On the north coast of Perú in the foothills of the Andes the polity of Collambay lived in a frontier zone between the Pacific coast and the highlands. On the eastern frontier of the coastal Chimú empire, in the Moche Valley, Collambay occupied a unique ecological niche, known for its production of coca, a prestige resource in the Andes. Andean strategies of political economy indicate this coca producing zone would be one that empires would want to access however, few studies have occurred in the chaupiyunga. My doctoral dissertation examines the relationships between the local community, Collambay and two successive empires, the Chimú (AD 900-1470) and the Inca (1470-1532). Prior to my investigation no archaeological excavations had been carried out in the Collambay area. My multi-dimensional study examines Collambay’s occupational history through settlement patterns and excavations at two sites, Cerro Huancha MV 900 and Cerro Ramon MV 1000. My excavations document the occupational history of the region and focuses on Collambay’s local economy and group identity, examining changes and continuities in the region throughout the duration of the Chimú and Inca Empires. My study indicates that Collambay maintained exchange relationships with the Chimú empire that developed into a political alliance, benefiting both parties. As a result of this relationship Collambay gained political power in the region. Upon the Chimú fall to the Inca, Collambay underwent another significant shift, undergoing reorganization to maintain an Inca state storehouse. Throughout these interactions with imperial powers Collambay maintained local traditions and material culture reflecting a unique, hybrid identity. This study contributes to a growing field of case studies that priorities understanding local populations in local-imperial interaction. It also is one of the few case studies to occur in the north coast chaupiyunga, a region whose sociopolitical history is significant for understanding experiences of populations on the political margins.

Archaeological research on gender in burial customs of pre-Moche societies on the north coast of Peru have been generally lacking. In an attempt to shed more light on the topic with respect to such societies, this paper utilized distributive data of ceramic assemblages from the site of Cerro Oreja on the north coast of Peru along with statistical analysis in the form of simple random sampling to determine the nature of gender dynamics within several pre-Moche burial assemblages. Cupisnique, Salinar, and Gallinazo were the main societies of focus. For each culture, the distribution of ceramics was compared according to their deposit in male, female, and subadult burials. Due to the unevenly represented population of males and females (male burials outnumbered females), simple random samples were taken from each culture to provide an even base for comparison. Ultimately, the findings determined that pre-Moche societies experienced less of a status division based on gender due to the distribution of ceramics within the burial assemblages as more pottery was deposited with females in the earlier societies. Those distributions became less evident in later periods. Furthermore, the types of vessels deposited may imply a gendered belief in the practice of ritual feasting in the afterlife, as males were buried with a wider assortment of vessel types than females.

This study investigates geospatial relationships among Late Intermediate Period (1000-1400 CE) settlement patterns within the Moquegua River drainage of southern Peru which were first identified in the 1990s by the Moquegua Archaeological Survey (MAS). A prevalence of walls and defensive locations and a largely vacant no-mans-land between down valley Chiribaya and up valley Estuquiña settlements likely evidences an increased level of inter-cultural conflict in the region during the LIP that may have continued in the Late Horizon. Using viewshed analyses in ARC-GIS, this study proposes and compares two possible chronologies to explore how Chiribaya, Estuquiña, and Estuquiña -Inca settlements interacted or competed for the surrounding river valley through their direct or indirect control of resources, and their ability to defend against each other. Through the identification of these prime factors, this study aims to understand how the placement of settlements corresponds to the larger web of social interactions.

Studies of early state societies often focus on macro-level dynamics of social

diversity and inequality. Archaeological debates about the centralized or pluralistic nature of the Tiwanaku state (A.D.500–1000), the earliest expansive polity in the south- central Andes (Bolivia, Peru), hinge on understanding the relationships between its constituent individuals and lineage groups. Tiwanaku funerary processes propagated popular ideologies of reciprocal feasting, reflected personal histories of the deceased, and marked social boundaries through style and space. For this dissertation, I applied a multiscalar approach that examined 299 individual burials from 14 cemeteries at the provincial Tiwanaku center of Omo M10 in the Moquegua Valley (Southern Peru). The unprecedented size of this sample, new sampling methods, and outstanding preservation of burial assemblages shed new light on aspects of the Tiwanaku funerary process, and redefined the range of normative and non-normative Tiwanaku mortuary practices.

Variability of grave assemblages and tomb structure styles at Omo M10 highlights the social construction of age and gender identities in Tiwanaku society. Over the life course, individuals acquired economic and social capital. Textile and food production and consumption marked gendered spheres of practice and entangled Tiwanaku men and women into relations of duality and complementarity. For Tiwanaku kin communities living at Omo M10, cemeteries presented discrete private spaces for commemorating ancestors and cultivating shared memories, always within the broader ideological parameters of Tiwanaku mortuary practices. A non-Tiwanaku cemetery at the site indicates, for the first time, multiethnic interactions of Tiwanaku lowland groups with coastal populations. Overall, the burials provide little evidence for institutionalized social stratification in Tiwanaku’s provincial society. Maintaining the autonomy of kin group mortuary practices, the state instead appropriated non-normative death-related practices in the context of public offering rituals.

