Revising Empire: Chimú and Inka Ceramic Morphology at Santa Rita B (Chao Valley, Peru)

Summary

This is an abstract from the "From Households to Empires: Papers Presented in Honor of Bradley J. Parker" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Populations in the Chao Valley of coastal Peru experienced successive waves of imperial expansion from about AD 1350 to the mid-sixteenth century. In relatively short order, the Chimú, Inka, and Spanish empires each established varying degrees of control over the valley. The site of Santa Rita B offers perspectives of how the annexation of the valley by the Chimú state established an imperial foundation that was strategically revised during the decades of Inka imperial rule. In this paper we discuss the evidence from Santa Rita B, which suggests that the Chimú conquest of the Chao Valley brought about a profound transformation of local identities and daily life as imperial subjects. We also investigate the distribution of the "Chimú-Inka" aesthetic in excavated administrative, ceremonial, and mortuary contexts at Santa Rita B. Given the uneven distribution of Inka-affiliated material culture at the site, we discuss the hybrid nature of Chimú-Inka pottery using preliminary results of a 3D scanning project to examine the impact of Inka conquest on local ceramic production practices and the social use of ceramics at Santa Rita B.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• From Households to Empires: Papers Presented in Honor of Bradley J. Parker   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24392