Revisiting Jahuay: An Early Horizon Maritime Site at the Topará Quebrada on the South Coast of Peru

Summary

The littoral site of Jahuay is located at the mouth of the Topará Quebrada, between the Cañete and Chincha Valleys on the South Coast of Peru. It is a key site for studying the Topará cultural tradition, which emerged on the South Coast during the late Early Horizon (EH)(250 – 1 BCE), and was the site where the Topará ceramic seriation was first documented by Edward Lanning in the mid-20th century. In 2017, we began our first season of excavations at Jahuay, with the goal of investigating EH coastal subsistence strategies as well as the sociopolitical role of the site within the larger Topará sphere. We recovered an array of materials, including ceramics, botanic remains, marine shell, faunal bone, and textile. Our initial results suggest the people occupying Jahuay during the EH primarily exploited maritime resources, but also had access to a wide array agricultural goods including squash, peanuts, beans, and cotton. Here we discuss these new results, including a reexamination of Lanning’s Topará ceramic seriation, and consider their implications for future research.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22319