Study of Archeobotanical Remains from El Campanario Site: A Preliminary Analysis of a Middle Horizon site in the North Coast of Peru, Huarmey Valley

Summary

During the Middle Horizon, the Andean area experienced significant cultural transformations in settlement patterns, architecture, ceramic style, and subsistence strategies, which are commonly associated with the Wari Empire. The region surrounding the Wari capital in Ayacucho was transformed to increase agricultural productivity in order to support the growing population. The increase of agricultural productivity can be also observed in the provinces in which the transformation of the land was oriented towards the production of certain products along with the construction of canals and reservoirs. Preliminary excavation work at El Campanario was conducted in residential areas within the site in order to understand the social interaction of non-elite groups, the ceramic style recovered from this site suggested that the area was occupied during the Middle Horizon. In addition, macrobotanical remains of different species, both edibles and non-edible, revealed significant variation in plant products, which indicate that the inhabitants who resided at the site had access to a wide array of resources that could be related to the Wari influence in the Huarmey Valley. The macrobotanical remains found at El Campanario are comparative with those found at other archaeological sites within the coastal Andean region.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage