UC San Diego

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.