Material Wealth and Herding Power: A Pastoralist Perspective on Divine Lordship from Pashash, Peru

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Pastoralism in a Global Perspective" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Fluctuating political allegiances during the Early Intermediate period (200 BCE–600 CE) were coopted by competing leaders throughout the central Peruvian highlands and more broadly in the south-central Andes. The relationships and conflicts that resulted from socioeconomic negotiations among local networks; alongside the vacuum of power left by the collapse of Chavin influence several centuries before, provide an ideal opportunity to examine the way that pastoral practices enabled and inhibited the ascension of divine lords. In this paper, we examine the heterogeneity of camelid (llama and alpaca) herds from the site of Pashash (200–400 CE) to examine how material wealth as expressed in nonhuman capital shifted the balances of power in the region. Mobilizing osteometric datasets from camelid first phalanges and stable isotope results to trace dietary and mobility, our analyses attest that pastoralism holds a key set of practices that were both world-making and world-breaking. The ability to control nonhuman animal power was a cornerstone to defining divine lordship during the Recuay cultural phase of the central Peruvian Andes, and this left lasting consequences for the definition of power for centuries that followed.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Ancient Pastoralism in a Global Perspective   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38663.0