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COLLAPSE ON THE ANDEAN FRONTIER: EFFECT OF STATE FRAGMENTATION ON PRODUCTION AND EXCHANGE ** on Production and Exchange **

Abstract

During the Late Intermediate Period or LIP (AD 1200 -1476), the south-central Andes were characterized by an absence of state level political authority. Instead, the region was inhabited by small, competing polities who often lived in defensive locations. In the Moquegua Valley, in southern Peru, the LIP cultural group was the Estuquiña. Estuquiña pottery and other material culture is distinct from the earlier occupants of the valley, who had migrated to the valley during five centuries (AD 500-1000) during which the Wari and Tiwanaku states controlled the southern Andes. Existing ceramic analyses of Wari and Tiwanaku pottery support the claim that when Moquegua was under the authority of those two states, pottery production was standardized and centralized and that pottery was circulated across long distances. In this poster, I test cross-cultural anthropological theories that craft production is less standardized and only locally exchanged in the absence of state level political authority by examining compositional data derived from my pXRF analyses of Estuquiña pottery. I collected compositional data on 200 Estuquiña style sherds or intact vessels from two different LIP sites in the Moquegua Valley: Tumilaca la Chimba and the site of Estuquiña. The analyzed material was derived from both domestic and mortuary contexts. I use the compositional data to a. examine how homogenous the compositional signature of these ceramics is and b. whether there are outliers or sherds that were likely imported from outside the valley. Comparing data from the two sites and from the different contexts at each site, I explore inter and intra-site patterns in production and access to non-local goods during the LIP.

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