Spanish Contacts and Social Change on the Ucayali River, Peru

Bibliographic Data

ID2741963
AuthorsThomas P Myers (corresponding author)
Year1974
Volume21
Issue2
Pages135
Publication date1974-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueEthnohistory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0014-1801 • E-ISSN: 1527-5477
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/480948
OpenAlexW1993801597
LanguageEN
Citations received29

Archaeological evidence from the Ucay ali River suggests that large communities, probably with a complex social organization, were character- istic throughout the prehistoric period. In contrast, Steward and M6traux suggest that large communities were the unstable product of the missionary period. Re-examination of the ethnohistoric sources indicates that large, stable communities were in fact characteristic of the mainstream Ucayali tribes at the beginning of the historic period but that they collapsed with the precipitous population declines caused by Spanish diseases. Tribes on the major tributaries probably had smaller communities; but only the tribes most remote from the mainstream were characterized by the kind of one house communities which Steward and M6traux believed to be characteristic of the Peruvian montana as a whole. Archaeological research carried out by Donald W. Lathrap and his associates on the Ucayali River and its tributaries has made it possible to trace the cultural record some 4000 years into the past. Within the later parts of prehistory we believe that it is possible to recognize the arrival and development of the cultural groups which occupied the area during the Historic Period: the Cocama and the Shipibo/Conibo, or more generally speaking, the Panoan tribes (Lathrap 1962, 1970; Myers 1970; Roe 1973). Our evidence indicates that Panoan speakers arrived on the Ucayali about A.D. 300 when ceramics of the Pacacocha Tradition first make their appearance in the archaeological record. Through a series of changes in the rules of ceramic manufacture, by A.D. 800 the pottery of the Pacacocha Tradition came to be characterized by a complex series of vessel forms and polychrome painted decoration which was outlined by incised lines. At least in part, these changes can be attributed to influences from the Polychrome Tradition which was spreading up the Amazon and its major tributaries (Lathrap 1970; Myers 1970; Roe 1973

Archaeology · Geography · Latin American history and culture

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