Echoes in the Wake of Collapse: Cultural Connectivity during the Middle Horizon to Late Intermediate Period in the Lower Ica Valley, Peru

Summary

This paper examines what happened to cultural connectivity on the south coast in the wake of Wari’s collapse based on our ongoing investigations at the site of H-8 in the lower Ica Valley. We investigate in particular how the echoes of the Middle Horizon resonate in the genesis of the Late Intermediate Ica culture that emerged here thereafter. We present evidence that H-8 was first founded at this time (c. 1000CE), and operated as a caravanserai within an intensifying network of trade and exchange articulated by camelid caravans between a number of Ica Valley sites throughout the LIP. Lyon (1966) argues that the beginning of the LIP was marked by a revival of Middle Horizon iconography, suggesting particular cultural or political value of this period to the people of Ica. Moreover, the remote oracle/pilgrimage center of Pachacamac on the central coast appears to have exerted particularly powerful influence on Ica during the Middle Horizon, but also thereafter on the developing regional culture in Ica. This poorly understood relationship with the central coast may have had a pivotal role in the development and rise to power of the Ica people during the subsequent LIP period.

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): 21160