Common Meals, Noble Feasts: An Archaeological Investigation of Moche Food and Cuisine in the Jequetepeque Valley, Peru

Summary

In the North Coast of Peru, relatively little is known about the majority of the population that supported the lifestyles of the elite. In this paper, I discuss the concept of a Moche cuisine through a study of the foodways of both elite and commoner classes, drawing on archaeobotanical data from a feasting preparation area located in the elite cemetery of San José de Moro and from a humble household situated near the base of the fortified hilltop settlement of Cerro Chepén. Cuisine can be interpreted as much more than a set of cooking traditions that define a group or groups of people through space and time. It is a cultural construct that incorporates the meanings surrounding the ingredients, the preparation, cooking, and combination of flavors, and the when, where, why, and how of eating, linking foods with a way of life; in essence, cuisine is what sets one culture apart from another and provides a common understanding of what it means to belong to a community. By conceptualizing the common, everyday meal and contrasting it with the opposite extreme—the feast—I examine how food might have played a central role in the creation and negotiation of Moche identity.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

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