As the results of this dissertation illustrate, mortuary archaeology continues to be a versatile tool for multiscalar analyses of the past, and for elucidating the nature and intersection of personal and community-level identities. In doing so, this line of inquiry can make significant contributions to debates about social organization, power and inequality in ancient states, as ideological domains related to death and ancestors are contested, appropriated, and transformed.

This thesis explores how food remains provide insight into ancient culinary and agrarian practices and how these food-related practices reflect ancient identities and migration histories. I present preliminary paleoethnobotanical findings from samples excavated from multiple household units at the large Tiwanaku residential site of Cerro San Antonio (L1), Locumba, Perú. The Tiwanaku civilization (ca. A.D. 500-1100) originated in the Bolivian Altiplano of the south-central Andes and expanded into Peruvian coastal valleys from A.D. 600-1100, which are areas suitable for growing lowland crops that cannot be grown in the Bolivian Altiplano. In this paper, I discuss the implications of local, lowland cultivars and nonlocal, highland cultivars at the coastal-valley site of L1. I ask how the food remains might be telling of whether Locumba-Tiwanaku colonists traveled to L1 directly from the Tiwanaku core of the Bolivian Altiplano and are primary Tiwanaku colonists or traveled to L1 from the known primary Tiwanaku colony of the Moquegua Valley and are secondary Tiwanaku colonists (Sitek 2018; Sitek n.d.). In conclusion, I argue that the macrobotanical assemblage suggests that L1 is a primary Tiwanaku colony because 1) highland-associated domestic and industrial cultivars and animals at L1 reflect efforts to maintain homeland identities (Goldstein 2005), 2) evidence of specialization and culinary differences at L1 are characteristic of the Tiwanaku homeland social structure (Goldstein 2005), and 3) the proportions of local and nonlocal foods at L1 resemble the proportions of local and nonlocal foods at a primary Tiwanaku colony, the Rio Muerto site of M43.

This dissertation develops a community ecology framework, which utilizes methods developed through network-analysis and the broader study of complex adaptive systems. Unlike most models of state growth that have tended to support either top-down, macroscale explanations, or bottom-up or more microscale-focused perspectives to connect between state and individual, my approach privileges the mesoscale, considering the community as the pivotal middle ground. I focus on Tiwanaku, one of the first state-level societies to expand in the Middle Horizon of the Central Andes, (ca. AD 600-1100), using results from several seasons of archaeological research at the Tiwanaku occupation of the Cerro San Antonio (L1) site, in the middle Locumba Valley on the far south coast of Peru. This work included survey and mapping, systematic surface collection, and extensive household archaeology excavations and material analysis. Using the community ecology framework, I synthesize these data to reconstruct the culture history of the site, understand the daily lives of Cerro San Antonio’s Tiwanaku residents, and delineate the role this node played in Tiwanaku’s dynamic multimodal community network on its western frontier. In doing so I shed light on the nature of Tiwanaku statecraft and contribute to the anthropological understanding of how individuals, communities, and institutions operated within nascent states of the past.

Despite emphasis placed by transnational theorists on the uniqueness of contemporary connections to homeland, such theories are relevant to the expansion of the ancient Tiwanaku state into the Osmore Drainage of southern Peru. These archaeological connections to homeland were maintained in the broader context of Tiwanaku sociopolitical organization, understanding of which is advanced by recent approaches to inter-regional interaction emphasizing studies of heterogeneous identities in peripheral contexts. The present study employs radiogenic strontium isotope analysis and stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis of bone collagen from individuals buried at a Tiwanaku provincial center in comparison with published diet and mobility data to better understand how different communities engaged with their ethnic and broader political identities. Additionally, radiogenic strontium isotope analysis of architectural material from the same provincial center is used to determine its source location and to better understand how the construction of the provincial center’s temple related to colonists’ ethnic and/or broader sociopolitical identities. Overall, a lack of difference in diet and mobility practices between different colonial communities and the building material’s origin in the Osmore Drainage supports more heterarchical notions of Tiwanaku colonial organization, as well as concepts of Tiwanaku as both a political entity and a deeply held cultural milieu. Moreover, the presence of an anomalous young woman suggests the possible exchange of marriage partners with coastal Huaracane-related populations, an intriguing mechanism for the poorly understood indirect procurement of marine resources by Tiwanaku colonists.