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Demographic and Architectural Retrodiction: An Ethnoarchaeological Case Study in the South American Tropical Lowlands

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Peter E. Siegel
Peter E. Siegel*
Affiliation:
Centro de Investigaciones Indígenas de Puerto Rico, Apartado 3831, Viejo San Juan, Puerto Rico 00904-3831
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Abstract

This paper focuses on the demographic and architectural organization of a South Amerindian tropical-forest community. The household, as the most important social, economic, and behavioral unit in this society, is reflected in the strong quantitative relations between the floor areas of the various structure types and the associated number of occupants. In contrast, floor area/number of occupants relations at the nuclear-family level are quantitatively weak. Since the aboriginal household was also the most important economic and demographic social unit in the South American tropics, the present study may be used to estimate prehistoric settlement population levels using excavated data. As such, this study encourages the use of the direct-historical approach by archaeologists working in the lowlands of South America.

Se presenta la organización demográfica y arquitectónica de una comunidad del bosque tropical sudamericano. El grupo doméstico, como la unidad de mayor importancia social, económica y de comportamiento en dicha sociedad, se refleja en las fuertes relaciones cuantitativas entre las superficies de varios estilos estructurales y el número relativo de ocupantes. En contraste, las relaciones entre el área y el número de ocupantes a nivel de familia nuclear son deficientes en términos cuantitativos. Porque el grupo doméstico aborigen era además la unidad social de mayor importancia económica y demográfica en los trópicos sudamericanos, el presente estudio podría ser utilizado para estimar los niveles de las poblaciones de los caseríos prehistóricos mediante el uso de datos excavados. Como tal, este estudio alienta el enfoque histórico-directo por parte de los arqueólogos que se encuentran trabajando en las tierras bajas de Sudamérica.

Type
Articles
Information
Latin American Antiquity , Volume 1 , Issue 4 , December 1990 , pp. 319 - 346
Copyright
Copyright © Society for American Archaeology 1990

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