Tag Archives: Peru

Uncovering the secrets of ancient Wari Empire pottery with lasers and chemistry

This is a little bit outside my usual range but the researchers are using some high end equipment for their analyses so I’m using that as an excuse to make an exception.

Caption: Example ceramic drinking cup from the Wari site of Cerro Baúl, Moquegua, Peru that are similar to the sherds included in the Laser Ablation sampling. Credit: Courtesy Cerro Baúl Archaeological Project, photo by P. R. Williams, Catalog number CB-V001.

From a March 14, 2023 Field Museum (Chicago, Illinois) news release (also on EurekAlert)

Peru’s first great empire, the Wari, stretched for more than a thousand miles over the Andes Mountains and along the coast from 600-1000 CE. The pottery they left behind gives archaeologists clues as to how the empire functioned. In a new study in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, researchers showed that rather than using “official” Wari pottery imported from the capital, potters across the empire were creating their own ceramics, decorated to emulate the traditional Wari style. To figure it out, the scientists analyzed the pottery’s chemical make-up, with help from laser beams.

“In this study, we looked at the idea of cosmopolitanism, of incorporating different cultures and practices into a society,” says M. Elizabeth Grávalos, a postdoctoral researcher at the Field Museum in Chicago and the study’s lead author. “We’re trying to show that potters were influenced by the Wari, but this influence was blended with their own local cultural practices.”

Grávalos says this model of cosmopolitanism is a little like trying to replicate a recipe from another culture, but with a local spin. “If you live in the US and you’re making pad thai at home, you might not have access to all the ingredients that someone living in Thailand would have, so you substitute some things,” she says. “Wari ceramics are a little like thatpeople throughout the empire were interested in Wari material culture, but they weren’t necessarily getting it directly from the Wari heartland. More often than not, we see local people trying to make their own version of Wari pottery.”

Grávalos and her colleagues led archaeological digs throughout Peru, working with local communities to excavate the thousand-year-old remains of households, tombs, and administrative centers, in search of Wari lifeways. The researchers were then granted permission from Peru’s Ministry of Culture to bring samples of ceramics from their excavations to Chicago for analysis.

Clay from different regions has a different chemical makeup, so studying the ceramics’ chemical makeup could tell the researchers if the pots were produced in different places or if they were all imported from the Wari capital.

“We’d take a tiny piece of a pot and used a laser to cut an even tinier piece, basically extracting a piece of the ceramic’s clay paste,” says Grávalos. “Then helium gas carried it to the mass spectrometer, which measures the elements present in the  clay paste.” (The lab set-up didn’t have open laser beams and floating shards of pottery cutting across the room, thoughthe whole process takes place on a microscopic scale inside a big boxy machine.)

The analysis showed that the pots excavated from distinct regions of Peru have different chemical signatures, and were therefore made with distinct clays. That helps show how the Wari culture spread.

Some empires, like the ancient Romans, took a “top-down” approach to spreading their aesthetic, shipping pottery across the Mediterranean so that people throughout the empire were using the official Roman style. Local potters emulating the traditional Wari style in their own work seems to hint at a more “bottom-up” approach.

“Of course, local people in all empires have some degree of agency and creative controlthe only empire that’s truly top-down is the Borg from Star Trek,” says Patrick Ryan Williams, Curator of Archaeological Science and Director of the Elemental Analysis Facility  at the Field Museum and the study’s senior author. “Even the Romans had local people doing things their own way. But what we’re finding in this study is the agency of local peoples and the importance of local economies. In some regions, we find that Wari colonists had their own production centers and were recreating Wari lifeways locally. In other areas, we see that local communities made Wari pottery in their own way. I think that’s what’s really important about this study.”

The researchers say that the patterns revealed by this pottery could help explain why the Wari empire was able to thrive for so long. “Local production, even in a cosmopolitan society with lots of far-flung connections, makes a society more resilient,” says Williams. “If you’re entirely dependent on someone far away sending you things you need, you’re extremely vulnerable.”

Beyond the economic lessons that we might learn from the Wari, Grávalos says that the study matters because “this work challenges some of the assumptions we have about how societies work, particularly Indigenous groups who are often misrepresented or left out of broader narratives of world history. There are many people whose stories haven’t been told, and this study shows their resilience and their accomplishments.”

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Crafting cosmopolitanism: Ceramic production and exchange during Wari imperialism (600–1000 CE) by M. Elizabeth Grávalos, David A. Reid, Donna J. Nash, and Patrick Ryan Williams. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports Available online 14 March 2023, 103878 In Press, Correctted proof. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2023.103878

This paper is behind a paywall.

