Diet, Identity and Status in Colonial Huamanga (Ayacucho), Peru

Summary

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

This paper explores ideas of identity and status at the earliest Jesuit church in Ayacucho, Peru (ca. 1605-1767 CE), La Iglesia de la Compañía de Jesús de Huamanga (ICJH). Starting with an exploration of indigenous resistance to Spanish colonialism, this case study uses stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen as proxies for diet and burial location as a proxy for potential status, to provide further analyses of the daily lives and deaths of the indigenous individuals buried underneath the church floors. Results are complicated. Isotopic values and burial position do not correlate as expected, suggesting that initial hypotheses may be too simple, and that broader discussions of diet and status within the urban context of 17th and 18th century Huamanga are needed to clarify ideas of identity within this community.

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): 24466