Professional Documents
Culture Documents
10/3/04
11:42 am
Page 239
ARTICLE
ABSTRACT
In the study of emergent complexity, little attention has been given
to the strategies employed by autonomous household-based
communities to overcome the social risks and uncertainties of initial
integration and how these strategies can be examined archeologically.
Such strategies can be designed to slow the integrative process and to
provide small-scale communities with the opportunity to negotiate the
form of emerging social cohesion. The Late Initial Period of Peru (c.
15001000 BC) presents a case study in which households are integrated for the first time at public ceremonies that were influenced or
organized by a centralizing external ideology. The archeological
evidence at San Luis, a U-shaped mound complex in the Zana Valley,
Peru, suggests the use of segmented ritual spaces and rhythmic, timeextended ritual pauses by households to ensure social harmony and to
deter or delay movements toward political centralization. The
broader implications of these developments are discussed for early
complex societies.
239
240
10/3/04
11:42 am
Page 240
KEYWORDS
integration landscape
Peru
place
politics
ritual
INTRODUCTION
The process of establishing social integration and political centralization in
early complex societies has primarily been treated by anthropologists as if
it was a self-evident reality in which a minority of emerging elites organized, integrated, and ruled people (e.g. Fried, 1967; Service, 1975).1 Until
recently, archeologists had mainly employed hierarchical models of centralization and inequality to explain various forms of social interaction and
power relations between rulers and commoners (Anderson, 1996; Blanton
et al., 1996; Brumfiel, 1994; Clark and Blake, 1994; Crumley, 1995; Dobres
and Robb, 2000; Feinman, 2000). Commoners have generally been viewed
as the products of social inculcation to which they were subjected in
exchange relations, ideological indoctrination, and public gatherings at
special places (Bender, 1995; Earle, 1991; Flannery, 1976; Hayden, 1995;
Hill and Clark, 2001; Upham, 1990). Although useful for examining certain
aspects of social relations, these models have often been shortsighted. They
have presumed passive acquiescence on the part of commoners and
overemphasized the extent to which autonomous communities were
molded by social processes to become part of a hierarchic collective.
Underemphasized is the presence of communities that questioned, resisted
or moved slowly towards these developments by organizing non-centralized, communal efforts to integrate on their own terms (Arnold, 1995;
Crumley, 1995; Giddens, 1984; Pauketat, 2000; Price and Feinman, 1995;
Sherratt, 1990). When pressures are placed on communities by changing
social landscapes, they may respond in different ways (Dietler and Hayden,
2001; Ehrenreich et al., 1995; Hayden, 1995; McIntosh, 1999; Mehrer, 2000;
Renfrew and Cherry, 1986) by organizing along various dimensions of hierarchic, heterarchic and horizontal complexity that represent differing but
competing forms of social constructs.
In regions of the world where early complex societies emerged, it is not
always clear whether integration and/or centralization occurred rapidly or
gradually, whether it was negotiated between non-elites and ruling elites,
or whether it ever developed. Despite the efforts of local leaders, there
must have been risk and uncertainty attached to agricultural or other forms
of economic intensification, adoption of innovations, increased congregation and coordination of activities, and increased differences in access to
resources, with the notion that their integration on a collective, interhousehold level eventually would lead to socialization, differential power,
and hierarchy (Carneiro, 1981; Fried, 1967; Spriggs, 1984). Not all public
10/3/04
11:42 am
Page 241
Dillehay
241
242
10/3/04
11:42 am
Page 242
Figure 1 General location of the Zana Valley in Peru and of the San Luis site
and Initial Period household sites in the valley
are created by new ways of experiencing time and space that alter the pace
of life and produce new places to accommodate events associated with
change. These experiences often result in what Harvey (1989: 220)
describes as time-space compressions the technological, ideological,
political, and/or economic conditions that accelerate the transportation of
goods and the communication of new ideas across space. In this sense, both
space and time are reduced in scale and scope by innovative time-space
instruments to achieve societal goals. Examples are the rapid pace and
spread of socio-economic development spurred by the nineteenth century
industrial revolution, the quick movement of people from one place to
another by rapid transit systems, the global transmission of information
within seconds by computers, and all-purpose assembly plants (e.g. Ford
Company) for more cost-efficient production. In a similar but reversed way,
I believe that other or similar instruments can act in the capacity of
timespace extensions; that is, to expand rather than compress time and/or
space to intentionally slow or retard certain developments or practices.
