Regional Solidarity, Ethnic Diversity, and Family Networks: The Bioarchaeology of Belonging and Exclusion in the Tiwanaku Colonial Enclave in the Moquegua Valley, Peru

Summary

During the Middle Horizon, disparate communities in the south central Andes embraced Tiwanaku corporate culture to signal their affiliation with the Tiwanaku state, yet these communities also maintained separate regional and ethnic identities through distinct cultural practices. The archaeological record of the Moquegua Valley, Peru, provides an important opportunity to evaluate processes of belonging and exclusion within Tiwanaku society. Previous research indicates members of two Tiwanaku-affiliated communities in Moquegua, Omo-style agropastoralists and Chen Chen-style agriculturalists, maintained distinct cultural identities despite living in adjacent settlements for several hundred years. However, recent biodistance research indicates that cultural boundaries did not prohibit gene flow between ethnic communities, and archaeological data from several sites are suggestive of co-residence and cultural hybridity.

This study uses bioarchaeological data from samples of human skeletal remains from five archaeological sites in the middle Moquegua Valley to develop a multiscalar approach to Tiwanaku social organization. Dental anomalies and basicranial and temporal bone landmarks are analyzed to assess postmarital residence practices and evaluate how family networks traversed ethnic boundaries. Results are contextualized using mortuary and body modification data to consider how processes of exclusion and belonging evident in material culture and social practice structured sociality within Moquegua Tiwanaku communities.

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): 20389