oBeyond Wari Walls o Beyond Wari Walls Regional Perspectives on Middle Horizon Peru Justin Jennings, Editor University of New Mexico Press Albuquerque 2010 by the University of New Mexico Press All rights reserved. Published 2010 Printed in the United States of America 15 14 13 12 11 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Beyond Wari walls : regional perspectives on Middle Horizon Peru / Justin Jennings, editor. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 978-0-8263-4867-8 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Huari Indians—Politics and government. 2. Huari Indians—Material culture. 3. Huari Indians—Antiquities. 4. Culture diffusion—Peru—History. I. Jennings, Justin. F3430.1.H83B49 2010 985’.01—dc22 2010025871 s Contents Figures vii Tables ix C h a p t e r 1 Beyond Wari Walls 1 Justin Jennings Chapter 2 The Nature of Wari Presence in the Mid–Moquegua Valley: Investigating Contact at Cerro Trapiche 19 Ulrike Matthies Green and Paul S. Goldstein Chapter 3 Becoming Wari: Globalization and the Role of the Wari State in the Cotahuasi Valley of Southern Peru 37 Justin Jennings Chapter 4 Wari in the Majes-Camaná Valley: A Different Kind of Horizon 57 Bruce Owen Chapter 5 Local Settlement Continuity and Wari Impact in Middle Horizon Cusco 79 Véronique Bélisle and R. Alan Covey Chapter 6 Nasca and Wari: Local Opportunism and Colonial Ties during the Middle Horizon 96 Christina A. Conlee Chapter 7 The Wari Footprint on the Central Coast: A View from Cajamarquilla and Pachacamac 113 Rafael Segura Llanos and Izumi Shimada Chapter 8 What Role Did Wari Play in the Lima Political Economy?: The Peruvian Central Coast at the Beginning of the Middle Horizon 136 Giancarlo Marcone F. Chapter 9 The Wari State, Its Use of Ancestors, Rural Hinterland, and Agricultural Infrastructure 155 Frank Meddens and Nicholas Branch Chapter 10 Piecing Together the Middle: The Middle Horizon in the Norte Chico 171 Kit Nelson, Nathan Craig, and Manuel Perales Chapter 11 Contextualizing the Wari-Huamachuco Relationship 188 Theresa Lange Topic and John R. Topic Chapter 12 Moche and Wari during the Middle Horizon on the North Coast of Peru 213 Claude Chapdelaine Chapter 13 Agency, Identity, and Control: Understanding Wari Space and Power 233 William H. Isbell Contributors 255 Index 259 vi Chapter 6 o Nasca and Wari Local Opportunism and Colonial Ties during the Middle Horizon Christina A. Conlee y the mid-twentieth century, when archae- several highland and coastal sites. She documented the ologists had accepted that Wari was an inde- influence of the Nasca ceramic style on the contem- Bpendent and powerful pre-Hispanic society, porary Early Intermediate Period Huarpa style of the research on the Nasca culture of the South Coast of Wari heartland, and on subsequent imperial styles of Peru led to questions about the role and influence of the Middle Horizon. This influence included imagery, Wari in coastal regions. Dorothy Menzel’s (1964) study use of color, slip-painting, and high-temperature firing of Middle Horizon ceramics was one of the first to try (Benavides C. 1971; Cook 1984–1985; Knobloch 1976; and define the relationship between the Wari state Menzel 1964). Conversely, Wari pottery (especially the and the Nasca culture. Menzel recognized early on Chakipampa style) also contributed elements to the local the expansive nature of Wari and the variability in the Nasca style. Menzel’s analysis included pottery excavated extent and type of influence it had in different areas of from the Wari site of Pacheco in the Nazca Valley where the central Andes. She also found that religion played many oversized Robles Moqo–style vessels were delib- a role in Wari expansion and that it was particularly erately broken, interred in adobe chambers, and used as important in Nasca, which had a close relationship offerings in a similar manner to the offering deposit of both politically and ideologically with Wari. “Nasca Conchopata near the capital city of Huari. thus seems to have enjoyed a special privileged position Pacheco, with its impressive pottery, is the best in the new empire, sharing its prestige in the provinces, known Wari site on the South Coast and has been cen- perhaps somewhat in the way in which Greece shared in tral to interpretations of Wari expansion and control in the prestige of the Roman Empire” (Menzel 1964:68). the Nazca region. The site was first investigated by Julio Menzel viewed Nasca as a center of prestige that influ- C. Tello in 1927 after looters had uncovered a series of enced the developing Wari state, and once the state was adobe rooms (Menzel 1964:24). Tello excavated over established she thought Nasca’s prestige among other three tons of ceramics including many oversized urns. groups was enhanced because of its unique connection In 1930 Ronald L. Olson made some additional exca- with Wari. vations and found an abundance of camelid