Camelid Pastoralism in the Wari Empire and Its Political Implications

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.

The South American camelids had tremendous importance for basic subsistence, social life, and religion in all prehispanic Andean societies, but implications of herding domesticated llamas and alpacas for broader political systems have received less academic attention. This study uses the camelid remains as a proxy to study pastoral traditions within the political apparatus of the Wari Empire (ca. 600–1100 CE, modern-day Peru). The overview of current evidence from southcentral Wari territories combined with novel zooarchaeological and isotopic (C, N, O, and Sr) results from northern Wari sites implies that herding strategies were strongly influenced by preexisting local practices of animal husbandry, which led to different political consequences in each subjugated province. This research suggests that camelid herding was an indispensable tool in the Wari imperial repertoire, reflecting practices of ecological engineering and trajectories of regional governance.

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): 39081.0