Magee, Shelby, "How do I get to Vilcashuaman? Least cost path analyses of the Chinchaysuyu r... more Magee, Shelby, "How do I get to Vilcashuaman? Least cost path analyses of the Chinchaysuyu road from Cuzco to Vilcashuaman" (2015). Undergraduate Honors Theses. Paper 934. Abstract iii 1 Introduction 1 2 Inka History and Culture 14 3 Archaeology of Roads 32 4 Spatial Analysis in Archaeology 53 5 Experiments with Least Cost Path Analysis 70 Bibliography 88 i LIST OF FIGURES
From the perspective of Central and South America, the peopling of the New World was a complex pr... more From the perspective of Central and South America, the peopling of the New World was a complex process lasting thousands of years and involving multiple waves of Pleistocene and early Holocene period immigrants entering into the neotropics. These Paleoindian colonists initially brought with them technologies developed for adaptation to environments and resources found in North America. As the ice age ended across the New World people adapted more generalized stone tools to exploit changing environments and resources. In the neotropics these changes would have been pronounced as patchy forests and grasslands gave way to broadleaf tropical forests. We document a late Pleistocene/early Holocene stone tool tradition from Belize, located in southern Mesoamerica. This represents the first endogenous Paleoindian stone tool technocomplex recovered from well dated stratigraphic contexts for Mesoamerica. Previously designated Lowe, these artifacts share multiple features with contemporary North and South American Paleoindian tool types. Once hafted, these bifaces appear to have served multiple functions for cutting, hooking, thrusting, or throwing. The tools were developed at a time of technological regionalization reflecting the diverse demands of a period of pronounced environmental change and population movement. Combined stratigraphic, technological, and population paleogenetic data suggests that there were strong ties between lowland neotropic regions at the onset of the Holocene.
How do I get to Vilcashuaman? Least cost path analyses of the Chinchaysuyu road from Cuzco to Vilcashuaman
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and remote sensing, archaeology, and ethnohistory are used t... more Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and remote sensing, archaeology, and ethnohistory are used to study the Cuzco to Vilcashuaman portion of the Chinchaysuyu Inka Road. The purpose of this analysis is to determine whether the Chinchaysuyu road from Cuzco to Vilcashuaman was built following the economic principles of Least Cost Path Analysis (LCA) or if it was built to accommodate locations of cultural significance. Drawing on the criteria presented by Rademaker et al. 2012; White (2012); and Howey (2007), I created several LCAs in order to find the most predictive Least Cost Path (LCP). Research has led me to believe that the location of Inka roads was influenced by factors that cannot be well modeled by a LCA constrained to solely the ecological factors of the environment because of cultural and historical particularities associated with the construction of the Inka road system according to the need of the imperial hegemonic administration. By researching this road, I wish to examine the larger role of the Inka road system as a communication infrastructure vital to maintaining and expanding the imperial hegemonic administration of the Inka Empire over a vast track of the Andes. Ultimately, I hope the multivariate LCAs I created in this thesis will further the assessment of LCA as a suitable method of locating ancient routes.
From the perspective of Central and South America, the peopling of the New World was a complex pr... more From the perspective of Central and South America, the peopling of the New World was a complex process lasting thousands of years and involving multiple waves of Pleistocene and early Holocene period immigrants entering into the neotropics. These Paleoindian colonists initially brought with them technologies developed for adaptation to environments and resources found in North America. As the ice age ended across the New World people adapted more generalized stone tools to exploit changing environments and resources. In the neotropics these changes would have been pronounced as patchy forests and grasslands gave way to broadleaf tropical forests. We document a late Pleistocene/early Holocene stone tool tradition from Belize, located in southern Mesoamerica. This represents the first endogenous Paleoindian stone tool technocomplex recovered from well dated stratigraphic contexts for Mesoamerica. Previously designated Lowe, these artifacts share multiple features with contemporary North and South American Paleoindian tool types. Once hafted, these bifaces appear to have served multiple functions for cutting, hooking, thrusting, or throwing. The tools were developed at a time of technological regionalization reflecting the diverse demands of a period of pronounced environmental change and population movement. Combined stratigraphic, technological, and population paleogenetic data suggests that there were strong ties between lowland neotropic regions at the onset of the Holocene.
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and remote sensing, archaeology, and ethnohistory are used t... more Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and remote sensing, archaeology, and ethnohistory are used to study the Cuzco to Vilcashuaman portion of the Chinchaysuyu Inka Road. The purpose of this analysis is to determine whether the Chinchaysuyu road from Cuzco to Vilcashuaman was built following the economic principles of Least Cost Path Analysis (LCA) or if it was built to accommodate locations of cultural significance. Drawing on the criteria presented by Rademaker et al. 2012; White (2012); and Howey (2007), I created several LCAs in order to find the most predictive Least Cost Path (LCP). Research has led me to believe that the location of Inka roads was influenced by factors that cannot be well modeled by a LCA constrained to solely the ecological factors of the environment because of cultural and historical particularities associated with the construction of the Inka road system according to the need of the imperial hegemonic administration. By researching this road, I wish to examine the larger role of the Inka road system as a communication infrastructure vital to maintaining and expanding the imperial hegemonic administration of the Inka Empire over a vast track of the Andes. Ultimately, I hope the multivariate LCAs I created in this thesis will further the assessment of LCA as a suitable method of locating ancient routes.
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