bones and Menzel’s interpretation of the relationship between ceramic sherds of local and Wari nonceremonial types. Wari and Nasca was based primarily on ceramics from Unfortunately, around 1953 Pacheco was bulldozed, 96 much of the site was destroyed, and it is now covered by large ceremonial center of Cahuachi was also established agricultural fields (Menzel 1964:23). Menzel concluded in this period, and there was a proliferation in construc- that the site was an important ritual location, given the tion of the Nasca lines (geoglyphs). Most archaeologists large offering deposit found there, and that a colony agree that a politically complex polity developed at this of people from the highlands lived at the settlement. time, although there continues to be some debate over Thorough scientific excavations at Pacheco were never whether to classify it as a state, chiefdom, series of chief- undertaken, and the subsequent destruction of the site doms, or a heterarchy (Reindel and Isla 1999; Schreiber makes further investigation, and more detailed interpre- 1999; Schreiber and Lancho 2003; Silverman 2002; tations, difficult. Vaughn 2004). Since Menzel’s initial work, much more has become Middle Nasca (AD 450–550) was a transitional known about Wari both at the capital and in the prov- period during which underground aqueducts were con- inces. Projects in the highlands and the coast have pro- structed in the southern Nazca drainage, and there was vided a wealth of information about many aspects of the movement of people into the middle parts of the val- Wari state. The Nazca region has also been the focus of ley (Schreiber and Lancho 2003). This appears to have archaeological investigations, and recent research has been a period of drought that may have created stress in focused on societies of all time periods, including the the region and led to new innovations (Schreiber and Middle Horizon, and the periods before and after Wari. Lancho 2003; Silverman and Proulx 2002; Thompson This diachronic approach has aided in our understand- et al. 1985). The ceramic style underwent a change in ing of local society and the impact of Wari expansion Middle Nasca from naturalistic to more abstract designs and collapse on people of the region. Menzel’s pioneering (Proulx 1968), and construction stopped at Cahuachi work has been crucial in guiding research on the rela- (Orefici 1993; Silverman 1993). In Late Nasca (AD tionship between Wari and Nasca. Recent research in 550–750) the population aggregated at large settlements Nazca supports many of Menzel’s earlier ideas; however, (Reindel and Isla 1998; Schreiber 1999; Schreiber and new data reveal that the situation was more complicated Lancho 2003; Silverman 2002), and the ceramic style than she initially proposed, and that in Nazca, as in other continued to change with warfare and warriors more areas during the Middle Horizon, there was a diversity of commonly depicted (Proulx 1983; Silverman and Proulx responses to and interactions with the Wari state. 2002). Overall, Late Nasca was a time of reorganization and potentially greater political complexity, and it is dur- ing this period that the relationship developed between The Nazca Drainage the Nasca and Wari people (Schreiber and Lancho 2003). and the Middle Horizon By the Early Middle Horizon, Wari had established at Archaeological evidence of human occupation in the least two settlements in the drainage, and large transfor- Nazca drainage goes back to the Middle Archaic (ca. mations occurred in the region. 3500 BC), but it was in the Early Intermediate Period Archaeological surveys conducted in both the (AD 1–750) that the first regionally integrated com- northern and southern Nazca drainage have located plex society developed in the area. Known as the Nasca hundreds of sites of all time periods and have helped to culture, this society developed out of cultural tradi- clarify the nature of Middle Horizon settlement and the tions from the Ica and Pisco valleys during the Early impact of the Wari state (Isla 2001; Reindel and Isla 1998; Horizon (800 BC–AD 1). The Nasca culture of the Early Schreiber 2001a; Schreiber and Lancho 2003; Silverman Intermediate Period is further subdivided into three 2002). Notable differences exist between the northern periods: Early Nasca (AD 1–450), Middle Nasca (AD valleys (Santa Cruz, Grande, Palpa, and Ingenio) and 450–550), and Late Nasca (AD 550–750). During Early the southern valleys (Nazca, Taruga, Las Trancas) in Nasca a new polychrome ceramic tradition developed the number and type of human settlements during the and was widespread over the South Coast of Peru. The Middle Horizon. In the northern drainage there was a 97 dramatic decrease in sites, and the majority of those iden- it did create opportunities for local leaders to obtain tified are cemeteries with little evidence for habitation power in new ways (Conlee 2006).