New Perspectives on the Ica Society: Tracing Changes in Material Culture in the Ica Valley on the Peruvian South Coast from the Middle Horizon to Early Colonial Period (ca. 1000–1600 CE)

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Developments through Time on the South Coast of Peru: In Memory of Patrick Carmichael" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

For nearly 600 years the Ica society flourished in the vast deserts of the Peruvian south coast. Rising to considerable regional influence during the Late Intermediate period (ca. 1000–1476 CE), little is known of its origins or later years. Our recent excavations in the lower Ica Valley have begun to address these gaps in our knowledge and shed further light on the era of Ica prosperity during the Late Intermediate period. Through investigating the formative years after the fall of the Wari, this work also questions the orthodox story of a cultural and demographic collapse within the Ica Valley around 1000 CE. This paper will outline the major finds of our excavations in the Ica Valley, including the discovery of two quipu and a potential spondylus shell workshop. Our excavations have also yielded abundant evidence of long-distance trade in the Ica Valley by camelid caravans that mobilized exotic goods from as far as modern-day Ecuador and the Amazonian Basin. Ultimately, this work traces changes in Ica material culture to better understand shifting patterns of cultural connectivity as well as the process of collapse and emergence of new sociopolitical identities, which has implications for the study of other Andean contexts and beyond.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Developments through Time on the South Coast of Peru: In Memory of Patrick Carmichael   •
• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32867