A “Salinar Period” Cemetery at the José Olaya Site: Preliminary Demography of a Post-Chavín Maritime Community in the Moche Valley

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Peering into the Night: Transition, Sociopolitical Organization, and Economic Dynamics after the Dusk of Chavín in the North Central Andes" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Systematic bioarchaeological studies of skeletal remains in conjunction with mortuary analyses provide a unique space in which archaeologists can begin to reconstruct past populations, social dynamics, and cosmologies. Following the influence of late Initial period Cupisnique (1200/1100–500 BC) and early Horizon Chavín (800–400 BC), north coast populations entered a period of transition. The beginning of this period, the “Salinar period” (ca. 400 BC–100/50 BC) is poorly understood in the context of the Moche Valley in northern Peru more broadly. Three years of excavations by the Programa Arqueológico Huanchaco (PAHUAN) at the José Olaya site in Huanchaco (approximately 10 km north of modern-day Trujillo) identified three Salinar period occupations. While human remains are associated with all occupations, the identification of a cemetery means the José Olaya site has become the largest systematically excavated Salinar period cemetery since rescue excavations at Cerro Oreja (Moche Valley) and the Puémape site (Jequetepeque Valley). To date, many burials have been recovered from José Olaya and some preliminarily analyzed. Preliminary demographic information will be presented, with particular focus on elite burials identified thus far. Considering data-derived mortuary patterns, bioprofiles, and cemetery-wide trends, this paper discusses potential theoretical implications in a post-Chavín coastal Moche Valley.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• Peering into the Night: Transition, Sociopolitical Organization, and Economic Dynamics after the Dusk of Chavín in the North Central Andes

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32279