Gardening for Victory: War Gardens in the Ancient Andes

Summary

During times of social and political crisis humans’ most basic biological needs still need to be met: they need to eat. This means that during times of war, when state infrastructure breaks down and supply chains are threatened, people often take food security matters into their own hands. During 20th century conflicts, families ensured food security on the home front by building household gardens. Practically, the construction of war gardens resulted in decreased individual reliance on often fragile political systems and infrastructure. While this process could be viewed as isolating, families often viewed themselves as collectively contributing to the war effort by maintaining self-sufficiency. In this paper, I will look at historical examples of war gardens and victory gardens to assess how they provided an anchor of cultural continuity at the household level while at the same time altering broader demographic, economic, and political relationships. I will then use these data as a heuristic framework to consider how pre-Hispanic gardens transformed social relationships in the Peruvian Andes during times of war.

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): 21632