Home, Hearth, and Hammer: Detecting Migrants in the Wari Empire, Peru

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Seeing Migrant and Diaspora Communities Archaeologically: Beyond the Cultural Fixity/Fluidity Binary" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The existence of a prehistoric Wari Empire in the Andes of Peru was debated for several decades. Despite major shifts in settlement patterns and large-scale landscape transformations corresponding to their early expansion in the seventh century CE, researchers questioned Wari hegemony based primarily on the prevalence and quality of “imperially branded” ceramics. These artifacts were predominantly from tombs, which could be attributed to a network of prestige exchange rather than the material markers of political affiliation. In recent years, studies focused on archaeological households have dramatically reshaped perspectives on Wari expansion. This research has demonstrated colonists originating from the core of the polity as well as subsequent waves of migration with people moving between provinces. In this paper I advocate for household archaeology, a focus on domestic assemblages, and a “communities of practice” approach to quotidian activities as the means to move beyond narratives posing the conquerors vs. the conquered. Household archaeology can detect the nuances of culture change in Wari-affiliated colonial settlements, where locals and migrants from diverse cultural backgrounds interacted with each other, differentially participated in the polity as state agents, formed regionalized traditions, and changed some practices, while retaining others, over the course of several generations.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Seeing Migrant and Diaspora Communities Archaeologically: Beyond the Cultural Fixity/Fluidity Binary   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 35833.0