Modern-day examples are the slow-food movement begun in Italy that
was designed to shift the increasingly rapid global consumption of cheap
10/3/04
11:42 am
Page 243
Dillehay
243
244
10/3/04
11:42 am
Page 244
water networks (Burger, 1992: 111; Moseley, 2001: 99102). Such moves
surely necessitated greater integration. Second, I believe that small-scale
communal activity worked at San Luis, because it was based on an ideology
that appealed to people living under different circumstances; it was
designed to show autonomous households how to agree and how to integrate socially. Crucial to this design was periodic ceremony that was constituted by timespace extensions or pauses and breaks in ritual action, which
allowed for power sharing across different households and fostered a selfdirected collective solidarity by means of consensus management and by
belief in a corporate cognitive code (Blanton et al., 1996: 57) a new
community-based religious ideology (Burger, 1992). Prior to presenting the
archeological evidence for these patterns, I will discuss briefly the Initial
period in Peru and some concepts that guide my thinking.
10/3/04
11:42 am
Page 245
Dillehay
245
246
10/3/04
11:42 am
Page 246
10/3/04
11:42 am
Page 247
Dillehay
that relate local form to the pan-Central Andean religious ideology and
social order, we can examine early social integration in the Zana Valley,
and how autonomous household relationships were restructured and
remapped in the socially constructed space of the U-shaped buildings at
San Luis. Specifically, analysis of the construction and use phases of these
buildings provides detailed information on the tempo of social cohesion and
the rhythm of the ritual calendar that allowed local household communities the time to adjust to integration and to set their own pace of change
(Bourdieu, 1990, 1994; Thrift, 1988).
Bourdieu (1994) has addressed the importance of understanding the
pace of a community. That is, members of a community must perform their
duties by conforming to an accepted social order. This entails adhering to
the collective rhythm or calendar that helps to establish and maintain
community solidarity. Certain rhythms are appropriate for certain actions
including, for my purpose, inter-household ceremonial activities that follow
an annual cycle or tempo. For Bourdieu, adherence or submission to the
collective rhythm is important, because the temporal and spatial organization of specific collective actions structures the communitys representation
of ideology and, in turn, structures the community itself in the form of a
social or ritual calendar (Bourdieu, 1994: 1589; see also Young and
Schuller, 1988; Zerubavel, 1981).
Little is known of the social rhythm or tempo of use of early ceremonial
sites, and how public architecture, building phases, and periodic ceremony
may have been used to integrate autonomous groups or employed for nonintegrative purposes (Dillehay, 1998; Walker and Lucero, 2000). In the
Central Andes, the U-shaped centers of the Late Preceramic and Late
Initial periods were special places where the social calendars of inter-household activities and new ideologies were periodically played out and where
goals may have been informed by a habitus, a call for action that oriented
members of previously autonomous households toward particular practices
as opposed to others, such as sustained autonomy, social integration, or
even political centralization.
The general thinking about the periodicity of building phases in early
Andean monuments is that they represent relatively static, conservative,
construction units reflecting refurbishment events, reciprocal labor
exchanges, population expansion, changes in leadership or ritual cycles of
dedication, termination and renewal ceremonies (Burger, 1992; Moore,
1996). Andeanists have not specifically problematized these phases as an
object of social study by asking what the tempo of cultural deposition (i.e.
