Negotiating with Empire: the Chancay as "intermediaries" in the Inka-Chimu conflict

Summary

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

During the Late Intermediate Period, the north-central coast of Peru was inhabited by a number of small but dynamic polities, or señoríos, that were actively engaged in interregional networks of trade, intermarriage, and warfare. However, even though the north-central coast was sandwiched between the Chimu and Inka, we know relatively little about how the señoríos who inhabited this region interacted with or were incorporated into these late Pre-Hispanic empires. This paper argues that, rather than be passively absorbed into the Chimu or Inka’s rapidly expanding spheres, at least some of these groups actively negotiated their own terms of engagement with these growing imperial powers. Specifically, the author examines how one of these señoríos, the Chancay, may have leveraged their position as merchants to at least partially resist both Chimu and later Inka advances. Using recent excavation data from the Chancay site of Cerro Blanco in the Huanangue Valley, Peru, as well as ethnohistoric data from the Justicia 396, and the Historia Anonima de Trujillo, this paper examines the ways in which this small, but potentially ambition community of merchants may have been drawn into the wider Chimu-Inka conflict and yet emerged unscathed through advantageous alliances on both sides.

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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Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 41621.0