The Biggest Party of All? Zooarchaeological Analysis of an Oversized Late Inca Banquet at Pachacamac
Author(s): Céline Erauw; Sylvie Byl; Peter Eeckhout
Year: 2023
Summary
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.
Pachacamac is a major archaeological site on the central coast of Peru, occupied from the 5th to the 16th centuries, AD. This paper reports the results of an interdisciplinary study of a late Inca context discovered in building B4, excavated in 2016 and 2018 by the Ychsma Project (ULB). A series of analyses were conducted, including zooarchaeological ones, which are the focus of this paper. The amount of butchered faunal remains uncovered in one of the excavated areas stands out as evidence of an enormous banquet. Zooarchaeological analysis allowed us to estimate the size of the feast and the number of people involved, as well as document further related material evidence. Furthermore, we discuss the criteria and limitations for identifying such events in the archaeological record, and the possible motivations for this uncommonly oversized case at Pachacamac.
Cite this Record
The Biggest Party of All? Zooarchaeological Analysis of an Oversized Late Inca Banquet at Pachacamac. Céline Erauw, Sylvie Byl, Peter Eeckhout. Presented at The 88th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. 2023 ( tDAR id: 475018)
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Keywords
General
Andes: Late Horizon
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Feasts
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Pachacamac
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Peru
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Subsistence and Foodways
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Zooarchaeology
Geographic Keywords
South America: Andes
Spatial Coverage
min long: -82.441; min lat: -56.17 ; max long: -64.863; max lat: 16.636 ;
Record Identifiers
Abstract Id(s): 37406.0