Defensibility Analysis with Geeograpfical Information System in a Pukara ina the Haulfínn Valley, Argentina

WYNVEDT, FEDERICO; SALLÉS, JUAN MANUEL ; LÓPEZ LUCIANO

Political Landscapes of the Late intermediate Period in the Southern Andes

Springer

Lugar: Cham; Año: 2018; p. 11 - 34

Cerro Colorado is an archaeological village site located in La Ciénaga deAbajo, in the South East of the Hualfín Valley (Belén, Catamarca, Argentina), at thetop of a 150 m hill. It can be defined as a pukara?a fortified site?considering notonly its location, but also its defensive walls, and the naturally inaccessible characterof certain areas. Most of the radiocarbon data dates the site?s occupation to thefirst half of the fifteenth century, that is, around the beginning of the Inka conquest,although some data points to earlier settlement, and other to later periods. It is oneof the most important archaeological sites in the valley in terms of the number ofstructures distributed in five topographically separated sectors. One of these?neighborhoods? is the Central Sector, where singular archaeological contexts havebeen excavated in a special architectural complex, different from the typical localpattern. In view of these characteristics, the goals of this chapter are first to analyzethe differences in the intrasite space and its relationship with the immediate environment,taking into account accessibility and visibility as elements to definedefensibility; and second, to evaluate the results in relation to three fundamentalproblems for the Late and Inka Periods in Northwestern Argentina: intergroupconflicts, chronology, and social inequality.