stratigraphy) at these sites implies ideologically or politically. I suggest that
they not only reflect ritual cycles and related activities, but, at some sites,
the formation of deliberate timespace extensions (e.g. temporal pauses
or breaks) in the public social calendar that are designed to slow integration or to more cautiously approach it, respectively, by engaging in
247
248
10/3/04
11:42 am
Page 248
10/3/04
11:42 am
Page 249
Dillehay
Figure 2
249
250
10/3/04
11:42 am
Page 250
Figure 3 Schematic drawing of the two building phases (1 and 2 on the left
side of the figure) of mound A, prepared use floors (1E, 2B, 2D, 2F, 2G, 2K, 2M,
2O, 2Q, 2S, 2U, and 2W), and culturally placed but sterile fill layers between
them in the stratigraphy of a one of several excavated trenches in complexes
A and B. Note that some floors are discontinuous and occupy discrete areas of
the platform mounds.This stratigraphy is typical of the entire site complex
10/3/04
11:42 am
Page 251
Dillehay
The two U-shaped structures at San Luis face to the east. The northern
structure is complex A; the southern structure is complex B (Figure 2). The
structures are 4 m and 3 m high, 80 and 89 m long, and 120 and 250 m wide,
respectively. Both are constructed of rough fieldstones and occasionally
smooth blocky stones, and have a central structure with a platform and two
parallel wings. The pair of U-shaped mounds is unique in the valley,
although later paired mounds exist elsewhere (Netherly and Dillehay,
1986).
In total, 625 m2 were excavated in on-mound and off-mound areas at
San Luis. An additional 105 m2 of looters pits were cleaned and profiled.
In total, 2932 sherds, stone tools, copper pieces, spondylus shells, rock
crystals, bone remains, articulated llama skeletons and several miscellaneous items were recovered from survey and excavation. Extensive survey
conducted in the valley resulted in the location of 15 small domestic sites
of the Late Initial Period. These sites range in size between 3050 m and
6090 m, and are defined by ceramics, grinding stones, cultigens (e.g. corn,
beans, peppers, peanuts, cotton), faunal remains (e.g. deer, iguana, shellfish), occasional small stone residential structures, and other debris. These
localities show indistinguishable ceramic affinity with San Luis; two of these
sites have AMS radiocarbon dates (129060 BC [Beta 161914] and
131050 BC [Beta 161913]) that agree with those from San Luis.
251
252
10/3/04
11:42 am
Page 252
Figure 4 Schematic view from above of discrete ash lenses, prepared floors,
and remnants of wall construction associated with the last use episode of
building phase 2 in complex A
with many superimposed upon others. Some abandoned structures were
partially destroyed or modified by the subsequent construction. Others
were intentionally buried by the placement of culturally sterile sediment.
Most ritual activity was associated with burned areas and intentionally
broken pottery vessels. We interpreted these discrete vertical and horizontal constructions and floors as different and brief ritual episodes that
represent individual household spaces. (Each discrete floor averages c. 13
m2 in size.) Similar stratigraphic patterns have been found at other Late
Initial Period sites (Terada and Onuki, 1981; Walter Alva, pers. comm.,
1997), which may represent similar or dissimilar activities.
Ceramics recovered from the two complexes and from the 15 support
sites indicate a Late Initial Period occupation ranging between approximately 1400 and 1100 BC. Two AMS radiocarbon dates obtained from
charcoal in sealed hearths excavated in the base of the atria of the
complexes were processed at 129040 BC (Beta 161944) for complex A and
at 128060 BC (Beta 34558) for complex B. Based on the close agreement
of these dates, on the similarity of and overlap between ceramic styles
between the two complexes, and on the appearance of discrete, thin, intermittent use floors in all excavated areas, it appears that the entire site
represents a series of temporally close building, use and abandonment
episodes. The ceramic types and radiocarbon dates from these sites agree
completely with similar types and date at Huacaloma Period sites (Terada
10/3/04
11:42 am
Page 253
Dillehay
and Onuki, 1981) in the nearby Cajamarca highlands and at the Montegrande sites in the neighboring middle Jequetepeque Valley (Tellenbach,
1986). Collectively, the ceramic, household settlement, and other artifact
evidence suggest that the individual ritual spaces defined for each phase of
construction in the buildings correspond to the individual households
located near San Luis (Figure 1).
