Abstract
This chapter analyzes the patterns of plant use at Middle Horizon sites in the Andes. We present data from the site of Conchopata, near the site of Huari, which was excavated and analyzed based on likely use of this space. The rooms were categorized into ritual or domestic spaces. The plant remains from these areas were examined in order to determine if plant use provides insight into activity use at the site. In the end, the remains recovered from Conchopata leave us with the impression that domestic and ritual life continuously blended together to leave behind a mixed record of daily activity in an early urban center.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Aufderheide, A. C., Buikstra, J. E., Cartmell, L., & Weems, C. (1991). The Prehistory of Andean Coca Leaf Chewing Practices. Paper presented at the 90th annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Chicago, November 20–24.
Bragayrac D. E. (1991). Archaeological Excavations at Vegachayoq Moqo Sector of Wari. In W. H. I. Isbell & G. McEwan (Eds.), Wari Administrative Structure: Prehistoric Monumental Architecture and State Government (pp. 71–80). Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.
Browman, D. L. (1976). Demographic correlations of the Wari conquest of Junin. American Antiquity, 41(4), 465–477.
Bruno, M. C. (2006). A morphological approach to documenting the domestication of Chenopodium in the Andes. In M. Zeder, D. Bradley, E. Emshwiller, & B. Smith (Eds.), Documenting domestication: New genetic and archaeological paradigms (pp. 32–45). Berkeley: University of California Press.
Bruno, M. C., & Ramos, M. (2009). Plant Remains from Residential and Mortuary Contexts of Mollo Kontu, Tiwanaku. Paper presented at the Society for American Archaeology Annual Meeting, Atlanta, Georgia, April 23.
Bruno, M. C., & Whitehead, W. T. (2003). Chenopodium cultivation and formative periods agriculture at Chiripa, Bolivia. Latin American Antiquity, 14(3), 339–355.
Cartmell, L. W., Auderheide, A. C., Springfield, A., Weems, C., & Arriaza, B. (1991). The frequency and antiquity of prehistoric coca leaf chewing practices in northern Chile: Radioimmunoassay of a cocaine metabolite in human-mummy hair. Latin American Antiquity, 2, 260–268.
Chiou, K. L., Hastorf, C. A., Bonavia, D., & Dillehay, T. D. (2014). Documenting cultural selection pressure changes on chile pepper (Capsicum baccatum L.) seed size through time in coastal Peru (7,600 B.P.–Present). Economic Botany, 68(2), 190–202.
Cook, A. (2001). Wari D-shaped structures, sacrificial offerings, and divine rulership. In E. Benson & A. Cook (Eds.), Ritual sacrifice in ancient Peru (pp. 119–163). Austin: University of Texas Press.
Cook, A., & Benco, N. (2000). Vasijas para la fiesta y la fama: producción artesanal en un centro urbano Huari. In P. Kaulicke, & W. Isbell (Eds.), Boletín de arqueología PUCP, No 4. Wari y Tiwanaku: Modelo vs. evidencias. Primera parte (pp. 489–504). Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú.
Cook, A., & Glowacki, M. (2003). Pot, politics, and power: Wari ceramic assemblages and imperial administration. In T. L. Bray (Ed.), The archeology and politics of food and feasting in early states and empires (pp. 173–202). New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum.
Cook, A., & Isbell, W. H. (2000). Emergency Excavations at Conchopata: Wari Temple Architecture and Iconography in Ayacucho, Peru: Project Grant Report, 1999–2000. http://www.doaks.org/PCProjectGrants/cook/cook.html8, July 2016.
Dean, E., & Kojan, D. (2001). Ceremonial households and domestic temples: “Fuzzy” definitions in the Andean Formative. Kroeber Anthropological Society Papers, 85, 109–135.
Earle, T., & Jennings, J. (2013). Remodeling Wari Political Economy. In Boletín de arqueología PUCP, No. 16. Los rostros de Wari: Perspectivas interregionales sobre el Horizonte Medio (pp. 209–226). Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú.
Finucane, B., Agurto, P. M., & Isbell, W. (2006). Human and animal diet at Conchopata, Peru: Stable isotope evidence for maize agriculture and animal management practices during the Middle Horizon. Journal of Archaeological Science, 33, 1766–1776.
Glowacki, M. (2002). The Huaro archaeological site complex: Rethinking the Wari occupation of Cuzco. In W. H. Isbell & H. Silverman (Eds.), Andean archaeology I: Variations in sociopolitical organization (pp. 267–286). New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum.
