The Newly Discovered Conchopata Style Offering Deposit: A Discussion of its Characteristics and Probable Implications

LEONI, JUAN BAUTISTA

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Congreso; 65th Annual Meetings of the Society for American Archaeology; 2000

Society for American Archaeology (SAA)

The 1999 excavations at Conchopata (Ayacucho, Peru) have revealed a sizable ceramic deposit consisting mainly of fragments of decorated and non-decorated oversize open urns. Stylistically this ceramic deposit is very similar to the one discovered by Julio C. Tello in 1942. In this paper I will describe the stratigraphic and depositional characteristics of the collection, its architectural context, as well as some of its iconographic and morphologic aspects. The chronological and behavioral implications of this find will be discussed, as well as the convenience of the term “offering” to describe this particular deposit. It is argued that the term probably masks a yet undetermined range of ideological, socio-political and economic features.