A Post-Wari World: Late Intermediate Period Defensibility in the Huamanga and Huarpa Provinces of Peru

Summary

Following the collapse of the Wari empire (ca. AD 1000), a widespread demographic and settlement change occurred in the Ayacucho Region of Peru. People were moving away from the rich farmlands and ritual centers of the flatlands to settle on hilltops and ridges. Many scholars point to strategic defense as a cause of settlement shift during this period—the Late Intermediate Period (ca. AD 1000-1450), suggesting warfare was endemic, while others suggest the sites facilitated agro-pastoralism and warfare was sporadic. This paper presents the preliminary results of two pedestrian reconnaissance surveys conducted in July 2014 and July 2017 in the Huamanga and Huarpa provinces of Peru—the provinces surrounding the Middle Horizon (ca. AD 600-1000) Wari capital. During these surveys, in an effort to assess the role of defensibility in the settlement shift, we considered the general designs and arrangements of architecture at 15 Late Intermediate Period hilltop sites.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22164