Moche Women: Multiple Realities and Alternative Powers

Summary

The growing breadth of data coming from scientific excavations of Moche sites in different valleys along the north coast of Peru has led to major advances in our understanding of the diverse ways of being Moche as well as the complex relationship between religious and political powers. How gender relations played into these Moche experiences however remains relatively understudied. Here, I specifically focus on the place of women in Moche society through time and space. Some women have now been shown to have played leading roles in practices linked to the dominant Moche ideology. However, these women appear to have lived mostly in the northern part of the Moche sphere and were exceptional in the way their status and gender identity intersected. Furthermore, beyond the positions of various women within the dominant hierarchical structure, the combination of multiple lines of evidence reveal alternative spaces where and ways in which the power of women may have been enacted.

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): 20751