Eating and Empires: Stable Isotope Analysis to Reconstruct Diet and Foodways in the Wari Heartland

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Seeing Wari through the Lens of the Everyday: Results from the Patipampa Sector of Huari" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Dietary patterns within a community can reveal insights into how communities were organized and how social class or gender roles could shape who had access to which foods. In this study, we use stable isotope analysis of archaeological humans and fauna from three Wari sites in the imperial heartland (Conchopata, Qasa Pampa, and Huari) to explore those issues. We analyze δ13C from 93 human dental carbonate samples to examine childhood diet and whether it differed between boys and girls, and we explore the spatial patterning of childhood diets within and between sites. Additionally, we present preliminary δ13C and δ15N values from human bone collagen (n=18), which are compared to previously published results, to document adult diets and whether they differed between the sexes and between sites. Animal dental carbonates (n=15) and animal bone collagen (n=21) are also examined to aid in reconstructing the Wari menu and Wari diets. Results show that δ13C from human dental carbonates range from -12.2 to .3‰, a wide range that may reflect the differential access to carbon enriched foods, such as maize, within the heartland. Bone collagen δ13C ranges from -19.1 to -8.7‰ and δ15N ranges from 6.6 to 10.8‰.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Seeing Wari through the Lens of the Everyday: Results from the Patipampa Sector of Huari   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25564