Political Economy at a Casma Valley Middle Horizon Center: Evidence from Pan de Azúcar de Nivín, Peru

Summary

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

Since 2017 the Proyecto de Investigación Arqueológico Nivín seeks to clarify the cultural affiliation of the groups that occupied the middle Casma Valley, Peru. Architectural and ceramic features demonstrate the influence of both Wari and Casma cultural traditions at Pan de Azúcar de Nivín (PAN), a site occupied AD 950-1150. While the Wari Empire expanded from the southern highlands of Peru in the Middle Horizon Period, the Casma polity and ceramic tradition emerged along the north-central coast during this time as well. However, there is little research into the political economy of the Casma Valley during the Middle Horizon. Exactly how and why did PAN grow as part of a complex polity; which were the cultural affiliations of the groups that occupied PAN, and how did political economy and subsistence patterns materialize archaeologically? We reconstruct the economic focus of the site using macrofaunal, macrobotanical, and marine shells in conjunction with architectural and ceramic evidence recovered from the 2017 field activities. We approximate the original function of the site within the broader political economy of the Middle Horizon in the Casma Valley, involving other areas of the valley and wider trade networks.

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): 24209