A Functional Analysis of “Horizon Styles” in Peruvian Archaeology

Abstract

Since the beginnings of scientific archaeology in Peru investigators have employed the concept of the “horizon” or “horizon style” in attempting to reconstruct the major outlines of Central Andean prehistory. This formulation of the horizon is an abstraction based upon the recurrence of specific features of style or manufacture in prehistoric artifacts, ‘mainly pottery, from one region to another so that the phenomena become pan-Peruvian in scope and coordinate our knowledge of the past in a broad temporal and spatial scheme. This integration is made possible when the same stylistic or technical complex of traits is found in the respective culture sequences of geographically widely separated regions, and by this means the two or more sequences are brought together and equated in time. The constructs of horizons have been useful synthesizing elements in the understanding of Peruvian archaeology on the level of time-space systematics. As yet, however, there has been little consideration of their functional significance in the prehistoric native societies of which they were a part. This present exploratory analysis ventures to define and characterize as cultural forces on the level of social interaction what heretofore have been viewed chiefly as historical phenomena.