Thinking Transition: The Processes of Ethnogenesis

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.

The study of Andean prehistory divides broader cultural eras or horizons which have their own distinct and well-discernible characteristics; political and social structures and material and symbolic traditions. Between these eras of (relative) stability, scholars designate the more or less lengthy periods between them as transitional or intermediate periods. These periods of transformation are both the dusk of one culture or state of culture and the dawn of another. These periods raise questions that are as difficult methodologically and theoretically as they are important. In the state of today’s archeology, they might be some of the most urgent. My own work focuses on the transitional phase that spreads from 850 to 950 CE and separates the Moche and Lambayeque on the northern coast of Peru, yet my hypothesis here is that parallels exist with the transition at the end of Chavín. In this paper, I will attempt to identify the elements from which to sketch the lineaments of a formal model in order to transcend simple diagnoses of fragmentation and seek to seize the coherence behind transition.

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): 33643