PREHISPANIC SEDENTISM(S) AND COMPLEXITY IN SOUTH AMERICA

The concept of sedentism has been widely used to study the emergence of complex societies in South America and in other parts of the world. It has also been the source of occasional disagreements about how we should identify early complexity in the archaeological record of the continent. However, despite the wide use of the concept, a major problem has been that archaeologists who have worked with this concept in South America almost never define this concept and, when they do, the archaeological criteria for its identification are not always presented or analyzed. Another problem in attempting to understand a fully sedentary lifestyle is its high variability throughout the continent. The evidence from various regions, such as the eastern lowlands and Andean mountain ranges, indicate different types of sedentism. In this paper we consider a broad definition of sedentism and various manifestations and variables recorded at different sites throughout the continent.