Eating in Transition: Diet at Cerro Del Oro

Summary

Subsistence practices during the transition from Early Intermediate Period (200 BC-AD 600) to the Middle Horizon Period (AD 600- AD 1000) is crucial to understanding Pre-Hispanic life on the Southern coast of Peru. As the Nasca polity waned and the Wari state began to expand life in the coastal valleys was changing. Through bioarchaeological reconstruction of diet and health at the site of Cerro Del Oro, in the Canete Valley, the effects of demographic and subsistence changes can be examined. This poster presents osteological and isotopic data from a cemetery sample (N=58) from the site. Excavated in 1926 by Alfred Kroeber, the Cerro Del Oro material has been unstudied at the Field Museum for almost ninety years. Carbon and oxygen isotopic values from tooth enamel are compared to bone carbonate values to reconstruct diet through the lifetime of each individual. This, in combination with carbon and nitrogen from bone collagen, provide data on dietary variability. Preliminary results indicate variation in dietary composition; possibly linked to the transition between political influences.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

Keywords

Spatial Coverage