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Social complexity and core-periphery relationships in an Andean Formative ceremonial centre: domestic occupation at Chavín de Huántar

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 June 2022

Christian Mesia-Montenegro Open the ORCID record for Christian Mesia-Montenegro [Opens in a new window]
Christian Mesia-Montenegro*
Affiliation:
Dirección de Investigación, Innovación y Responsabilidad Social, Universidad Privada del Norte, Lima, Perú (✉ christian.mesia@upn.edu.pe)
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Abstract

The site of Chavín de Huántar, Peru, lies at the heart of developing social complexity in the Andean Formative period. The archaeological contexts on the site's immediate periphery are assessed to investigate the nature of occupation, activities practised, and relationships between the area's inhabitants and Chavín's ceremonial centre. The peripheral Wacheqsa sector, which began as a modest, domestic occupation in the second millennium BC, was reconfigured c. 800 cal BC into a more substantial settlement, perhaps inhabited by craftspeople producing artefacts for the Chavín authorities. The implications of this study are relevant to wider questions regarding relationships between monumental ceremonial centres and their immediate peripheries, and the study of early socio-economic complexity.

Keywords

AndesChavínFormative periodsocial complexitycraft production
Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 96 , Issue 388 , August 2022 , pp. 883 - 902
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Antiquity Publications Ltd.

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