Local Mortuary Practice and Inca Imperial Conquest in the Middle Chincha Valley, Peru

Summary

This is an abstract from the "From the Paracas Culture to the Inca Empire: Recent Archaeological Research in the Chincha Valley, Peru" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

I investigate the relationship between local mortuary practice and imperial conquest in the middle Chincha Valley of Peru, a landscape that was incorporated into the Inca Empire in the 15th century. Indigenous groups developed strategies for dealing with invasive imperial control. One strategy was mortuary practice, a means of expressing relationships among the living and the deceased. Such relationships can form the basis of society, knit together extended family groups, and enable the continuation of cultural practices and identities. To what extent did indigenous people transform their mortuary practices during periods of conquest? To address this question, I examine indigenous mortuary activities in the study area that date to the Late Intermediate Period (AD 1000–1400) and Late Horizon (AD 1400–1532). I report 25 14C dates associated with two distinct grave types: above-ground and subterranean mausolea (chullpas) and subterranean cists. I employ Bayesian modeling to analyze these dates. Results demonstrate that local groups maintained, transformed, and innovated their mortuary practices as they were brought under Inca rule. These data carry implications for understanding how societies are reconstituted through mortuary practice during times of profound sociopolitical change. These implications are drawn out in this paper.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• From the Paracas Culture to the Inca Empire: Recent Archaeological Research in the Chincha Valley, Peru   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25962