A history of violence in the Lambayeque valley: conflict and death from the late pre-Hispanic apogee to European colonization of Peru (AD 900–1750)

Abstract

Human remains provide definitive and intimate evidence bearing witness to the history of violence from the Pleistocene to the present (Chacon and Mendoza 2007a, 2007b; Fiorato et al., 2000; Larsen 1997; Martin and Freyer 1997; Verona 2007; Walker 2001; this volume). Osteological indications of violence include depressed cranial fractures, facial fractures, broken ribs, defensive parry fractures, scalping, decapitation, dismemberment, torture, mutilation, trophy-taking, embedded projectiles or projectile damage and demographic variation reflecting the specific targets of violent acts (Kimmerle and Baraybar 2008; Lambert, 2007; Larsen 1997; Lovell 1997). As Lambert (2007: 202) states, the skeletal record of the injured or dead is the end point of a violent exchange. Our task is a reconstructive effort that relies on multiple lines of independent contextual evidence. In this chapter, I attempt an initial reconstruction of the history and nature of violencewithin one of the centres of cultural development in Andean South America – the Lambayeque Valley Complex of northern coastal Peru (Figure 21.1) through a synthesis of osteological, archaeological and ethnohistoric evidence. Lambayeque peoples reached their notable cultural, technological, and organizational apex between the tenth and twelfth centuries AD – and were subsequently conquered by two waves of Andean imperial expansion that was followed by European conquest. Over the past 20 years, the remains of 2,014 individuals have been scientifically documented from a socially representative spectrum of burials in the Lambayeque region that span AD 900-1750 (Table 21.1). Of these, this chapter focuses on the 1,070 skeletons complete enough to be scored for trauma. This permits the first preliminary view of regional and diachronic patterns of violence spanning the late pre-Hispanic era and across the post-contact transition. This study of conflict, however, does not end with analysis of broken bones. I draw additional interpretive perspective from the theory of structural violence. Such an approach can highlight how health and well-being may reflect subtle and perhaps even greater degrees of violence than typically considered by traditional osteology.