Moving the Animal: Camelid Herding on the North Coast of Peru and the Temporalities of Human-Animal Interactions during the Moche Period

Summary

The north coast of Peru during the Middle Horizon Period witnessed a shift in the way that people, things and animals moved across the landscape. The often fragmented polities that formed the occupation sites for communities engaged in Moche ideology and politics were also associated with trade and interregional interaction on a different scale. The role of animals in this exchange is often overlooked and taken for granted. Camelids (alpacas and llamas) were the conduits of mobility within the highlands and on the coast of Peru with skeletal evidence revealing the intensity of caravan trading. If we consider the amount of time dedicated to the exchange of things, ideas, languages and even the movement of entire communities, animals, in particular camelids, where present for each of these processes. The reorganization of temporalities that surrounded camelids not only reordered the lives of how these animals were used but it also restructured the way that human communities engaged with the landscape, with each other and how the notion of value was altered by the use of animals. This paper will argue that the intensified use of animals as a means of mobility ignited a recapitulation of communities, politics and self.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• E pur si muove: Exploring Mobilities in Latin America

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