Goldstein, D. J., & Coleman, R. C. (2004). Schinus molle L. (Anacardiaceae) Chicha production in the Central Andes. Economic Botany, 58(4), 523–529.
Green, K. R., & Whitehead, W. T. (2006). Domesticated Plant Remains from Conchopata, a Wari Ceremonial Site in the Ayacucho Valley. Poster Session presented at the 71st Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Hastorf, C. A. (1990). The effect of the Inka State on Sausa agricultural production and crop consumption. American Antiquity, 55, 262–290.
Hastorf, C. A. (1999). Recent research in paleoethnobotany. Journal of Archaeological Research, 7(1), 55–103.
Hastorf, C. A. (2001). Studying ritual in the past. In past ritual and the everyday. Kroeber Anthropological Society Papers, 85, 1–15.
Hastorf, C. A. (2007). Archaeological Andean rituals: Performace, liturgy, and meaning. In E. Kryriakidis (Ed.), The archaeology of ritual (pp. 77–107). Los Angeles, CA: UCLA Cotsen Press.
Hastorf, C. A., Whitehead, W. T., Bruno, M. C., & Wright, M. (2006). The movements of maize: The path of maize into Middle Horizon Tiwanaku, Bolivia. In J. Staller, R. Tykot, & B. Benz (Eds.), Histories of maize: Multidisciplinary approaches to the prehistory, linguistics, biogeography, domestication, and evolution of maize (pp. 429–447). San Diego, CA: Academic Press/Elsevier Press.
Hawkes, C. (1954). Archaeological theory and method: Some suggestions from the Old World. American Anthropology, 56(2), 153–168.
Hayden, B. (2001). Fabulous feast: A prolegomenon to the importance of feasting. In M. Dietler & B. Hayden (Eds.), Feasts: Archaeological and ethnographic perspectives on food, politics, and power (pp. 23–64). Washington: Smithsonian Institutional Press.
Isbell, W. H. (2004). Mortuary preference: A Wari culture case study from Middle Horizon Peru. American Antiquity, 15(1), 3–30.
Isbell, W. H. (2008). A community of potters, or multi-crafting wives of polygynous lords. In I. Shimada (Ed.), Craft production in complex societies: Multicraft and producer perspectives (Foundations of Archaeological Inquiry) (pp. 68–96). Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
Isbell, W. H. (2009). Wari: A new direction in central Andean urban evolution. In L. R. Manzanilla & C. Chapdelaine (Eds.), Domestic life in prehispanic capitals: A study of specialization, hierarchy, and ethnicity (pp. 197–219). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, Museum of Anthropology.
Isbell, W. H., & Cook, A. G. (2002). A new perspective on Conchopata and the Andean Middle Horizon. In H. Silverman & W. H. Isbell (Eds.), Andean archaeology II: Art, landscape, and society (pp. 249–305). New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum.
Isbell, W. H., & McEwan, G. F. (Eds.). (1991). Wari administrative structure: Prehistoric monumental architecture and state government. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.
Isbell, W. H., & Schreiber, K. J. (1978). Was Wari a State? American Antiquity, 43(3), 372–389.
Jennings, J., & Bowser, B. (Eds.). (2008). Drink, power, and society in the Andes. Gainseville: University Press of Florida.
Jennings, J., & Craig, N. (2001). Politywide analysis and imperial political economy: The relationship between valley political complexity and administrative centers in the Wari empire of the central Andes. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 20, 479–502.
Kaulicke, P., & Isbell, W. H. (Eds.). (2000). Wari y Tiwanaku: Modelo vs. evidencias. Primera parte: Boletín de arqueología PUCP, No 4. Lima.
Kaulicke, P., & Isbell, W. H. (Eds.). (2001). Wari y Tiwanaku: Modelo vs. evidencias. Segunda parte: Boletín de arqueología PUCP, No 5. Lima.
Kintigh, K. W., & Altschul, J. H. (2010). Sustaining the digital archaeological record. Heritage Management, 3(2), 264–274.
Knobloch, P. J. (2000). Wari ritual power at Conchopata: An interpretation of Anadenanthera colubrina iconography. Latin American Antiquity, 11(4), 387–402.
Knudson, K. J., & Buikstra, J. E. (2007). Residential mobility and resource use in the Chiribaya polity of Southern Peru: Strontium isotope analysis of archaeological tooth enamel and bone. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, 17(6), 563–580.
Kolata, A. L. (1993). The Tiwanaku: Portrait of an Andean civilization. Cambridge: Blackwell.
Lanning, E. (1967). Peru before the Incas. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.
