Transition in a Place Between: Salinar Phase (500 BCE–CE 1) Settlement Patterns in the Chaupiyunga of 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.

In the Moche Valley, the dusk of Chavín brought the end of millennium-long traditions of large ceremonial centers (Guañape Phase, 1600–500 BCE) and ushered in a long period of sociopolitical fragmentation and endemic conflict (Salinar Phase, 500 BCE–CE 1). Synthesizing two full-coverage pedestrian surveys of the Moche Valley *chaupiyunga conducted by Billman (1990–1991) and Mullins (2017–2018), we focus on *chaupiyunga settlement patterns in order to better understand this period of sociopolitical transition and change. As the main coastal-highland borderland of the Moche Valley, the *chaupiyunga landscape exhibits many scars of the ebb and flow of coastal and highland people and polities throughout prehistory. Our settlement pattern analyses use measures of visual interconnectedness and demographic tethering to articulate the changing connections built between peoples and places during the transition from the Guañape to Salinar Phases. Though Salinar Phase *chaupiyunga populations were somewhat bound to the older Guañape Phase landscape and its huacas, they simultaneously were forging newer connections with newer places. We argue that these new connections were intertwined with changing norms in land ownership and community organization, both of which contributed to the endemic conflict characteristic of this phase.

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): 32588