A Ceramic Investigation into the Relationship between Emergent Complexity and Religion on the South Coast of Peru

Summary

This paper investigates negotiations of power on the south coast of Peru through ceramic attribute analysis. The ceramic sample comes from the site of Cerro Tortolita, which contains both ceremonial and habitation zones. This site’s emergence in the upper Ica Valley during the 3rd century AD coincided with a broader increase in local settlement hierarchy. The timing of Cerro Tortolita’s rise and its religious nature provide a unique opportunity to isolate and investigate the relationship between religion and emergent inequality. Although inequality was once thought to be an inevitable transition on the road to progress to Western civilization-like complexity, it is now recognized that societies have social norms and leveling mechanisms that actively maintain distributions of power. For inequality to arise, social norms and limitations maintaining equality must first be overcome, and religion is one means of doing so. The hypotheses tested through this work concern use of space within the ceremonial zone of the site, and what this can tell us about elite strategies for power and how regular people shaped those strategies. By studying the power dynamics at Cerro Tortolita, we can better understand the potential of religion in emergent inequality.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 16559