253
254
10/3/04
11:42 am
Page 254
10/3/04
11:42 am
Page 255
Dillehay
255
256
10/3/04
11:42 am
Page 256
How were these beliefs and experiences shaped at San Luis, and moved
from one area to another on the wings and on the atria of the two structures? The sequential building phases in the two complexes, the discrete
use spaces on the atria, and the intermittent or discontinuous stratigraphy
suggest deliberate pauses and segregated spaces in collective ritual that not
only spatially defined and extended community social relations beyond the
household level to the San Luis site but also sequenced or extended these
relations over a prolonged social calendar. The association of individual
ritual episodes most likely with different households, each with assigned
different spaces and elevations on the atria, suggests the rotation and separation of individual household actions within the broader community order
and collective physical space. The discrete horizontal and vertical episodes
reflected in activity at the site were seemingly not part of a single coherent,
centralized ceremonial system administered by a permanent ruler or group
of elites.
What was the integrative and political effect and possible social meaning
of the temporal pause and employment of segmented spaces in collective
ritual at San Luis? The macro-stratigraphy of the site represents two major
building or refurbishment episodes in each complex. But I suggest that the
microstrata of discrete and intermittent floors and capping events carry
social meaning related to deliberate pauses in ritual action. The value of
pauses in collective ritual was reinscription and negotiation of new social
meanings. The repetition of the ritual, the activity of the break, was not so
much arbitrary as interruptive and redeeming, a time-lag, or time-space
extension, that was not a conclusion but a liminal interrogation and reordering of interhousehold relations. I suggest that these breaks opened up and
extended the negotiatory space between local households (and between
any participating outside communities) rather than imposing a strict
continuous hierarchical order. By slowing or extending the integration
process and deterring centralization, local households may have reduced
the risks and uncertainty of integration and the adoption of an integrative
ideology. Risks also would have been taken in shifting to an intensified agricultural economy and in sharing a valley-wide irrigation system with neighbors.
What was the broader integrative social energy circulated at San Luis?
I suggest it was related to power, aspirations, religious awareness, and
collective social rhythm. The physical structuring, restructuring, and
sequential building of San Luis, movement within and among it parts, the
sequencing of events and structures, the reordering and reworking of individual ritual spaces worked to react and recreate sectional and graded fields
of new social knowledge and experience. By emulating the U-shaped form
and its attendant ideology at sites in neighboring valleys, previously independent households in the middle Zana Valley associated themselves with
a powerful and prestigious pan-Central Andean ideology, although they
10/3/04
11:42 am
Page 257
Dillehay
257
258
10/3/04
11:42 am
Page 258
10/3/04
11:42 am
Page 259
Dillehay
259
260
10/3/04
11:42 am
Page 260
CONCLUSION
What do the observed patterns at San Luis tell us about emerging social
and political complexity at the outset of Andean civilization? The archeological record of the Zana Valley presented here can be interpreted in
different ways. Some archeologists may see centralization and hierarchy in
the data presented; others may interpret individual agency, heterarchy, or
egalitariansm. I see full-scale political incorporation by outsiders being
denied by locals at San Luis. People never lived permanently at San Luis,
but they were periodically integrated there. The need to integrate probably
stemmed from population nucleation in the middle valley, from the intensification of an agrarian lifeway, and perhaps from the realization that
increased intravalley and intervalley connectivity via an irrigation network
were inevitable. By experiencing ceremonial activity at San Luis and by
spatially structuring and restructuring the site, the U-shaped structures
became vehicles for an active reconstruction of remembrance or corporate
memory that permitted the projection of local social relations into the
future.
I do not see the integrative processes and shared ceramic and architectural styles at San Luis and other U-shaped settlements of this period in
the Central Andes being representative of an incipient state system, but
places that simply wove together circulating ideas, styles, and populations
to form a particular kind of integrated society one poised to achieve more
integration or even centralization in some places. It is likely, however, that
most of these settlements were nothing more than small polities defined by
a particular kind of improvised social integration and occasionally political
centralization, and by different strategies designed to transform, multiply,
and spread their local identity through shared power at special places.
