<html>A return to <i>Special Function Settlements</i>: the spatial dynamics of gathering in the Ica Highlands (AD 1000-1532)</html>

Author(s): Kevin Lane

Year: 2025

Summary

This is an abstract from the "A Movable Feast: Mobility and Commensalism in the Andes" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In the 1990’s Parsons, Hastings and Matos identified Special Function Settlements describing habitation sites with dense clusters of agglutinated structures and circumscribed open areas in the highlands. They theorized that these places functioned less as permanent settlements, and more as spaces were people congregated and interacted. Special Function Settlements situated at the liminal junction between ecozones served as aggregation sites for different social, economic (herders and agriculturalists), and possibly ethnic groups to coalesce around shared feasts and rituals.

In the Ica Highlands, Special Function Settlements straddled the yunga-kichwa and the kichwa-puna ecozones potentially serving two distinct types of pastoralist transhumance, a high-altitude pastoralism (HAP) and a low-altitude pastoralism (LAP), and their concomitant agriculturalists. This paper presents the results of drone survey, least-cost analysis, and GIS to model the patterns of movement from the different areas to these Special Function Settlements, while ethnohistoric data will indicate when these commensal gatherings might have occurred. Following, I will focus on the Late Intermediate (AD 1000-1400) and Late Horizon (AD 1400-1532) Special Function Settlement site of Viejo Sangayaico to trace how commensal rituals changed emphasis during this transition from the local to the imperial.

Cite this Record

A return to Special Function Settlements: the spatial dynamics of gathering in the Ica Highlands (AD 1000-1532). Kevin Lane. Presented at The 90th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. 2025 ( tDAR id: 510436)

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Keywords

General
Archaeometry & Materials Analysis • Mobility • South America: Andes • Zooarchaeology

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 52470