Food in the Contact Zone: Reimagining Highland-Coastal Contact in the Prehispanic Moche Valley of North Coastal Peru

Summary

In this paper, we explore migration and culture contact in the prehispanic Moche Valley of north coastal Peru, specifically through the lens of domestic foodways. During the Early Intermediate Period (EIP, 400 B.C. to A.D. 800), serrano groups from the neighboring highlands colonized many principal river valleys along the Peruvian north coast; however, the nature of highland colonization remains poorly understood. Scholars have envisioned diverse interactions between locals and nonlocals, from trade and exchange of marriage partners to warfare, coercion, and slavery. Recent analysis of excavated materials from EIP highland and coastal domestic habitation sites in the Moche Valley affords a closer look at this historical process. By employing paleoethnobotanical data to examine the organization of foodways, we have the potential to shed light on myriad social processes related to the negotiation of ethnic identities, gender relations, and domestic labor in the more distant as well as recent Andean past.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Food and Culture in the Andes

Keywords

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