Several further issues can be raised for which we have no current answers
in the archeological record of early complex societies. For instance, what
leadership roles came to play in the regulation of interhousehold activity?
When did households evolve into a formal political community? When this
occurred, were special places like the U-shaped structures abandoned?
10/3/04
11:42 am
Page 261
Dillehay
NOTES
1 In this study, I view social integration and political centralization as different
but potentially continuous processes that may grade into each other. I refer to
social integration as cooperation and exchange among roughly egalitarian
households, with decision-making being a community enterprise. Leadership is
261
262
10/3/04
11:42 am
Page 262
Acknowledgements
The author thanks the Instituto Nacional de Cultura for granting the permission to
carry out archeological research in the Zana Valley over the past 25 years. He also
thanks Drs Walter Alva and Cristobal Campana for serving as the Peruvian codirectors of the project. Thanks are also extended to Patricia Netherly, who was codirector of the research in the Zana Valley from 1976 to 1990, Jack Rossen, and
numerous students from the Universidad Nacional de Trujillo, the Pontificia
Universidad Catolica del Peru, and the University of Kentucky who worked with
the project. I thank several colleagues who read portions or all of this manuscript,
especially Patricia Netherly, Paul Trawick, and Jack Rossen. Anonymous reviewers
are also thanked for their insightful comments. Gratitude is also extended to the
National Science Foundation for supporting the research at San Luis.
10/3/04
11:42 am
Page 263
Dillehay
References
Adam, B. (1995) Timewatch: The Social Analysis of Time. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Alva, W. (1988) Investigaciones en el complejo formativo con arquitectura monumental de Puruln, costa norte del Per, Beitrge zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Archaologie 8: 283300.
Anderson, D.G. (1996) Fluctuations between Simple and Complex Chiefdoms in
the Late Prehistoric Southeast, in J.F. Scarry (ed.) Political Structure and Change
in the Prehistoric Southeastern United States, pp. 23152. Gainesville: University
Press of Florida.
Archer, M. (1988) Culture and Agency: The Place of Culture in Social Theory.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Arnold, J.E. (1995) Transportation Innovation and Social Complexity among
Maritime Hunter-Gatherers, American Anthropologist 97: 73347.
Arnold, J.E. (2000) Revisiting Power, Labor Rights, and Kinship: Archeology and
Social Theory, in M.B. Schiffer (ed.) Social Theory in Archaeology, pp. 1430.
Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
Bawden, Garth (1996) The Moche. Oxford: Blackwell books.
Bender, B., ed. (1995) Landscape: Politics and Perspectives. Oxford: Berg Press.
Blanton, R.E., G.M. Feinman, S.A. Kowalewski and P.N. Peregrine (1996) A Dual
Processual Theory for the Evolution of Mesoamerican Civilization, Current
Anthropology 37: 114.
Bonavia, D. (1991) Per, Hombre e Historia. Lima: Ediciones Edubanco.
Bourdieu, P. (1990) Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1994) Structure, Habitus, Power: Basis for a Theory of Symbolic
Power, in. N.B. Dirks, G. Eley and S. Ortner (eds) Culture/Power/History: A
Reader in Contemporary Theory, pp. 15599. Princeton: Princeton University
Press.
Brumfiel, E. (1994) Factional Competition and Political Development in the New
World: An Introduction, in E.M. Brumfiel and J.W. Fox (eds) Factional
Competition and Political Development in the New World, pp. 313. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Burger, R.L. (1992) Chavin and the Origins of Andean Civilization. London:
Thames and Hudson.
Burger, R. and L. Salazar-Burger (1986) Early Organizational Diversity in the
Peruvian Highlands: Huaricoto and Kotosh, in R. Matos, S. Turpn and H. Eling
(eds) Andean Archaeology, pp. 4564. Los Angeles: University of California
Press.
