Diachronic and Spatial Perspectives for Exploring the Ethnogenesis of Afro-Andean Populations in Southern Coastal Peru

Summary

Ecclesiastical records suggest that the Ingenio Valley in Nasca’s northern Rio Grande Drainage has been defined by a predominantly black population since the early 17th century, most of whom worked as enslaved laborers on the two large Jesuit wine haciendas and a number of smaller secular estates in the valley. In this paper I approximate Afro-Andean ethnogenesis in the coastal valleys of Nasca from multiple temporal and spatial scales, considering both historical documentation and archaeological evidence. A close examination of documentation across the subsequent two centuries opens a window onto the complexities and contradiction of mapping casta categories onto the valley’s social geography. Archaeology offers a means to explore slave-dominated spaces on the Jesuit wine estates and the production of an hacienda aesthetic which contentiously incorporated a host of African, European, and Andean signs, revealing of both dissensus and social cohesion among the heterogeneous enslaved and free Afro-Andean hacienda population.

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): 21359