A Relative Sequence of Nasca Style Pottery from Palpa, Peru

Abstract

The archaeological dating of the ancient Peruvian Nasca-Culture (approx. 150 B.C – 650 A.D.) is based on a stylistic sequence of the shape and decoration of its pottery. During the past 100 years, there had been several approaches to defining the changes in style of this fine polychrome pottery. However, since the 1990ies an increase of archaeological fieldwork in the region yielded a multitude of new archaeological evidence that puts to probe the reliability of the existing chronological models. <br /> This study presents a regional approach to the understanding of Nasca pottery chronology. The principal objective is to establish a regional relative sequence of Nasca pottery for the Palpa area. This will be achieved by description, classification and stratigraphic analysis of a representative sample of about 5000 Nasca pottery fragments from five different settlement sites in the Palpa area. The pottery constituting the study sample comes from excavations by the Archaeological Project Palpa. Since 1997, a team of archaeologists under direction of Markus Reindel (German Archaeological Institute) and Johny Isla (Instituto Andino de Estudios Arqueológicos) has been investigating the prehistoric settlement in the Palpa area. Among the many archaeological evidence investigated, there was a series of important Nasca contexts that could be documented the recent years.<br /> The results from the analysis of the Nasca pottery from Palpa will be discussed in the context of earlier studies on Nasca chronology, based on the pottery from the neighboring valleys.