The Rise, Fall, and Regeneration of Ancient Societies: Pre- Hispanic Peru”

Isabel Muñoz-Suñé

Bibliography

Binford, Lewis r. 1962. Archaeology as Anthropology. American Antiquity 28(2):217-25

This source proves significant as it both discusses and expands the differences and similarities between archaeology and anthropology. Moreover diving into the specific processes utilized to explain and understand cultures, which proves relevant to analyzing the ancient societies of Peru That change in the total cultural system must be viewed in an adaptive context both social and environmental, not whimsically viewed as the result of “influences,” “stimuli,” or even “migrations between and among geographic units.

Cook, Noble David. Demographic Collapse: Indian Peru, 1520-1620. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

The “Demographic Collapse: Indian Peru, 1520-1620,” is a secondary source that was first published in 1982, and later updated during the year 2004. This text focuses upon Peru, where Cambridge University Professor Cook, estimates population size on the basis of archaeology. Further carrying capacity of agricultural systems, disease mortality, depopulation rations, and census project. Additionally, he analyses the catastrophic population decline that resulted from contact with Europeans and further compares the experience recorded with that of the coastal region and Andean highlands.

Kolata, Alan L., Tom Dillehay, and Mario Pino Q. “Pre-Industrial Human and Environment Interactions in Northern Peru during the Late Holocene - Tom Dillehay, Alan L. Kolata, Mario Pino Q., 2004.” SAGE Journals, October 1, 1970. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1191/0959683604hl704rp. 

This source explores the relationship and consequences within long-term environmental and human interaction with regards to various potential human major natural crisis responses, population dispersal, changes in economic strategies, land-use patterns, restructuring of social organization, increase in conflict or warfare, and urban abandonment or cultural collapse. The article employs archaeological and geological data from the Jequetepeque and Zana valleys in the north of Peru to further examine the specific replies of the Moche, Chimu, and Inca societies to major episodes of drought, El Niño flooding, and desertification, the social processes of urban-rural relations and economic diversification. Moreover focusing upon paleoenvironmental regimes, agricultural infrastructures, and domestic occupations to explore cultural interplay.

Kurin, Danielle Shawn. Bioarcheology of Societal Collapse and Regeneration in Ancient Peru. SPRINGER, 2018. 

The “Bioarcheology of Societal Collapse and Regeneration in Ancient Peru,” is a secondary source that provides insights as to the nature of society during the “Late Intermediate Period” in Andean pre-history in addition to providing a detailed study of Wari state collapse. Through study of bones and the molecules embedded therein, one can reconstruct how the reverberations of traumatic social disasters impacted rates and types of violence, altered population demographic profiles, changed dietary habits, prompted new patters of migration, generated novel ethnic identities, encouraged innovative technological advances, and lastly, transformed believes and practices concerning the dead.

Kurin, Danielle Shawn. “Societal Collapse and Reorganization.” The Bioarcheology of Societal Collapse and Regeneration in Ancient Peru, 2016, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28404-0_1. 

This primary source, paraphrases Thomas Hobbes, who reflects upon the manner in which communities throughout the area negotiated the collapse of the Wari Empire during the early Late Intermediate Period. In addition to this, sets out to explain the underpinnings of Chanka and Quichua society in the first 250 years after through providing a detailed study of 477 individuals from four main sites. Within the text, a strong focus on scientific method allows for social theory involving community, migration, ethnic identity, violence, healthy, diet, and medical innovations to draw various conclusions.

Reindel, Markus, and Günther A. Wagner. New Technologies for Archaeology: Multidisciplinary Investigations in Palpa and Nasca, Peru. Berlin: Springer, 2009. 

This primary source provides geoarchaeological evidence for Holocene paleo climates in the eastern Atacama Desert in hopes to reconstruct the paleoenvironmental history in the Andean foreland. With the aridisation hunter-gatherer people concentrated on favorable sites along the river oases, which were flooded seasonally by reliable rains in the western Andes. Approximately four centuries, through acceleration of reduced summer rains in this location, the river ultimately dried up, and shortly after, the Nazca culture collapsed. Additionally, during the Late Intermediate Period, pre-Columbian people re-occupied the eastern Atacama Desert until the sixteenth century AD. The Little Ice Age, with its coldest temperatures between the next couple of centuries, ultimately caused these settlements to be abandoned and desert conditions reappeared lasting until today.

Schwartz, Glenn M., and John J. Nichols. After Collapse: The Regeneration of Complex Societies. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2011. 

“The Regeneration of Complex Societies,” demonstrates through both archaeology and the study of social change in addition to drawing on textual and ethnohistoric data to consider factors such as preexistent institutions, structures, and ideologies that are influential in regeneration. In addition to economic and political resilience, the role of social mobility, marginal groups, and ethnic change. All in all this source is driven by the main question of expanding the understanding of social evolution, specifically within Peru, of how societies were transformed during the period of radical change now termed “collapse.” Moreover, seeking to discover how societal complexity reemerged, second-generation states formed, and the re-emergent states similar or different that preceded.

Tainter, Joseph A. The Collapse of Complex Societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. 

This source, written by archaeologist Joseph Tainter, describes nearly two dozen cases of societal collapses or political disintegration in addition to reviewing more than 2000 years of explanations. Drawing from this, he then develops a new and far-reaching theory that accounts for collapse among diverse kinds of communities, evaluating his model and clarifying the processes of decomposing by detailed evidence collected from various collapses including the organizations of the Roman, Mayan, and Chacoan people.

Velasco, Matthew C., and Department of Anthropology. “Ethnogenesis and Social Difference in the Andean Late Intermediate Period (AD 1100–1450): A Bioarcheological Study of Cranial Modification in the Colca Valley, Peru.” Current Anthropology, February 1, 2018. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/695986. 

This article specifically focuses upon and explores how changed in cranial modification, a correlate of embodied identity in the Andes, made possible new forms of political solidarity and social inequality in the late prehispanic Colca Valley. It is stated that greater standardization of head-shaping practices allows for broader patterns of identity formation across the south-central highlands and may have provided a symbolic basis for the cooperation of peoples during an era of intensive conflict. Moreover, that boundaries enacted by head shaping potentially intersected other forms of collective identity and likely contributed to growing social inequality prior to Inka expansion.

Washburn, S.L. 1951. The New Physical Anthropology. Trans of the New York Academy of Sciences 13(7): 298-304

I have chosen to utilize this secondary source because it discusses a notion of “the new physical anthropology.” As my topic surrounds the rise and fall of ancient Peruvian societies, the topic of evolutionary studies potentially progressing through the understanding of genetic constitution and population changes is of upmost relevance. Moreover, the text discusses various processes employed to record data that ultimately leads to conclusions made both about societies and cultures. All leading towards one question which is whether or not the current methods of analysis are suitable or not.