Variability among the Dead: Population Structure and Inferred Cultural Adaptations to the Changing Environmental and Sociopolitical Landscapes during the Late Moche (AD 650–800) Era in the Jequetepeque Valley, Peru

Summary

Recent bioarchaeological and archaeological research regarding the environmentally influenced demise of the Moche (AD 200 – 800) of the Jequetepeque Valley, Perú, indicates a variety of responses, including population dispersals, political fragmentation, cultural hybridization, and new political alliances with recently arrived foreigners at ceremonial centers. Biodistance analyses suggest that adjacent highland Cajamarca peoples from the adjacent highlands arrived in the Jequetepeque and likely interbred with local inhabitants interred at San José de Moro during both the Late Moche (~AD 650-800) and subsequent Transitional (~AD 800-900) periods. Local ceramicists at San José de Moro responded by experimenting with hybrid vessels that blended both local Moche forms and designs with new ones brought by highland immigrants in a process that Kolata has referred to as orthopraxy. These data speak to social and political relationships that existed between the arrival of foreign Cajamarca and local Moche during this period of dramatic change.

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): 20348