A Paleoethnobotanical Analysis of Food, Identity, and Culture Contact in the Middle Horizon Wari Empire, A.D. 600-1000 (WGF - Dissertation Fieldwork Grant)

Summary

This resource is an application for the Dissertation Fieldwork Grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation.

The goal of this project is to examine the relationship between food, identity, and culture contact in the context of imperial borderlands. More specifically, the proposed research uses ancient plant remains to address the role of food in the complex multi-directional social interactions between colonists and indigenous groups in the Wari Empire of the highlands of the Peruvian Andes. Comparing plant food data from Middle Horizon (A.D. 600-1000) household contexts at the Wari imperial administrative sites of Cerro Baúl in Moquegua Valley and Hatun Cotuyoc in the Cusco Valley to the indigenous sites of Yauhay Alta and Aka'willay, I will examine Wari and indigenous foodways from an intersite and intrasite perspective. Analyzing spatial patterns of plant use and discard, I aim to reconstruct household foodways of Wari colonists and indigenous groups to examine: (1) if the diet of Wari colonists in provincial colonies differed from the imperial heartland in Ayacucho; (2) how daily foods were related to the expression of identity amongst Wari colonists and local groups; and (3) how food can inform our understanding of cultural interactions between Wari colonists and indigenous groups on the borderlands of the empire.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• WGF - Support for Research Projects   •
• Wenner-Gren Foundation

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Contact(s): Wenner-Gren Foundation

Notes

Rights & Attribution: This resource is an application from the Wenner-Gren Foundation and has been approved by the grantee solely for pedagogical purposes. Please do not cite, circulate, or duplicate any part of these documents without the express written consent of the author.

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