Emergency!!! Lonely heart looking for love: Female. Stocky build. Height of 2 – 3 inches.

(Matias Careaga) [downloaded from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/scientists-made-matchcom-profile-bolivias-loneliest-frog-180968140/]

That is a very soulful look. How could any female Sehuencas water frog resist it? Sadly, that’s the problem. They havn’t found any female Sehuencas water frogs yet.

It’s not for want of trying. Back in February 2018 worldwide interest was raised when scientists as the Cochabamba Natural History Museum (Bolivia) started a campaign to find a mate and raise funds for a search. ( I don’t know how I missed this story the first time. For long time readers, this is my frog story for this year.)  From a February 14, 2018 article by Anoop Menon for India.com,

Scientists are scouring for a mate for Romeo, who has been calling forth for mates for the last nine years now. But alas, a mate hasn’t been found in the rivers and streams of the Sehuencas water frog’s natural habitat so far. So scientists have decided to make a Match.com profile for the lovelorn frog, according to the BBC [British Broadcasting Corporation]. The effort hopes to raise awareness of the condition of the Sehuencas water frog and raise money to fund searches for the Sehuencas water frog in areas where they once thrived.

Romeo’s dating profile reads, “I’m a pretty simple guy. I tend to keep to myself and have the best nights just chilling at home, maybe binge-watching the waters around me. I do love food, though, and will throw a pair of pants on and get out of the house if there’s a worm or snail to be eaten!” His preference is for females between two to three inches tall and is okay with drinkers but not smokers. But honestly, at this point, he should be fine with just about anything.

All jokes aside, Romeo’s plight is an important one. The profile links to the campaign donation page that it is part of, with an aim of raising USD 15,000 to search for more Sehuencas water frogs. And Match.com is doing its part by matching all donations made from February 9 to today, Valentine’s Day.

Zoe Schlanger’s February 10, 2018 article for Quartz, in the context of Romeo’s (and the scientists’) quest, offers information about the ‘current state of amphibia’, Note: Links have been removed)

As the Earth faces what some experts call its “sixth mass extinction,” amphibians, like frogs, are among the most imperiled. Around half of amphibian species (which includes toads, salamanders, frogs, and newts) are reported to be in decline. A third are considered to be threatened with extinction.

Last year, 10,000 critically endangered “scrotum frogs” that lived in Lake Titicaca on the border between Bolivia and Peru died en masse. In the US, federal scientists say the overall amphibian population is shrinking in size by 3.8% every year. That trend has continued since the 1960s, due to a mix of climate change, pesticide applications, and diseases like infectious fungi which can quickly decimate populations.

Frogs seem to be especially vulnerable. Roughly 74% of frog species globally are in decline, and 80% of the frog species that live in India are threatened, a researcher recently told the Hindustan Times.

Hande ‘s February 12, 2018 article for CNN adds a few more details about Romeo and about the effort to save him,

Arturo Munoz [Arturo Muñoz Saravia] , founder of the Bolivian Amphibian Initiative and GWC [Global Wildlife Conservaation] associate conservation scientist, said, “When biologists collected Romeo 10 years ago, we knew the Sehuencas water frog, like other amphibians in Bolivia, was in trouble, but we had no idea we wouldn’t be able to find a single other individual in all this time.”

Romeo started to call for a mate about a year after he was brought into captivity and Munoz pointed out that those calls have slowed in the last few years.

“We don’t want him to lose hope, and we continue to remain hopeful that others are out there, so we can establish a conservation breeding program to save this species,” Munoz said.

Update

They raised almost $25,000 in funds to search for a female but there’s been no luck yet. Sehuencas water frogs live for about 15 years and Romeo has lived in the Cochabamba Natural History Museum for the last nine or 10 years. You do the arithmetic.

Apparently, Sehuencas water frogs were once found in both Ecuador and Bolivia. Today, there are only two regions of Bolivia (Cochabamba and Santa Cruz) where they are reputed to live. (There is more about the current search for a mate in a July 26, 2018 news item on phys.org.)The Sehuencas water frog Wikipedia entry has this to say (Note: Links have been removed),

While it is currently listed as vulnerable by the IUCN [International Union for Conservation of Nature], this is based on an assessment that has not been updated since 2004.[1] No individuals have been encountered in the wild since 2008.

