From Dispersal to "Disappearance": AD 1000-1250 in the Upper Moquegua Valley, Peru

Summary

In the Moquegua Valley, Peru, the decline of the greater Tiwanaku system circa AD 1000 was accompanied by a shift to a more dispersed settlement pattern, as populations moved out of the large towns of the middle valley and established smaller sites on the coast and in the upper valley. In this paper I focus on the upper valley, where the longevity of occupation at post-expansive sites and the presence of secondary occupations offer an opportunity to examine the centuries’ long trajectory of cultural transformation. I discuss the considerable recent excavation data from one site, Tumilaca la Chimba, to highlight temporal patterns of continuity and change in the upper valley, and consider how that data sheds light on the ultimate disappearance of Tiwanaku derived traditions from the archaeological record, some 250 years after regional political collapse. Further, in comparing community organization, burials, residential contexts, public space and material culture from Tumilaca la Chimba with neighboring settlements, I also critique a tendency to understand post-expansive upper valley sites as essentially monolithic and suggest that the considerable differences between Tumilaca la Chimba and contemporaneous communities invite us to reassess the nature of the local socio-political landscape post AD 1000.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Regional Perspectives on the Tiwanaku Collapse: "Post-expansive" chronology, cultural transformation and ethnogenesis in the south central Andes

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