Leoni, J. B. (2005). La veneración de montañas en los Andes preincaicos: el caso de Ñawinpukyo (Ayacucho, Perú) en el período Intermedio Temprano. Chungara Revista de Antropología Chilena, 3(2), 151–164.
Leoni, J. B. (2006). Ritual and society in early Intermediate Period Ayacucho: A view from the site of Nawinpukyo. In W. H. Isbell & H. Silverman (Eds.), Andean archaeology (Vol. III, pp. 279–306). New York: Springer.
Lumbreras, L. G. (1974). The peoples and cultures of ancient Peru (B. J. Megers, Trans.). Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Machaca, G. (1997). Secuencia cultural y nuevas evidencias de formación urbana en Ñawinpuquio. Tesis de Licenciatura. Universidad de San Cristobal de Huamanga, Ayacucho, Peru.
McEwan, G. F. (1990). Some formal correspondences between the imperial architecture of the Wari and Chimu cultures of ancient Peru. Latin American Antiquity, 1(2), 97–116.
McEwan, G. F. (1996). Archaeological investigations at Pikillacta, a Wari site in Peru. Journal of Field Archaeology, 23(2), 169–186.
McEwan, G. F. (1998). The function of Niched Halls in Wari architecture. Latin American Antiquity, 9(1), 68–86.
Menzel, D. (1964). Style and time in the Middle Horizon. Ñawpa Pacha: Journal of Andean Archaeology, 2(1), 1–106.
Moore, J. (1989). Pre-Hispanic beer in coastal Peru: Technology and social context of prehistoric production. American Anthropologist, 91(3), 682–695.
Moore, J. (1996). Architecture and power in the Prehispanic Andes: The archaeology of public buildings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Morehart, C. T., & Morell-Hart, S. (2013). Beyond the ecofact: Toward a social paleoethnobotany in Mesoamerica. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 22(2), 483–511.
Moseley, M. E. (1992). The Incas and their ancestors: The archaeology of Peru. New York: Thames and Hudson.
Moseley, M. E., Nash, D. J., Williams, P. R., deFrance, S. D., Miranda, A., & Ruales, M. (2005). Burning down the brewery: Establishing and evacuating an ancient imperial colony at Cerro Baúl, Peru. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 102(48), 17264–17271.
Ochatoma Paravicino, J., & Cabrera Romero, M. (2000). Arquitectura y areas de actividad en Conchopata. In P. Kaulicke & W. Isbell (Eds.), Boletín de arqueología PUCP, No 4. Wari y Tiwanaku: Modelo vs. evidencias. Primera parte (pp. 449–488). Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú.
Ochatoma Paravicino, J., & Cabrera Romero, M. (2002). Religious ideology and military organization in the iconography of a D-shaped ceremonial precinct at Conchopata. In H. Silverman & W. H. Isbell (Eds.), Andean archaeology II: Art, landscape, and society (pp. 225–247). New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum.
Parrish, N. (1999). Field Report on Floatation and Preliminary Paleoethnobotanical Analysis from Conchopata 1999. Report on file. New York: William Isbell, Binghamton University.
Pearsall, D. M. (2000). Paleoethnobotany: A handbook of procedures (2nd ed.). San Diego, California: Academic Press.
Plowman, T. (1984). The origin, evolution and diffusion of Coca, Erythroxylum spp., in South and Central America. In D. Stone (Ed.), Pre-Columbian Plant Migration (pp. 125–163, Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology 76). Cambridge: Harvard University.
Plowman, T. (1985). Coca chewing and the botanical origins of coca (Erythroxylum spp.) in South America. In D. Paccini & C. Franquemont (Eds.), Coca and cocaine: Effects of people and policy in Latin America (pp. 5–34, Cultural Survival Report 23). Cambridge: Cultural Survival.
Popper, V. (1989). Selecting quantitative measurements. In C. A. Hastorf & V. Popper (Eds.), Current paleoethnobotany: Analytical methods and cultural interpretations of archaeological plant remains (pp. 1–16). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Pozzi-Escot, D. (1991). Conchopata: A community of potters. In W. H. Isbell & G. McEwan (Eds.), Wari administrative structure: Prehistoric monumental architecture and state government (pp. 81–92). Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.
Renfrew, J. (1973). Paleoethnobotany: The prehistoric food plants of the Near East and Europe. New York: Columbia University Press.
Rosenfeld, S. (2012). Wealth display and local power in the Wari Empire. Ñawpa Pacha: Journal of Andean Archaeology, 32(1), 131–164.
