Conchopata Archaeological Analyses, 2003

Suny At Binghamton, Binghamton NY

Investigators

Abstract

With National Science Foundation support the Conchopata Archaeological Analysis - 2003, directed by Dr. William H. Isbell, will complete laboratory study of artifact collections excavated at Conchopata between 1998 and 2001. Conchopata was the second largest city in Central Highlands Peru during the initial stages of the Andean urban revolution and formation of pristine empires Conchopata has been recognized as a center of important religious developments that may have promoted imperialism and city life, and our new excavations suggest that the site consisted of palaces, tombs and temples, plus dense concentrations of residences clustered around these important buildings. This new program will bring together archaeologists from the USA, Peru, Argentina and Canada in a coordinated effort to learn more about early urban life in one of the first Andean cities, from power, religious ideology and class difference to subsistence and the organization of labor. Between 1998 and 2001, under Dr. Isbell's direction, archaeologists excavated the largest area of prehistoric architectural remains ever exposed for a highland Peruvian city of early Middle Horizon date. The buildings exposed contained artifacts, ranging from food remains to burial offerings that document the way people lived during Conchopata s apogee. Painstaking analysis of these remains will teach us about how the residents supported themselves, what kind of industries they practiced, their religious rituals, their system of government, how power was consolidated, and the role of symbolic communication and ideology in the profound changes associated with Peru's early urban revolution. These results have broad significance for understanding culture change in the past and present, the production of social difference, and the emergence of centralized political authority. Do all societies follow similar paths in the evolution of cultural complexity and production of differential wealth and power? Some scholars argue that all cultures have developed along similar lines, while others insist that Central Andean civilizations were unique, so processes of culture change are historical and contingent. On the basis of preliminary examinations of our excavated remains from Conchopata it appears that this ancient city shared some features, particularly in the domain of subsistence and economic organization, with other early cities of the New and Old Worlds. On the other hand, it appears that the core of Conchopata consisted of small palaces, occupied serially, that were centers from which ideology, politics and craft manufacturing were organized, until the became mortuary monuments. Perhaps, the first elites also specialized in manufacturing things like ceremonial offering pottery, replete with highly symbolic iconography. This may be a pattern unique to Andean Native America. The analyses will discover much more information about the lives lived at Conchopata, showing how this early Andean city does or does not conform to current theories of universal culture change and processual evolution.