Returning Home: Zooarchaeological and Bioarchaeological Insights on Nasca Domestic Foodways and Local Mortuary Traditions at Cocahuischo, Peru

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Excavations between 2010 and 2012 at the Nasca site of Cocahuischo (300-700 CE) recorded domestic and mortuary activities of a large local community composed of 130 house structures, patio preparation spaces and dozens of cist tombs. Employing zooarchaeological and bioarchaeological techniques to the human, vertebrate and invertebrate remains from Cocahuischo, we explore inter-house variability in acquisition, processing and sharing of animal remains as well as the demographic and health profiles of human tomb burials. Our analyses reveal that the raising and consumption of guinea pigs was a central part of foodways, which was supplemented by camelid meat and coastal invertebrates. Higher proportions of camelid remains and greater intensities of burning on fauna recovered from a possible workshop highlights divergent provisioning strategies for labourers. Human burials from stone cist tombs at Cocahuischo include individuals from a range of demographic profiles, with non-metric traits indicating several instances of direct kinship ties. The results from our analyses attest that local communities at the end of the Early Intermediate Period (~600 CE) where managing their networks in response to changing socio-political dynamics, mainly the emergence and increasing influence of the Wari in the Nasca region.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38895.0