Southern Moche Politics Reevaluated: The Reconciliation of Relative (ceramic chronologies) and Absolute (radiocarbon) Dates.

Summary

Recently I performed a reevaluation of published radiocarbon dates for the Moche culture (200-900 AD). I only considered 14C samples obtained from short-lived plant materials found in association with "datable" ceramics (Moche I-V, and Early, Middle, and Late Moche). The purpose was to test the validity of the relative ceramic chronologies in each valley against absolute dates. For this paper, using Bayesian analysis I compare the well contextualized Moche dates from the Chicama Valley to those from the Moche and Viru Valleys to demonstrate that ceramic style does not strictly follow time and that there are marked differences in the dates when each ceramic style was in use in the different valleys. This has major implications on our understanding of Moche politics in the Southern Moche region. The reevaluation of the Moche 14C record demonstrates that ceramic phases are insufficient for understanding Moche chronology. However, by careful analysis of the absolute dates associated with ceramic styles at different sites, we can begin to reconstruct Moche political dynamics and site affiliations through time.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Recent Research and a Chronological Reevaluation of the Viru-Moche-Chicama Valleys

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