Crafting Continuity, Crafting Change: A Compositional Approach to Communities of Practice in the Moquegua Valley, Peru

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Communities of Practice in the Ancient Andes: Thinking through Knowledge Transmission and Community Making in and beyond Craft Production" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In many regions of the south central Andes, the transition from the Middle Horizon to the Late Intermediate period was accompanied by significant disruption to regional sociopolitical and economic systems, including the organization of craft production and the long-distance circulation of craft objects. Ongoing research in the Moquegua Valley provides a nuanced, local level, and diachronic perspective on the lived experience of the almost five centuries that are bookended by the end of the Middle Horizon states (ca. AD 1000) and the beginnings of Inka imperial rule (ca. AD 1476) in the valley. Drawing on visual and compositional analyses (LA-ICP-MS) of ceramic sherds spanning these 500 years as well as a comprehensive chemical data base of clays from Moquegua, this paper seeks to identify the geographic and temporal scope of communities of practice in the valley. I suggest both that existing communities of practice were essential to continuing patterns of resource procurement and production that endured across generations despite localized population displacement, but also that emerging communities of practice were key participants in the reformulation of intravalley relations and networks.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Communities of Practice in the Ancient Andes: Thinking through Knowledge Transmission and Community Making in and beyond Craft Production   •
• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32948