Examining Inter-regional Interaction in the Tiwanaku State (C.E. 500-1100) using 87Sr/86Sr Analysis of Building Material from a Provincial Ceremonial Center

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Recent approaches to inter-regional interaction emphasizing the study of heterogenous identities in peripheral contexts advance scholarly debate about sociopolitical organization in the archaic Andean state of Tiwanaku (C.E. 500-1100). The present study employs 87Sr/86Sr analysis to determine the source region of four archaeological ichu grass (Stipa ichu) samples from the Omo M10 temple in the Moquegua Valley of southern Peru, where there was significant Middle Horizon (C.E. 600-1000) Tiwanaku-affiliated settlement. Use of ichu grass (Stipa ichu) as building material is an architectural technique found in the higher elevation Tiwanaku homeland and it is more well suited to the frigid, rainy climate there than the hyper-arid Moquegua Valley. The present analyses test existing hypotheses concerning how the Omo M10 temple related to Tiwanaku colonists’ multi-scalar identities. Surprisingly, the ichu (Stipa ichu) samples were found to have 87Sr/86Sr values within the range of known local values for the Moquegua Valley. This study adds to our understanding of the practices involved in constructing the ceremonial center at Omo M10 and suggests colonists sought to situate ritual activities in a built environment that not only gestured to the homeland, but that also incorporated and sanctified the local landscape.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 26082