Glossary

Ayllu An extended family unit for the Inca, whose history was traced through ancestral mummies.

BP Radiocarbon years before the present, which is set by

Convention to 1950. Since the number of radiocarbon years is not always the same as the number of calendar years, it is possible to adjust them into years calibrated by comparison of tree-rings from long-lived Bristlecone pine trees.

Catchment The region used for obtaining resources. In coastal Peril, a village catchment could extend from beneath the ocean to altitudes in excess of 3500 m.

Cribra orbitalia A special kind of pitting in the upper part of the frontal bone that forms the back of the eye socket; the pitting may become smooth with healing. It is associated with childhood anaemia as a response of the body in producing more red cells in this region, the most available one, of the body skeleton during early childhood.

ENSO El Nifio Southern Oscillation. The interaction of the tropical Pacific ocean with the global atmosphere that results in sporadic episodes of changing ocean currents and hence climate, especially along the western coast of South America.

Fog oasis In Peril, the coastal hills between 200 and 800 m above mean sea level are shrouded in fog from about June until November. Trees, before nearly all have been cut down in modern times, condensed the fog and in many years, the hills had a savana-like appearance. Such foggy hills are called lomas in Peru.

Lomas See fog oasis.

Palaeodemgraophy Modeling demographic properties such as estimated remaining life expectancy and fertiilty from the distribution of the dead. Since emigration or immigration can dramatically effect the relation between the properties of the dead and living, assumptions of stability or other data, such as living floor areas, are necessary to support such reconstructions.

Parental investment The varying economic investments parents might make in children with respect to their own maintainance; investment might vary by gender where there are economic differences in their values.

Periosteal lesions Additional bone on the surface of a bone that has a woven appearance; it is usually the results of infection, either mechanically from punctures in the skin or from some chronic infectious diseases.

Preceramic period Alternatively called Archaic, in Peril, is the time between the end of the Holocene until 1500 BC. The Late Preceramic overlaps the Initial Period of Ceramics in the north and central coastal regions, as Tom and Sheila Pozorski have demonstrated and Leonid Velarde has recently shown for even the early part of the Late Preceramic in central Peril. Needed changes in periodization will not be discussed here. stable isotopes As used here, the concentrations of carbon and nitrogen isotopes, which exhibit a pattern across varied food sources and can be reliably measured in human osseous tissue. village As used here, a settlement in which more than 50 persons are usually in residence. We use both floor area and palaeodemography to estimate village size. virtual reality Three-dimensional structures from digital

Models, which can be entered and manipulated. In Paloma World (available at my web site: Http://rcp. missouri. edu), wire-frame models were covered with texture from photographs of a reconstructed house and the background at the site. Details were modeled separately.