You can find out more about Muñoz’s Bolivian Amphibian Initiative here. There don’t seem to be any Romeo updates on the website but they still seem to be gathering donations. Romeo’s dating profile is here.

Plea

One possibility occurred to me (and I imagine others), if there’s someone out there who has a female Sehuencas water frog in their aquarium at home, please consider saving the species. I’m certain a deal can be made.

Finally,. Good luck, Romeo!

Peruvian scientist Marino Morikawa nanoremediates wetlands

Peru’s El Cascajo Lake has undergone a successful nanotechology-enabled remediation technique developed by scientist Marino Morikawa and which he hopes can be used to clean up Lake Titicaca according to a July 6, 2016 news item on news.co.cr,

Peruvian scientist Marino Morikawa, who “revived” polluted wetlands in 15 days using nanotechnology, now plans to try to clean up Lake Titicaca and the Huacachina lagoon, an oasis in the middle of the desert.

El Cascajo, an ecosystem of roughly 50 hectares (123 acres) in Chancay district, located north of Lima, began its recovery in 2010 with two inventions that Morikawa came up with using his own resources and money.

The idea of restoring the wetlands came from a call from Morikawa’s father, who told the scientist that El Cascajo, where they used to go fishing when Marino was a child, “was in very bad condition,” Morikawa told EFE.

Marino Morikawa, who earned a degree in environmental science from Japan’s Tsukuba University, visited the wetlands and found a dump for sewage ringed by an illegal landfill where migratory birds fed.

The stinky swamp was covered by aquatic plants, Morikawa said.

The fifteen day timeline for the cleanup seems to be contradicted in this June 22, 2014 article by Rosana Pinheiro for Agencia Plano (a Latin American news portal) describes the situation at Lake El Cascajo and the nanotechnology in more detail,

Peruvian scientist Marino Morikawa created a cleanse system using nanobubbles to decontaminate lake El Cascajo, located at Chancay district, north of Lima, Peru’s capital. After nearly four years of the start of the project, 90% of the lake waters are recovered, and the place is now visited once again by at least 70 species of migratory birds.

The lake was once home to more than a thousand species of migratory birds in the 1990s. …

The [nanotechnology-enabled] treatment is done with tiny bubbles, the nanobubbles, a thousand times smaller than the ones we can see in a glass of soda. These bubbles attract bacteria and metals using static charge and then decompose, releasing free radicals which destroy viruses present in water. The process has been recognized by the Commission of Science, Technology and Innovation of the Peruvian Congress.

Biofilters were also deployed to ease the cleaning process of the water. Morikawa divided the wetland area with pieces of bamboo, creating sectors to order the withdrawal of the aquatic weeds.

… At the beginning, in December 2010, he worked alone, making daily visits to the region to develop the project. After some time, he started receiving help from friends, local population and local government.

A few months after the beginning of the treatment, it was possible to see that El Cascajo waters were more crystalline. However, it was only in January 2013 that “a miracle happened” as Morikawa says: Thousands of migratory birds returned to the lake and occupied about 70% of the area, forming a white cover around the water.

Whether this took fifteen days or several months seems less important than the remediation of the wetlands, Lake El Cascajo, the return of the birds, and a better functioning ecosystem. Let’s hope the same success can be enjoyed at Lake Titicaca.

There are more details in both pieces which I encourage you to read in their entirety.

Copyright and patent protections and human rights

The United Nations (UN) and cultural rights don’t immediately leap to mind when the subjects of copyright and patents are discussed. A Mar. 13, 2015 posting by Tim Cushing on Techdirt and an Oct. 14, 2015 posting by Glyn Moody also on Techdirt explain the connection in the person of Farida Shaheed, the UN Special Rapporteur on cultural rights and the author of two UN reports one on copyright and one on patents.

From the Mar. 13, 2015 posting by Tim Cushing,

… Farida Shaheed, has just delivered a less-than-complimentary report on copyright to the UN’s Human Rights Council. Shaheed’s report actually examines where copyright meshes with arts and science — the two areas it’s supposed to support — and finds it runs contrary to the rosy image of incentivized creation perpetuated by the MPAAs and RIAAs of the world.

Shaheed said a “widely shared concern stems from the tendency for copyright protection to be strengthened with little consideration to human rights issues.” This is illustrated by trade negotiations conducted in secrecy, and with the participation of corporate entities, she said.

She stressed the fact that one of the key points of her report is that intellectual property rights are not human rights. “This equation is false and misleading,” she said.

