A Movable Feast: Mobility and Commensalism in the Andes
Part of: Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)
This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "A Movable Feast: Mobility and Commensalism in the Andes" at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.
Movement and feasting are key themes in the modern study of archaeology. While the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of these two have received considerable attention, they have mostly been tackled individually. Here we focus on the role of movement (caravans, pilgrimages, trade networking) in creating the social, economic and political setting for feasting to occur. As such we understand feasting as a political mechanism by which society negotiates inter- and intra-community commensality, peer-to-peer and peer-to-commoner conspicuous consumption, as well as wider elite and community interactions with the sacred. Here we welcome papers that focus on unravelling the methodological and material correlates that link movement and feasting across the spectrum in the prehispanic Andes. These approaches can include, among others, stable isotope analysis of faunal and human remains; genetics; and chemical, geological, and stylistic study of archaeological material including spatial analysis and circuit theory research.
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- Documents (10)
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Commensality and Mobility at Pachacamac during the Late Prehispanic Periods (2025)
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This is an abstract from the "A Movable Feast: Mobility and Commensalism in the Andes" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. At Pachacamac, the theme of mobility is closely associated with pilgrimage, as well as the reciprocal banquets that occurred at the site during the Late Intermediate period and Late Horizon, across various contexts. In this paper, we present material evidence of these activities from excavations carried out in different parts of...
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Eating Clams to Keep Society in Motion: Shell Middens and Social Reproduction at the Longotoma Bay, Central Chile (32°24’ S) (2025)
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This is an abstract from the "A Movable Feast: Mobility and Commensalism in the Andes" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Coastal research has stressed the variety of systemic roles played by shell middens as architectural features, markers of the landscape/seascape, and as the result of the accumulation of food debris. The latter is the effect of concrete economic behavior; however, the exploitation and consumption of shellfish on coastal settings...
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Fish and shell remains from the Late Archaic period in the inland region of the Atacama Desert: insights into the circulation and consumption of special coastal meals and goods by complex hunter-gatherers (2025)
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This is an abstract from the "A Movable Feast: Mobility and Commensalism in the Andes" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. It has been suggested that hunter-gatherer social complexity becomes evident during the late Middle Holocene in the Atacama puna. The Loa River basin is a highly advantageous location, characterised by a concentration of water and biotic resources, and contains multiple human settlements. The Late Archaic is represented by the...
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From Predation to Gifting in the Ancient Andes: Some Thoughts on Camelids and Reciprocity after the Chavín Cult (2025)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "A Movable Feast: Mobility and Commensalism in the Andes" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One of the most salient and widespread innovations after the Chavín-period cults was the depiction of camelids across various ancient Andean cultures, from Moche to Nasca, and Pukara to Recuay. We can surmise that camelids played an increasingly prominent role in their respective social worlds, expanding horizons both economically...
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<html>A return to <i>Special Function Settlements</i>: the spatial dynamics of gathering in the Ica Highlands (AD 1000-1532)</html> (2025)
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This is an abstract from the "A Movable Feast: Mobility and Commensalism in the Andes" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the 1990’s Parsons, Hastings and Matos identified Special Function Settlements describing habitation sites with dense clusters of agglutinated structures and circumscribed open areas in the highlands. They theorized that these places functioned less as permanent settlements, and more as spaces were people congregated and...
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Making communities static through human remains networks: an initial approach to Burial Site Selection in Mariash-Recuay times at Chavín de Huántar (2025)
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This is an abstract from the "A Movable Feast: Mobility and Commensalism in the Andes" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The deceased have the capacity to engage with the living, impacting social roles, meanings, and the perception of places. At Chavín de Huántar, a prominent ceremonial center during the Formative period, the spatial reoccupation by Mariash-Recuay exemplifies this interaction. This study investigates whether placing funerary...
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Mobility And Commensality in Early Agropastoral Societies of the Argentine Puna: Faunal, Pottery and Architectural Approaches (2025)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "A Movable Feast: Mobility and Commensalism in the Andes" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The circulation of goods over medium and long distances in the Prehispanic Andean agropastoral societies, and its connection to caravan practices, has been a topic of interest for generations of archaeologists. However, the link between mobility patterns and feasting has been less explored, particularly in the southernmost region...
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Pulsating Tiwanaku: The Seasonal Surges that Built an Andean City (2025)
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This is an abstract from the "A Movable Feast: Mobility and Commensalism in the Andes" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Tiwanaku has long been compared to Cuzco, Rome, or Teotihuacán, but generalized models of state and empire have overlooked a crucial difference: Tiwanaku was built by mobile agropastoralists bound to the seasonal rhythms of the arid Andes. This dynamic means Tiwanaku's population was much lower than previously suggested and saw...
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Seasonality and Intermittent Occupation of High-Altitude Towns in the Cusco Region during the Late Intermediate Period (2025)
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This is an abstract from the "A Movable Feast: Mobility and Commensalism in the Andes" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. With this exploratory paper, I present and interpret the results of laboratory analyses of excavated materials from the Formative (ca. 2200 BCE - 200 CE) and Late Intermediate Period (ca. 1000-1350 CE) towns of Matagua and Wat'a, located in and near the Cusco Valley of Perú. The goal of the paper is to gauge whether these...
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Taskscapes and Mobility in Recuay Commensalism: A preliminary exploration in the northern Callejon de Huaylas valley, Ancash, Peru (2025)
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This is an abstract from the "A Movable Feast: Mobility and Commensalism in the Andes" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper explores the evidence for regional interaction in Recuay (and early Recuay, called Huarás) feasting in Ancash, Peru (300 BCE–700 CE). While commensalism has long been identified as a cornerstone of Recuay rituals, mobility has been less central to Recuay studies. Nonetheless, various lines of evidence suggest it, such...