Early Horizon Foodways and Settlement Nucleation: Preliminary Insights From Samanco, a Maritime Center in the Nepeña Valley, North-Central Peru

Summary

This paper examines the relationship between foodways and settlement nucleation at Samanco, a maritime center located in the Nepeña Valley littoral. Samanco comprises hundreds of orthogonal stone structures agglutinated into compounds spanning over 40 hectares. The site is similar to several other contemporary settlements in Nepeña, interpreted to be part of an integrated peer network. Excavations at Samanco yielded extraordinary amounts of food refuse, including mollusk, fish, faunal, and plant remains, all of which have been preliminarily analyzed. Results indicate that rather than being a specialized maritime community, Samanco residents relied on intensive exploitation of a variety of plants and animals. Excavations documented plant cultivation along stone terraces just below the site, on-site rearing of animal domesticates including camelids, net-based fishing focused on large-scale harvesting of smaller fish species, and shellfish exploitation along rocky and sandy outcrops of Samanco Bay. Preliminary results suggest that Early Horizon maritime centers were able to live with considerable autonomy as related to foodways, and that trade was more localized within lower-middle valley pockets. More broadly, the results bring important insights into the ways in which non-state complex societies were able to develop early urban life forms through the production and distribution of food.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Social Complexity in the Central Andean Region: Current Research on the Initial Period and Early Horizon Part 2

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