Carneiro, R.L. (1981) The Chiefdom: Precursor of the State, in G.D. Jones and
R.R. Kautz (eds) The Transition to Statehood in the New World, pp. 3775.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Clark, J.E. and M. Blake (1994) The Power of Prestige: Competitive Generosity
and the Emergence of Rank Societies in Lowland Mesoamerica, in E.M.
Brumfiel and J.W. Fox (eds) Factional Competition and Political Development in
the New World, pp. 1730. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Crumley, C.L. (1995) Heterarchy and the Analysis of Complex Societies, in R.M.
Ehrenreich, C.L. Crumley and J.E. Levy (eds) Heterarchy and the Analysis of
263
264
10/3/04
11:42 am
Page 264
10/3/04
11:42 am
Page 265
Dillehay
Fortes, M. (1945) The Dynamics of Clanship among the Tallensi. London: Oxford
University Press.
Giddens, A. (1984) The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Gramsci, A. (1973) Prison Notebooks. London: Lawrence and Wishart.
Haas, J. (1982) The Evolution of the Prehistoric State. New York: Columbia
University Press.
Harvey, D. (1989) The Condition of Post-Modernity: An Enquiry into the Origins
of Culture Change. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Hayden, B. (1995) Pathways to Power: Principles for Creating Socio-Economic
Inequalities, in T.D. Price and G.M. Feinman (eds) Foundations of Social
Inequality, pp. 1586. New York: Plenum Press.
Hill, W. and J.E. Clark (2001) Sports, Gambling, and Government: Americas First
Social Compact?, American Anthropologist 103: 33145.
Hirsch, E. and M. OHanlon (1995) The Anthropology of Landscape. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
Isbell, W. (1976) Cosmological Order Expressed in Prehistoric Ceremonial, Actes
du 42 Congrs International des Amricanistes 4: 26999.
Joyce, R.A. and J.A. Hendon (2000) Heterarchy, History, and Material Reality:
Communities in Late Classic Honduras, in M.A. Canuto and J. Yaeger (eds)
The Archeology of Communities, pp. 14360. London: Routledge Press.
Kato, Y. (1993) Resultados de las excavaciones en Kuntur Wasi, Cajamarca, Senri
Ethnological Studies 37: 20328.
Kaulicke, P. (1975) Pandanche. Un caso del Formativo en los Andes de Cajamarca.
Seminario de Historia Rural Andina. Lima: Universidad Nacional Mayor de San
Marcos.
Kaulicke, P. (1997) La nocin y la organizacin del espacio en el Formativo
Peruano, in H. Crdoba (ed.) Espacio: Teora y Praxis, pp. 11327. Lima: Pontificia Universidad Catlica del Per.
Keatinge, R. (1981) The Nature and Role of Religious Diffusion: An Example from
the Peruvian Prehistory, in A. Jones and R. Kautz (eds) The Transition to Statehood in the New World, pp. 17287. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Keene, A. (1991) Cohesion and Contradiction in the Communal Mode of Production: The Lessons of the Kibbutz, in S. Gregg (ed.) Between Bands and States,
pp. 37695. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
Keith, M. and S. Pile, eds (1993) Place and the Politics of Identity. London: Routledge Press.
Kertzer, D. (1988) Ritual, Politics, and Power. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Koepcke, H.W. and M. Koepcke (1958) Los restos de bosques en las vertientes
occidentals de los andes peruanos, Boletn del Comit Nacional de Proteccin a
la Naturaleza 16.
Lavallee, D. (2000) The First South Americans (trans. by P. Bahn). Salt Lake City:
University of Utah Press.
Lefebvre, H. (1991) The Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell.
Levine, R. (1997) A Geography of Time. New York: Basic Books.
Lumbreras, L. (1990) Chavn de Huntar en el Nacimiento de la Civilizacin Andina.
Lima: Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Andinas.
Marcus, J. (2000) Toward an Archeology of Communities, in M.A. Canuto and
265
266
10/3/04
11:42 am
Page 266
10/3/04
11:42 am
Page 267
Dillehay
267
268
10/3/04
11:42 am
Page 268