Chimu Craft Specialization and Political Economy: A View from the Provinces

Abstract

Recent archaeological approaches to craft specialization have championed a perspective that gives politics primacy over economics (Brumfiel and Earle 1987: 1–2; Earle 1987: 64 – 67; Peregrine 1991: 8). In this view, “attached specialization” develops under elite coercive control (Brumfiel and Earle 1987: 5; Costin 1991, 1998, 2001). Elites patronize the production of hand-crafted, labor-intensive (Clark and Parry 1990: 319) and hard-to-acquire, exotic goods (Helms 1993)—the quintessential status markers and prestige technologies (Hayden 1995: 258)—and hand these goods out to supporters and allies, allowing them to convert surpluses of staple goods into primitive wealth (Brumfiel and Earle 1987: 7; Clark and Parry 1990: 323; D’Altroy and Earle 1985; Earle 1987: 68–69). “Redistribution” is not about subsistence and utilitarian goods; it is a political rather than economic phenomenon (D’Altroy 1992: 68, 184) and a redistributive system is not to be confused with a centrally planned economy. On the north coast of Peru, craft specialization has played a pivotal role in modeling Chimu political economy and imperial expansion. Existing models portray the Chimu economy as a poster child of the political approach. Based on his excavations of production facilities and artisans’ residences at Chan Chan, Topic (2003: 269) argues that “the focus of the Chan Chan economy was craft production and the development of its specific storage and administrative pattern was intended to support that economy.” That storage and administrative pattern was highly centralized, with both storage and administrators concentrated at a single site: Chan Chan (Topic 2003). Chan Chan was composed of ten sequentially occupied ciudadelas or palaces (Cavallaro 1991; Kolata 1978, 1982), surrounded by elite compounds and small irregular agglutinated rooms (SIAR). Here, up to 12,000 artisans—virtually the entire adult population (Topic 2003: 269)—was internally stratified and organized in “horizontally integrated,” multi-craft workshops and engaged in the production of luxury and wealth items on behalf of the ruling elite (Topic 1977, 1982, 1990). Thus, all residents were either themselves elite or retainers of the elite; all activities focused on the palaces of the reigning lords.