Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Community Identities in the Chimu Empire

Columbia University, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

Under the supervision of Dr. Terence D'Altroy, Scott Kremkau will analyze data gathered during his archaeological excavations and survey work at several Chimu settlements in the Chaman Valley on the North Coast of Peru. Excepting the Inkas, the Chimu empire was the largest native polity in pre?Columbian South America. Beginning in the 13th century, the Chimu conquered most of the Northern and Central coasts of Peru, and ruled over an ethically and geographically diverse empire. However, much of the archaeological research on the North Coast of Peru has focused on earlier civilizations, and only a relatively small number of Chimu sites have been excavated, most of which are large political centers such as the capital of Chan Chan. This project will examine the Chimu conquest of the Chaman valley and what effect it had on the people who were conquered. Specifically, it will look at how conquered groups collaborated with, resisted, or remained unaffected by the intrusion of the Chimu by examining communities that were inhabited before, during, and after the Chimu conquest. This approach is adopted here because historical, archaeological, and ethnographic studies all show that the community is a pivotal setting within which positions of power, status, and identity are negotiated and different social networks become intermeshed. Communities are both physical groups of people defined by social identities and ideas manifested in subtle ways. Thus a community of people can be understood and viewed from many different perspectives based on the differing experiences and beliefs of the people who compose it. Using artifacts, architecture and settlement patterns, this project will investigate how existing social identities and social networks changed following the conquest of the valley by the Chimu. The main question examined in this project is whether these communities maintained their existing identities and social networks, adopted the identities of the foreign invaders, or created new ones by blending both the traditional and the new. To address this issue, the project will examine communities that were socially and politically stratified, but ethnically homogeneous. While the historical record describes several kinds of communities on the North Coast, often organized by craft specialization, this project will focus on communities of farmers, which made up the majority of the population in the region during this period. This project will gather and analyze a significant corpus of empirical data, in addition to addressing significant theoretical and historical issues. The goal is to contribute both to future research on the prehistory of the same time and place and to broader, more comparative studies. The project also has a central educational mission, as its personnel include Peruvian and American students and archaeologists, and it contains plans for broader community development and the dissemination of information. Educational displays will be incorporated into existing museum components in the towns of Chepen and San Jose de Moro created by the Proyecto Arqueologico San Jose de Moro since 1999. These displays are designed to help promote the archaeological resources of the area for tourism and to teach local people the value of archaeological remains in an effort to deter looting and site destruction through agricultural development.