Laboring in Tiwanaku's Moquegua Colony: A Bioarchaeological Activity Indicator Comparison Using Population-Based and Life Course Approaches

Summary

Diverse, lower elevation areas were home to producers and procurers of goods not easily grown or obtainable in the South Central Andean heartland of the Tiwanaku state. Various Tiwanaku colonial settlement clusters, near present-day Moquegua, Peru, comprised one such region. Tiwanaku colonists in this area participated in activities that included farming of corn and coca, as well as transportation of goods between the heartland and colony. For example, Omo-style (Omo M16D and Rio Muerto M70 sites) burials included people who may have embraced more of a pastoralist lifeway, while Chen Chen-style (Omo M10, Chen Chen, and Rio Muerto M43 sites) burials comprise people with potentially a more agrarian lifestyle. In addition to site-based burial differences, prior research has shown individual, gender, and subgroup-specific variability in grave good assemblages, isotopic differences reflecting diet and migration patterns, and cranial modification, likely reflecting the multicultural Tiwanaku way of life. This research uses patterns of specific skeletal evidence of activity (i.e. musculoskeletal stress markers and osteoarthritis) to address labor differences, employing both a population-based perspective by burial area and a life course approach by individual burial, in order to understand the Tiwanaku colonial life and workforce in the Moquegua region.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage