Enemies and Allies: GIS Analyses of Late Intermediate Period Defensibility and Settlement Patterns in the Huamanga Province of Peru*

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Warfare theorists argue that scholars must move beyond social evolutionary theories and realize that warfare and sociopolitical organization are not autonomous and self-regulating; one cannot be understood in isolation from the other. Instead, scholars need to focus on the interrelationships between and interdependency of military infrastructure and societal structure. Only through the analysis of this interrelationship can scholars begin to understand warring societies across time and space. The Peruvian Late Intermediate Period (LIP) (AD 1000-1450), the period between the collapse of the Tiwanaku and Wari States and the rise of the Inca Empire, is an ideal time period to study this relationship, as it has often been characterized as a time of violent conflict and social strife. This paper uses Geographic Information Systems (GIS) analyses to consider how defensive practices and regional site organization changed throughout the LIP in the former core of the Middle Horizon (MH) (AD 600-1000) Wari Empire—the Huamanga Province of Ayacucho, Peru. GIS analyses at the regional level evaluate the relationship between hilltop sites, examining spatial distribution, ceramic distributions, and sensory connections (intervisibility). Meanwhile, site level analyses assess site defensibility, focusing on movement analysis (accessibility) and visibility analysis (visual range and invisibility to outsiders).

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• SAA 2021: General Sessions

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 31997