Casma State Material Culture and Society: Organizing, Analyzing, and Interpreting Archaeological Evidence of a Re-emergent Ancient Polity

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Casma State Material Culture and Society: Organizing, Analyzing, and Interpreting Archaeological Evidence of a Re-emergent Ancient Polity," at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This session brings together scholars working on diverse aspects of the Casma State/Polity (ca. AD 1000-1450) from the perspective of the Casma Valley itself to well beyond. Presenters employ a variety of approaches towards archaeological practice and explore a range of data types ranging from ceramic analysis to landscape analysis to bioarchaeological analysis. The papers illuminate Casma State/Polity socio-political organization, its material culture, and the social dynamics of later pre-Hispanic periods more generally. The Casma State (alternatively Casma Polity or Casma Culture) has long lived in the shadow of more spectacular archaeological neighbors, even though mounting research suggests the Casma State was a significant political force in and around the Late Intermediate Period (ca. AD 1100-1400, though earlier and later dates are also known from Casma State/Polity sites). Despite an increasing number of studies investigating Casma style material culture and the Casma State in the eponymous valley and beyond - in the Culebras Valley, Nepeña Valley, Chao Valley, and indeed into the Andean foothills - this session is the first synthetic effort to collect and debate such diverse lines of research on the Casma State and its material culture.