Technology and Social identity on the North Coast of Peru

Summary

Drawing on nearly three decades of inspiration from and collaboration with Rita Wright, this paper explores the relationship between craft technologies and social identities on the North Coast of Peru over the longue durée. The technologies used to manufacture goods were themselves meaningful, often considered to be divinely inspired and certainly a key element in determining the value and significance of both everyday and esoteric objects. As transformative processes, the methods and techniques of craft manufacture reflected the power of artisans to create and animate the material and social worlds. Importantly, within media distinct technologies were often associated with different genders, classes, ethnicities, and other aspects of social identity. Set within the context of the rise and fall of regional state-organized polities and waves of "contact" and conquest by more distant powers, I discuss how technological stability in some media reflected the persistence of autochthonic identities, "traditional" social structures, and indigenous claims to place, while the episodic introduction of new technologies – some developed locally and some "imported" by more distant conquerors – reflected the assertion of new loci of authority, the restructuring of sociopolitical relationships, and claims to different modes of prestige.

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): 20754