one.     

Gendering the city: the lived experience of transforming cities,urban cultures and spaces of belonging

Debates centred on ‘planetary urbanisation’ have raised questions over the adequacy of existing theories and epistemologies to explain the quantitative and qualitative transformations of cities. However, this theorization of the urban has met with opposition from post-colonial and feminist researchers amongst others. The comparative, empirical research in this collection, from Bolivia, India and Turkey, highlights that the city remains an important analytical and concrete framework, demarcated by contingency and cultural change through which residents must navigate. In particular we focus on the specificity of women’s lives and their capacity to problematise universalist theory, documenting their interrogation of simplistic binaries such as modern/traditional; their innovative approaches to informal settlement, housing and markets; their production of urban knowledge in order to negotiate the city; and processes and practices of mobility, experimentation, risk taking and aspiration that contest or support a myriad of urban imaginaries. Whilst not rejecting the need for theories that allow comparative perspectives on cities, our conclusions underscore the importance of recognising the multiple logics that generate city space and urban cultures, and the consequent need to parochialise the empirical basis of theories that claim to be global in outreach.     

Hydraulic Analysis of a Self-Cleaning Drainage Outlet at the Hellenistic City of Priene

At the distal western end of a main drainage canal running along West Gate Street in the Hellenistic city of Priene, an unusual masonry outlet structure has been found. The housed structure contains a doubly curvilinear, contracting rectangular cross-section flow passageway that allows drainage water flow through the city perimeter wall. A computer model of the complexly-shaped drainage structure has been hydraulically analysed in order to determine the function of the curvilinear passageway. Results indicate that the internal shaping of the structure hydraulically conditions the flow to create multiple circulatory mixing flows that agitate and entrain debris in the outflow stream sufficient to “self-clean” the outlet, thus preventing clogging. Further calculations of flow free surface shapes at different flow rates indicate the maximum flow capacity that can be processed by the drainage system without overspillage to provide a lower-bound estimate of the steady-state water supply to the city. The design of a self-cleaning, continuous flow urban wastewater system implies that Greek city planners maintained a high level of awareness about the hygienic conditions needed to maintain the health of the populace. The Greek attitude toward technical refinements necessary to improve the quality of urban life could therefore not be better represented than in attention to detail related to water supply and waste water drainage systems as a key to improved life standards.     

Consequences of conquest? The analysis and interpretation of subadult trauma at Puruchuco-Huaquerones, Peru

This paper examines bioarchaeological evidence of violence and traumatic injury on subadult skeletal remains from two Late Horizon (A.D. 1470-1540) cemeteries within the archaeological zone of Puruchuco-Huaquerones, Peru. Here we present the frequency and types of traumatic lesions on the 242 subadults analyzed. We observed significant increases in the frequency of subadult trauma, particularly among the burials associated with Spanish Conquest. Specifically, we noted a statistically significant increase in the frequency of cranial trauma in a subsample of individuals from one of two cemeteries at the site, 57AS03. These perimortem cranial injuries suggest an intensification of violence and lethality that may have affected the children from this community. We then discuss the biocultural implications of this analysis within the context of Spanish invasion and conquest.