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19-05-2015, 16:35

CONCLUSION

In light of the recent finds from the Santa Ana-La Florida site in Zamora-Chinchipe Province, the Remanso site in Morona-Santiago Province, as well as the recent discoveries of Terminal Valdivia and Machalilla occupations in far northern Manabi and Esmeraldas provinces, it is clear that our current understanding of the Ecuadorian Formative Period is in need of rethinking. With respect to the latter, it would now appear that both the Terminal Valdivia and Machalilla phases of far northern Manabi may have been far more complex than previously thought, both in terms of sociopolitical development and in terms of ideology and religious beliefs. Of particular interest with respect to Terminal Valdivia is the highly developed lapidary industry of polished stone artifacts. We now know that this included far more than the polished stone bowls and zoomorphic mortars documented at the San Isidro site (Zeidler 1988), but also included elaborate engraved and excised

Stone plaques with a complex array of enigmatic design motifs and symbolism, as well as deeply excised or grooved bas-relief effigies of avian (probably owl) imagery. What we lack, however, is contextual information on these artifacts from scientifically controlled archaeological excavations.

Perhaps the most astonishing recent finds relating to the Ecuadorian Formative are those of Francisco Valdez and his associates (Valdez et al. 2005) at the Santa Ana-La Florida site in Zamora-Chinchipe Province. These finds will require a complete rethinking of the Ecuadorian Formative Period as well as the relationships between Ecuador and Peru during this early time period. If anything, these finds urge us to shed our myopic concentration on the well-known coastal Formative cultures as standards for the evaluation and interpretation of other Formative Period societies. Hopefully, this new perspective will foster more intensive and systematic archaeological research in the Ecuadorian oriente, especially in Zamora-Chinchipe province, and adjacent lowland areas of Peru.