The last statement fires shots over the bows of “moral rights” purveyors, as well as those who view infringement as a moral issue, rather than just a legal one.

Shaheed also points out that the protections being installed around the world at the behest of incumbent industries are not necessarily reflective of creators’ desires. …

Glyn Moody’s Oct. 14, 2015 posting features Shaheed’s latest report on patents,

… As the summary to her report puts it:

There is no human right to patent protection. The right to protection of moral and material interests cannot be used to defend patent laws that inadequately respect the right to participate in cultural life, to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications, to scientific freedoms and the right to food and health and the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities.

Patents, when properly structured, may expand the options and well-being of all people by making new possibilities available. Yet, they also give patent-holders the power to deny access to others, thereby limiting or denying the public’s right of participation to science and culture. The human rights perspective demands that patents do not extend so far as to interfere with individuals’ dignity and well-being. Where patent rights and human rights are in conflict, human rights must prevail.

The report touches on many issues previously discussed here on Techdirt. For example, how pharmaceutical patents limit access to medicines by those unable to afford the high prices monopolies allow — a particularly hot topic in the light of TPP’s rules on data exclusivity for biologics. The impact of patents on seed independence is considered, and there is a warning about corporate sovereignty chapters in trade agreements, and the chilling effects they can have on the regulatory function of states and their ability to legislate in the public interest — for example, with patent laws.

I have two Canadian examples for data exclusivity and corporate sovereignty issues, both from Techdirt. There’s an Oct. 19, 2015 posting by Glyn Moody featuring a recent Health Canada move to threaten a researcher into suppressing information from human clinical trials,

… one of the final sticking points of the TPP negotiations [Trans Pacific Partnership] was the issue of data exclusivity for the class of drugs known as biologics. We’ve pointed out that the very idea of giving any monopoly on what amounts to facts is fundamentally anti-science, but that’s a rather abstract way of looking at it. A recent case in Canada makes plain what data exclusivity means in practice. As reported by CBC [Canadian Broadcasting Corporation] News, it concerns unpublished clinical trial data about a popular morning sickness drug:

Dr. Navindra Persaud has been fighting for four years to get access to thousands of pages of drug industry documents being held by Health Canada.

He finally received the material a few weeks ago, but now he’s being prevented from revealing what he has discovered.

That’s because Health Canada required him to sign a confidentiality agreement, and has threatened him with legal action if he breaks it.

The clinical trials data is so secret that he’s been told that he must destroy the documents once he’s read them, and notify Health Canada in writing that he has done so….

For those who aren’t familiar with it, the Trans Pacific Partnership is a proposed trade agreement including 12 countries (Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, United States, and Vietnam) from the Pacific Rim. If all the countries sign on (it looks as if they will; Canada’s new Prime Minister as of Oct. 19, 2015 seems to be in favour of the agreement although he has yet to make a definitive statement), the TPP will represent a trading block that is almost double the size of the European Union.

An Oct. 8, 2015 posting by Mike Masnick provides a description of corporate sovereignty and of the Eli Lilly suit against the Canadian government.

We’ve pointed out a few times in the past that while everyone refers to the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement as a “free trade” agreement, the reality is that there’s very little in there that’s actually about free trade. If it were truly a free trade agreement, then there would be plenty of reasons to support it. But the details show it’s not, and yet, time and time again, we see people supporting the TPP because “well, free trade is good.” …
… it’s that “harmonizing regulatory regimes” thing where the real nastiness lies, and where you quickly discover that most of the key factors in the TPP are not at all about free trade, but the opposite. It’s about as protectionist as can be. That’s mainly because of the really nasty corprorate sovereignty clauses in the agreement (which are officially called “investor state dispute settlement” or ISDS in an attempt to make it sound so boring you’ll stop paying attention). Those clauses basically allow large incumbents to force the laws of countries to change to their will. Companies who feel that some country’s regulation somehow takes away “expected profits” can convene a tribunal, and force a country to change its laws. Yes, technically a tribunal can only issue monetary sanctions against a country, but countries who wish to avoid such monetary payments will change their laws.

Remember how Eli Lilly is demanding $500 million from Canada after Canada rejected some Eli Lilly patents, noting that the new compound didn’t actually do anything new and useful? Eli Lilly claims that using such a standard to reject patents unfairly attacks its expected future profits, and thus it can demand $500 million from Canadian taxpayers. Now, imagine that on all sorts of other systems.

Cultural rights, human rights, corporate rights. It would seem that corporate rights are going to run counter to human rights, if nothing else.