Who Founded Quilcapampa? Wari Agents, Social Network Analysis, and the Unfurling of a Middle Horizon State

Summary

At the beginning of the ninth century AD, a Wari-affiliated settlement was founded in the Sihuas Valley of southern Peru. Celebrants ritually smashed face-necked jars when they abandoned the site less than a century later. These vessels likely represent elites or ethnic groups in the Wari sphere - agents whose associations in conflict or cooperation can be used to tell a more dynamic story of the founding of Quilcapampa during this turbulent era of Wari state expansion. This paper uses social network analysis (SNA) to explore the relationship between Middle Horizon agents throughout Peru based on site provenance and artifact co-occurrence. We suggest that SNA hints at a series of changing relationships between agents that speaks both to the complexities of Wari governance and the reasons behind the creation of sites like Quilcapampa.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

Keywords

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20226