Defining Identity during Revitalization: Taki Onqoy in the Chicha-Soras Valley (Ayacucho, Peru)

Summary

Investigations into Early Colonial Period status and identity of New World indigenous people have focused on assemblages of Spanish and indigenous goods in domestic and public contexts (Deagan 2003, Rice 2012). These studies have investigated how access to new goods and foodways may have reflected status among indigenous people, or how use of these imports in specific contexts were markers of changing identities. This paper presents excavation results at Iglesiachayoq (Ayacucho, Peru), an Inka settlement where inhabitants participated in a 1560s revitalization movement called Taki Onqoy. In this movement, Andeans rejected Spanish cultural traditions in favor of a return to local deity worship. Rather than strategically exploiting Spanish goods as a marker of status, some inhabitants of Iglesiachayoq actively rejected these imports in order to reaffirm their indigenous identities in the face of mass death, labor demands, and religious change. Utilizing ceramic, faunal, and spatial data, I argue that the presence of Spanish goods in specific households cannot be fully understood merely as rejection or acceptance vis-à-vis resistance or accommodation. Instead, patterns of use at Iglesiachayoq were complicated by indigenous actors who were caught between outwardly conforming to Spanish mandates while simultaneously maintaining local identity through Taki Onqoy practices.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Status and Identity in the Imperial Andes   •
• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 15186