Archaeological Microhistory at a Planned Colonial Town in Highland Peru

A generation after the Spanish invasion of the Inka Empire, the indigenous communities of the Viceroyalty of Peru were subjected to one of the largest mass resettlement programs by a colonial power: the Reducción General de Indios (General Resettlement of Indians). Over a million native people were resettled to reducción towns to facilitate religious indoctrination and tribute collection, and more broadly, to colonize the deepest recesses of everyday practice to produce newly "civilized" communities. How such colonialist global schemes actually manifested in disparate contexts in the Andean landscape, however, is only beginning to be explored archaeologically. This session presents the largest scale excavations in a highland reducción to date. Situated in the exceptionally well-preserved reducción of Santa Cruz de Tuti (AKA Espinar de Tuti) in the Colca Valley, the Proyecto Arqueológico Tuti Antiguo (PATA) excavated in varied domestic and ritual spaces in 2016, including elite indigenous domestic compounds, the sacristy and rectory of the main parish, and a chapel. Our results compare the contexts of domestic and liturgical practices of indigenous households and the clergy, and trace out threads of continuity and change through the colonial and early republican eras.