Rowe, J. H., Collier, D., & Willey, G. R. (1950). Reconnaissance notes on the site of Wari, near Ayacuchu, Peru. American Antiquity, 16(2), 120–137.
Sayre, M. (2014). Ceremonial plants in the Andean region. In A. Chevalier, E. Marinova, & L. Peña-Chocarro (Eds.), Crops and people: Choices and diversity through time (pp. 369–373). Brussells: European Science Foundation/Early Agricultural Remnants and Technical Heritage Program.
Sayre, M., Goldstein, D., Whitehead, W. T., & Williams, P. R. (2012). A marked preference: Chicha de Molle and Wari State Consumption Practices. Ñawpa Pacha: Journal of Andean Archaeology, 32(2), 231–258.
Sayre, M., & Whitehead, W. T. (2002). New Paleoethnobotanical Evidence from Conchopata: A Wari Site. Paper presented at the 68th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Schreiber, K. J. (1992). Wari imperialism in Middle Horizon Peru (Anthropological Papers, No. 87). Ann Arbor: Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan.
Schultes, R., & Hoffman, R. (2001). Plants of the Gods: Their sacred, healing, and hallucinogenic powers (2nd ed.). New York: Healing Arts Press.
Simpson, B. B., & Conner-Ogorzaly, M. (2013). Plants in our World: Economic botany (4th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill Education.
Spielmann, K. A., & Kintigh, K. W. (2011). The digital archaeological record: The potentials of archaeozoological data integration through tDAR. SAA Archaeological Record, 11(1), 22–25.
Tung, T. A. (2007). Trauma and violence in the Wari empire of the Peruvian Andes: Warfare, raids, and ritual fights. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 133(3), 941–956.
Tung, T. A. (2008). Dismembering bodies for display: A bioarchaeological study of trophy heads from the Wari site of Conchopata, Peru. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 136(3), 294–308.
Tung, T. A., & Cook, A. (2006). Intermediate-elite agency in the Wari empire: The bioarchaeology and mortuary evidence. In C. M. Elson & R. A. Covey (Eds.), Intermediate elites in the Pre-Columbian states and empires (pp. 68–93). Tucson: The University of Arizona Press.
Van Buren, M. (1992). Wari administrative structure: Prehistoric monumental architecture and state government. American Anthropologist, New Series, 94(3), 756–757.
VanDerwarker, A. M., & Peres, T. M. (Eds.). (2010). Integrating zooarchaeology and paleoethnobotany: A consideration of issues, methods, and cases. New York: Springer.
Wilbert, J. (1993). Tobacco and shamanism in South America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Williams, P. R. (2001). Cerro Baúl: A Wari center on the Tiwanaku frontier. Latin American Antiquity, 12(1), 67–83.
Williams, P. R. (2002). Rethinking disaster-induced collapse in the demise of the Andean highland states: Wari and Tiwanaku. World Archaeology, 33(3), 361–374.
Williams, P. R., & Nash, D. J. (2002). Imperial interaction in the Andes: Wari and Tiwanaku at Cerro Baúl. In W. H. Isbell & H. Silverman (Eds.), Andean archaeology I: Variations in sociopolitical organization (pp. 243–266). New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum.
Wright, M., Hastorf, C. A., & Lendstrom, S. (2003). Pre-Hispanic agriculture and plant use at Tiwanaku: Social and political implications. In A. L. Kolata (Ed.), Tiwanaku and its Hinterlands (pp. 384–403). Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Yarnell, R. A. (1970). Paleo-ethnobotany in America. In D. Brothwell & E. Higgs (Eds.), Science in archaeology: A survey of progress and research (2nd ed., pp. 215–228). New York: Praeger.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank William Isbell, Anita Cook, and the Conchopata excavation team for their work on collecting and housing the authors while the samples were processed in Peru. Christine Hastorf was instrumental in giving us this opportunity all these years ago, and the team of undergraduates that helped with some of the sorting of materials. Much of the sorting was done in Ripon by Kelsey Green under the supervision of Whitehead. The Field Museum of Chicago, donated several hours of SEM time, and the Dean of Faculty at Ripon College who donated laboratory and research funds to complete the final analysis. This manuscript was reviewed and commented on by an anonymous reviewer and Maria Bruno.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Sayre, M.P., Whitehead, W.T. (2017). Ritual and Plant Use at Conchopata: An Andean Middle Horizon Site. In: Sayre, M., Bruno, M. (eds) Social Perspectives on Ancient Lives from Paleoethnobotanical Data. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52849-6_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52849-6_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-52847-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-52849-6
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)