Feasting and Ritual Reuse: Analysis of the Faunal Assemblage from Huaca Soto, Chincha, Peru

Summary

Huaca Soto, a monumental Paracas platform mound in the Chincha Valley, experienced centuries of post-Formative reuse that continued well into the Inca Period. Two seasons of extensive excavation have yielded a massive assemblage of feasting debris within the mound’s uppermost sunken court dating to the mid-first millennium CE. Communal feasting in the ancient Andes is widely acknowledged to have been both a ritually and politically charged practice, and ongoing research examining the ritual reuse of Huaca Soto includes zooarchaeological analyses of feasting remains. This faunal assemblage highlights the array of activities that may have been incorporated into feasting events, and provides evidence of animal sacrifice, divination, and food consumption. These behaviors at Huaca Soto are consistent with ethnographic and ethnohistoric data in the region, and highlight the complex practice of ritual reuse of mounds on Peru’s South Coast.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

Keywords

Spatial Coverage